OPINION:
One has to hand it to the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, who, like his father, Hassan II, never gives up — even when he’s wrong and all the world knows it.
In the 1970s, nation after nation in Europe gave up their colonies, most of which became independent countries. The Spanish Sahara was the exception and is now often referred to as “Africa’s last colony.” When Spain left, the former king of Morocco invaded, claimed it as part of what he and now his son call “Greater Morocco,” and informed the indigenous people of the area that they should, from that day forward, live as his subjects.
Unfortunately for the king and his army, the Sahrawi people who live in what we now call the Western Sahara weren’t eager to trade one colonial ruler for another. They organized the Polisario Front and fought his army and sought justice through the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and world opinion.
They won everywhere but on the battlefield. More troops and better weapons enabled the king’s army to seize and occupy as much as 70% of the land he coveted. Several hundred thousand Sahrawis were driven across the Algerian border and have lived for two generations in refugee camps, harassing the king’s men and praying for the day when Morocco will give up or be forced to withdraw from the king’s costly effort to seize their homeland and make it his own.
Morocco’s occupation of the land has been brutal. International human rights groups have complained continuously about the abuses of those living there. Morocco maintains a heavy and expensive military presence to control the occupied territory and has moved several hundred thousand Moroccans in the same way that the Soviet Union moved Russians to the Baltic States after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939. Stalin wanted to overwhelm the native cultures of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and failed.
The king isn’t having much more success as the people of the Western Sahara, who refuse to surrender either their identities or desire for independence.
Products taken or produced by the occupiers of this illegally occupied territory face challenges to be sold internationally, but Morocco keeps trying to find ways to do so. Some governments have seized vessels carrying Western Saharan phosphate, and the European Court of Justice declared illegal any agreement between the European Union and Morocco that includes fish in Western Saharan waters. A few years ago, the king even negotiated an agreement with an international oil company to explore the region for oil, but it was ruled illegal by the United Nations’ legal adviser.
As the Trump administration was working out the Abraham Accords in the Middle East, the king let it be known that if the U.S. would acquiesce to his desire to incorporate the Western Sahara into his Greater Moroccan empire, he would recognize Israel or do pretty much anything else to get the world off his back. Then-President Donald Trump issued a tweet to placate and encourage him, but it has had little impact either on U.S. policy or the attitudes of the many nations that support the findings of the U.N. and the International Court of Justice.
The king’s latest ploy is to build huge solar and wind energy installations in the occupied territories that would export electricity to Europe, which the king hopes will make him a hero to the green and “woke” communities. No doubt, he hopes that Europe’s thirst for energy will persuade his customers to ignore the legal niceties. After all, it seems to have worked for those willing to ignore China’s human rights abuses in exchange for solar panels made in Xinjiang.
But China isn’t Morocco, and the betting is that the king will fail again, although former Vice President Al Gore and current climate czar John Kerry will no doubt applaud him for putting climate change and solar power above the needs of a subjugated people. The effort amounts to a campaign to “greenwash its occupation,” as a Western Saharan human rights advocate recently told a Forbes reporter.
The U.N. and the world believe the “solution” is a free and democratic referendum that will allow the indigenous people of the territory to vote on whether they want independence or to remain under Moroccan rule. Morocco once agreed to such a referendum but backed out at the last minute, pledging never to let such a vote take place. To keep the United States neutral, Morocco spends lavishly on Washington lobbyists and has recently been caught bribing elected members of the European Parliament.
This king assumes eventually, everyone will forget about the sovereign rights of the victims of thuggery. That should never be allowed to happen.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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