The Moroccan colonial power knows that carrying this logic through to the end would open a Pandora’s box. Genuine autonomy in Western Sahara would immediately blow open the lock on the Rif, on marginalized regions, on territories held together more by coercion than by consent. The Makhzen governs through authoritarian centralization, not through the sharing of power. The autonomy plan is therefore doomed to remain vague, ambiguous, and deliberately incomplete.
Tags : #Western_Sahara #Frente_Polisario #Morocco #autonomy_plan #regionalization #Rif #Resolution_2797_(2025)
The Makhzen is now trapped in its own snare. By seeking to impose its flimsy and deceitful autonomy plan—barely four laughable pages long—it now finds itself forced to provide details, something that is technically, politically, and legally impossible for it to do.
Rabat has still not presented its new and stillborn autonomy plan for Western Sahara. Two months after the November 10, 2025 meeting at the highest level of the state, which was supposed to seal a definitive proposal, the document remains nonexistent. This silence is not a mere administrative delay. It has become an admission of the Makhzen’s strategic dead end, incapable of turning a diplomatic promise into a credible political project. The Makhzen, copying the policy of faits accomplis from its Israeli patrons, played for time.
It backfired. The Security Council is now ordering it to spell out its autonomy plan. Yet its own feudal nature makes this impossible. At the same time, this lays bare the scale of its lies and dilatory maneuvers. Indeed, international law is fully on the side of the Sahrawi people. Consequently, no solution (legal and mutually acceptable) can be envisaged outside a referendum on self-determination.
Security Council Resolution 2797, adopted on October 31, 2025 under U.S. leadership, has placed the kingdom before a requirement it feared: “genuine” autonomy. In other words, something other than a slogan recycled since 2007 and mechanically served to Western capitals. Real autonomy implies a transfer of power, local political legitimacy, control over resources, and, above all, a break with the colonial management of the territory. This is precisely what Rabat refuses. Hence the stalemate.
The Moroccan colonial power knows that carrying this logic through to the end would open a Pandora’s box. Genuine autonomy in Western Sahara would immediately blow open the lock on the Rif, on marginalized regions, on territories held together more by coercion than by consent. The Makhzen governs through authoritarian centralization, not through the sharing of power. The autonomy plan is therefore doomed to remain vague, ambiguous, and deliberately incomplete.
The so-called advanced regionalization of 2011, often brandished as proof of good faith, was nothing more than institutional window dressing. No strategic power left the palace; no structuring decisions were entrusted to local populations. In the occupied Sahrawi territories, the administration remains vertical, security-driven, and extractive. To speak of autonomy under these conditions is sheer political imposture.
To this internal failure is added an international maneuver of unabashed brutality. The United States has decided to neutralize the UN and hollow out MINURSO of its substance. Budget cuts, targeted dismissals, and the gradual erasure of the self-determination referendum are not collateral damage, but a deliberate strategy. Washington no longer wants a multilateral framework—too constraining, too legalistic, too protective of the Sahrawi people’s rights.
Resolution 2797 enshrines this shift. The referendum, the core of the UN mandate for more than thirty years, is simply swept aside. A balance of power replaces international law. MINURSO, already reduced to the role of a powerless observer, is now being pushed toward the exit. The new U.S. ambassador to Rabat has not even bothered to conceal this intention, openly evoking an early withdrawal of the UN mission.
What is taking shape is not a solution, but a forced imposition. Steve Witkoff and Massad Boulos have assumed the mission of transforming a decolonization conflict into a mere diplomatic file, negotiated between capitals, far removed from the Sahrawis themselves. The announced presence of Jared Kushner completes the cynicism of the operation: the treatment of Western Sahara as a bargaining chip in the continuity of the Abraham Accords, on the same footing as other causes sacrificed on the altar of U.S. interests and those of the Israeli entity.
Morocco’s discourse on direct negotiations is nothing but a diversion. It does not aim to resolve the conflict, but to dilute responsibilities, circumvent international law, and impose a fait accompli under the U.S. umbrella. Once again, the Sahrawi people are excluded from their own destiny.
Things must therefore be called by their name. What is unfolding today is not a negotiation, but an attempt at the political liquidation of the Sahrawi question. It is not a search for peace, but a normalization of occupation. As long as the referendum remains buried, as long as autonomy remains an empty word, and as long as Washington continues to act as the devil’s advocate for the Makhzen, Western Sahara will remain an occupied territory and a glaring symbol of the collapse of international law. Food for thought…
El Ghayeb Lamine
Source : La patrie news, 07/01/2026
