Content area
Full Text
WESTERN SAHARA: LINES IN THE SAND Erik Jensen. Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate. Boulder, CoIo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005. 179 pp. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. $15.95. Paper.
Toby Shelley. Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa's Last Colony? London: Zed Books Ltd., 2004. Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan. xii + 215 pp. Chronology. Photographs. Index. $69.95. Cloth. $22.50. Paper.
THE CONCEPT OF NATIONAL self-determination is a legal phenomenon that postulates the right of every nationality group, large or small, to form and govern its own nation-state, or to form a nation-state with another nationality group and decide its form of government. Historically, the concept is closely linked with that of liberal nationalism and is implicit in both the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Reaffirmed by Woodrow Wilson and later by the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations, the principle of self-determination has been seized upon by the people of Western Sahara to assert their own claims to independence. Commendably, these two books, which complement and reinforce each other, seek to answer the question of why these claims have gone unrealized. In doing so, they illustrate the tragic consequences of the inability of African states to solve the problems of the continent. But first and foremost, they offer an insightful case study of the tortuous operations of the United Nations and of how geopolitics and the interests of the great powers impinge on those operations.
The U.N. quest for national self-determination in Western Sahara began formally in the 1960s after the adoption of Resolution 1514 (XV), when the organization pressured Spain to decolonize Western Sahara by means of a referendum enabling the inhabitants to exercise freely their right to national self-determination. In 1967 Spanish authorities in the territory set up a Yemaa, a colonial legislative assembly, which they hoped to control indefinitely. In 1973 a group of Western Sahara nationalists organized Polisario, a national liberation movement, which initiated guerrilla activities against the Spanish administration. In 1974 Spain agreed in principle to a 1973 request by the Yemaa to allow the expression of self-determination, and the Spanish authorities proceeded to conduct a census of the territory in anticipation of a 1975 referendum. The census counted only Sahrawis...