I just wish Lee Smith would remove his head from his read end as Morocco is one of the top violaters of UN Security Council resolutions precisely because it is occupying and illegally colonizing the Sarahawi people's land.
Pax Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian
www.afrol.com :
While decolonisation remained unfinished at the northern coast, Morocco turned all its attention southwards as the Sahrawi people entered their decolonisation process in the beginning of the 1970s. Ignoring several UN decisions towards the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination, Morocco invades Western Sahara in 1975. Morocco still occupies the territory and still denies the Sahrawi people its right to self-determination.
Status quo since 1975 has been a Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, a British possession of Gibraltar, Spanish possession of Ceuta and Melilla and non-engagement by Morocco and Spain on a dozen islands off Morocco's coast. It is a status quo not liked by any party, and it does utter injustice to the Sahrawi people and Moroccan territorial integrity.
As the piece also notes, Spain missed a fine chance to make progress on West Sahara with the way it tackled the crisis over Perejil/Leila in 2002. (Jorge Luis Borges described the Falklands War as "two bald men fighting about a comb." I wonder what he would he would have thought of this...)
But Morocco is undoubtedly one of the last, if not the last, true colonial powers in Africa. I plan to write about this some other day.
Thanks for your kind words, by the way! The world's northernmost desert wind.
