Rabat – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced Major General Fakhrul Ahsan as Force Commander for MINURSO, the UN peacekeeping operation in Western Sahara.
The UN chief announced the appointment on Thursday, stressing that Ahsan will succeed Major General Zia Ur Rehman of Pakistan.
The UNSG extended gratitude to the Pakistani commander, who will complete his assignment at the end of March.
With over 34 years of experience in both international and national military in Bangladesh, Ahsan served in several positions including as a director of the Military Intelligence Directorate at the Bangladesh Army Headquarters.
Ahsan also served previously in two peacekeeping missions including UN Operation in Somalia II and the Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).
As for the major general’s education background, Ahsan holds a BA in Science as well as master’s degrees in development studies and defense studies.
The Bangladesh military professional speaks fluently in English, French, Indonesian, and Hindi, according to the UN.
The Western Sahara dispute has been ongoing for over four decades. The UN-led political process is marked by stagnation particularly due to Polisario and Algeria’s rejection of the latest UN resolutions that call on all parties involved in the dispute to embrace compromise and political realism as the way toward a lasting solution to the decades-long dispute.
Growing tensions between Algeria and Morocco are one of the crises that the UN Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is facing to succeed in convening the parties associated with the dispute around a potential roundtable to discuss possible solutions.
The UNSG appointed De Mistura as the UN Personal Sahara Envoy in 2021 to succeed Horst Kohler, who resigned in May 2019 due to health complications.
Kohler succeeded to bring together the four parties – Polisario, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania– in two rounds of talks in Geneva, reviving hope among observers about the possibility of a political settlement.
It remains to be seen whether De Mistura will succeed in convincing the political parties to convene at a round table to talk amid the escalating political crisis.
