Arm the Polisario. Drag Morocco into a fight it cannot win. Remind Morocco's king he is not a power player and should never imagine himself to be.
An excerpt from, "The occupation of Western Sahara" Western Sahara Resource Watch, September 28, 2021:
Many believe that the age of colonialism is over. It is not. On the UN's maps of remaining non-self-governing territories in Africa, there is one last remaining colonial question left. Neighbouring Morocco occupies a large part of Western Sahara and obstructs the decolonisation process.
It was during the last months of 1975, that the Saharawi people's aspiration to independence took a serious blow. The territory's colonial power, Spain, abandoned Western Sahara without finalising the process of independence, as the UN had demanded. Instead, it allowed Moroccan military forces to invade the territory, in violation of international law and a decision from the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Moroccan forces met resistance from the Saharawis, who had organised under the liberation movement Polisario. After 16 years of armed conflict, the two parties entered into a ceasefire agreement in 1991. According to the agreement, a referendum on independence in Western Sahara was to take place in 1992. The solution was in line with the over 100 UN resolutions calling for the respect of the Saharawi people's right to self-determination.
The UN operation MINURSO was established to monitor the ceasefire and to secure the implementation of the referendum. But this has still not materialised. Morocco has sabotaged the peace process by failing to cooperate with - or refusing to accept the nomination of - UN Special Envoys to the territory.
Tracing its origin to a Sahrawi nationalist organization known as the Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Wadi el Dhahab, the Polisario Front was formally constituted in 1973 with the intention of launching an armed struggle against the Spanish occupation which lasted until 1975, when the Spanish decided to allow Mauritania and Morocco to partition and occupy the territory. The Polisario Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) on 27 February 1976, and waged a war to drive out the two armies. It forced Mauritania to relinquish its claim over Western Sahara in 1979 and continued its military campaign against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire, pending the holding of a UN-backed referendum which has been consistently postponed ever since. In 2020 the Polisario Front declared the ceasefire over and resumed the armed conflict.
