TERRORISM AND WAR IN THE SAHARA
By Ana Camacho
ISN
April 14 2008
Switzerland
Equating the Polisario Front’s fight as terrorism shines an unfair
light on the organization, says Ana Camacho for Strategic Studies
Group.
The need to make amends for an unforgivable omission by the Spanish
administration has added to a list of dangers for the Polisario
Front. Until now, its role as the Sahrawi people’s liberation
movement has never been disputed, but now they have been downgraded
to no more than a vulgar terrorist group. A new innovative episode
of historical revisionism is threatening to sneak through via the
Canarian Association of Terrorism Victims (ACAVITE) in order to demand
recognition and help to defend the inalienable right of the Sahrawi
people to self-determination in their own land. Spaniards still
require this same recognition and help after more than thirty years
of suffering the consequences of the actions of the Polisary Front.
It seems that it is not a group acting just moved by an anti-Polisario
grudge or some post-colonial resentment; they are just convinced
that this is the most effective way to solve the problem endured
by its members. Nevertheless, this group’s demands end up being
the perfect alibi with which Morocco’s King Mohammed is about to
obtain institutional recognition by the Zapatero administration to
his strategy of distorting the history of the invasion when he tried
to annihilate the Sahrawi people.
The Polisario Front is not perfect, neither was the French resistance
against the Nazi invasion during World War II, nor was the ANC fighting
underground against South African apartheid and whose members, by
the way, were depicted as terrorists by Nazis and racists Boers,
respectively. But, until now, no one – with the obvious exception of
pro-Moroccan lobbies – had thought of associating it with a form of
terrorism, let alone to equate its actions with ETA’s.
Nowadays, the stigma of terrorism has become a powerful way
to discredit opponents carrying serious political and legal
consequences. Branding the Polisario Front as such is one of the most
desired objectives after sought by King Mohammed’s friends.
The Moroccan rulers have been trying to use this approach through
several means. One of them, airing a certain connection between
Polisario and Islamist terrorism – something filtered in the middle
of the 3/11 tragedy. An older one was resorting to assume the
similarities between Polisario and ETA. Their bet on this battle
of semantic confusion is that the silence pervading the Sahrawi
conflict favors the disappearance of that great difference marked
by more than fifty UN resolutions recognizing the Sahrawi people’s
right to self-determination under the banner of freedom – something
conspicuously absent in ETA’s case.
The omission – treacherously promoted by King Mohammed’s many friends
in Spain – also intends to drag public opinion into an error that Rabat
fosters when branding the Polisario Front as a gang whose threads
lead to Algeria in order to break away from Morocco. Just as if the
Sahara had been integrated as a state with Morocco when, in 1973,
in the heat of this territory’s Spanish colonization, Polisario was
born to provide continuity to the efforts that Bassiri, the first
Sahrawi martyr fighting for liberation, had begun. In 1970, Bassiri
had disappeared in Franquist jails after his arrest. In a peaceful
manner, he had requested to the Spanish dictatorship the beginning of
the self-determination process without any more delays- a compromise
of the regime with the United Nations to decolonize the Saharan region.
The Spanish troops, who during three years faced the Polisario
forces, preferred to resort to terms such as "subversive" or "radical
youngsters" when talking about Sahrawi rebels, branding them as
anti-Spanish – with all the serious criminal baggage that this
discrediting term carried. In their reports about the Sahara, the
term "terrorism" was reserved by the ones in charge of the Spanish
information services to be used about pseudo liberation movements,
such as the Liberation and Unity Front (LUF,) trained and armed
by Morocco, to pretend before the international community that the
Sahrawis did not want independence but instead that the Spaniards
left the territory in order to culminate decolonization returning
the Sahara into the arms of the Moroccan motherland.
No one knew better than the Spanish military that Polisario militants
were no angels. The amount of dead and wounded as a result of their
actions among Spanish ranks facilitated that certain sectors settled
the score with a "they had it coming," about the Moroccan invasion
that in 1975 came along the improper and complicit Spanish desertion
of the territory. Yet not even venting their frustration could afford
them to trample the UN’s displayed common sense opposing to identify
the actions of self-defense carried out by armed liberation movements
as terrorism. The end of an era justifying colonial submission of
subjugated peoples was irreversible. Not even the alarm stirred in 1972
by the unfolding phenomenon of hijacking airliners was a justification
for the United Nations to stop considered the situation of national
liberation wars as state of war, and never as acts of terrorism.
The Polisario Front was the enemy, those in charge of the mission to
safeguard the Spanish presence in the Sahara, were pretty unceremonious
with them. The Sahrawi combatants who survived that time still remember
that becoming prisoners of their Spanish adversaries exposed them to
torture, deportation, summary execution or, worse still, to be sent
to Morocco -it already meant they could pay with their lives. But
in that sinister logic usually entailed in all decolonization wars,
Polisario’s Spanish enemies clearly knew that the Sahrawi combatants’
main objective was not to finish with their lives but to publicize
their cause and put pressure on the Spanish government to give them
back their land.
For example, when Polisario had already been active for a year and
had inflicted Spanish casualties, a Spanish intelligence report made
a series of peculiar ascertainments. Some were about a certainty that
not all the violent actions attributed to Polisario had really been
carried out by the organization. Others emphasized the premeditated
will of Sahrawis and its allies to minimize the damages suffered
in their struggle. "In all the attacks carried out [by Polisario]
against posts or detachments, two things have been demonstrated
in every occasion: 1) They wanted neither European nor indigenous
casualties; 2) Their means to attack have always been very poor
(lack of mortars, hand grenades, and so forth.) The incidents with
casualties had always been due to the fact that we had forced them
into that desperate situation and in self-defense." Evidently, the
situation described by the report had nothing to do with, for example,
the violence and scope reached in the Algerian struggle against French
colonialists and a death toll by tens of thousands.
France constitutes a good example of how the process of decolonization
can also translate in a very slow and heavy digestion for the old
metropolis. The electoral leverage still brandished by those having
nostalgia for French Algeria, has succeeded with that the government –
the self-proclaimed champion of the international community against
the "barbarism of Bush’s imperialism" in Iraq – is now domestically
embroiled in a controversy with imperialistic undertones – because
of a law forcing all to recognize the civilizing benefits of its
colonization and, very specially, its contribution to Algeria’s
development.
The post-colonial trauma that the hurt French grandeur has been
dragging on since 1962 for the loss of what it considered a province as
French as Provence, keeps on interfering even today in Franco-Algerian
relations, sabotaging the good intentions of the authorities on
both banks of the Mediterranean Sea to seal a powerful and mutually
beneficial alliance. The vengeful demons never forgave the Algeria
of the National Liberation Front (FLN) neither to have taken the
road to independence nor the affront for refusing to sacrifice its
vocation as a regional power in order to act just like a simple pawn
of French neocolonial hegemony in Africa. Its shadow has loomed large
and very strongly, for example, favoring unconditional support by
Paris to Morocco (a model of post-colonial submission) against a
Polisario endorsed by rebellious and uncontrollable Algeria, even
at the expense of sacrifying the international legality that French
foreign policy advocates in other scenarios. Its irrational logic has
also led French politicians to unfathomable non sequiturs like the one
refusing to show its repentance for the colonial massacres in Algeria
and instead promoting a law demanding the Turks to apologize for the
Armenian genocide. But not even this discourse – with which Imperial
Nostalgia tried to impose by law the elevation of the Camembert’s
intellectual benefits bursting in the Hoggar Mountains – has in its
plans to recover the use of the term "terrorist" to brand Algerians
who rejected the honor to be French.
If nobody takes the lead – and everything indicates there is
no danger of this happening – that innovative reading of the
decolonization processes will belong to the political aces of the
Spanish historical memory law. Rodríguez Zapatero’s PSOE got its
chance through the struggle that Lucía Jimenez, President of ACAVITE,
has been waging since 1999 – the date when the Victims of Terrorism
Law came into force and her father could be recognized as a victim
of terrorism. The alleged attack took place on January 10, 1976 in
Western Sahara where Francisco Jimenez was working as an electrician
for Fos Bucraa -company belonging to the National Institute of Industry
that operated the Spanish colony’s phosphate deposits. Spain had not
finished yet its exit after the agreements with which, in November
1975, Franco’s last government had surrendered the Sahrawi people to
King Hassan of Morocco, violating UN resolutions and its duties as the
administrator power. The Spanish treason against the Sahrawi people
had unleashed a multi-headed war roaming the territory, in addition
to Polisario and FLU guerrillas, there were battalions of Moroccan,
Mauritanian and Algerian armies.
The vehicle in which Francisco Jimenez was traveling blew up when
it drove over a landmine placed by the Polisario Front – something
alleged by his daughter. He survived miraculously but suffered
terrible physical and psychological consequences. Raimundo Lopez,
another worker accompanying Jimenez, died on the spot.
Nobody can deny solidarity to whom fate assigned the ticket of a
sinister lottery. Something very different is to attribute the
difficulties that the Jimenez family went through to a lack of
humanitarian responsiveness by the Popular Party’s government in the
family’s attempts to make Francisco invoke his right under the law
seeking reimbursement or compensation from the State for "victims of
terrorism or acts perpetrated by persons belonging to gangs or armed
groups or acting with the purpose of seriously disturbing the peace
and security of the citizens".
The flexibility that the Jimenezes demand to make their case fit
into the only opportunity that, at the moment, the law offers to help
victims of violent acts so they receive the attention needed, forces
an ellipsis that skips the peace and security of Western Sahara’s
citizens already broken since October 1975 with the invasion promoted
by the King of Morocco – with which he misappropriated most of the
territory and implanted terror using troops, air power, and security
forces devastating a defenseless civil population with genocidal fury.
The historical punctiliousness could be sacrificed in the name
of a good cause if, with it, one were not culminating a dangerous
distortion of the facts that ends up turning into a crime the right
to self-determination, recognized by the United Nations to defend
oneself from the aggression of a third party. Jimenez herself has
assured that she does not look for culprits. She suspects the landmine
that tragically marked the destiny of her family, did not have as
a target the Spanish workers who remained in a territory engulfed
by an international war, but to stop the advance of Moroccan troops
that, with the support of its Mauritanian allies, were completing
the illegal occupation of the territory in those days.
Therefore, it seems she does not intend to create a precedent with
which people such as Jose Martí, Simon Bolívar, George Washington,
Ho Chi Minh or Manuela Malasaña herself could be considered terrorists.
And if the Popular Party had accepted Jimenez’s demands? Immediately,
some would have urged to mobilize in outrage using text messaging
against what it would have been considered a lingering feeling of
"fascist nostalgia," because of the national-catholic civilizing
mission glories as a revengeful piece of Francoism that never forgave
Polisario for its leftist persuasion – or maybe as a new test for the
Popular Party’s stubborn trend to step over the will of other peoples.
In the hands of people considering it is an anathema to speak about
Palestinian terrorism or who would put anyone on the spot if doubting
that the terrorists in Iraq are the American invaders and the Iraqis
putting bombs are legitimate insurgents, would have been suspicious
the certainty with which it was assured that the road bomb pumping
Francisco Jimenez’s body full of shrapnel and that left him almost
blind, belonged to Polisario. They were probably right since – though
the closing down of the Sahara archives make it difficult to elucidate
the facts – it was in a public speech when Franco’s own ambassador
to the UN, Jaime de Pinies, asked for the UN Security Council’s
intervention against the wrongly-called Green March (the Alaouite
invasion,) denouncing that Moroccan FLU’s "terrorists" had also
contributed to fill the Sahrawi territory with landmines. It is also
very dangerous to accept as a fact that the machine-gunnings suffered
by Canarian fishing boats in Saharan waters were always carried out by
Polisario: There are examples and data that show that the Moroccan side
carried out some of the attacks and then attributed them to Sahrawis in
order to short-circuit a inconvenient Spanish-Polisario understanding.
The Popular Party would have had a very difficult time escaping the
outrage of NGOs supporting the Sahrawi people. However, Zapatero’s
Socialists have turned the claims of Jimenez and other victims of
the Saharan conflict into a test that, when push comes to shove, the
Popular Party is not receptive to victims of terrorism unless they
are birds of a feather. So, in 2006, after the Socialist government
granted compensation recognizing that Francisco Jimenez was the victim
of a terrorist attack and that there is a terrorist group called the
Polisario Front, it has been very receptive to the intentions Jimenez
has promoted – one of ACAVITES’s main goals is to "institutionalize"
the recognition of Polisario’s terror victims.
The support that ACAVITE has received from the Catalonian Association
of Terrorist Organizations’ Victims (ACVOT) that broke away from the
Terrorism Victims Association (AVT) alleging that his then president
Francisco Jose Alcaraz gave preference to defend the interests of
the Popular Party than those of the association’s has contributed to
this peculiar pirouette. ACVOT, accused as well of its herd behavior
towards Zapatero by AVT, has put much emphasis in reminding that
ACAVITE resorted to them due to the lack of help and sensitivity
shown to Canarian victims by the "Madrid Association."
Trapped in a race in which each side must demonstrate it has a higher
sensitivity, the solution to this dilemma raised by ACAVITE seems
to have become encased in a dichotomy in which one either recognizes
Polisario’s terrorism or one is giving the cold shoulder in a painful
and unfair way to citizens left aside by the Administration because
it considered them just mere victims of work-related accidents.
Jimenez’s father and the Canarian fishermen who were victims of
landmines, kidnappings and naval machine-gunnings during the 80s,
fulfilled the old aphorism saying that, in the end, when in a silly
situation, it is always the innocent who pay. It was not their fault
that in January 1976, the Sahara had become the epicenter of a war
as bloody as to force Moroccans – who had the advantage – to shut
down Laayoune Airport to hide the evacuation of their many dead
and wounded (as it is on record in the information of the Spanish
services on the ground.) They do not have to share the blame for the
atrocities that the Sahrawi people went through for not accepting
to hoist the invaders’ flag. Neither were they at fault for the
plundering – not even Spanish belongings escaped – carried out by
Moroccans and Mauritanians as soon as they took control over the
cities that the Spanish troops were forced to leave behind because
of their commander’s orders.
One cannot continue forcing them to hide their sorrow either as
the counterpart for the suffering of Sahrawi women, children and the
elderly who were the object of napalm bombings when fleeing through the
desert – bombings that Moroccans used trying to sweep away Polisario’s
resistance in the Sahara. They, just like the Sahrawis, were also
victims of a war that sparked off an aggression that the Spanish
Government should have avoided, not only as a moral imperative, but
because the UN compelled them to defend Sahrawi interests. The Sahara
was and still is (according to the law) a territory administered by
Spain, and everyone, Spanish and Sahrawi victims, were defenseless
because the State inhibited its actions and did not exert its
commitment to protect all.
It is more than justified that the former Minister of Justice, Fernando
Lopez Aguilar, and Government representatives – who recently met with
ACAVITE – demonstrate with facts the greater social commitment they
boast to the Popular Party. But, since it is a matter of exuding
sensitivity, there is a chance to design a formula demonstrating
respect for all peoples – something that Zapatero promised once more
during the election campaign.
After all, it would be enough if instead of "victims of Polisario’s
terrorism," they were to create a paragraph for ACAVITE’s
victims identifying them as victims of the Saharan conflict or of
decolonization. Loyalty to truth does not have to conflict with
the respect for the pain born by Spanish or Sahrawi victims, unless
Fernando Lopez Aguilar – who boasts of his abilities to be welcomed by
the Moroccan rulers – prefers ambiguity in order to score more points
than the Minister of Foreign Relations, Miguel Ángel Moratinos. It
is a matter of checking Moroccan blogs about the Sahara to see the
satisfaction oozing in all the information about the Polisarian terror
generated by the ACAVITE struggle. As a Guinean democrat and supporter
of his "brothers’" cause for African Spanishness said recently, it
is not easy to reach "the superlative of astonishment" that turns
the world upside down producing as a result that the hunted become
the hunters.
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