Polisario’s desperation is evident as it resorts to using women, children, and even dogs in its faux “war” against Morocco.
Rabat – Amid renewed tensions in the Western Sahara conflict marked by one-sided declarations of war, an increasingly insecure Polisario Front is attempting to use defenseless dogs to spy on Moroccan forces.
Photos and audio clips obtained by Morocco World News expose Polisario’s desperate tactics unheard of in modern military operations.
The evidence reveals Polisario’s debilitating lack of advanced technology and resources, as it sends not drones but dogs fitted with “spying equipment” to gather intel on Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces.
The fate of these “spy dogs,” unfortunately, is little more than that of a sacrificial lamb.
Even if the dogs can successfully navigate the dangerous desert minefields, they do not stand a chance once in the line of fire of Moroccan forces, who have no choice but to eliminate the security threat.
In the recording analyzed by MWN, a man speaking Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, greets a colonel and informs him that one of Polisario’s dogs was “killed by the 40 this morning,” referring to a military coordinate.
“It was one of the dogs that come to spy on the mine position. When the dog entered the area, they killed it,” the man said.
Referring to a previous conversation with the same colonel, the man added: “And about the thing I told you earlier, that the dogs have spying equipment, the dog that was killed has the equipment in the collar on its neck.”
Highly-trained dogs are active in military operations around the world, accompanying teams of soldiers to detect explosives or scope out and record small spaces that humans would otherwise be unable to access.
Sending dogs with cameras around their necks unaccompanied into minefields for spying purposes, however, is unheard of.
But to the trained eye, Polisario’s sacrifice of dogs is sadly not surprising. International observers argue that an increasingly rogue Polisario uses women and children as human shields by sending them to participate in its provocations in the buffer zone. More alarming, perhaps, there is evidence that the militias even recruit and radicalize children to take up arms.
Read also: NGOs: Polisario Provokes War, Uses Women, Children as Human Shields
Despite Morocco affirming its commitment to the 1991 UN ceasefire in Western Sahara, Polisario is hungry for further escalation of tensions as it continues to lose favor in the diplomatic process to resolve the conflict.
After Morocco’s armed forces acted on November 13 to secure the Guerguerat border crossing, where Polisario had staged a blockade of civil and commercial traffic since October 21, the separatists declared they would no longer respect the ceasefire and claimed to be mobilizing “thousands” of volunteers to fight in its “war” against Morocco.
Algeria arms, funds, and shelters the militant Polisario Front, which has been vying since 1973 for an “independent state” in Western Sahara. But with the separatists now forcing dogs and children to do their bidding, it seems as though Algeria has left the Front high and dry as it grapples with its own political, economic, and social crises.
As its war-mongering rhetoric and unorganized guerilla tactics fail to earn international sympathy, Polisario is growing weaker by the day. By contrast, the aftermath of the Guerguerat crisis has shed more light on the depth of Morocco’s diplomatic overtures in recent years.
Many countries have in the past weeks supported Morocco’s stance, condemned Polisario’s acts in the buffer zone, reasserted their commitment to the UN-led political process, and hailed Morocco’s “serious” and “pragmatic” plan to end the decades-long dispute.
