Makhzen’s Subversive Agendas Against the Region’s Interests

The President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, warned, on Monday, in Boumerdes (eastern Algiers), of the aggressive policies through which Morocco seeks to pass subversive agendas that threaten peace in the region.

President Ghali said during the conclusion of the 11th edition of the summer university for the executives of the Polisario Front and the Sahrawi Republic at the University of Boumerdes, that “it has been confirmed to everyone today that the danger of the aggressive policy of the Moroccan occupation is not limited to supporting crime and terrorist groups, but rather through the conclusion of suspicious alliances with the expansionist colonial powers to pass subversive agendas to strike peace and security in the entire region”.

He added that the Sahrawis had warned of “the dangers threatening the entire region as a result of the aggressive expansionist policy of the Moroccan occupation state” and that today “the seriousness of this approach has been confirmed, which is not only limited to supporting and encouraging transnational organized crime gangs and terrorist groups, including through the flow of the increasing use of drugs but also through the conclusion of suspicious alliances with the expansionist colonial powers to pass destructive agendas that strike at the peace, security and stability in the entire region”.

Faced with this Moroccan threat, Ghali expressed his confidence that the peoples of the region “are able and qualified to move together responsibly to put an end to these schemes that aim at the heinous exploitation of their capabilities and wealth.”

In his speech, the Secretary-General also spoke about the resumption of the armed struggle as a Sahrawi popular decision, which was commended at the 16th Congress of the Polisario Front, recalling that it came “in response to the occupation’s policy of persisting in its intransigence and brutal practices against defenceless Sahrawi civilians and its systematic looting of natural resources in light of suspicious silence and even shameful conspiracy by some parties at the level of the UN Security Council”.

In this regard, the Sahrawi President renewed his “strong condemnation of the practices of repression, abuse, harassment and suffocating siege imposed on the masses of the Sahrawi people in the occupied territory and southern Morocco,” calling on the United Nations to “immediately intervene to stop these gross violations of human rights, lift this unjust siege and release the heroes of the epic of Gdim Izik and all the Sahrawi civilian prisoners in Moroccan prisons”.
He also called on the United Nations to take “its full responsibility to expedite the implementation of its commitment to decolonize the last colony in Africa,” as stipulated in its charter and resolutions, and to enable the United Nations Mission to Organize the Referendum on Self-Determination (MINURSO) to perform its mission so that the Sahrawi people can exercise their right to self-determination and independence according to the African Settlement Plan of 1991, which is the only agreement signed by the two parties to the conflict and approved by the UN Security Council.

President Ghali also stressed the responsibility of the African Union to “put an end to the flagrant violation by the Kingdom of Morocco of its constitutive law”, and thus “to end its illegal military occupation of parts of the territory of the Sahrawi Republic, which is a founding member of the continental organization”.

The Secretary-General of the Polisario Front also asserted that the European Union is “obligated to comply with the requirements of international law and international humanitarian law in Western Sahara and to fully respect the decisions of the European Court of Justice, which affirmed the invalidity of any agreement by the Kingdom of Morocco that includes the occupied parts of Western Sahara, by land, air and its territorial waters, as they are considered two separate and different countries.”

Accordingly, President Ghali warned against “the consequences of resorting to circumventing those clear legal references and submitting to the policies of extortion, corruption lobbies, and people-buying pursued by the Moroccan occupying state,” adding that “it is unreasonable for European institutions to keep silent to such practices and be drawn into participating in an open piracy operation and a flagrant theft of the wealth of a defenceless people, a victim of an illegitimate Moroccan military occupation”.

In this regard, Ghali praised the firm positions of solidarity with the struggle of the Sahrawi people in the world, which indicates “the strength of the firm Algerian position unconditionally supporting the struggle of the Sahrawi people for freedom and independence.”

Ghali affirmed that “Algeria’s historical and witnessed position is clear, and is not afraid of any blame, with full awareness, conviction, responsibility, and loyalty to the principles of the glorious November 1 revolution, and in full harmony with international legitimacy embodied in the charter and resolutions of the United Nations and the African Union.”

On this occasion, Ghali renewed the Polisario’s condemnation of Spain’s “treacherous position in support of the aggressive, expansionist policies” taken by the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, calling on the next Spanish government to review that position, in line with international legitimacy and the responsibility of the Spanish state.