Western Sahara

[…] After a 29-year ceasefire, fighting re-erupted in November 2020 as the Polisario Front – a political-military movement that claims representation of the Sahrawi people – resumed its struggle to eject Morocco from the 80% of Western Sahara they control, and which Rabat claims as its own. … While the Polisario Front has reported heavy fighting in recent weeks, Morocco refuses to acknowledge the war in what it refers to as its “southern provinces”.

The row opens a new front in a series of disputes over Western Sahara that has already dragged in Spain and Germany.

(The) king says he wants to re-establish normal relations with Algeria, which cut off ties last August over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

Algeria said Wednesday it was suspending a decades-old co-operation treaty with Spain, after Madrid backed the position of the North African country's arch-rival Morocco on the disputed Western Sahara.

Morocco is seeking backing for a proposal it tabled in 2007 that would offer limited autonomy via a devolved government in Western Sahara, with tax raising and budgetary powers, though with foreign relations, security and defence remaining in the hands of Rabat.

Tensions between Morocco and Algeria have risen lately, and there is now a heightened risk of armed conflict arising. The escalation is rooted in the dispute over the status of Western Sahara, where Morocco appears to feel that its claim to sovereignty is gaining international support.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI hosted Spanish prime minister on Thursday in a landmark visit ending a year-long diplomatic crisis, after Madrid reversed decades of neutrality on the Western Sahara conflict in a U-turn that has angered Algeria.

The United States on Tuesday reiterated its support for a Moroccan plan for autonomy in the Western Sahara to settle the kingdom's decades-old conflict with the Polisario independence movement.

Since hostilities between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in Western Sahara resumed in November 2020, the EU has been reluctant to play an active role in the conflict. But a recent EU Court of Justice ruling against the inclusion of Western Sahara in the EU-Morocco trade deal could soon force Brussels to step into the fray.

Morocco is determined to “turn the page definitively” on the Western Sahara conflict but without giving up its “legitimate rights” over the disputed territory, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said Tuesday.