About the Book

Why does a remote swathe of the Western Sahara concern the US and Europe? Why does Morocco maintain its occupation? Why has the UN Security Council prevaricated for three decades while the Sahrawis live under Moroccan rule or as refugees? This book examines the geopolitics and reveals:

• The little-known struggle of Sahrawis living under Moroccan rule to defend their identity

• US/European competition for influence in the Maghreb

• The rich natural resources at stake - fishing grounds, phosphates, and the prospect of oil

• The reasons for the UN failure to resolve Africa‘s last decolonisation issue

Toby Shelley has visited the territory and talked to both opposition activists and Moroccan officials. He has interviewed the Polisario leadership in the refugee camps. He shows how the future of the Western Sahara is being moulded by global and regional forces and how the Sahrawis are best placed to influence that fate.

Commendations

'In 1991, after 16 years of guerrilla war between Morocco and Polisario, the Western Saharan independence movement, both sides officially agreed that a referendum should be held in the territory to decide whether it should be independent or integrated with Morocco. The UN sent a mission to identify eligible voters. But the process was, and remains, a farce. Morocco will allow a referendum only if it can stack the votes by including Moroccan settlers and other tricks that ensure a vote for integration. The backing of its friends, America and France (on the same side for once), enables Morocco to stall indefinitely.... Following the complex steps of the referendum minuet, Toby Shelley provides a detailed account of the region‘s history since 1975.' - The Economist

'An excellent new book' - Ian Black, The Guardian, 18 October 2004

'Shelley‘s book is the most comprehensive contribution to the debate over Western Sahara in English since Tony Hodge‘s seminal ‘Roots of a Desert War‘, published 20 years ago.' - Deborah Hope in The Weekend Australian

'Toby Shelley focuses on the situation in the territory since the ceasefire of 1991... Where [he] takes up the story in earnest, he tells it very well, and his is the only full-length, readily available account in English that covers the years of failed diplomacy... He has visited Western Sahara and wrung a lot of interesting detail from towns where media access is strictly controlled and trouble-makers - pro-independence activists or the families of detainees - are kept away from visitors. His sense is that much now hangs on what Sahrawis in Western Sahara can do to challenge the occupation.' - Jeremy Harding in The London Review of Books

'The first real study of this obscure conflict in over 20 years.' - Middle East Policy

Contents

Chronology
1. Introduction
2. International context: The Maghreb from ‘Cold War‘ to ‘War Against Terror‘
3. Cain and Abel: The Western Sahara and the Struggle for Regional Supremacy
4. Morocco: Unstable and Counting the Cost of the Green March
5. The Alchemist‘s Dream: The Quest for Gold from the Desert Sand
6. Sahrawi Society under Occupation
7. The ‘Years of Lead‘
8. An Identity Forged by Resistance
9. 1999: Civil Society and Breaking Down the ‘Wall of Fear‘
10. Zero-Sum game: The Western Sahara and the UN Process
11. Polisario and the SADR: Guerrillas, Refugees and their State-in-Waiting
12. War: The Unbroken Chain
13. Endgame

About the Author

Toby Shelley is a journalist with the Financial Times. Over the past twenty years he has reported from across Africa and the Middle East. His other books include Nanotechnology (2006), Oil (2005) and Exploited (2007). He is a member of the Council of Management of the radical development charity War on Want.

Academic Adoption Information

This book is used for teaching at the following institutions:

Newcastle University