Western Sahara
Western Sahara

Author: Stephen Zunes

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2010-08-04

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0815652585

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The Western Sahara conflict has proven to be one of the most protracted and intractable struggles facing the international community. Pitting local nationalist determination against Moroccan territorial ambitions, the dispute is further complicated by regional tensions with Algeria and the geo-strategic concerns of major global players, including the United States, France, and the territory’s former colonial ruler, Spain. Since the early 1990s, the UN Security Council has failed to find a formula that will delicately balance these interests against Western Sahara’s long-denied right to a self-determination referendum as one of the last UN-recognized colonies. The widely-lauded first edition was the first book-length treatment of the issue in the previous two decades. Zunes and Mundy examined the origins, evolution, and resilience of the Western Sahara conflict, deploying a diverse array of sources and firsthand knowledge of the region gained from multiple research visits. Shifting geographical frames—local, regional, and international—provided for a robust analysis of the stakes involved. With the renewal of the armed conflict, continued diplomatic stalemate, growing waves of nonviolent resistance in the occupied territory, and the recent U.S. recognition of Morocco’s annexation, this new revised and expanded paperback edition brings us up-to-date on a long-forgotten conflict that is finally capturing the world’s attention.

Perspectives on Western Sahara
Perspectives on Western Sahara

Author: Anouar Boukhars

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2013-12-18

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1442226862

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The ongoing conflict in Western Sahara is one of the more intractable legacies of European colonization in North Africa. Following the withdrawal of Spain, this territorial dispute escalated in 1975 into a war of independence between the Sahrawi people of the Polisario Front, who were backed by Algeria, and the states of Mauritania and Morocco. In 1976, the Polisario Front established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which was not admitted in the UN but won recognition by a few states. After multiple peace efforts, the conflict reemerged in 2005 as the “independence Intifada.” Today, the Polisario Front controls about 20% of Western Sahara. At the heart of the conflict lie geopolitical interests and incompatible claims aggravated by the use of military force and decades of mostly unproductive diplomatic maneuvers by international bodies and regional or foreign powers. This thorough, impartial survey brings together some of the best experts on the Sahara question to provide a broad-based analysis of the problem, from a range of perspectives. Featuring new research, the chapters examine the roots of the conflict, its dynamics, and potential solutions. This groundbreaking text also addresses questions of law, human rights, natural resources from an analytical point of view. Contributed by scholars from North Africa, Europe, and the U.S., it is an essential contribution to the literature of Middle East and African studies.

Western Sahara
Western Sahara

Author: Erik Jensen

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9781588263056

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Jensen explores the long-standing conflict over the sovereignty of Western Sahara-from its colonial roots to its present manifestation as a political stalemate.

Western Sahara
Western Sahara

Author: Stephen Zunes

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2022-01-14

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0815655517

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The Western Sahara conflict has proven to be one of the most protracted and intractable struggles facing the international community. Pitting local nationalist determination against Moroccan territorial ambitions, the dispute is further complicated by regional tensions with Algeria and the geo-strategic concerns of major global players, including the United States, France, and the territory’s former colonial ruler, Spain. Since the early 1990s, the UN Security Council has failed to find a formula that will delicately balance these interests against Western Sahara’s long-denied right to a self-determination referendum as one of the last UN-recognized colonies. The widely-lauded first edition was the first book-length treatment of the issue in the previous two decades. Zunes and Mundy examined the origins, evolution, and resilience of the Western Sahara conflict, deploying a diverse array of sources and firsthand knowledge of the region gained from multiple research visits. Shifting geographical frames—local, regional, and international—provided for a robust analysis of the stakes involved. With the renewal of the armed conflict, continued diplomatic stalemate, growing waves of nonviolent resistance in the occupied territory, and the recent U.S. recognition of Morocco’s annexation, this new revised and expanded paperback edition brings us up-to-date on a long-forgotten conflict that is finally capturing the world’s attention.

War and Insurgency in the Western Sahara
War and Insurgency in the Western Sahara

Author: Geoffrey Jensen

Publisher: Military Bookshop

Published: 2013-05

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 9781782663928

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At a crucial crossroads between Africa and Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and the "Arab World" and the West, Morocco has long had a special place in U.S. diplomacy and strategic planning. Since September 11, 2001, Morocco's importance to the United States has only increased, and the more recent uncertainties of the Arab Spring and Islamist extremism have further increased the value of the Moroccan-American alliance. Yet one of the pillars of the legitimacy of the Moroccan monarchy, its claim to the Western Sahara, remains a point of violent contention. Home to the largest functional military barrier in the world, the Western Sahara has a long history of colonial conquest and resistance, guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency, and evolving strategic thought, and its future may prove critical to U.S. interests in the region.

Endgame in the Western Sahara
Endgame in the Western Sahara

Author: Toby Shelley

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2013-07-04

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1848136587

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Why does this remote swathe of Sahara along the Atlantic seaboard concern the USA and Europe? Why does Morocco maintain its occupation? Why has the UN Security Council prevaricated for three decades while the Sahrawis live under Moroccan rule or as refugees? In this revealing book, Toby Shelley examines the geopolitics involved. He brings out: The little-known struggle of Sahrawis living under Moroccan rule to defend their identity. USA/European competition for influence in the Maghreb. The natural resources at stake -- rich fishing grounds, phosphates, and the prospect of oil. The reasons behind the UN failure to resolve what is now Africa's last decolonisation issue. The evolution of the USA-backed Baker Plan to settle the dispute. How the Western Sahara's history and future is tangled up with Moroccan--Algerian rivalry. The political development of Polisario, independence movement and state-in-waiting. Toby Shelley has talked to Polisario, Moroccan, Algerian and other diplomats. He has visited the territory and had access to opposition activists and Moroccan officials. In the refugee camps he interviewed the leadership of Polisario. What emerges is that the fate of the Western Sahara is being moulded by global and regional forces and that it is the Sahrawis under Moroccan rule who are best placed to influence that fate.

Silenced Resistance
Silenced Resistance

Author: Joanna Allan

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0299318400

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Spain’s former African colonies—Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara—share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men. In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women’s rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects. She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women’s rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.

Western Sahara
Western Sahara

Author: Pablo San Martín

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2010-10-15

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1783161183

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The Western Sahara is the last colony in Africa and the only Spanish-speaking territory in the Arab World. When in 1975 the agonising Francoist Spain abandoned hastily its colony, Morocco and Mauritania occupied the territory, despite the protest of the UN and the resistance of a nascent Saharawi liberation movement, the Frente Polisario. During the first months, the conflict displaced thousands of Saharawis to the neighbouring Algerian region of Tindouf, where almost 200,000 Saharawis still live today in four large refugee camps. But these camps are more than refugee settlements. They became the centre of a state founded by the Saharawi nationalists: the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, now recognised by over 60 states worldwide and full member of the African Union. The camps provided the opportunity to develop a process of nation-building and identity construction based on the principles of the revolutionary nationalism of the 1970s. This book explores the dynamic process of construction of the new Saharawi identity, culture and society developed in the refugee camps over the three last decades of conflict and analyses the complex articulation of elements from the Hispanic, Arab and African worlds that shapes the contours of the Saharawi Refugee Nation.

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time
Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time

Author: Kathleen Bickford Berzock

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-02-26

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 069118268X

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Issued in conjunction with the exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, held January 26, 2019-July 21, 2019, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.