western sahara background:
Western Sahara, like East Timor, was a European colony until the mid-1970s. In a landmark 1975 ruling, the International Court of Justice dismissed Morocco's historical claims to Western Sahara and instead supported the Sahrawis' right to self-determination. The UN Security Council and Secretary General have both reiterated their support for a solution that provides for self-determination, which would entail a vote including, but not limited to, the option of independence.
(...) Though the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations had provided material support for Morocco's invasion and occupation of Western Sahara from 1975 to 1991, the first Bush and Clinton administrations maintained a hands-off policy toward the early UN referendum process (1992-1996). Indirect, high-level U.S. involvement -- in the form of former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker -- began in 1997. However, Baker's seven-year engagement was sabotaged, on the U.S. side, by larger geo-strategic concerns: Morocco's role as an ally in -- and after May 2003 a site of -- the war on terror.
(...) The stalemate in Western Sahara was originally achieved on the battlefield during a 16-year war pitting Western-supported Morocco against the Algerian-backed Sahrawi guerrillas of the Polisario Front.
(...) The idea was to grant Western Sahara four years of autonomy as a kind of trial period and then hold a final status referendum. The choices would be autonomy, integration with Morocco, or full independence. To sweeten the deal for Rabat, Baker proposed that non-Sahrawi Moroccan settlers could participate in the vote. With Moroccan colonists outnumbering the native Sahrawi population by as much as two-to-one, it came as quite a shock that Rabat rejected the proposal as soon as Polisario accepted it. Baker worked with Morocco for another year, but all of Rabat's counter-proposals demonstrated a deep unwillingness to compromise on the most fundamental issue, the right of self-determination
(...) Growing in militancy, the Western Saharan independence movement has spawned its own intifadah, a decentralized, youth-led, anti-Moroccan protest movement in the occupied region. The Sahrawi heroes of this struggle are former political prisoners who have become unashamed nationalists. Many Sahrawis living under Moroccan administration are no longer afraid to speak their mind about the Moroccan occupation, for which they suffer regular beatings and imprisonment. The flag of Polisario, once unseen in Moroccan-controlled areas, is now a ubiquitous symbol of Sahrawi resistance. The only internal feedback that Polisario's leaders are receiving is toward greater confrontation not compromise.
(...) Instead, the determinant reality is that Western Saharan nationalism is growing, not diminishing. Thirty years of exile (for the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria) and socio-economic marginalization (for the Sahrawis under Moroccan administration) have strengthened their resolve, not diminished it. In the streets of Western Sahara, an escalating dialectic of violence is being played out day by day. Protest meets repression meets counter-protest meets police retaliation in an endless cycle. How much longer can Polisario's leaders justify to their constituents, without losing all credibility, the maintenance of a cease-fire that is now considered pointless by many nationalists?