2012

Al Akhawayn University
Fadel Toulba
Dr. Kalpakian
INS 3301 (01)

[THE WESTERN SAHARA

CONFLICT AS EXPLAINED BY
THE FOUR MAIN APPROACHES
OF IR]

The Western Sahara conflict is one of the most persistent stalemate conflicts in recent
decades and despite numerous efforts and initiatives from various individuals and institutions both those directly affiliated with one of the belligerent sides and the ones acting as neutral
mediators, there seems to be no impending process of solving the question of the status of the
territory. Moroccan control over most of the area is firmly asserted with a strong presence of all
types of state institutions, including the military1. However, protests by the pro-independence
segment of the indigenous population often occur and threaten to destabilize the region2. The
United Nations Mission for the Referendum on The Western Sahara has been stationed in the
area since 1991 to monitor the ongoing ceasefire but it is receiving strong criticism for its
inability to improve the human rights situation. There is also strong reason to believe that the
ceasefire is becoming increasingly precarious since the failure to hold a referendum made it
unjustified. This is amplified by the Polisarios severing of ties with the mission and accusing
it of becoming a protection tool for what they consider Moroccan colonialism. The purpose of
this paper is to analyze the conflict in an impartial manner using the four main approaches of
International Relations of Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism and Radicalism. Wherever
applicable, the analysis will be on the three levels (Individual, State and International System).
The realists explanation of the Western Sahara conflict definitely has a strong case given
the extents to which the leaders have gone in order to tip international opinion to their side
therefore giving considerable ground to the assumption that both sides see themselves as
dependent on international events and trends. Whether by running diplomatic missions to
1

Peter R.Baehr, The United Nations at the End of the 1990s, (3rd Revised edition Macmillan P:
1999), 91.

Maria J Stephan, and Jacob Mundy, "A Battlefield Transformed: From Guerilla Resistance to
Mass Nonviolent Struggle in the Western Sahara," Conference Papers -- International
Studies Association 1 (2006).

convince other governments to support their claim to the territory or by making regional allies
with common interests to balance the power, Morocco was largely more successful with regards
to diplomacy and collecting international recognition, securing support from the US, most of
western europe and the Arab League among others for its autonomy proposal3. The Polisario
front on the other hand has benefitted from the animosity between Morocco and Algeria
remaining from the Sand War of 1963 and that countrys refusal to have any of the neighbouring
countries take over the territory after Spain abandoned it to secure the military and financial
backing of the Maghreb regions other important actor4. It is also necessary to analyze the
changes that happened in this conflict as a result of the end of the cold war, which brought with it
a hegemonic International System led by the United States. The Polisario front and the Sahrawi
Arab Democratic Republic it aspires to create can, in the context of the International System, be
viewed as inevitably tied to Algeria which, like many other Arab countries, has made the
eventually losing choice of leaning toward the soviet side during the cold war. Morocco, having
been one of the United States most valuable assets in the region and one of its closest allies in
the Arab world, benefits from the support of the only remaining superpower after the collapse of
the USSR.
The realist perspective will also assign some importance, to a lesser extent, to IGOs and
NGOs. Throughout the four decade long conflict, the UN through its mission to the territory
Minurso and its Refugees Agency UNHCR have played a central part in many of the initiatives
and are responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the ongoing ceasefire. If not for
3

Yahia Zoubir, "The Geopolitics of the Western Sahara: Realpolitik as Impediment to the
Resolution of the Conflict," Conference Papers -- International Studies Association 1177 (2008).

Stephen Zunes, "Algeria, the Maghreb Union, and the Western Sahara stalemate," Arab Studies
Quarterly 17, no. 3: 23 (1995).

this type of IGO intervention the conflict would probably have continued to involve violence and
perhaps dragged Algeria into a war with Morocco with unimaginable repercussions on North
Africa and the Sahel. The effectiveness of IGOs has its source in their power to act as a forum of
nations in which both the Polisario front and the Moroccan government are compelled to keep a
clean record for their own interest since they depend so much on international assistance.

There is little about radicalism that can be accurately applied to the issue of the Western
Sahara. However, if we only consider those aspects of the Marxist ideology that assert the
existence of a divide in societies that results in continuous clashes, we can apply these ideas to
Sahrawi society. It should be noted however that a radicalist explanation will invariably come in
favour of the Polisario front since it usually tends to imply some form of judgment portraying the
stronger, more economically endowed party as the villain and on the other hand the weaker
underdogs as righteous. The originally Bedouin society still retains much of its tribal aspects
and tribe leaders or sheikhs still hold some form of symbolic influence and it is often within
the ranks of their families that much of Sahrawi wealth resides. If we choose to view these
leaders as bourgeoisie in the Marxist meaning and the general Sahrawi population as the
proletariat, it is possible to note a pattern that is remarkably compatible with the radicalist view:
The elites are overwhelmingly supportive of Morocco and a majority of Sahrawi tribal leaders
have traditionally been pledging allegiance to the Moroccan king in a Bay'ah ceremony held each
year. Their motivations for doing so are quite clear as their economic interest resides within their
affiliation to the Moroccan state. This is testified to by the CORCAS committee which was
assigned the task of preparing for the implementation of Moroccos autonomy proposal. The 141

members of this council are the Sahrawi influential elite5. On the other hand, the remainder of
the Sahrawi population which happens to be for the most part impoverished tends to be where
the pro-independence riots and manifestations originate. As a matter of fact, the November 2010
events involving the setting up of a protest camp named Gdeim Izik a few kilometers away from
the largest city in the territory were at the beginning made with demands of economic and social
reform and their initial discourse did not include any calls for independence6. It is worth
mentioning here that the Moroccan government can be generally considered to be an adept of
capitalism, while the Polisario front has some of its roots in Arab nationalism and socialism as
evidenced by its membership in Socialist International; thereby giving place to an additional
analogy that can be established in the frame of the Radicalist view.

Constructivists would argue that the nature of the conflict and its course of events can be
attributed to a wide range of contributing elements. The personalities and individual
characteristics of leaders do play a role; however other factors such as the socio-economic and
international context and the nature of the decisions that need to be made also have a say in how
a conflict will unfold7. In the Western Sahara context, with partial agreement to the liberal view
that emphasizes the role of individuals, constructivists will additionally argue that whatever

Franois Soudan, Le << monsieur Sahara >> de M6, Jeune Afrique, Last modified October
02, 2006, http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/LIN01106khalidihcar0/-Mohammed-VIHassan-II-Sahara-Occidental-Khalihenna-Ould-Errachid-le-monsieur-sahara-de-m6.html.

CODAPSO, The dismantling of the Gdeim Izik camp. Accessed December 7, 2011,
http://saharadoc.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/codapso-report-2011eng.pdf.

Karen Mingst and Ivan Arreguin-Toft, Essentials of International Relations, (New York.
W.W. Norton, 2011). http://www.wwnorton.com/.

developments have arisen have also been influenced by international pressure directed at each of
the belligerent parties. This is true in the case of the 1991 ceasefire which is still in effect to this
day with very negligible breaches. It was a UN brokered peace monitored through its MINURSO
mission and the negotiations that led to it also resulted in an agreement to conduct a referendum
to determine the fate of the desert region. Constructivism will inevitably reject the International
System as an acting force because it dismisses it as a fabricated concept that resulted from a
perceived dominance of Euro-centrism in the discipline of International Relations. However, the
constructivist perspective acknowledges the passing of time as the origin of many changes that
occur with regards to social norms therefore it is bound to establish a distinction between the
directions that decision makers used to take as a response to these social norms a few decades
earlier and their current policies. This would, for instance, entail a differentiation between the
Hassan II regimes approach in handling dissent within the disputed region which consisted in a
large part of abductions and forced disappearances in the frame of what was called the years of
lead8 , and that of his more democratizing and less repressive son that has focused more on
legitimized means of silencing political opponents. On the other side of the conflict, the Polisario
will also feel the need to adjust its policies and its human rights record if it is to effectively tackle
the issue of increasing defectors. A growing number of Polisario officials are joining the
Moroccan side and publicizing their narrative of the infringements to human rights to which they
were witnesses while they were at the refugee camps9. In both cases it can be argued that these
8

Jacob Mundy, "The Limits of Coercion and Co-Optation: The Case of the Moroccan
Administered Western Sahara," Conference Papers -- International Studies Association
1-36, (2008).

Report: Clan wars and unavoidable scission in Tindouf, defectors, arabicnews.com. Last
modified May 11, 1999,
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/991105/1999110536.html

shifts of policy are a response to social conjuncture that is less prone to remain passive in the
face of abuses and also to the spread of communication technologies that over the last decade
made it increasingly easier to convey news and overcome state censorship efforts.
The constructivist view concerning the national interest, arguing that it is of a constantly
changing nature depending on circumstances can be applied in the context of a comparison
between the Moroccan approach of dealing with the Western Sahara issue and the countrys way
of handling other territorial problems. Using this perspective, one can argue that while Morocco
pursues a more pronounced and active policy in asserting its dominance over the Saharan area,
going to lengths as far as severing ties with its most important immediate neighbor Algeria and
assigning much of its defense budget to be deployed in the area, it remains reluctant when it
comes to its claims of sovereignty over the two Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. This can
be speculated to originate from a Moroccan calculation of what is to be gained against what is to
be lost if it were to engage in efforts to reclaim the two cities as well as the small islands of its
northern Mediterranean coast, Spain being one of its top economic partners and a member of the
EU and NATO. It is relatively harder to analyze the Polisarios behavior using the constructivist
view on the national interest because it hasnt yet reached the status of a sovereign State.
Liberals tend to analyze wars and conflicts from the Individual level, based on the idea
that the differing and sometimes aggressive nature of leaders is a crucial factor in the nature of a
conflict or the existence thereof10. Therefore, a liberal understanding of the Western Sahara
conflict would have to involve a study of the personalities of some of the key figures involved in

10

Karen Mingst and Ivan Arreguin-Toft, Essentials of International Relations, (New York.
W.W. Norton, 2011). http://www.wwnorton.com/.

it. For the larger part of the conflict, the dispute saw two leaders with widely diverging personas
and backgrounds scrambling for international support and recognition within the UN.
Hassan II, known to be a realist and a great admirer of thinkers such as Machiavelli came
into power in 1961 and upon Spains announcement that it intends to abandon the territory, he
organized what was described as a remarkable political manoeuvre, inciting 350.000 Moroccans
to march into Western Sahara unarmed with the purpose of convincing Spain to cede control of
the region to Morocco. The Green March could be seen as an attempt by Hassan II to do
something to be remembered for in the same way that his father is credited with securing
independence from France. It is also possible that he saw it as a way to assert his power and
boost his popularity less than four years after two attempts to overthrow him were carried out by
members of his close circle11. In both cases, it would provide the basis for a fierce policy aimed
at maintaining control over the territory since more is at stake than just a barren, sparsely
inhabited piece of land and Hassan II was constrained to uphold the glory of the Green March
throughout his reign. Thus, the liberal theory about leadership change being a cataclysmic factor
for change of policy finds validation in the more willing to compromise leadership of
Mohammed VI, which came forth with a proposal to grant the territory an autonomous status. No
change in Polisarios leadership has occurred for most of the time period in which the movement
was engaged in conflict with Morocco. Mohamed Abdelaziz was Secretary General since 1976
and for the past two decades the movement did not go beyond threatening to return to armed
conflict without actually ever doing so.
An international system-based perspective of the conflict by liberalism is likely to be
categorized as pertaining to neoliberal institutionalism which, being not too different from
11

"The Almost Perfect Regicide," Time 100, no. 10.33, Academic Search Complete, .(1972).

realism, sees the International System as an anarchic one in which actors strive to promote their
own self-interest using whatever means available to them12. However, they seem to be more
optimistic about the outcome of such a system. Neoliberal institutionalism suggests the idea that
more often than not, the institutions which embody the International System act towards
moderating state behavior. It is possible to defend liberalism in this aspect by visualizing a
conflict in which IGOs and any form of influence by the International System such as
diplomatic, political and economic pressure was non-existent. In such a context it is safe to
expect a more aggravated and militarized approach, especially from the Moroccan part since it
relies heavily on its diplomatic assets such as its ties with the US and France and is therefore
keen on keeping its record as clean as practically possible.
Each one of the four main directions of thought within the field of IR seems to have an
interpretation of the Western Sahara conflict that is at least partially validated by some facts and
realities. While Liberalists might seem to link the developments of the conflict to the leadership
and by extension recognize a big deal of change resulting from Mohammed VIs accession to his
throne after his fathers passing, realism is more likely to attribute a lot of influence to the
international systems diplomatic and other types of pressure, as well as to institutions that act as
international mediators such as the UN. Radicalism might have some success in explaining the
diverging allegiances within the Sahrawi population.
Constructivism seems to have the least tendency of all four approaches to depart from
some sort of premise in its analysis of an issue. The liberal idea that individuals are the major
player in international relations may often be true but it is no law of nature, neither is the realist
12

Karen Mingst and Ivan Arreguin-Toft, Essentials of International Relations, (New York.
W.W. Norton, 2011). http://www.wwnorton.com/.

emphasis on the international system or the radicalist imagination of a perpetual conflict inside
societies. However, the constructivist focus on social and political change is a verifiable reality
and the necessity of reacting correspondingly to such change is an intuitive conclusion. This
makes constructivism a very useful tool to study the conflict because of its relative uniqueness.
The Western Sahara is not the only case of a people demanding their right of self-determination;
however it is somewhat rare in the sense of the relationship between the independence-seeking
community and the country from which it seeks to secede.
Each one of the four main directions of thought within the field of IR seems to have an
interpretation of the Western Sahara conflict that is at least partially validated by some facts and
realities. While Liberalists might seem to link the developments of the conflict to the leadership
and by extension recognize a big deal of change resulting from Mohammed VIs accession to his
throne after his fathers passing, realism is more likely to attribute a lot of influence to the
international systems diplomatic and other types of pressure, as well as to institutions that act as
international mediators such as the UN. Radicalism might have some success in explaining the
diverging allegiances within the Sahrawi population.
Constructivism seems to have the least tendency of all four approaches to depart from
some sort of premise in its analysis of an issue. The liberal idea that individuals are the major
player in international relations may often be true but it is no law of nature, neither is the realist
emphasis on the international system or the radicalist imagination of a perpetual class conflict
within societies. However, the constructivist focus on social and political change is a verifiable
reality and the necessity of reacting correspondingly to such change is an intuitive conclusion.
This makes constructivism a very useful tool to study the conflict because of its relative
uniqueness. The Western Sahara is not the only case of a people demanding their right of self-

determination; however it is somewhat rare in the sense of the relationship between the
independence-seeking community and the country from which it seeks to secede.

Bibliography
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http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/991105/1999110536.html
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