Guerguerat Crisis Prompts Guterres To Search For New UN Envoy

The unfolding events in the occupied Saharawi territories, which are on the verge of an all-out war between the Polisario Front and the Kingdom of Morocco, have led the United Nations to move with the active states of the Security Council to appoint a new UN envoy to Western Sahara, hoping to clear off the logjam.

The position of the United Nations envoy to Western Sahara has been vacant since the resignation of the former UN envoy to Western Sahara, Horst Kohler, in March 2019, after he felt the complicity of international powers and was convinced that Morocco had no intention of solving this issue, which has elapsed for more than four decades.

In this regard, media sources revealed that the United Nations has embarked on vigorous efforts to contain the three-decade long Western Sahara conflict, which is currently witnessing unprecedented tension, by finding a new envoy who would move the negotiations to search for a solution, with the help of all of Russia, Spain and France, without the United States of America, who live in a real and unprecedented dilemma, as a result of the dispute over the legitimacy of the winner of the last presidential elections.

The United Nations is looking for a consensus between these countries, among which there are those who openly support Morocco in its proposal to solve the Saharan crisis, such as France, as well as Spain, which is striving to hold the stick in the middle, while Russia considers its position close to the Sahrawi government, as it has shown in recent years.

These sources did not rule out that the UN Secretary-General would visit Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, in search of a way out of the current stalemate, in a bid to spare the region a new war.
Civil society activists in Western Sahara had peacefully closed the “Guerguerat” crossing last month, in protest at the United Nations’ disregard for their cause and its failure to appoint a successor to “Horst Kohler”, a matter that Morocco was hoping to continue harbouring.

The outbreak of the war in the southwestern side of the Maghreb led to the United Nations to be finally convinced of the danger of the mission, and the need to activate its efforts, as the Secretary General of this body, Antonio Guterres, initially contacted the Sahrawi president, Brahim Ghali, then the Moroccan monarch, Mohamed VI and held consultations with the members of the security council to appoint a new UN envoy to Western Sahara.

The United Nations’ move finally came after the “MINURSO mission” secured confirmed information about ongoing clashes between Sahrawi forces and the Moroccan army in the buffer zone, and it fears that these clashes will develop into a comprehensive war, which would plunge the region into a nagging crisis that may be difficult to overcome.