Rabat — Amid growing calls to label it a terrorist group, the Polisario Front is explicitly resorting to more terrorist tactics, not only against Morocco and its southern provinces but also foreign businesses that are operating or seeking a presence in the region.
Members of the Polisario leadership, including Mustapha Sidi Ali El Bachir, conveyed the separatist group’s terrorist threats, noting that foreign investors and tourists visiting southern provinces are “in great danger.”
The Polisario member appeared in a threatening video on May 1 published on YouTube, noting that the separatist group is reiterating and confirming that “in line with Polisario’s statement from November 13, 2020, announcing the return to war, any foreign investor or tourist in the Sahara is putting their life at risk.”
He also threatened those living in Morocco’s southern provinces not to work with foreigners.
“Let the Sahrawi stay away from foreigners and not come telling us they’re civilians or innocent. This is not a tourism context, but a wartime context,” he said.
This is not the first time Polisario members have made similar heinous remarks targeting Morocco’s territorial integrity and stability.
In 2022, Polisario member Mohamed Ouali Akeik made similar remarks, noting that Moroccan cities of Laayoune and Dakhla are “legitimate” targets for the separatist front.
He made his statements in an interview with Spanish news outlet La Razon, in which the Polisario member claimed that the “war with Morocco will extend to southern provinces with the aim of striking Moroccan targets.”
In November 2020, the separatist group declared war against Morocco, in defiance of repeated UN calls for de-escalation and restraint to salvage the UN Security Council-led political process.
The war claims followed Morocco’s peaceful intervention on November 13, 2020, to halt Polisario’s blockade in Guerguerat near the Mauritanian Moroccan border.
The blockade disrupted civil and commercial traffic for three weeks, causing a shortage of fruits and vegetable exports to several African countries.
After the Polisario declared their own reality of a war with Morocco, several media outlets, especially Algeria’s regime-affiliated media, quickly picked up to frame it as a “real war.”
Notably, this is not the first time Morocco has received terrorist threats from the Polisario Front and its main backer.
The threats date back years and years, including in November of 2021, when former Algerian military intelligence officer Mokkhtar Said Mediouni publicly called on the separatist group to attack Morocco’s urban centers to undermine the country’s security.
“Sahrawis, die and sacrifice yourself as martyrs for your country. Take the war from the ‘occupied’ land to Moroccan territory,” he said.
He publicly called on Polisario operatives to attack “not in Western Sahara, I mean take it to Moroccan territory… I’m talking about Casablanca, Marrakech.”
The threats were not limited to only words but terrorist acts that the Polisario Front launched against Morocco’s southern provinces on multiple occasions.
Last year, the Polisario targeted a ceremony celebrating the 49th anniversary of the Green March in Mahbes on November 9, stirring uproar and frustration about the separatist group’s ongoing hostilities and terror attacks targeting civilians.
A year earlier, the separatist group also launched a terror attack in Es-Semara in southern Morocco, killing one and injuring three others.
The terrorist attacks led to growing calls from members of the international community, who are calling for the designation of the Polisario Front as a terrorist group.
In April, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson announced that he would introduce legislation to designate the Polisario Front as a terrorist entity.
“I will introduce legislation to designate the Polisario as terrorists,” Wilson said, echoing similar demands from politicians from different countries, including the UK and France.
