The Fading Dream to Liberate Africa’s Last Colony
This is a decent article but it&#x27;s flawed in some ways.<p>Some of it is simply outright wrong:<p>&gt; The narrative of return and independence also presents many practical challenges. In 1976, the Moroccan “Green March” sent 350,000 Moroccans into the Western Sahara to settle, massively altering the demographics in the sparsely populated region.<p>The Green March was a peaceful march of 350k unarmed Moroccans into the region, that pushed out the Spaniards who had colonised it. Not a single bullet was fired, and these 350k people didn&#x27;t settle there at all, they went straight back home.<p>On the other hand, in the past 40 years people have come to settle in the region, mostly driven by business opportunities as it&#x27;s being invested in by Morocco. This is changing the demographics, but very much unrelated to the Green March. It&#x27;s these quite clear errors that show the author isn&#x27;t doing the proper research.<p>Anyway what bothers me the most is that it&#x27;s so one-sided. I don&#x27;t mind when authors take up a position at all, and I too am empathetic with the plight of the Sahrawi&#x27;s, but it&#x27;s a deeply complex issue with many facets left unspoken. Like the role of Algeria, which has financed the military rebellion for decades. And not for moral reasons, because they think it&#x27;s the &#x27;right thing to do&#x27;. Morocco and Algeria had been in a cold war, one was allied to the west&#x2F;us, the other to the soviet union. Algeria also had no direct access to the ocean outside of the med. sea, and wants to build a road through the western sahara to get to a free standing port. None of this is mentioned at all, we only hear of the poor human interest story of a refugee girl who&#x27;s described as a perfect western hollywood story: poor but desperate to go to school etc, read it yourself it&#x27;s a bit corny.<p>Fact is, Morocco&#x27;s various dynasties have ruled over these lands a long time. The Sahrawi&#x27;s are berbers, just like Moroccans (and Algerians and Tunisians btw, they&#x27;re all very similar peoples). Morocco is willing to invest heavily into the region, and is looking to give large degrees of autonomy, like has been ongoing in Morocco itself (a country which has many different berber groups, who&#x27;ve been getting increased autonomy, respect, special educational programmes, cultural recognition etc). But Morocco is not looking to lose territory to a few hundred thousand people under the influence of Algeria. The notion that this vast piece of land, if left alone by Morocco, will be independently and without other influences (e.g. Algeria) be ruled by a few hundred thousand people, and run as a successful nation, more so than as a part of Morocco, is I think naive.<p>So I fully support their right to self determination, but I&#x27;m also cognisant that it&#x27;s paired with a complex geopolitical story that&#x27;s left unsaid in this article, and honestly I think the best and most sensible outcome is an autonomous region within Morocco.