Donald Trump Has Just Traded Western Sahara Like a Victorian Colonialist

By Eoghan Gilmartin, Jacobin

22 December 20

The Trump-brokered deal between Morocco and Israel normalizes relations between the two states. But the outgoing president bought Morocco's agreement by endorsing its ownership of Western Sahara — making the US the only major state to rubber-stamp an occupation regime condemned by international law.

n what may be his last major foreign policy initiative as president, on December 10 Donald Trump announced a US-brokered agreement that will see Morocco become the third Arab country since August to normalize ties with Israel.

Following deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the White House hailed this agreement as “advancing regional stability.” But, as Saharawi journalist Ahmed Ettanji tells Jacobin, its real effect is to “legitimize two occupations — that of the Israeli occupation of pre-1967 Palestinian territory and that of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.”

Under the agreement, the United States becomes the first major power in the world to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the illegally annexed Western Sahara — a move which flies in the face of numerous UN resolutions and a ruling from the International Court of Justice.

Colony

Covering an area the size of Britain, Western Sahara is Africa’s last colony — that is, what the United Nations designates as a “non-self-governing territory.” The Saharawi people were denied independence in 1975 after former colonial power Spain reneged on its promise of a referendum on the country’s future status, instead signing the tripartite Madrid Pact which carved up the territory between Morocco and Mauritania. About half the Saharawi population fled to neighboring Algeria to escape the subsequent Moroccan invasion.

Today, close to two hundred thousand refugees continue to live in camps along the border. Thousands more have been tortured, jailed, and killed for resisting the occupation since the 1970s. In Freedom House’s annual ranking, Western Sahara is listed as the seventh-least free territory in the world — just one point above North Korea.

Trump’s cynical intervention — announced via Twitter — did have the unintended consequence of renewing international attention on a conflict largely unreported by Western media. And it comes as the conflict is heating up again. A 1991 cease-fire between Morocco and the Polisario Front — the main Saharawi pro-independence movement — broke down in November. Daily exchanges of artillery fire are now taking place along the 2,700 km defensive sand wall (or berm) that divides the territory. For Saharawi Voice‘s Elbu Sidahmed, “The decision [to recognize Moroccan sovereignty] blows apart any chance of the US credibly mediating the conflict.”

Yet the wider context for Trump’s formal recognition of Moroccan annexation is the West’s decades-long complicity with the occupation regime. One basic condition for ensuring the economic sustainability of Morocco’s hold over Western Sahara is the exploitation of its mineral wealth and other natural resources by corporations from over forty countries.

For Ettanji (cofounder of one of the few media organizations operating out of the occupied territories, Equipe Media): “The United States, France, and Spain have not been supporting a solution to the conflict, quite the opposite — they have aided the occupier in undermining our basic rights and in plundering our resources.”

EU Hypocrisy

Indeed, this didn’t all start with Trump. A clear example of this international complicity is the European Union’s aggressive trade policy in the region. In December 2016, the EU’s highest court issued a landmark ruling that the 2012 free trade deal with Morocco on agricultural and fisheries products had no legal basis to include Western Sahara. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) concluded that Western Sahara had a “separate and distinct status” from any country in the world “by virtue of the principle of self-determination” and must be regarded as “a third party” when it came to such bilateral treaties. As a third party, it could not be legally subject to these treaties without “the expressed consent of its people.”

The ruling represented a particular threat to the lucrative fishing trade. Spain imports 100,000 tons of Moroccan-labelled fish a year at a value of €1.6 billion — though much, if not the majority, of this is generated from fishing in the occupied Saharawi waters. Similarly, Morocco has become a key exporter of fish oil and fish meal to the EU — with €44 million worth of fish meal from Western Sahara passing through the German port of Bremen alone between 2017 and 2019. At the same time, 90 percent of the catch from European trawlers operating in Moroccan-controlled waters comes from fishing in the Saharawi zone — with the EU making a €52 million a year financial contribution to Morocco in exchange for access.

In this sense, rather than seek to apply the ECJ judgment (one which invoked basic principles of international law), the EU’s response was to renegotiate a new fisheries agreement with Morocco to explicitly include Western Sahara in its scope. As a recent report from Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) explains, the EU justified this by committing to undertake a process of “consultation” with the “concerned population” — something qualitatively distinct from the legal requirement of receiving explicit consent from “the people” of the territory.

Moreover, the consultation process itself was also highly restricted: all eighteen groups whom the commission invited to take part supported Morocco’s position on the conflict. The WSRW lays out how this was concealed by the European Commission in a report on the trade deal that was sent to the European Parliament and national governments. This document included, among the names of the stakeholders who were supposedly consulted, eighty-nine Saharawi civil society organizations that, while not invited to participate, had sent a letter condemning the consultation process itself.

“The double standard is incredible,” declared WSRW coordinator Sara Eyckmans as the European Parliament approved the new deal in February 2019. “One day we observe EU politicians advocate for rule-of-law and democracy in countries like Hungary and Venezuela. The next day, those same politicians openly vote to ignore the rulings of the highest court in the EU .?.?. The EU has no right — legally and ethically — to steal the fish from the Saharawi people in partnership with their Moroccan occupiers.”

Occupation Inc.

For Sidahmed, this is only the tip of the iceberg. He tells Jacobin: “Pretty much every country that says it supports human rights and international law is helping to plunder Western Sahara today — beginning with New Zealand and India, which continue to import conflict minerals .?.?. while companies like the British Windhoist and German Siemens continue providing Rabat with infrastructure support in the occupied territories.”

Western Sahara’s large reserves of phosphate, a key component in modern fertilizers, have been exploited since the 1960s — with Moroccan state-owned phosphate company OCP taking control of the massive Bou Craa mine in the wake of the occupation. In 2018 exports were worth US$164 million, but this figure fell to US$90 million in 2019 as Canadian fertilizer giant Nutrien chose to halt imports to the North American market. Its move came after a number of institutional investors divested from the company, citing concerns over the legality of the imports. Among OECD countries, New Zealand now stands alone in the continued importation of the conflict mineral — with purchases totalling US$29 million in 2019.

Yet a number of European corporations do play a crucial role in facilitating Morocco’s mining operations at Bou Craa. For example, in 2013 Siemens installed a park of twenty-two wind turbines which supply the mine with 95 percent of its power while another German company provides maintenance services on the world’s longest conveyor belt which ferries the phosphate 100 km across the desert to the coast. Siemens is also the sole supplier of wind turbines to three other large-scale parks in the occupied territories that are owned by the king of Morocco’s renewable energy company Navera. A fifth park is planned in conjunction with Siemens and Italy’s Enel Green Power — which taken together with the other four will have a combined power of 850 MW.

A whole host of other extractive activities are also currently ongoing in Western Sahara. For decades Spanish companies have exported industrial quantities of sand from its former colony, particularly to the nearby Canary Islands, to be used in building works, on golf courses, as well as in the construction and renewal of its artificially sandy beaches. Huge agri-business plantations, largely owned by the Moroccan monarchy, and various Moroccan and French companies have left underground water reserves in the Dakhla peninsula severely depleted — to the detriment of the local population. Exploratory oil and gas drilling has also been undertaken by various French, American, and UK companies while Texas company Crystal Mountain had been mining and exporting salt to Europe from within the territory until the end of 2017.

As Miguel Urbán, a left-wing member of the European Parliament, notes, “the illegal occupation, as well as Morocco’s illegal wall, are being paid for by the Saharawi’s own resources .?.?. with the territory being turned into a Wild West for multinationals — in which anything goes.”

A Return to War

On October 21, scores of Saharawi civilians engaged in a peaceful sit-in blocking a major highway in the Guerguerat buffer zone along the Mauritanian border. This left two hundred trucks stranded — most of which were carrying fisheries and agricultural products. “Saharawi people see this road as a route through which the natural resources of Western Sahara are plundered, so blocking it is blocking the plunder,” Sidahmed tells Jacobin. As food prices soured in neighboring Mauritania as a result of the trade stoppage, the Moroccan army entered the buffer zone to violently disperse the protesters — thus violating the terms of the twenty-nine-year-old cease-fire.

In response Polisario forces engaged the Moroccan troops, ferrying the civilians out of the area, before declaring the cease-fire null and void. The Polisario Front is recognized by the UN as the political representative of the Saharawi people and is affiliated to the social-democratic Socialist International. From its base in neighboring Algeria, it has launched a series of attacks on fortified Moroccan positions along the sand berm in recent weeks, but Morocco’s wall, the longest defensive barrier in the world, makes any meaningful military gains highly unlikely — not to mention Morocco’s technological and numerical advantage.

Yet both Ettanji and Sidahmed underscore how the cease-fire status quo had long become unsustainable for the Saharawi people. “Regarding whether armed struggle is a viable option for gaining independence: the UN (and now the US), have made it clear that peaceful means will definitely not work,” claims Sidahmed. “After twenty-nine years of peaceful struggle, and winning legal cases in various courts stating Morocco has no right to Western Sahara, the international community has only emboldened Rabat. Meanwhile, the world forgets that the Saharawi people still exists.”

The end to the sixteen-year war in 1991 had been negotiated on the basis of a joint commitment from Morocco and the Polisario Front to hold an independence referendum within one year. Yet attempts to organize such a vote have been systematically sabotaged by Morocco, which has also continued to populate the region with Moroccan settlers. A wave of nonviolent protests in 2010 (which Noam Chomsky posits as the start of the Arab Spring) ended with deadly violence at the Gdeim Izik protest camp as Moroccan security forces stormed the site in the middle of the night, leaving eleven Saharawi dead and hundreds injured. Nineteen leading figures in the movement have been handed twenty-year and life prison sentences — with their convictions largely based on testimony extracted under police torture.

“We are living in an open-air prison. It has been many years since the Sahara has known peace, and so most of us have welcomed the return to war — which might at least change something,” Ettanji explains in a phone interview from the Saharawi capital El Aaiún. He and his wife Nazha El Khalidi, who is also a journalist, had been placed under house arrest for a number of weeks in November. He tells Jacobin that “we [journalists and activists] are under constant watch. Surveillance has increased considerably since the end of the cease-fire and if you walk around the city you can see a large police and military presence everywhere.”

A People Betrayed

It remains unclear whether Joe Biden will reverse the United States’ position on Western Sahara, which effectively seeks to legitimize “the takeover of one African nation by another” according to academic Stephen Zunes. As with his statements that he will not reverse Trump’s decision to move the United States’ embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the president-elect might decide against alienating a key regional ally, in this case Morocco.

Yet even if he does, a more permanent solution to the conflict is still needed. Such a solution is only possible if the Saharawi people can exercise their right to national self-determination, including regaining sovereign control over its natural resources and mineral wealth. For now, that remains a distant prospect. It likely remains so, as long as Western powers see their economic and security interests in North Africa best served by a continuation of the brutal occupation.

I Am Guilty of Violating the Espionage Act

By Laura Poitras, The New York Times

21 December 20

The Justice Department is setting a dangerous precedent that threatens reporters — and the truth.

am guilty of violating the Espionage Act, Title 18, U.S. Code Sections 793 and 798. If charged and convicted, I could spend the rest of my life in prison.

This is not a hypothetical. Right now, the United States government is prosecuting a publisher under the Espionage Act. The case could set a precedent that would put me and countless other journalists in danger.

I confess that I — alongside journalists at The Guardian, The Washington Post and other news organizations — reported on and published highly classified documents from the National Security Agency provided by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden, revealing the government’s global mass surveillance programs. This reporting was widely recognized as a public service.

The Espionage Act defines the unauthorized possession or publication of “national defense” or classified information as a felony. The law was originally enacted during World War I to prosecute “spies and saboteurs.” It does not allow for a public interest defense, which means a jury is barred from taking into account the difference between a whistle-blower exposing government crimes to the press, and a spy selling state secrets to a foreign government.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, the Espionage Act was rarely used in the context of journalism. The most notable exception is the case of Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 was charged with violating the Espionage Act for providing news organizations, including The Times, with the Pentagon Papers. The charges against Mr. Ellsberg were dropped when the illegal methods of the government’s evidence gathering — breaking into his psychiatrist’s office and warrantless wiretapping — were exposed.

All this changed after Sept. 11, when the Espionage Act became a tool of the government to selectively prosecute sources and whistle-blowers, and to intimidate journalists and news organizations seeking to publish reports that the government wanted to suppress. During Barack Obama’s presidency alone, the Justice Department prosecuted eight journalism-related Espionage Act cases against sources, more leak prosecutions than all previous administrations combined.

One of the most alarming abuses of the Espionage Act under President Obama was the case of Stephen Kim, a State Department analyst who in 2010 was indicted under the law for disclosing classified information to the Fox News journalist James Rosen. In the Justice Department’s search warrant, Mr. Rosen is described as a possible “co-conspirator.” Mr. Rosen was ultimately not charged, but tragically Mr. Kim pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act and served 10 months in prison. (I co-produced a film about the case.)

Despite this escalation of prosecuting whistle-blowers and sources, the government had never crossed the line to charging journalists or publishers for receiving or releasing classified information — until last year.

That was when the Justice Department indicted Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, on top of one earlier count of conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The charges against Mr. Assange date back a decade, to when WikiLeaks, in collaboration with The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel and others, published the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and subsequently partnered with The Guardian to publish State Department cables. The indictment describes many activities conducted by news organizations every day, including obtaining and publishing true information of public interest, communication between a publisher and a source, and using encryption tools.

I made a film about Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks called “Risk.” I filmed Mr. Assange for many years, and as the film shows, we had serious disagreements. There are many reasons to be critical of Mr. Assange, and I have not shied away from them. But we should be clear about what he is being prosecuted for and the stakes for press freedom.

WikiLeaks’ publications exposed war crimes, revealed previously undisclosed civilian deaths in American-occupied Iraq, detailed government corruption in Tunisia on the eve of the Arab Spring, and generated countless other reports that dominated the front pages of newspapers around the world throughout 2010 and 2011.

WikiLeaks was responsible for the most unvarnished reporting on American occupations and foreign policy since the start of the “war on terror,” and helped to shift the public consciousness.

None of the architects of the “war on terror,” including the C.I.A.’s torture programs, have been brought to justice. In contrast, Mr. Assange is facing a possible sentence of up to 175 years in prison.

He is detained at Belmarsh, a high-security prison in London, recently under lockdown because of a coronavirus outbreak, and fighting extradition to the United States. A British judge is expected to rule on his extradition on Jan. 4. On Wednesday, 15 members of Britain’s Parliament issued a letter to the secretary of state to meet with Mr. Assange ahead of the extradition decision, citing concerns of press freedom.

I have experienced the chilling effect of the Espionage Act. When I was in contact with Mr. Snowden, then an anonymous whistle-blower, I spoke to one of the best First Amendment lawyers in the country. His response was unnerving. He read the Espionage Act out loud and said it had never been used against a journalist, but there is always a first time. He added that I would be a good candidate because I am a documentary filmmaker without the backing of a news organization.

It is impossible to overstate the dangerous precedent Mr. Assange’s indictment under the Espionage Act and possible extradition sets: Every national security journalist who reports on classified information now faces possible Espionage Act charges. It paves the way for the United States government to indict other international journalists and publishers. And it normalizes other countries’ prosecution of journalists from the United States as spies.

To reverse this dangerous precedent, the Justice Department should immediately drop these charges and the president should pardon Mr. Assange.

Since Sept. 11, this country has witnessed an escalating criminalization of whistle-blowing and journalism. If Mr. Assange’s case is allowed to go forward, he will be the first, but not the last. If President-elect Joe Biden wants to restore the “soul of America,” he should begin with unequivocally safeguarding press freedoms under the First Amendment, and push Congress to overturn the Espionage Act.