The Canadian Kim Bolduc, the new head of MINURSO (the UN mission in the Sahara) appointed by Ban Ki-moon in May, has been unable to take up her post because of Morocco's position.
Tags : Morocco Leaks, United Nations, United States, Western Sahara, Polisario Front, MINURSO, Lobbying, hacker Chris Coleman,
DIPLOMACY
An anonymous Twitter account leaks dozens of secret Moroccan documents
- The documents revealed by the “Snowden of the Maghreb” highlight the tense relationship
- Obama multiplies gestures of support for Ban Ki-moon’s team in the face of Rabat
- Morocco prevents the head of the UN “blue helmets” in the Sahara from taking up her post
IGNACIO CEMBRERO
The UN Secretariat “will have to assume responsibility in the event of a collapse of the political process and the withdrawal of MINURSO [the blue-helmet contingent] from the Sahara,” warned Omar Hilale, Morocco’s ambassador to the United Nations, to his counterpart Hervé Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations.
This could lead to a “military explosion,” Ladsous replied, alarmed. The ambassador nodded and added: “It will be exclusively the responsibility of the Secretariat, which (…) is doing everything to fuel tension and destabilize the region, something that will undoubtedly be exploited by the terrorist network of al-Qaeda,” which is firmly established in the Sahel.
The ambassador made these warnings in New York on April 26, and they are recorded in one of the many cables that, since the beginning of this month, have been disseminated by an anonymous Twitter user hiding behind the profile of Chris Coleman. The cables reveal that Morocco and the United Nations, backed by the United States, are engaged in a kind of permanent quarrel over the former Spanish colony.
The diplomatic documents are only part of the steady drip of explosive revelations by the Twitter user. Among the leaked material, covering the period from 2012 to 2014, are emails concerning payments—through an intermediary—by the foreign intelligence service (DGED) to journalists and think tanks, as well as conversations about the purchase of weapons and ammunition by the Moroccan equivalent of the Ministry of Defense.
Although the Casablanca press has barely written about the leaks, the country’s top circles are living through a climate of crisis over what they consider a large-scale operation aimed at torpedoing their strategy to consolidate the “Moroccanness” of Western Sahara, from which Spain withdrew 39 years ago. Moroccan intelligence services have opened an investigation into the leak, which they suspect originated in Algeria.
African Neighbors
To Rabat’s tense relationship with the United Nations and, to a lesser extent, with Washington, is added the conflict it triggered with Paris at the end of February, which is still ongoing. With its two African neighbors, Algiers and Nouakchott, the Moroccan authorities also maintain chronically poor relations. Finally, they have just angered Cairo because it made a gesture toward the Polisario Front last weekend. In its political environment, Morocco maintains cordial relations with only one country: Spain.
“Morocco expresses its profound disappointment, its genuine anger, and its total incomprehension regarding the biased and tendentious content of the report” by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Sahara. This was how, for example, a high-level Moroccan delegation in New York expressed itself on June 18. The report was amended before being submitted to the Security Council.
The quarrel has practical consequences. The Canadian Kim Bolduc, the new head of MINURSO (the UN mission in the Sahara) appointed by Ban Ki-moon in May, has been unable to take up her post. Rabat has vetoed her because it suspects she will try “to interfere in human rights issues that are not within her remit.”
“The United States is leading the political process to find a solution” to the Sahara conflict, David Dunn, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, reminded his Moroccan counterpart on August 28. He then expressed his “concern” over the Moroccan veto preventing Bolduc from traveling to the Sahara. Washington made at least two other similar démarches, but Rabat did not give in.
At the beginning of that same month, Deputy Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo had already reminded the Moroccans not only of the Bolduc case, but also that it was necessary to legalize “more NGOs originating from the Sahara,” that is, those aligned with independence, and to “put an end to the trial of civilians [Sahrawis] by military courts.” “Progress is very slow,” she lamented. All of this, however, had been agreed during King Mohammed VI’s visit to Washington in November 2013.
If Bolduc must be prevented from exercising her post, the American diplomat Christopher Ross must be removed from his position as Ban Ki-moon’s personal envoy for the Sahara. Since late spring he has requested to tour the Maghreb, but Rabat is in no hurry to receive him.
Against Ross
“Ross has demonstrated his pronounced hostility toward Morocco,” stresses the Moroccan report that sets out the line to be followed on the Sahara through April 2015. “Without confronting him openly, the aim is to discredit him,” it advises. “Without turning him into a victim, he must be forced to resign from his mission (…)” through the application of a series of measures.
These include, for example, “reducing his trips to Morocco to the bare minimum” and, if they occur, ensuring that “he is received at an intermediate level.” It also recommends spreading, in “unofficial circles (journalists, academics, parliamentarians, etc.), a skeptical message” about Ross: “Is he the man for the job?” Ambassador Hilale describes him as a clumsy alcoholic who has difficulty putting on his jacket.
To replace him, Rabat already has a candidate: Athar Khan, current chief of staff to António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees. “He is interested and motivated,” Ambassador Hilale wrote to his minister on August 31. Moreover, Athar Khan has done countless favors for Morocco, such as arranging for Ross, during his 2013 visit to Geneva, to be received by low-level officials at the High Commissioner’s office.
In this effort to discredit Ross, Moroccan diplomacy counted on the help of the Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo. “It would be good if he moved forward with the dossier more quickly and focused on the central issues of that dossier instead of getting lost in secondary matters,” the Spanish minister said about Ross in Rabat in June 2012, just after the Moroccan authorities had launched their first campaign against him.
El Mundo, 29/10/2014
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The conflict between Rabat, on the one hand, and the UN and Washington, on the other, over Western Sahara is summed up in this dispatch from the Spanish news agency:
The UN mission in the Sahara has still not received its chief appointed in May
The UN mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO) has a new head, the Canadian Kim Bolduc, appointed last May by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. However, she is still in New York at present, and the date of her arrival at the headquarters in El Aaiún remains unknown.
Javier Otazu
Rabat, Oct. 23 (EFE). — According to MINURSO sources in El Aaiún interviewed by EFE, there is “no specific date” for Ms. Bolduc’s arrival, as she remains in New York during this waiting phase, even though she had been expected in the region at the end of July.
In the absence of Kim Bolduc, command has been assumed on an interim basis by the mission’s military chief, Indonesian Major General Imam Edy Mulyono, while MINURSO “continues to work normally,” the same sources stressed. They declined to comment on the reasons for the delay in Ms. Bolduc taking up her post.
However, the reasons were recently set out by the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Salaheddine Mezouar, who chose a local newspaper last September to explain them. Mr. Mezouar complained that Morocco “had not been consulted” by the UN during Bolduc’s appointment and suggested that her arrival would not be accepted until “many clarifications” regarding her mandate were resolved.
MINURSO’s mandate in question
The mandate of MINURSO, created in 1991, is theoretically to oversee the ceasefire and to prepare a referendum on self-determination in the territory, but this latter mission has already been set aside by Morocco.
On October 8, Morocco’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Abderrazak Laassel, listed before the Decolonization Committee the tasks that Rabat now considers to fall within MINURSO’s responsibilities on the ground:
- Monitoring the ceasefire.
- Demining.
- Promoting confidence-building measures in support of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), including “visits between Sahrawi families” living under Moroccan administration or in the camps of the Polisario Front in Tindouf.
Tensions with Special Envoy Christopher Ross
In the same interview, Mr. Mezouar also warned that the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Sahara, the American Christopher Ross, would not be received in Morocco until Rabat obtained “written” responses to its request for “clarifications on the limits of his mission.”
Relations between Morocco and Mr. Ross are far from cordial: in May 2012, the Rabat government announced that it was “withdrawing its confidence” in him because of his “unbalanced and biased behavior.” Rabat nevertheless suffered a diplomatic setback when Ban Ki-moon, ignoring these arguments, confirmed the American in his post. Since then, relations between Ross and the Moroccan government have, to say the least, been distant.
A persistent stalemate
In private, Christopher Ross, who has not visited the area since January 2014, has confided to some interlocutors his pessimism about a solution, given the immense gap between the parties, Morocco and the Polisario Front.
To Rabat’s dissatisfaction with Ross is added Moroccan concern about the possible reemergence of a proposal that the United States had presented in 2013 to the Security Council (before withdrawing it under pressure from Rabat and its allies) aimed at expanding MINURSO’s mandate to include monitoring of human rights.
This proposal was later taken up by Ban Ki-moon himself, who, last April, on the eve of the renewal of MINURSO’s mandate, supported the establishment of an “independent, permanent, and impartial mechanism” to monitor human rights in the Sahara and in Tindouf. This mechanism was ultimately not mentioned in the resolution, once again giving the impression that Morocco had prevailed. An impression that nonetheless appears mistaken in light of the latest stalemate facing the Sahara dispute and MINURSO itself.
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