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Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa's Last Colony? by Toby Shelley. London, UK and New York: Zed Books, in association with War and Want, 2004. 192 pages. $27.95.
Reviewed by James N. Sater
The Western Sahara issue is one of the world's most protracted international conflicts and the last remaining issue of decolonization in Africa. It is a conflict that involves two main conflicting parties, Morocco and the Polisario Front. Morocco occupied the territory in 1975 after the former Spanish colonial power contemplated independence. Polisario is the historical independence movement of Sahrawis, who struggled for independence first from Spanish rule, and since 1975 from Moroccan rule. Morocco claims that this territory had been part of pre-colonial Morocco, and it upholds the principle of territorial integrity. Polisario, on the other hand, claims the right to self-determination as a basic principle of the decolonization process.
In addition, outside players have been of crucial importance: Algeria allied itself to Polisario; up until the mid-1980s a regional organization, the Organization of African Unity (since 1999, the African Union), tried to broker a solution; and since the late 1980s the United Nations security Council has elaborated a plan for a referendum that the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) was to oversee and implement. After about 15 years of fighting, a ceasefire came into effect in...