The Moroccan Sahara

Over forty years after the Green March of November 6, 1975 that put the issue of the Spanish colonization of the southern provinces of Morocco to rest, and allowed their restitution to the Western Kingdom, an extensive analysis of the persistence of conflict in the Moroccan Sahara has become necessary. The conflict was artificially created by Algeria and the Communist bloc. Disinformation, propaganda, provocations, targeted campaigns:every well-known tactic of totalitarian revolutionary activism continues to function in order to keep an artificial conflict alive. It has become one of the main factors for the destabilization of the Sahel-Sahara strip because of the dynamism of terrorist groups that some separatists are now associating with. It has become absolutely necessary to provide a complete overview on the issue of Moroccan Sahara and in particular to clarify what the law prescribes in the matter, and also to highlight the serious geopolitical consequences if the conflict is allowed to go on. Such is the aim of the present book. Written by specialists from several countries (France, Germany, Lebanon, Senegal, Spain, and of course Morocco) it offers a survey of the issue from several different perspectives: historical, geopolitical, legal, social and economic. The Moroccan Sahara: Record of an Artificial Conflict is intended for researchers and students, for politicians and diplomats and more widely for anyone interested in the Maghreb and in Africa. Charles Saint-Prot is General Director of Observatory of Geopolitical Studies; Jean-Yves de Cara i s p rofessor o f I nternational L aw a t Université Paris-Descartes Sorbonne-Paris-Cité and at Sciences Po; Christophe Boutin is Professor of Public Law at Université Caen-Normandie. Other contributors: Babacar Diallo, José Maria Gil Garre, Kerstin Odendahl, Abdelhamid El Ouali, Zeina El Tibi, Henri-Louis Védie.