According to well-informed sources in the Tindouf camps, the Polisario is in dire straits after Washington has reiterated its support for the autonomy initiative in the Sahara, describing the Morocco-proposed plan as “serious” and “realistic” and as representing “a potential approach” to resolving the regional conflict constantly fueled by Algeria.
The autonomy plan “is able to satisfy the aspirations of the populations of the Sahara to manage their own affairs in peace and dignity,” said a senior official of the State Department on Monday during the working visit Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita was paying to Washington.
The position of the United States is that the autonomy plan “is serious, realistic and credible” and that “it is able to satisfy the aspirations of the people of the Sahara to manage their own affairs in peace and dignity,” said the US official.
This statement has put the Polisario in disarray especially that it comes after the talks of the head of Moroccan diplomacy with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, and with President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton.
The embarrassment of the Polisario and its mentor, Algeria, is to be placed in the context of a stronger tendency of major capitals considering the autonomy plan for the Sahara as the most realistic plan for a political settlement of this regional conflict.
Actually, the international community deems it most dangerous to rush the Maghreb into a separatist adventure whose consequences are all the more unpredictable, as the region is at the edge of serious insecurity spots in the Sahel and Libya where jihadist and terrorist groups, and separatist movements are endangering the security of the entire region.
