In December 2020, in one of his final acts in office, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a unilateral proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over a 100,000-square-mile territory that has been disputed for half a century: Western Sahara. The United States had long remained mostly neutral in the standoff between the Moroccan government, whose forces exercise de facto control over most of the territory, and the rebel group that seeks Western Sahara’s independence. But with the stroke of a pen, Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy, endorsing Morocco’s territorial claim in exchange for its normalizing relations with Israel and joining Trump’s Abraham Accords. This tradeoff caused the collapse of a cease-fire agreement, leading to renewed fighting and growing tensions in the region.
The United Nations is trying to relaunch a political process that would overcome the current impasse; Morocco has rejected implementing a UN-backed popular referendum that would determine Western Sahara’s status and has instead advanced its own proposal that would grant the territory a form of limited autonomy. The disagreement remains intractable. Buoyed by U.S. recognition of its claims, an overconfident Morocco is unlikely to make needed concessions, such as allowing human rights monitoring in the territory or compromising on the full sovereignty it seeks to retain over Western Sahara, while the Polisario Front, the group that has for decades fought for the territory’s independence, is convinced that the process is rigged against Western Sahara. Decades of UN talks have made little progress toward a resolution, kicking the can down the road while Morocco cements control over nearly all the disputed territory.
