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Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future For Africa's Last Colony? By Toby Shelley. Zed Books; 224 pages; $69.95 and pounds 45 (hardback), $22.50 and pounds 14.95 (paperback)
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.
Even when the whole sleepy business seemed to be given life by the appointment in 1997 of James Baker, a former American secretary of state,...