FRMF’s statement adds to the national outpouring of support that greeted FAR’s intervention in Guerguerat to establish a “security corridor.”
Morocco’s Royal Football Federation (FRMF) has expressed support for the country’s recent intervention to restore traffic at the Guerguerat crossing point, calling the move a “legitimate act.”
“The national football family is proud of the decisions taken by the Kingdom of Morocco to put an end to the provocations in the buffer zone of El Guerguarat,” FRMF president Fouzi Lekjaa said in a statement on November 21.
Lekjaa’s statement followed a meeting of FRMF’s executive committee.
A statement summarizing the meeting’s talking points also noted that the FRMF president “welcomed and supported the intervention of the FAR (Royal Armed Forces) … to preserve the territorial integrity of the Kingdom and ensure security and stability in the southern provinces.”
Lekjaa stressed that “Moroccan football is united behind HM the King to defend the national cause.”
FRMF’s statement adds to the national outpouring of support that greeted Morocco’s operation in Guerguerat to establish a “security corridor” at a vital regional crossing point, where a group of Polisario elements had been disrupting traffic for three weeks.
Moroccans from all walks of life have hailed the national army’s “timely” and “responsible” intervention to lift the Polisario blockade and “defend the country’s national integrity and sovereignty over its southern provinces.”
At the international level, meanwhile, Morocco’s Guerguerat security operation has elicited a relatively unanticipated show of support. In the Arab world, the country has received uncharacteristically unwavering support from the Gulf Cooperation Council.
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In Africa, more than twenty countries have condemned Polisario’s acts in Guerguerat and expressed their support for both Morocco’s intervention and its broader position — the country’s 2007 Autonomy Proposal — on the Sahara question.
Also consolidating Morocco’s diplomatic upper hand has been the wave of support from Latin America, including from countries that formerly supported Polisario or sympathized with its independence claims.
While Polisario continues to issue escalation threats and declare the 1991 ceasefire “null and void,” most Western Sahara watchers say that the militant group is unlikely to substantially disrupt or derail the series of diplomatic victories Morocco has achieved in recent years.
They argue that, in the past two decades, the international community’s default position on Western Sahara has been the adoption of Morocco’s Autonomy Proposal — whose pragmatism most boservers have hailed — as the best route to a lasting solution to the Sahara crisis.
