Is the Western Sahara now friendless? No, EU backing for Morocco is conditional, and Spanish election will be pivotal
Spain's general election could be, in part, a referendum on the country's partnership with Morocco, with the opposition promising tougher border control measures and closer ties with Rabat's neighbour and enemy, Algeria.
The collapse of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, after a 35 year mandate, is the latest diplomatic win for Morocco, but Rabat’s European support may prove to be less conclusive than it thinks.
The end came at a UN Security Council last week, when the United States and Russia effectively cancelled each other out by vetoing rival resolutions on extending the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara.
Russia vetoed a US-drafted resolution on Western Sahara at the Security Council on Friday (30 October), leaving the UN peacekeeping mission without a renewed mandate just a day before it expired.
The US resolution would have extended the mission for another year but enshrining a plan to give Western Sahara limited autonomy under Morocco’s sovereignty as the only basis for talks to settle the dispute that dates back to the end of Spanish colonialism in the 1970s. The US text also proposed to remove any reference to a referendum among the Sahrawi people on their future.
The security council then rejected a rival Russian resolution to extend the mission for a year. France and the UK, the two other permanent Security Council members, along with eight non-permanent members, backed the US resolution.
The end of the UN mission is undeniably better for Morocco than the Polisario Front, the political wing of the Sahrawi independence movement.
Benjamin Fox is our trade and geopolitics editor. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, although he often reports from London.
