By Hassan Alaoui
This Thursday, November 14, 2024 symbolizes for us the celebration of the 49th anniversary of the Madrid Agreements, signed by the Kingdom of Morocco, Spain and Mauritania. The so-called tripartite Agreement, signed on November 14, 1975, in the wake of the success of the Green March, concerned in particular the definitive withdrawal of Franco’s Spain from the Sahara, and consisted of a partition of the territory between Morocco which took back Saquia- al-Hamra, and Mauritania to which the southern part, Oued Eddahab (Rio de Oro), was returned. General Franco, dying, was then living his last hours and the Spain of the young King Juan Carlos was keen to complete the decolonization of this territory which it had occupied for the first time in 1884 and a second time in 1934…
It should be remembered that Boumediene, then president of Algeria, denounced the Tripartite Decolonization Agreement and did not hesitate to threaten – during a stormy meeting in Bechar – the Mauritanian president at the time, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, for its rapprochement with Morocco. The Algerian services, led by Kasdi Merbah, central director of Algerian Military Security, a native of the city of Fez, and those of Franco had recovered the Polisario, then created and financed by Gaddafi. From these dates and, already launched into a latent “war” against the Kingdom of Morocco, they indulged in the conspiracy which was already announcing the color…
The literature of the Algerian media – starting with the APS – without baffling – has accustomed us to an irascible humiliation of lies which reflects more a total and astounding ignorance of the Sahara issue than the propagandist mirror effect. Created by Houari Boumediene, this “Sahara affair” constitutes the biggest scam of the century. Because the claim to this territory, occupied until 1975 by Spain, was made by the Kingdom of Morocco already in…1956, just after the Liberation of our country, while Algeria, which became independent only in 1962 , knew nothing, absolutely nothing about this problem.
An official claim filed by Morocco in 1963 relaunched again the case of restitution of our territory and, once again, Boumediene was not yet in power, then he waited two years to overthrow Ahmed Ben Bella and seize it. This also shows the monstrous deception and imposture of the heirs of Boumediene who spent his time insulting King Hassan II and the Moroccan people.
« Morocco Occupying country », « the Sahara, last colony in Africa » etc…, « the referendum and self-determination of the Sahara »…So much verbiage had continued to bombard our ears with high-sounding formulas since 1975 that the Algérie Presse Service (APS) agency, the official Algerian agency – “ voice of his master » of course is executed, as well as the entire armada of media manipulated by the Algerian intelligence services assailed us.
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Since the official outbreak of “ the Sahara affair » in 1975, the Algerian governments which have succeeded one another until now, their services and their propagandists, all in the same movement of mystification, have continued to play on a major confusion. That of the voluntary use or misuse of the concept of decolonization. With this unfortunate consequence that certain governments and states around the world have allowed themselves to be misled. Worse: those responsible for our national diplomacy have not, if ever, paid particular attention to this precise point, that of the decolonization formula which is to Algerian propaganda what expansionist ambition is to a dictatorship. So much so that, from negligence to a simple and deplorable abandonment on the part of our leaders, we arrive at this paradox that it is the Algerian stipendiaries of the Polisario who write our history, distort it as they wish and, seriously, use it against us.
The irresistible fantasy of accession to the Atlantic
Still, our case is barely well defended, it changes hands and actors; but that an essential point like that of the decolonization process is the subject of a semantic violation on purpose, of ignorance on our part and serves as an argument for our established adversaries, that is what disgusts us. The Sahara issue has only ever opposed Morocco and Algeria alone, the latter using it since the beginning – 1975 – as a “ trench warfare » with the (un)confessed objective of appropriating a territory, truly Moroccan since the dawn of time, of installing a “ puppet republic », the pseudo « rsd » and to monopolize its wealth, not to mention the irascible rage to encircle Morocco on its southern borders, by the Atlantic and on its eastern borders…
In other words, all the geopolitics refined for centuries by our Kings and our history, would fall into the hands of an Algeria which, not content with possessing abundant oil and gas, has multiplied its surface area tenfold by monopolizing at least six or seven Moroccan territories in the south-east, would still like, in addition to the eastern Sahara, to get its hands on the one called “ occidental » and on its resources. In fact therefore of “ decolonization » that Algerian governments have continued to agitate for forty-eight years now, it is a criminal project of recolonization of the southern Moroccan provinces by Algeria. A rehash of the French occupation, its continuity, its legacy in some way. The theory of the United Nations, defended by the 4th Commission responsible for special political questions and decolonization, is to facilitate the accession of ” colonial peoples » to autonomy. This is recorded and well and truly expressed by the legislators and jurists of the international organization. Better: the Fourth Committee of the UN, in the case of a dispute between an occupying power and a country claiming territory – as was the explicit case of Spain and Morocco – officially provides its support for any solution, any negotiated formula, in other words it ratifies what we call today the “ consensual political solution » !
On November 14, 1975, after two marathon weeks and while General Franco was dying, Morocco, Spain and Mauritania signed the Madrid Tripartite Agreement. Its purpose? No more, no less than returning the territory of the Moroccan Sahara that Spain occupied in two stages, at the end of the 19th century and in 1930. This agreement illustrated decolonization in due form, without war or bloodshed. It was in line with UN doctrine. That the Algerian leaders, without faith or law, fought it fiercely reflects a singular cynicism.
For what ? Because the same Algeria – all to the honor of its people – not only fought gloriously to wrest its independence, but it negotiated for two years with France, in Melun, then in Evian and God knows that the sequence negotiations on the Algerian Sahara aspect was a tough part, because the representatives of the GPRA (Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic) were instructed not to “ give no inch » of the Sahara…In July 1962, Algeria gained independence and its leaders were unaware of Morocco’s claim to its Sahara, submitted to the offices of the United Nations. As for the Polisario, an instrument created out of nothing by the predecessors of the DRS in 1974, no one will dispute that its leaders are from Morocco, neither more nor less, manipulated and become creatures of the Algerian services…
The perfidious Algerian contradiction
Why then what was good for Algeria with France, could not be good for Morocco with Spain? Why would Morocco not be within its rights and in “ his boots “, as is an Algeria which, in defiance of good neighborliness with Morocco, exhausts itself in contesting its Sahara? Especially since Spain in colonizing the Moroccan Sahara had not found an empty territory, without soul and without life, but populations who have always been attached to the Kings of Morocco, performed their prayers in the name of the Sultan , exchanged with a currency struck with the effigy of the same Sultan, in short a whole history and a memory shaped in an interdependence which has never been lacking…
Still invoking the decolonization of the Moroccan Sahara, spreading this crazy qualification of a “ Maroc colonial », obscure the historical and political truth in the name of an expansionism which does not say, but poorly conceals its name, contradicting itself with regard to the principle of negotiated decolonization holds in fine bad Machiavellianism. The decolonization of the Moroccan Sahara obeyed the principle of direct negotiation, between the occupying power and the beneficiary which is none other than Morocco, the only country which had to face two colonial empires, France and Spain, which had to negotiate its liberation twice with different powers…
Morocco has invested considerably in the Sahara since its liberation in 1975, and this year 2016 will see the implementation of a program of tens and more billions of dirhams which are mobilized to provide the southern provinces with major projects…Exactly in the spirit of this creature called 4th Commission in its charter which stipulates that within the framework of direct negotiation between two parties, one occupying – Spain at the time – and the other claiming the decolonization of the territory, Morocco here, there is no no more constraint, no questioning by anyone. Morocco, Mauritania and Spain therefore signed the Madrid Agreement on November 14, 1975 without firing a shot, further supported by the Opinion favorable to Morocco rendered by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a month earlier , on October 15 of the same year.
All that remained for Boumediene was to swallow the snake, admit or resign, the rule of law having more than prevailed.
