Western Sahara

In the last few months, the Group of Unemployed Saharawis, which consists of many masters degree holders, university graduates and technicians, organized several peaceful demonstrations in the main streets of Laayoune, Western Sahara, demanding their right to employment. This modest demand has been met by the most monstrous oppression at the hands of the Moroccan police. After the authorities refused to open channels of dialogue with the protesters, the Group found no other resort but to go on a hunger strike.

The recent dramatic events involving Sahrawi protestors near the city of El Aayiún, with ordinary poor people fighting off the armed security forces, which led to death of around a dozen people, the wounding of several hundreds and the arrest of more than one hundred, highlight the plight of the Sahrawi people. Here we publish and account and an analysis of the events by Moroccan Marxists.

The Communist League of Action has published a reply to the leadership of the Democratic Path in Morocco. The Democratic Path, the main left-wing party in Morocco and inheritor of the old Marxist-Leninist left, has recently called for negotiations to resolve the question of the Western Sahara. The purpose of CLA’s critique is to arm the new generation of socialist activists with a clear Marxist understanding of the question of the Western Sahara and the national question in general.

The conflict in the Western Sahara is an important question for revolutionaries in the Maghreb not only from the theoretical point of view (taking into consideration the importance Marxism gives to the right of self-determination), but also from the political and practical side of the issue (as it is impossible to carry out the tasks of the socialist revolution in the region without putting forward a clear Marxist and internationalist understanding of the national question).

The United Nations has betrayed the Saharawi people once again. After ten years of promising a referendum on self-determination, they have now dropped this plan altoghether and are proposing limited autonomy. We publish here an article from the Spanish Marxist paper El Militante written just before the latest developments. The author argues that the Saharawis will find their best allies in the Moroccan workers and youth in their common struggle against the hated Moroccan monarchy and for a Socialist Federation of the Maghreb. (J.J. Catala, June 2001) Also in Spanish:...