Conflict in the Sahara: Options for an Outside Power

CONFLICT IN THE SAHARA: OPTIONS FOR AN OUTSIDE POWER /. William Zartman x*. conflict is raging in Northwest Africa over the status and ownership of the former colony of Spanish West Africa or Spanish Sahara. The immediate stakes are a territory of 102,000 square miles with some 120,000 people (smaller by half than any nonisland member of the United Nations) and huge phosphate deposits. Since Spain left the territory in February 1976, its status has been uncertain, as its ownership is contested by Morocco (which occupies the land by historic claim and by international treaty with Spain) and by the People's Front for the Liberation of Saqiet al-Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO Front), which claims independence for the territory as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) with the support of Algeria and Libya. Looking on are the United States, France, and the Arab and African associates of these parties, many of whom are torn by ties with both sides and desirous above all of avoiding an open Moroccan-Algerian war and the political dismemberment of the continent. The African states finally took the problem into their hands, within the Organization for African Unity in mid-1981, and moved the conflict from a military to an electoral decision. Other observers —notably the Reagan administration—seriously debate the proper role to which their interests point. I. William Zartman is professor of international politics and director of the African Studies Program at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the current president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), and has authored a number of works on North Africa and African international relations, the latest of which are Africa in the 1980s (with Colin Legum et al) (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979) and Ripefor Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), both for the Council on Foreign Relations. This article is drawn from the latter work. 167 168 SAIS REVIEW The conflict in the Sahara is above all a power rivalry fueled by interstate problems and incidents among several growing states in the region. During the colonial period and after, the French played their three North African colonies of different statuses—the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates and Algeria as "an integral part of France" — off each other and maintained the West African territory of Mauritania as a buffer area between black and Arab Africa. After independence, these new countries continued the same pattern of relations. When Libya discovered it had oil, its power and aspirations grew apace and it joined the pattern noted above, completing the structure beyond colonial limits. Once the parties had become sovereign, the dynamics of their conflict were spurred by a growth in resources and capabilities, a continuation of problems and incidents, and an evolution of differing policy directions. Thus, even when serious attempts were being made to calm the conflict, one of these three elements was always present to revive it by turning a perception, an incident, or a policy difference into a crisis. Given this local dynamic, a remarkable aspect has been not the occasional resort to ideology but, rather, its relative absence. To be sure, Algerians frequently refer to Morocco as a corrupt feudal monarchy, Moroccans talk of Algeria as a leftist military dictatorship, and both complain of living conditions in the other's territory. But a superimposed structure of ideologies or of alliances has been absent from the Sahara because each state is internally cohesive enough to do without foreign ideologies, and the lines to foreign allies have been blurred. The cold war has not served to replicate or reinforce the conflict. The United States has strong interests in both of the leading regional parties , in a stable regional balance, and in keeping the cold war out of the dispute. It is Algeria's leading trade partner and receives a tenth of its oil imports from Algeria, but the two countries rarely agree on international political issues. Conversely, the United States has little trade with Morocco, but is its traditional arms supplier and shares a history of strategic concerns. Morocco sees a Communist threat to the African continent. It participated in...