Morocco’s aggressive foreign policy towards the Sahara

Following Germany and Spain’s efforts, France has also bowed to pressure from Morocco to align itself with its position on the Western Sahara conflict. At the end of July, a letter was published from French President Emmanuel Macron to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, in which he stated that Rabat’s autonomy plan was “the only basis” for a solution to the Western Sahara dispute. With this gesture, Paris put an end to more than two years of diplomatic crisis with its traditional ally in the Maghreb since the decolonisation of the region.

France’s change of position confirms the undeniable success of Morocco’s aggressive foreign policy, which has used a strategy based on opening diplomatic crises with allied countries, often using excuses, in order to force a change of position on the Western Sahara dossier in its favour. And it has done so with countries, in theory, with greater weight on the world stage.

The turning point in the Moroccan attitude came at the end of 2020, when the Trump administration recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in a three-way pact that included the establishment of diplomatic relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv. Rabat, with the support of the American superpower under its arm, believed it had a historic opportunity to transform the status quo of a conflict frozen for decades in its favour and set its sights on the European Union, a key player. The aim: to get it to follow in the footsteps of the United States.

In order for the bloc to move in the right direction, it was necessary for the Franco-German axis, the driving force behind so many decisions at the European level, to do so first, as well as Spain, whose voice is listened to with particular attention as it is the former colonial power. It should not be forgotten that the UN has treated the question of Western Sahara as a conflict linked to the process of “decolonization”.

The success of Moroccan diplomacy is remarkable, since it has not only managed to get these three European countries, Germany, Spain and France, to modify their respective official positions regarding Western Sahara under pressure and in the face of the risk, later confirmed, of harming their relations with Algiers, but they did so by entering into a kind of auction to see who was more accommodating with Rabat. Thus, Berlin, the first to end its dispute with Morocco, offered as a concession in December 2021 a declaration in which it assured that Rabat’s autonomy plan, presented in 2007, constituted “a good basis” for the resolution of the dispute with the Polisario Front. The reconciliation between the two countries occurred shortly after the current Executive, led by the socialist Olaf Scholz, and which includes the Greens, came to power. Precisely, this party would have been decisive in the German turnaround by having considered Morocco as a central country in its ecological transition strategy due to its potential in the production of Green Hydrogen.

A few months later, in March 2022, Madrid followed in Berlin’s footsteps. In a letter to King Mohammed VI, President Pedro Sánchez went further than the German tricolour government, proclaiming the Moroccan plan as the “most serious, realistic and credible” proposal. While the reason for the Moroccan regime’s anger with Germany was never clear – there was speculation about the fact that a regional parliament had raised the flag of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – in the case of Spain it responded to the secret reception of the leader of the Polisario Front, Ibrahim Gali, for medical treatment.

French diplomacy, which had already supported the Moroccan autonomy plan, had to find a formula that was even more favourable to Rabat, and found it in the description of the autonomy plan as “the only basis” for resolving the conflict. In a contradiction perhaps intended in vain to appease Algiers, Macron’s letter also says that the solution to the dispute must be made “in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council”, which have always been based on the recognition of the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people. In the case of Paris, the bilateral crisis had been going on for more than two years, and its components included President Macron’s Pegasus hack, allegedly at the behest of Morocco, the reduction of French visas for Maghreb countries, or a rapprochement between Paris and Algiers.

In Morocco, Foreign Minister Nasser Burita is seen as the main architect of an assertive Moroccan diplomacy that, as King Mohammed VI said in a speech, looks at the world through the lens of Western Sahara. Its success was not guaranteed, and at times, it seemed that he had overreached himself and the strategy could even be counterproductive. For example, this was believed by some observers when Morocco opened the Ceuta fence to allow the irregular entry of thousands of people into the Spanish enclave in 2021. The European Union, Morocco’s main trading partner, could have reacted angrily to the exploitation of such a sensitive issue as immigration, but this was not the case.

Instead of coordinating to deal with Moroccan pressure, European countries engaged in a kind of competition, one of the main keys to Morocco’s success. It is also worth noting the weak response to the Moroccan pressure strategy offered by Algeria, which did not put all its cards on the table in the same way, as well as Rabat’s ability to convince its allies that it was better for them to take advantage of their counterparts than to maintain a position of principle in a cause such as the Saharawi cause, which is of doubtful success.

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