British Foreign Minister David Lammy declared on Sunday the UK would support Rabat’s plan to integrate Western Sahara (called “Southern Provinces” in Morocco) to the Moroccan state as an autonomous region.
The UK is the latest country to endorse the Moroccan proposal to end the decade-long Western Sahara conflict, after similar shifts in policy from France, Spain, Israel, Germany and the United States in recent years, often in exchange for economic and geopolitical concessions from Rabat.
A resource-rich territory located on the Atlantic coast of North Africa, Western Sahara was a Spanish colony until 1975, when it was relinquished to a Morroccan-Mauritanian condominium. A three-way war between Morocco, Mauritania, and the Polisario Front, a socialist Sahrawi militia backed by Algeria, erupted immediately and concluded in 1991 with an uneasy ceasefire, a Moroccan control over 80% of the territory with the rest administered by the Polisario’s Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), and the promise of a self-determination referendum that never came to fruition.
Rabat’s 2007 “autonomy plan” would see Sahrawis renounce a referendum on independence and transfer the handling of foreign affairs and defense to Morocco, in exchange for the creation of a Sahrawi-led autonomous government, based on the Spanish model of comunidad autónoma.
The plan is staunchly opposed by Algeria, Morocco’s main geopolitical rival and main backer of the Polisario Front, whose relations with France sharply degraded last year after Paris’ endorsement of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan.
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British Foreign Minister David Lammy declared on Sunday the UK would support Rabat’s plan to integrate Western Sahara (called “Southern Provinces” in Morocco) to the Moroccan state as an autonomous region.
The UK is the latest country to endorse the Moroccan proposal to end the decade-long Western Sahara conflict, after similar shifts in policy from France, Spain, Israel, Germany and the United States in recent years, often in exchange for economic and geopolitical concessions from Rabat.
A resource-rich territory located on the Atlantic coast of North Africa, Western Sahara was a Spanish colony until 1975, when it was relinquished to a Morroccan-Mauritanian condominium. A three-way war between Morocco, Mauritania, and the Polisario Front, a socialist Sahrawi militia backed by Algeria, erupted immediately and concluded in 1991 with an uneasy ceasefire, a Moroccan control over 80% of the territory with the rest administered by the Polisario’s Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), and the promise of a self-determination referendum that never came to fruition.
Rabat’s 2007 “autonomy plan” would see Sahrawis renounce a referendum on independence and transfer the handling of foreign affairs and defense to Morocco, in exchange for the creation of a Sahrawi-led autonomous government, based on the Spanish model of comunidad autónoma.
The plan is staunchly opposed by Algeria, Morocco’s main geopolitical rival and main backer of the Polisario Front, whose relations with France sharply degraded last year after Paris’ endorsement of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan.