Western Sahara Dispute: Threat to Moroccan Palace

The dispute in Western Sahara, a threat to the Royal Palace

The Alawite regime faces the discontent of the Sahrawis, who denounce the “expropriation of their lands for the benefit of Gulf emirs and Zionist investors”

In Morocco, in the culture of the royal court, it is customary for the Cherifian sultan to decide to reward his faithful by granting them land, as he can also dispossess those who have fallen into disfavor.

At all times, the Alawite sultans have taken care to control the right of tribes to benefit from collective lands. These lands are subject to a legal regime dating from the French protectorate, codified by the dahir (decree) of 27 April 1919, still in force, which governs the right of ownership of tribes, fractions, douars or other ethnic groups on the lands of culture or livelihood that they enjoy collectively.”

Placed under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, these tribal lands are distinguished by their inalienable, indivisible, imprescriptible and elusive character. They are managed by an assembly of delegates representing the community that has the right to use the land in question. According to official figures, collective land represents nearly 15 million hectares (which corresponds to about 21% of the total area of Morocco).

During his reign, Hassan II carried out massive reappropriations by the state of collective land occupied by tribes (1963 Law on Nationalization), expropriations and redistributions of properties for the benefit of his followers, in order to guarantee their loyalty.

At the time, there was talk of a million hectares of collective land, of which nearly 600,000 were distributed to the servants of the monarchy.

King Mohammed VI has not departed from tradition, as evidenced by the decision of the Moroccan authorities in 2016 to arbitrarily grant high-level clerks or state servants prime land at ridiculously low prices.

In his 2020 speech, the king also called for the mobilization of one million hectares of collective agricultural land to “make it available to entitled and private investors.”

To this end, the authorities do not hesitate to dispossess the right holders of their tribal lands by means of expropriation for “public use.”

Sahrawis and tribal lands

The distribution of income, particularly through land, thus, allows the powers that be to tame the elites. Moreover, the dispossession seems to have contributed to the enrichment of the king and his relatives.

An example is the Addoha Real Estate Group, headed by Anas Sefrioui, a close friend of Mohammed VI. The two men would have benefited from the land constituting a village, located in Rabat, by the sea, to build luxury residences as part of the “Plage des nations” project. A case revealed in 2006 by journalist Omar Radi and corroborated by the investigation published on 19 September 2022 by Forbidden Stories.

Since 2010, the Moroccan authorities have been working to expropriate thousands of hectares of collective land throughout the country.

In 2019, the kingdom adopted Law 62/17 and its implementing decree to consolidate the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior over collective land, saying “wanting to promote the development of the rural world and benefit Soulaliyate women in the same way as the men of the tribal lands.” (The term Soulaliyate is in reference to the, which is the bond that unites the members of an ethnic community.)

However, in reality, this law has contributed to limiting the use of habits and traditions in the management and exploitation of the assets of these communities, in particular by restricting the role of the nouabs (representatives of the communities). The latter no longer had the right to intervene to apply customary rules in the resolution of conflicts that arise during the exploitation of collective land.

In 2020, the authorities would even have taken advantage of the declaration of a state of health emergency during the covid-19 pandemic to accentuate the movement of expropriation of collective land for reasons of “public utility”. As proof, the publication in the official bulletin of dozens of nominative decisions of expropriation of tribal lands located in the different regions of the kingdom.

Very recently, the kingdom decided to intensify the expropriation of collective lands throughout the kingdom, including in certain undisputed areas of Sahrawi territory, which is administered by the Moroccan authorities. The expropriation operation could, thus, affect collective lands occupied by Sahrawi tribes who, despite their allegiance to the monarchy, would be threatened with being dispossessed of the lands of their ancestors.

This political maneuver risks fueling tensions between the authorities and the Sahrawi population who claim a historic right to their tribal lands.

The chiefs of the Sahrawi tribes find it difficult to conceive of intensifying the expropriation of collective lands in the name of the “public interest” in desert areas that are difficult to exploit.

Sahrawi protesters denounce what they consider to be an “attempt by the Moroccan state to tighten the security grip on Sahrawi territories that existed even before French and Spanish colonization.”

According to the declarations of certain Sahrawi activists, notably from the regions of Tan-Tan and Guelmim—in disputed territories administered by Morocco—in a press release signed by the Coordination of the Three Rivers (Oued Eddahab, Oued Noun and Sakia el- Hamra) on 8 September, the Moroccan authorities would not have the right to carry out such a large expropriation operation for public utility when in reality it would be carried out for the benefit of “Gulf emirs and Zionists investors.”

Attempts to regulate collective land have resulted in the adoption of a legal mechanism at the end of 2019 that promotes their privatization (melkisation) and promotes agricultural investment by rights holders and private investors. However, it is clear that legal vagueness still persists as to the status of these lands, which remain subject to the discretionary power of the Ministry of the Interior.

It should be admitted that the legal status of collective property made it possible to seal the relationship of domination by the central state of the rural world. Only the state and local authorities could acquire this land by compensating the rightful claimants who could continue to benefit from their land, but without acquiring individual ownership.

A risk of recovery

In the case of Sahrawi tribal lands, expropriation seems even more difficult to justify, for cultural and historical reasons. The boundaries of these territories have never been fixed and the history of the Sahara can be seen in the form of an incessant recomposition of cultures, communities and spaces.

But what is really the extent of this embryonic movement of protest that crosses the Sahrawi communities and threatens to shake the Royal Palace?

For the moment, the chiefs of the Sahrawi tribes seem aware of the political stakes of such an operation, namely the control of the modes of ownership and exploitation of the land that tend toward a transformation of the social and political order.

The undeclared objective of royal power would be a political and security reconfiguration of the Sahrawi territories in such a way as to better regulate demographic evolution, control of the rural masses, creation of a local protest leadership, the transport and trafficking of goods and merchandise, as well as the mobility and ethno-tribal coalitions of the Sahrawi communities, in particular those that support the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi independence movement.

All the major Sahrawi tribes seem determined to defend their historic collective lands.

Some tribes—Lahmidat, Al-Mahbass and Mhamid al-Ghizlane—have `already started organizing protest actions in early September.

Other tribes, called “royalists,” prefer to keep their distance from the protesters’ demands. The Sahrawi tribes are not all inclined to challenge the Alawite regime, and some wish to negotiate with the Moroccan authorities for a way out of the crisis.

This being the case, for the first time, the challenge is endorsed by the chiefs of the large Sahrawi tribes. However, most of the latter support the monarchy, which defend Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, arguing for the existence of “historic ties of allegiance between these shuyukh [chiefs] and the Alawite sultans.”

While it is usually young people who protest to defend social demands, the Royal Palace fears a massive mobilization of Sahrawi activists around the issue of collective land.

Hence, the risk for the kingdom of seeing the Polisario Front harness the discontent of the Sahrawi tribes, especially those who recognize the Moroccanness of the Sahara, by inciting their young people in particular to rebel against the Moroccan authorities.

This could harm Moroccan diplomacy, which is trying to convince the international community of the kingdom`s commitment to respecting Sahrawi rights under Morocco`s proposal for greater autonomy.

By attacking the collective lands of the Sahrawis, the regime of Mohammed VI is on the wrong track if it thinks it can bank on disruptive diplomacy: the consequences of polarization and confrontation could prove disastrous for political stability throughout the region.

Playing the card of the dispossession of Sahrawis from their tribal lands risks encouraging an escalation of the Sahrawi conflict, putting into play a collective identity capable of sparking extreme violence.

Translated by HLRN. Original article (in French)

Aziz Chahir is an international consultant and associate researcher at the Jacques-Berque Center in Rabat, and the secretary general of the Moroccan Center for Refugee Studies (CMER). He is the author of a sociological study on political leadership Who governs Morocco: a sociological study on political leadership (L`Harmattan, 2015). Aziz Chahir is a doctor in political science and a professor/researcher in Salé, Morocco. He works, in particular, on issues relating to leadership, the training of political elites and governability. He is also interested in the processes of democratization and secularization in Arab-Islamic societies, identity conflicts (e.g., the Amazigh cultural movement) and issues related to forced migration.

Western Sahara Dispute: Threat to Moroccan Palace

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