Tags: Morocco, SADR, Polisario Front, US, Joe Wilson, Jimmy Panetta,
The UN treats the Polisario as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahara people. The US is now vilifying it.
By Stephen Zunes ,
designation of armed groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) has always been politicized, but it may now reach a new level of absurdity thanks to a bipartisan resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced by Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) and Jimmy Panetta (D-California) targeting the Frente Polisario, the government of Western Sahara, officially known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Morocco, an important U.S. ally, invaded Western Sahara in 1975 on the eve of its independence from Spain and currently occupies nearly 80 percent of the territory, while the Polisario appears to governroughly 40 percent of the Western Saharan population in the liberated zones and in refugee camps in western Algeria.
According to the UN Security Council, terrorism is defined as:
…criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.
Most nations, including the United States, have traditionally only applied that label to irregular forces. But the U.S. has broken with that practice in recent years, with Washington designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the largest branch of the country’s armed forces — as a terrorist group. Since the IRGC controls major sectors of Iranian industry, colleges, and other non-military institutions, large segments of the Iranian population, as a result of military conscription or simply taking classes and going to civilian jobs at IRGC-affiliated institutions, are now deemed to have terrorist affiliations.
The Houthis of Yemen, who constitute the de facto government of three-quarters of that country’s population, have also been labeled a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States, thereby complicating desperately-needed relief efforts to starving Yemenis who live under Houthi-governed areas.
break with the longstanding Arab League position of refusing to establish formal diplomatic relations until Israel withdrew from occupied Arab territories, including the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza Strip.
While Biden did not formally endorse Trump’s decision, he allowed it to stand. U.S. government maps under Biden began depicting Western Sahara as part of Morocco, with nothing delineating the two. Reports by the State Department and other federal agencies, which until then had treated Western Sahara as a separate entity, began including the territory as a part of Morocco. While the administration claimed it still supported the UN-led peace process, its recognition emboldened the Moroccans to take an even more hardline posture, arguing that U.S. recognition essentially resolved the issue.
In 2023, Israel became the second country to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, no doubt encouraged by the precedent of the world’s most powerful nation breaking with the UN’s longstanding prohibition against recognizing the expansion of territory by military force.
Rules Don’t Apply
During the 50 years of resistance against Moroccan occupation forces, the Polisario has never engaged in any acts of terrorism. They have formally ratified the Geneva Conventions and their protocols and they are a party to the African Union’s Convention on Counter-Terrorism.
The United Nations recognizes the Polisario as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahara people and the African Union recognizes Western Sahara as a full member state. Neither they nor any other credible international legal entity classify the Polisario as a terrorist group.
Supporters of Morocco’s autocratic monarchy have tried to link the Polisario — which is a democratic, secular, moderately left-leaning liberation movement — with Islamist groups like Hezbollah, in addition to the Iranian government. This is a ludicrous claim, especially as the U.S. State Department has found no indication that the Polisario has any operational ties with such entities. Moreover, I have spoken to Polisario leaders who have been quite explicit that their interpretation of Islam is more liberal than the model espoused by Iran’s leaders.
Even former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, one of the most extreme critics of Iran, recently noted that allegations of Iranian influence on the Polisario were groundless. Similarly, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker said the Polisario-governed refugee camps and liberated zones of Western Sahara have “exercised a degree of democracy, maintained a high literacy rate, and never resorted to terrorism.”
The Western Saharan liberation struggle is unified, democratic, has never questioned Morocco’s right to exist, and has never targeted civilians, yet they are still being denied their right to self-determination and are now being labeled as terrorists.
As with the Russian and Israeli annexations of neighboring territories, Morocco’s 1975 annexation of Western Sahara is a flagrant violation of international law. As long as civilians are not targeted, it is not terrorism for a people to engage in armed resistance to a foreign belligerent occupation.
Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara is rejected by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the African Union, and a broad consensus of international legal scholars that consider the region a non-self-governing territory that must be allowed self-determination. The Sahrawis have a distinct dialect, kinship system, dress, cuisine, and colonial history and have no desire to live under the rule of their autocratic neighbor.
Unlike the Polisario-controlled areas, those living in the Moroccan-occupied parts of Western Sahara suffer under brutal repression.
hegemony, since its return to the White House, including makign false charges of a “genocide” against that country’s relatively well-off white minority.
Targeting the Polisario also underscores how Washington’s opposition to Palestinian rights is not really about concerns over terrorism or Israel’s security. The Western Saharan liberation struggle is unified, democratic, has never questioned Morocco’s right to exist, and has never targeted civilians, yet they are still being denied their right to self-determination and are now being labeled as terrorists.
By labeling the Western Saharan nationalist movement as terrorist, it makes it easier for Washington to ignore the flagrant double standards in its policies of opposing Russia’s expansionism in Ukraine as a violation of the “rules-based international order” while defending Morocco for doing the same thing.
Terrorism is a real threat in North Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Yet Washington’s willingness to label a popular movement and even a recognized government as a “terrorist organization” simply for pursuing their recognized right to national self-determination through legal means further underscores how politicians are willing to manipulate legitimate concerns about terrorism in order to undermine longstanding international legal principles.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco.
Truthout, August 2, 2025
