Western Sahara News

Publically the language is impeccable. Members of the Spanish Government and diplomats show, with rare exception, an exquisie neutrality when they speak about the conflict in Western Sahara which face since 39 years Morocco and Polisario Front, backed by Algeria. The Spanish president Mariano Rajoy was, for example, a model of impartiality when he received UN Secretary General in Madrid in April 2013. However, underhand, Spanish diplomacy supports Morocco and its autonomy proposal, formulated in 2007 for the territory that was colonized by Spain until 1975. The cables of US State Department, unveiled in 2010 by Wikileaks, and showed, for example, then Ambassador of Spain in Morocco, Luis Planas, offering help to the Moroccan authorities to elaborate their autonomy offer for Western Sahara. Now the Moroccan Wikileaks provides new data. Since early October, hundreds of confidential documents of the Moroccan diplomacy are being unveiled by Chris Coleman, a fake Twitter profile....

According to documents released by the Moroccan hacker Chris Coleman, the information flowed smoothly between some French and the editor of L'Observateur du Maroc, Ahmed Charai, which is turn reported to Mourad El Ghoul, Director of Cabinet Yassine Mansouri, head of the Moroccan DGED. They worked as L'Observateur du Maroc collaborators to cover other activities they carried out for the Moroccan intelligence service. -Among these activities, relaying the propaganda of Morocco to improve the image of King Mohammed VI. In this area, Vincent Hervouet was a real working spy of all publications appeared in France against the King of Morocco and his country. On 01/03/2012, he sent an "urgent" message and requesting a "receipt" in which he reported that "the book by Eric Laurent on Your King finds an echo in Paris and guy make outright campaign. He talks about physical threats through anonymous messages, incredible! ". When the book came out ...

A document leaked by the Moroccan whistle-blower twitter account demonstrates how Morocco uses the Western Saharan natural resources to embroil other countries into its own illegal occupation of Western Sahara. The case at hand; Russia. On 21 November, the @chris_coleman24 twitter account, which has been leaking official Moroccan documents for some time now, published a document called " La Fédération de Russie at la question du Sahara Marocain " ("The Russian Federation and the question of the Moroccan Sahara") - a 6-page document devoted entirely to Morocco's geopolitical aim to convince Russia to side with Morocco when it comes to Western Sahara. Under the header "how to optimise Russia's position", the strategy is outlined. It reads as follows (translation from French to English by WSRW): "§39. To reach this objective, Morocco has to: a. renew, enrich and diversify its strategic partnership with Russia, the goal being...

A group of Moroccan human rights groups announced Monday they would boycott an international human rights conference being held in their country because of consistent government interference. The Moroccan Association of Human Rights, the country's most active and well known independent rights group, said they were initially invited to participate but then sidelined and excluded from the preparation for the 2nd World Forum for Human Rights. The statement, which was also signed by seven other organizations, described how calls to release detainees and end a crackdown on various groups was ignored, prompting the boycott. The move also comes after Interior Minister Mohammed Hassad railed against human rights groups in June, saying they sullied the reputation of security services by accusing them of torture. The New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a statement earlier this month November pointing out that the recent crackdown on human rights groups in Morocco, in...

Morocco decided, since the international community has imposed the good offices of the US veteran diplomat Christopher Ross as the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Western Sahara, to use all means to be stated an indispensable partner of the anti-terrorism at a time when its reputation was severely affected by several cyclical factors: - Cannabis trafficking, the barons acting under the orders of Morocco’s Makhzen, became one of the main sources of financing of the terrorist group Al Qaeda installed in Mali. - The failure of the so-called autonomy plan that was not given any consideration by the international community committed to the international law and UN resolutions, namely the principle of self-determination for Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory. - The fear of losing control of the resources of the former Spanish colony, the only way for Morocco to compete with Algeria at the regional leade...

[The following open letter was written by Moroccan journalist Hamza Mahfoud on 11 November 2014, in response to King Mohammed VI's speech marking the anniversary of the Green March. The open letter was originally published in Arabic on Huna Sotak and translated to English by Abdellah Laaraj. Since its publication, the open letter has been widely disseminated on social media, drawing a wide range of responses.] Dear King, I am writing regarding the Sahara after having watched your speech last Thursday. I would like to present the point of view of a Moroccan citizen who wished he were in a stronger position to defend his country. The reality is that he found himself split between the overwhelming desire to do so and the simultaneous constraints. How can anyone possibly defend his nation when it is ruled by authoritarianism, governed by a regime that fails to respect basic human rights, and is dedicated to perpetuating systematic favoritism and internal, pervasive corruption...

Caitlin Dearing Scott is Senior Vice President of Research, Projects, and Programs at the Moroccan American Center where she provides overall supervision and coordination of research for the Center, with a focus on political and security issues pertinent to Morocco, Moroccan-American relations, and North Africa. Fluent in French, Caitlin holds an MA in International Affairs from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs and a BA in History and International Studies from the College of New Jersey. I have closely followed Caitlin Dearing Scott (I will refer to her as “Dearing” for short) since she got out of college in 2008 and started working for the Moroccan American Center (MAC), a long-time paid lobbyist and foreign agent for Morocco. I admit to always being astounded by the disjoint between her impressive educational background - with specializations in international affairs, human rights, conflict resolution, genocide in Rwanda, and North...