The end of the Left’s pet guerillas in the Western Sahara?

There are certain conflicts and countries where US policy should be a no-brainer. In 1777, Morocco was the first country to recognize American independence. In subsequent centuries, Morocco has consistently sided with if not vocally advocated for moderation. This was especially true during the Cold War. Egypt flip-flopped its allegiances. Libya expelled Americans and grew increasingly close to the Soviet bloc. After its bitter independence struggle against France, Algeria also marched headlong into the Soviet camp. Morocco, however, consistently sides with the West, even at great cost to itself.

One of Morocco’s key national security concerns has been the fate of the Western Sahara, a territory which successive Moroccan dynasties not only ruled but originated from and which was separated by force from Morocco by both the Spanish and French. Over at the Journal of International Security Affairs, I wrote a long piece detailing this history of this sparsely populated land, as well as arguing that both historical justice and regional security interests mandate that the United States should side with Morocco’s claims.

Sahrawi people during the funeral of Western Sahara’s Polisario Front leader Mohamed Abdelaziz in Tindouf, Algeria June 3, 2016. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina.

In short, Morocco is the only country that has been able to secure its own territory, not only in North Africa but also across the Sahel. Morocco may only be a flawed democracy, but its trajectory has, for a decade and a half, been in the right direction. And, whatever faults it has, they pale in comparison to the Cold War relic that is modern day Algeria, which is approaching a tumultuous transition–if not collapse–as the 79-year-old strongman Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s health worsens.

Morocco may only be a flawed democracy, but its trajectory has, for a decade and a half, been in the right direction.

In the United States, however, there has long been a tendency to bash allies while coddling or at least legitimizing manufactured grievances of adversaries. At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet-backed Algerian regime, with the help of Cuban advisers, founded the Polisario Front, a self-described liberation movement and the pretender to the leadership of the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. In reality, the group neither represented most Sahrawi (given the freedom to travel, most Sahrawi choose areas controlled by Morocco) nor was it democratic. Rather, it was a police state under the authoritarian rule of Mohamed Abdelaziz, the self-styled president. While one former lobbyist for Algeria eulogized Abdelaziz as “a man of peace,” he was no more a man of peace than Pol Pot. Those who seek peace do not forcibly separate children from parents and send them to re-education centers in Cuba. Nor do men of peace hold prisoners of war illegally to extort blood donations from them or participate in schemes to divert and sell off humanitarian assistance.

One of the more bizarre elements of Obama administration policy has been a repeated willingness to throw Morocco under the bus and bend over backward to legitimize Polisario. Personnel is policy, as the old adage goes, and many Morocco, Western Sahara, and Africa watchers more generally place the origin of this policy with National Security Adviser Susan Rice and her friendship with Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, who has long been active in Polisario causes. On many foreign policy issues, the National Security Council takes the lead and cuts the State and Defense Departments (and Central Intelligence Agency) out of the loop. During Nelson Mandela’s funeral, President Obama even posed with the Polisario leader, a meeting no previous president would even consider and something no diplomat or advance man would have allowed had it not presumably been for Rice’s intervention.

The Polisario has in recent weeks appointed an acting leader, but with its decades-long strongman gone, it is time to close the door on the Polisario and their pretensions to rule as well as a UN process that has floundered for a quarter century because of Algeria’s refusal to allow an open census inside refugee camps.  Sometimes, the path to peace isn’t through endless compromise and moral equivalency, but rather though recognizing that one side is right and the other wrong.

The Western Sahara conflict may be a largely forgotten dispute and a relic of the Cold War, but with Abdelaziz’s death and the looming end to Rice’s tenure, peace may just have gotten closer.