Deserting the Baker plan
by David Keene

President Bush likes to talk about nurturing democracy within the Muslim world, but he's doing little for the pro-Western Muslims of the Western Sahara whose future rests in his hands.

If you don't know much about the plight of these people, you aren't alone. They have been languishing in refugee camps in western Algeria for nearly 30 years and will remain there until the United States stops playing chief enabler to a Moroccan government that invaded and seized their country when it was freed from colonial rule by Spain in the '70s. I've visited the camps, and to suggest that the people who inhabit them live under harsh conditions is to speak euphemistically.

The Western Saharan or Saharawi peoples tried to resist the Moroccans, but hundreds of thousands of them were forced to flee to Algeria before a U.S.-equipped Moroccan army determined to seize their land. Today more than 300,000 of them survive as best they can, unable to see their relatives or visit their homeland.

Realizing they didn't have the capability to defeat Morocco on the battlefield, the Saharawi faced a choice. They could fall back on the asymmetric warfare of the terrorist, surrender or turn to the international community. They perhaps rather naively chose the latter course and went to the United Nations and the World Court seeking justice.

Meanwhile, they've built a functioning democracy that guarantees equal rights to
men and women alike, educated their children and let it be known that all they want to do is live in peace with those around them. Their congressional friends in the United States include people such as Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Reps. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), Mark Green (R-Wis.) and Donald Payne (D-N.J.), but so far few of their colleagues and virtually no one in the Bush administration or the media seem to share their concerns.

This is in spite of the fact that virtually everyone agrees the Saharawi are right. The International Court of Justice in 1975 ruled Morocco had no right to the land seized, but the king of Morocco ignored the ruling and the United Nations sought a referendum in which the people of the region could vote on whether they wanted to be ruled by their colonial masters or by leaders of their own choosing.

Meanwhile, the United States stood by silent as our Moroccan ally consolidated control over the region to become the last colonial power on the African continent.

Publicly, of course, the Moroccans declared that they too believed in self-determination, but marched hundreds of thousands of Moroccans into the region and declared that if there was to be a vote, these folks should be allowed to vote too. The Saharawi and the United Nations balked at this baldfaced attempt to stuff the ballot boxes, but finally appointed former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker as a special envoy to work something out. Baker eventually came up with a "compromise" plan that would grant the vote to enough Moroccans to give them a majority if they stuck together and suggested a period of autonomy within Morocco followed by a vote to decide whether the region would go its own way.

To everyone's surprise, the Sahrawi accepted the "Baker Plan." They know they can't survive in the camps forever and suspect that more than a few of the Moroccans who will vote might welcome the chance to escape the tender mercies of their king. The Moroccans immediately rejected the plan announcing that they will never accept any scheme that includes the possible loss of the territory they have grabbed.

The United Nations doesn't know what to do, and Baker has thrown up his arms and resigned. The king's only real ally in the United Nations is France, but it's our silent acceptance of whatever he wants do to that has allowed him to thumb his nose at the world. Everyone knows that as long as King Mohammed VI can keep the United States in line, he will remain intransigent.

During the king's visit to Washington last week, President Bush supposedly brought up the Baker Plan, but one wonders if he pressed very hard. He has, after all, said nothing about the Saharawi in public and done everything from declaring Morocco a "major non-NATO ally" to leading the charge for a U.S.-Moroccan Free Trade Agreement to give the King the impression that we aren't about to do anything at all about the way he acts in his own neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the Saharawi hang on, praying for the day when an American president who talks about democracy and justice will come to their aid.

 

Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is a managing associate with Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm (www.carmengrouplobbying.com).