What’s the deal with Western Sahara?

Comments

• Pons_Aelius@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  From what I can gather, that is pretty much the reason.

  The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is the self governing body you mentioned but it is only recognised by about 50 nations.

  My guess is that, to avoid upsetting Morocco most demographers just give it the "No Data" flag and move on.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s part of it, but the other part is that, like its name suggests, it’s the Sahara. Most of it is unknown territory for most of the world. Maybe a tribe here or there has been through it, but that’s it.

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    • charlytune@mander.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m a bit confused by your comment and what you mean by “a tribe here or there has been through it” and that it’s unknown territory? It’s sparsely populated, but according to Wikipedia about 500k people live there, and they’re mostly in urban areas. Surely the lack of data is more down to the political disputes over who governs it? I’d imagine the locals are reluctant to share information with the Moroccan government who they see as the occupiers.

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• Rigal@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Spanish here, and not really versed on the matter, but I’ll share what I heard. It borderlines conspiracy theories so take it con a stone of salt.

  Basically it was part of Spain, with the civil war and following years it was considered a hassle and left abandoned, despite saharauis can get Spanish nationality. During decolonization the UN said that spain should decolonise it and help to stablish an autonomous government. Spain did nothing because it stopped recognising the territory as their own. Therefore it becomes no body’s land. Morroco has interest on that area and saharauis has interest on being independants. Spain doesn’t care and just use it for politics with Morroco.

  The far left say say that saharauis should be protected, but the rest doesn’t really care and sometimes it is used as a political leverage with Morroco. There are even conspiracies teorías that the kin Juan Carlos was a CIA agent or at least sympatizer and has helped on maintain the ignore west Sahara issue among other policies with north africa.

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  • chuso@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Another Spaniard here, for the record.

    I wouldn't say it's like Palestine, there are relevant differences between both cases. The basis of the Palestinian conflict and the reason why two states were created were mostly religious and ethnic. I don't think any of that plays a significant role in the Saharan case and it's all down to Moroccan expansionism and access to oil reserves in the Saharan sea.
    In the Palestinian case, it was a former British colony that was being decolonized and tensions between two communities living in that territory led to the current situation. I'm not going into the details because it would be too long, you can just go to Wikipedia.
    In the Saharan case, it was a Spanish former colony which, in the process of being decolonized, was invaded by a neighbouring country for political and economic reasons.

    You are basically saying Western Sahara ended up in this situation because Spain abandoned it unattending the UN's mandate to decolonize it. That's not true and I wonder how you can talk about the current situation in Western Sahara without even mentioning Morocco.
    Spain was indeed attending the UN's mandate to decolonize it as it did with Equatorial Guinea a few years before, which is an independent country nowadays. But both Mauritania and Morocco had aspirations on Western Sahara and wouldn't accept an independent Sahara, so taking advantage of one moment of political weakness in Spain with the dictator retired to die, Morocco invaded Western Sahara and mainland Spain was more concerned about their internal issues and was not in the position to defend the Sahara against Moroccan invasion.

    Mauritania eventually gave up on their aspirations on Sahara and that's how we ended up in the current situation with a Morocco-occupied Sahara with a self-proclaimed government that fights back against the occupation with very little support (other than Algeria) because Morocco has much stronger diplomatic ties.

    The current situation, de jure, is that Western Sahara is a Spanish former colony in the process of being decolonized.
    But de facto, it's a territory governed by Morocco and disputed with the Polisario Front, which was already fighting against Spanish occupation before Moroccan one and has declared an independent Republic which has very little recognition.
    De jure, Spain would be continuing the decolonization process, but that's not realistic when the territory has been occupied by Morocco for half a century.

    It's true, however, that this is not an issue that raises a lot of interest currently in Spain for anything else than playing internal politics.
    Also, Morocco and Spain have a lot of common interests so Spain is very careful to not upset Morocco with this topic. On the other hand, Algeria is the biggest supporter of the Polisarian cause and another Spanish strategic ally and probably the reason why Spain hasn't fully abandoned yet the Saharan cause. So Spain usually tries to play a low profile on this trying to balance their position between not upsetting Morocco and not upsetting Algeria.

    For more details, Wikipedia is still your friend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_March

    And the former Spanish king being a CIA agent? Yeah, I don't think it's even worth to add any comment to that.

    And, of course, when I say "Spain", "Morocco", "Algeria", etc., I am referring to the regime that rules the country at that moment.
    I'm not trying to imply that every Moroccan or Algerian is responsible for what their rulers do the same way that a lot of Spaniards were not Franco supporters by that time.

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    • Rigal@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thank you for correcting me.

      About the cia agent, as I said it borderlines conspiracy theory but it’s possible to find media about the subject : meneame.net/…/rey-juan-carlos-borbon-fue-espia-ee…

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