analysis
Morocco has been claiming the Western Sahara for decades. Now Morocco hopes that after France the USA will also hit its side. Both states have other conflicts and powers in view.
Squipments like this strike Emmanuel Macron at home in Paris rarely: With standing ovations, the MPs of Parliament in Morocco gave the French President in Morocco, when he said this – historical – words about Western Sahara last October: “For France, the present and the future of this area are under the responsibility of Morocco.”
Macron spoke much audibly for the world public what his hosts have long been long for: the clear commitment that France recognizes Morocco's regional claims to Western Sahara. Macron's words postponed the power -political weight in the region and also gave the geopolitically consequent conflict a completely new turn.
Sarah Yerkes from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Thinking Factory, Macron's statement says: “If both France and the USA and Spain gather behind Morocco, i.e. all important players in this conflict, this is important.”
It was Donald Trump who recognized the demands of Morocco on the raw material territory on the northwest African coast during his first term in the name of the United States and as the first member of the UN Security Council. Now he is back in the White House – and Morocco combines great hopes.
Triggered enthusiasm in Morocco: France's President Macron (here in 2017 on a state visit with Morocco King Mohammed VI.)
Two neighboring countries struggle for power
For decades, the dispute over Western Sahara has primarily poisoned Morocco's relationships with the neighboring Algeria. 50 years ago, the colonial power of Spain pulled Spain from the area on the Atlantic. Then the struggle for control began: the so-called “Polisario” front is committed to an independent state of Western Sahara and also masters part of the area. The rebels are supported by Algeria, the largest country in Africa.
Algeria's rival Morocco, on the other hand, already controls the significantly larger part of the West Sahara and strives to integrate the entire region into its own territory. In 2020, this conflict about the desert area became so explosive that military clashes. The UN observer mission Minurso, in which the Bundeswehr is also involved with up to four military observers, is to prevent further fights.
Map of Morocco, the Western Sahara and Algeria.
Two major conflicts have an impact
What happens in Western Sahara is geostrategically significant, not least because the Western Sahara is closely linked with at least two other major conflicts.
On the one hand, there is the Middle East conflict. Trump gave his blessing in 2020 last year of his first term in Morocco because the country recognized as a state in return.
On the other hand, the advertising of France and the United States around Morocco also has a lot to do with the economic advance of China and the military spread of Russia in West Africa.
Stability as a goal – also because of Russia
The West is looking for a stable partner in a restless, so as not to say explosive region. South of Morocco, the Western Sahara and Algeria, the Sahel lies with the states that are affected by crises, terrorism and states of state such as Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso.
There, Russia has recently increased its influence massively, while the West was on the retreat: “Because the fact that instability in the Sahel has exploded in recent years explosively, it is in the interest of everyone that the Western Sahara conflict is solved,” says Sarah Yerk in conversation with the ARD.
According to current reports, Morocco, supported by the USA and France, is now planning to build an airport in Western Sahara. From there, Islamist bases are to be combated with drones and jets in the Sahel zone, as the Spanish newspaper La Razon writes. One wants to prevent the region from becoming a “new Afghanistan”.
And there is another visible sign for the rapprochement of the West to Morocco: This week, the arrival of the first six Apache fighter helicopters ordered in the USA was celebrated in a solemn ceremony.
The U-turn in the French attitude, however, has led to a tangible crisis in relationships with Algeria ex-colony. It should also not have helped that Paris only a few hours after the Macron speech on the website of the Foreign Ministry, the Western Sahara on maps as part of Morocco.
Where the liberation front is Polisario, they proudly show their weapons. But the situation has become more difficult for them.
Algeria without supporters
Algeria's problem: Since US President Trump will hardly change his attitude, there are hardly any significant players who oppose the Moroccan demands: “I do not see that there is realistically a future for an independent West Sahara,” emphasizes Yerkes.
A few years ago, Germany also learned how sensitive every statement on this topic is recorded in the region: Because the Federal Republic demanded that the UN Security Council with the Western Sahara conflict, after Trump had clearly commented, triggered a severe diplomatic crisis with Morocco.
This has been adjusted in Rabat in the summer of 2022 since the visit of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – even if nothing has changed in the German position since then.
Like most EU countries, Berlin continues to consider the status of Western Sahara as unclear under international law. France, Spain and the United States, on the other hand, have been politically committed. And Morocco should do everything possible to ensure that there is no back on this marked path.
Kai Küstner, Ard Dakar, Tagesschau, 07.03.2025 2:44 p.m.
