It’s time for the United Nations to dismantle the Polisario Front Camps in Tindouf after the UN Security Council endorsed Morocco’s Autonomy Plan in the Sahara, said the prestigious American Think-Tank “the Middle East Forum”.
“At the height of the Cold War, Soviet proxies Algeria and Cuba created the Polisario Front. They cared little for the Sahrawi people and use the Sahrawi issue to undermine Morocco, one of the most stalwart and moderate countries in the Arab world”, said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official, in an analysis published by MEF.
Over the past thirty-five years, not only has MINURSO failed to complete its mission, but it never really began it, said Mr. Rubin, noting that the Algerian military junta understood that a free and fair referendum would expose their fraud and delegitimize their Polisario proxy, so they threw obstacles in front of any census, flooding proposed voter rolls with people who never lived in the Sahara and who, in many cases, were not even Sahrawi.
As the largest donor to the UN, peacekeeping, and the Office of UNHCR, the United States has an interest in cutting funds to missions that are impossible to fulfil, added the American expert, accusing Algerian authorities of inflating the number of those held in Tindouf camps to bilk donors and embezzle international aid.
According to the MEF expert, more than half of the Tindouf camps’ residents are technically not refugees from the Western Sahara but, rather, moved to the camps from elsewhere in Algeria, Mali, or Mauritania.
With the UN endorsing Morocco’s autonomy plan for the Sahara, there is no reason the Sahrawi cannot go home. Morocco now has a decades-long record showing generous treatment and integration of returnees, said the MEF analyst, stressing that this does not mean amnesty.
The UNHCR screens and prevents former Assad regime soldiers who have blood on their hand from its protection in Lebanon. Likewise, those Polisario henchmen who have kidnapped, killed, or committed acts of terrorism should face justice in Morocco if they return; if they wish to remain in Algeria, so be it. But it is time for the United Nations, UNHCR, and donor nations to recognize that the best way to protect real refugees is to stop wasting money on those capable of returning but cynically prevented from doing so.
