A Fragile Peace Unravels
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara has officially concluded after 35 years, leaving the territory in a state of diplomatic and military uncertainty. The collapse of the mission follows a high-stakes impasse between the United States and Russia at the UN Security Council, effectively removing the international oversight mechanism that had maintained a tenuous ceasefire since 1991. As the mission shutters, the region faces the resurgence of a conflict that has simmered for half a century.
To understand why a diplomatic mechanism designed to facilitate a referendum has met such a definitive end, you have to go back to the twilight of European colonialism in Africa and the 1975 "Green March" that fundamentally reshaped the map of the Maghreb.
The Ghost of the Green March
In the mid-1970s, as Spain prepared to abandon its colonial claims to Spanish Sahara, the native Sahrawi people anticipated a path to independence. However, the territory quickly became the stage for a three-way struggle between local Sahrawi nationalists, Morocco, and Mauritania. Morocco’s King Hassan II sought to annex the phosphate-rich region, challenging the Sahrawi aspiration for self-determination.
The turning point arrived in November 1975 with the "Green March," a strategic, state-coordinated mass demonstration. Approximately 350,000 Moroccan citizens, escorted by 20,000 troops, crossed the border into Western Sahara. This maneuver was designed to force Spain’s hand, effectively pressuring Madrid to bypass the International Court of Justice and transfer administrative control to Morocco and Mauritania via the Madrid Accords. While the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 380 condemning the march, the reality on the ground had already been irreversibly altered by the sheer scale of the Moroccan presence.
The Green March was a masterstroke of geopolitical orchestration, utilizing mass civilian mobilization backed by military force to claim a territory while navigating the anxieties of the Cold War.
The Polisario Front and the Long War
The Sahrawi response was immediate. The Polisario Front—a liberation movement founded in 1973—had originally organized to fight Spanish occupation, but quickly pivoted to defend the territory against the partitioning powers of Morocco and Mauritania. In 1976, the front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). While the Polisario Front successfully forced Mauritania to withdraw in 1979, the conflict with Morocco escalated into a brutal, low-intensity war that lasted throughout the 1980s.
During this period, the international context was defined by the Cold War. The United States and France, wary of the potential for an independent state to align with Algeria or the Eastern Bloc, provided tacit support to Morocco. This Western backing allowed Morocco to entrench its control, eventually building extensive defenses that neutralized the Polisario Front's guerrilla tactics. By the time a UN-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1991, the expectation was that a referendum would finally determine the territory's status. That vote never happened, postponed by decades of political disagreements over voter eligibility and sovereignty.
A Cycle of Impasse
The dissolution of the UN mission is not merely a bureaucratic failure; it is the culmination of a historical cycle where international consensus has consistently failed to address the core grievance of Sahrawi self-determination. In 2020, the Polisario Front declared the 1991 ceasefire at an end, citing the lack of progress toward the promised referendum. Today, the Security Council’s internal divisions between Washington and Moscow reflect the same geopolitical hardening that characterized the 1970s.
As the international community withdraws its oversight, history suggests that the power vacuum will likely revert to the status quo that predated the UN's arrival: a direct confrontation between the Moroccan state and the Polisario Front. Without a formal mediator, the resolution of Western Sahara’s fate may no longer be fought in the halls of the UN, but once again in the desert, where the competing claims of the Green March and Sahrawi nationalism remain as intractable as they were in 1975.
