Rabat – Morocco’s reluctance to cooperate with Spain on an important military expertise sharing platform forced Spain to give up on the participation of its troops in the upcoming African Lion exercise, according to the latest update in the ongoing diplomatic and narrative warfare between Madrid and Rabat.

Spanish outlet El Pais reported yesterday that Spain, which has been a frontbencher in the joint military exercise in recent years, is withdrawing from this year’s iteration of the African Lion maneuvers over its principled rejection of Morocco’s stance on the status of Western Sahara. 

While Madrid has cited “budgetary constraints” as its reason for “withdrawing” from the 2021 African Lion, El Pais wrote, the actual reason was the Spanish government’s uneasiness about legitimizing “the occupation of Western Sahara.”

This year’s Africa Lions maneuvers will take place in Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia between June 7-18. Because the exercises to be performed in Morocco will take place in the country’s southern territories (in Dakhla and Mahbes), Spain has decided that “sending soldiers to these exercises would legitimize the Moroccan occupation,” El Pais claimed.

But Intelligence Maghreb’s update casts serious doubt on that interpretation. The news website, which usually publishes “exclusive” and reliable scoops on confidential, intelligence-related matters in the region, reported that the El Pais story was most likely leaked by the Spanish government to set the agenda and preempt any counter-narrative. 

It underlined that what has been presented as Spain’s “decision to withdraw” was, in fact, a demand by the Moroccan government, which has ostensibly grown weary of Spain’s apparent duplicity and unreliability on highest-priority issues for Moroccan interests.

The understanding is that, the African Lion exercise being essentially an event for developing military interoperability and intelligence or expertise sharing with allies, Morocco opposed sharing such a sensitive platform with a country that it no longer considers as a reliable or strategic partner.

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“According to reliable sources consulted by Maghreb Intelligence, it is Morocco, the first protagonist (with the United States) of the [African Lion] maneuvers, that has opposed Spain’s participation,” reads the report. “For Rabat, it is out of the question to give the impression that relations between the two countries will resume normally before the case of Brahim Ghali is resolved.”

This latest twist in the rapidly widening gulf between Madrid and Rabat comes amid a widely shared consensus in the circles of power in Morocco that relations with Spain should undergo a complete overhaul. 

Among Moroccan officials, the leading sentiment appears to be that, unless the Spanish government satisfies Morocco’s demands on its “shocking” decision to shelter Polisario’s Brahim Ghali and its apparent hostility to the “vital interests” of an “indispensable neighbor” and “strategic partner,” Morocco “will take note” of Spain’s attitude or positions and behave accordingly.

Meanwhile, the El Pais story is bound to displease many in Rabat for its use of “occupation” when referring to Morocco’s sovereignty over Dakhla and Mahbes. Like the insistence on a self-determination referendum, the use of “occupation” is one of the many pro-Polisario terminologies that successive UN negotiations in the past 41 years appear to have decidedly disqualified.

Far from using “occupation” or pushing for an independence referendum, the UN-led political process is now calling for a compromised-based political solution, a shift many Sahara watchers and experts – including some who sympathize with Polisario’s claims – have interpreted as a cryptic vindication of Morocco’s 2007 Autonomy Proposal. 

This means that the suspicion that the Spanish government leaked the African Lion story to El Pais and appeared to condone the use of “occupation” or “annexation” will further convince Rabat that, for all its repeated calls for renewed dialogue, Spain has no intentions of salvaging its heavily bruised – but crucial – relations with Morocco