Anna Theofilopoulou and Jacob Mundy do the ongoing debate on the future of Western Sahara—not to mention those refugees still suffering in the camps—an extreme disservice by continuing to insist that the principle of self-determination has only a single meaning. The legal scholarship on this aspect of the Western Sahara problem is both extensive and considerably more complicated than Ms. Theofilopoulou and Mr. Mundy would have readers believe. Indeed, the previous US Administration under President Bush conducted extensive legal research on the issue before it publicly declared Morocco's proposal to be both "serious and credible."

Perhaps the most salient recent public research can be found in an article by Samuel J. Spector, “Western Sahara and the Self-Determination Debate,” published in The Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2009 (http://www.meforum.org/2400/western-sahara-self-determination). Spector's very thorough examination makes it clear that Morocco’s proposal to negotiate broad autonomy for the territory under Moroccan sovereignty is wholly consistent with current international law, custom, practice in the post war period, and the general principle of respect for self-determination. Indeed, Morocco insists such an autonomy arrangement be in accordance with international law and norms. Morocco has also made it clear that whatever agreement ultimately emerges from direct negotiations with the Polisario Front must also be put to a vote of the concerned population before it can be implemented.

It does not advance any objective understanding of this difficult problem when those who follow it closely to deliberately try to obscure or distort the issue by presenting the "facts" only in the narrowest manner to advance their own preferred outcome.

Furthermore, the number of Sahrawis cannot be confirmed as the 300,000 total the authors advance. Most problematic is pinning down the actual population of the various refugee camps located around Tindouf in Algeria. No one can be certain of those numbers until and unless Algeria and the Polisario Front finally relent and allow the United Nations to conduct an objective census and identification process in the camps. The Polisario Front and its various supporters like to claim numbers ranging from 150,000 to 200,000 for the camps' population. However, substantial and credible first-hand accounts from those who have fled the camps indicate the actual population is more likely in the range of 40,000 to 50,000. Additionally, there is further evidence that shows a very large percentage of those who currently reside in the camps are, in fact, not actual "refugees" from Western Sahara at all. Of course, none of this can be substantiated until both Algeria and the Polisario agree to stop saying no to the United Nations and allow a legitimate count and identification exercise to be completed.

What is much more certain is that a very significant majority of the total number of Sahrawis today actually reside and are moving on with their lives in Moroccan Western Sahara, which has a thriving economy and distinctive Sahrawi social fabric that belies the tired rhetoric that the Polisario continues to repeat. Importantly, the Moroccan Western Sahara population has also participated in four major local and parliamentary election cycles over the last decade. In the most recent election they rejected Polisario calls for a boycott and topped the nation in voter participation percentages, sending a strong implicit message of approval for their citizenship in Morocco. Unfortunately, the contrast with conditions for those remaining in the camps couldn’t be starker.

Perhaps this is why the Polisario’s top police official in Tindouf, on his first visit to Moroccan Western Sahara in 31 years to visit his family, publicly declared this week that he thought Morocco’s autonomy plan was the best solution to reunite Sahrawis in their own distinctive community and end the decades-long Western Sahara dispute. We can only hope he’ll be allowed to take that message back with him when he returns to Tindouf.

It is time for the international community to live up to its responsibilities in the Western Sahara. On this we should all be able to agree. The first step is for UNHCR to stop ignoring its own responsibilities and begin a repatriation program to allow those refugees who so choose to return home to their families in Morocco. Since the beginning of this year, 1800 refugees have managed to flee the camps and return home, often at the risk of their lives. They have done so with no assistance from UNHCR, whose mandate is to facilitate exactly such durable solutions for refugees who make this choice. Instead, UNHCR pretends nothing can be done to assist refugees in returning home until there is a political solution to the larger problem.

This only perpetuates the problem and prolongs the suffering of tens of thousands of refugees, who are being held as virtual hostages in one of the bleakest spots on Earth—deservedly named the “Devil’s Garden”—to justify the political aims and existence of the Polisario leadership. It is a remarkably cynical exercise on the part of the Polisario leaders, almost all of whom have very comfortable homes elsewhere in which to live. And it is a shameful abrogation of responsibility by the international community, which is only enabling this tragic situation to continue, leaving tens of thousands of refugees to fend for themselves in the desert, when most would prefer to reclaim their lives and build a better future with their families in Morocco.

The realities and contrast in human conditions on the ground between Tindouf and Moroccan Western Sahara make it eminently clear where self-determination is really being practiced and enjoyed, and where a mockery is being made of its promise to serve the goals of a bankrupt ideology and political leadership. Those who continue to write and preach about it from afar should come see for themselves. Seeing is believing.

Robert M. Holley

Executive Director

Moroccan American Center for Policy

It is not surprising that Mr. Holley, heading an organization that represents and talks on behalf of the Moroccan Government, would be critical of the article that Mr. Mundy and I wrote on the current status of the efforts to resolve the Western Sahara conflict. Mr. Holley is entitled to his views on the subject like everybody else. However, Mr. Holley is not correct in distorting some of the views expressed in the article or misrepresenting events and scholarly writings and opinions on the subject of self-determination in general and Western Sahara in particular to suit the purposes of the Moroccan Government.

Mr. Holley claims that the Bush Administration “conducted extensive legal research on the issue” of self-determination before publicly declaring Morocco’s autonomy proposal both “serious and credible”. This is really news to anybody closely following the issue and I would appreciate knowing the source where such information can be found. It is known by those inside the efforts to resolve the conflict and has been widely reported that such decision was based on purely political grounds. The Bush Administration started openly favoring the Moroccan position at the urging of Elliott Abrams, then deputy in the National Security Council, who linked Morocco’s usefulness to the US on its help to resolve the Middle East issue, on counter-terrorism grounds and overall stability for North Africa. On those grounds he managed to convince the Bush Administration to withdraw its support from the Baker Peace Plan in April 2004 after Morocco had rejected it and in the US calling the Moroccan autonomy proposal “serious and credible”.

Turning to the issue of self-determination and Mr. Holley’s assertion that Mr. Mundy and I insist that the principle of self-determination has only one meaning, I would refer Mr. Holley and other readers to the relevant paragraph in the article where it is clearly stated that “UN decolonization practice has traditionally offered a plebiscite on independence”. The paragraph further says “Unlike the generic claim of self-determination often uttered in separatist conflicts, self-determination has a very specific and clear meaning in the case of Western Sahara given its international legal status as Africa’s last UN recognized non-self-governing territory.” Mr. Mundy and I are aware that self-determination is not necessarily equated with independence even in UN parlance. However in the case of Western Sahara the option of independence through a referendum of self-determination has been the practice all along and wherever the UN organized such referenda, independence has been there as an option.

With respect to the article by Mr. Spector that Mr. Holley mentions, I would say that Mr. Spector’s analysis of self-determination is a lot more complex than Mr. Holley asserts. Nowhere does Mr. Spector say that “Morocco’s proposal to negotiate broad autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is wholly consistent with current international law, custom, practice in the post war period and the general principle and respect for self-determination”. Mr. Spector makes it clear that scholarly opinion on the matter is divided about whether independence should be on option for self-determination to take place or not. However, Mr. Spector fails to confront the very simple question: What do the people of Western Sahara want? Mr. Holley suggests that the majority of native Western Saharans favor unification with Morocco. In that case, what does Morocco have to fear from a referendum that would include the independence option? Suggesting that current times require an evolution of thinking on self-determination ignores the fact that Western Sahara remains the last decolonization case in Africa and that the aspirations and desires of thousands of people are ignored in order to satisfy Morocco’s needs.

Regarding the number of refugees, nowhere in the article do we claim certainty regarding their numbers. After the MINURSO Identification Commission completed the identification of potential voters in December 1999, 39,000 eligible voters were found in the Tindouf camps, another 86,000 in Western Sahara and 10,000 in Mauritania. Extrapolating on those figures, UNHCR estimated at that time that around 100,000 would be in the camps and that was 11 years ago. While Mr. Holley doubts claims by the Polisario as to the numbers, it is hard to accept as he suggests, as substantial and credible claims made by those who have fled the camps when understandably these individuals would have every reason to provide information and numbers that would please the Moroccan Government.

We all agree that the actual number of Western Saharans is not known and it is lamentable that Algeria and the Polisario Front will not allow a census in the camps to ascertain the number of the refugees living there. It is equally lamentable that the Moroccan Government will not allow monitoring of human rights in the Territory, especially since it is keen to prove that claims of abuse by Polisario, human rights organizations and some governments are baseless. One would expect it willing to show the contrast in living conditions between Western Sahara and the Tindouf camps.

The Moroccan Government claims that MINURSO’s mandate does not include such monitoring, which is essentially correct. However, it is hard to accept its calls on UNHCR, which Mr. Holley in his response repeats, that it is time for UNHCR to assume its responsibilities and begin the repatriation of the refugees from the camps when no such mandate exists either, before resolution of the conflict. While Mr. Holley is right that the international community should live-up to its responsibilities, we cannot pick and choose which responsibilities we would like assumed.

Starting the confidence building measures which include family visits to the Territory by Western Saharans living in the camps and which have rendered some unexpected gifts to the Moroccan Government such as the recent statements by Polisario’s top police official in favor of Morocco’s autonomy offer, is definitely not part of MINURSO’s or UNHCR’s mandate. Maybe, some creative thinking such as the one that allowed for the creation and evolution of the confidence-building program, would allow for inclusion of human rights monitoring in MINURSO’s mandate.

Finally, responding to Mr. Holley’s comment about “those who continue to write and preach about Western Sahara from afar” I would like to mention for the record that neither Mr. Mundy nor I have been that afar from the Western Sahara conflict and we would like to see nothing more than a just and lasting resolution to the conflict.

Mr. Mundy has twice visited the Moroccan administered areas of Western Sahara and the refugee camps to conduct research for the International Crisis Group and his co-authored book on Western Sahara. As for myself, I spent 12 years of my professional career in the UN covering the conflict, 7 of those working closely with Personal Envoy James A. Baker, III. I worked directly with Special Representatives, members of the Security Council, representatives of both sides and Algeria and participated in private talks and negotiations.

I am in a position to know more than most about the efforts extended to convince the two parties to agree to a just and long-lasting solution. I saw both sides missing opportunities to resolve the conflict in the mistaken and often ill- advised belief that a better opportunity would come along. I am sorry to say that the Moroccan Government is ahead of Polisario in having let such opportunities go by.

Anna Theofilopoulou

What! No mention of Morocco's pre-colonial history? Ofcourse not because, Anna Theofilopoulou and most other Westerners approaching this subject -or any subject - do so loyal to Euro-centric programming; they feel the Maghreb's history begins when Europeans first colonised the place - if anything, that is the only parallel I see with the Palestine case. Surely the fact of Morocco's historic possession of this 'disputed' area's allegiance, deserves mention (I am speaking of the bay'a between the Chiefs of 'Western Sahara' and Moroccan dynasties). Once that history and relationship is fully understood you cannot help but realise that Morocco is in fact a double victim: it was first colonised, only to be spited for REVERSING this colonialism. For some reason, which may be allied to something unsanitary, Anna Theofilopoulou and her co-thinkers prefer European-inflicted mutilations of Geography and Society to prevail forever.
Just look at the Polisario - they will gain the Western Sahara if it is torn from Morocco - and think about whether this group of people should be allowed to control a state.