Morocco warns that there will be “an adequate military response” if the Polisario uses Iranian drones

Oct. 29 () –

Morocco’s representative to the UN, Omar Hilale, has warned that his country will launch “an adequate military response” if the Polisario Front uses Iranian drones.

“It would be a game changer at the military level and Morocco would react accordingly and appropriately,” Hilale warned in statements collected by the Moroccan press.

In addition, he pointed out that “it would pose a serious moral problem” because while the UN and other international organizations ask for more funding to attend to the Saharawis of Tindouf, “at a time when there is talk of the risk of famine, of scarcity, the Polisario brags about having acquired drones,” he said.

For Hilale, if the acquisition of Iranian drones is finally confirmed, “this will give us the reason to have alerted the international community for two years about the fact that Iran and Hezbollah are infiltrating Tindouf and North Africa and that they have spent to train to equip the Polisario with drones”. “After having destabilized Yemen, Syria, Iraq… Iran is destabilizing our region,” Hilale said.

On the other hand, Hilale referred to the recent extension of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), approved last Thursday by the UN Security Council. However, he has warned that if the international mission were withdrawn, “the Kingdom of Morocco would have the right to return to the situation before” the ceasefire.

Hilale has referred to a letter sent by then King Hassan II of Morocco to the UN three days before the 1991 ceasefire in which he warned that if MINURSO withdraws, Morocco “would have the right to recover these areas.”

The former Spanish colony of Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco in 1975 despite the resistance of the Polisario Front, with whom it remained at war until 1991, when both parties signed a ceasefire with a view to holding a self-determination referendum, but Differences over the preparation of the census and the inclusion or not of Moroccan settlers have so far prevented its convening.

On November 14, 2020, the Polisario Front declared the ceasefire with Morocco broken in response to a Moroccan military action against Saharawi activists in Guerguerat, in the agreed demilitarized zone, which meant for the Saharawis a violation of the conditions of the agreement. armistice and has since announced numerous attacks on the Moroccan defensive wall.