Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Marrakech – The mask has fallen. The Polisario Front has once again revealed itself as nothing more than an outlaw militia masquerading as a political movement.
Armed elements of the separatist group stormed the gold-mining zone of El Malhate on the Mauritanian-Western Sahara border, kidnapping unarmed Mauritanian prospectors, confiscating their vehicles and belongings, and ordering them under threat of violence to abandon what is clearly their national soil.
According to Mauritanian media, the incident occurred near the town of Zouérat. The miners are now staging a sit-in just 248 meters from the Sahara frontier after being chased two hundred meters back into Mauritanian territory.
“We were assaulted and stripped of everything we had, without a single reaction from our state,” declared Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Hassan, head of the General Union of Miners, who confirmed he had formally alerted provincial authorities of the attack but received no answer.
The brazenness of this cross-border banditry is staggering. What began as a violent raid by Polisario gunmen turned into outright hostage-taking, laying bare the group’s contempt not only for Morocco but also for Mauritania’s sovereignty.
Eyewitnesses told Mauritanian press agencies that the armed patrol penetrated Mauritania by 200 meters, seized cars and equipment, and terrorized civilians in broad daylight. The incident, far from an isolated act, contributes to a pattern of extortion, smuggling, and armed intimidation by which the Polisario has long funded its criminal enterprise.
Reports described the attack as the latest proof that this so-called “liberation movement” is nothing more than a state-sponsored terrorist gang, operating under the protection of Algeria’s military regime.
Last April, a Washington Post investigation revealed how Algeria and Iran used the Polisario as a destabilizing proxy in both North Africa and Syria.
Another detailed Hudson Institute report made the case that the group meets every statutory threshold to be formally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under US law, citing its collusion with Hezbollah and its smuggling networks across the Sahel.
And even more recently, a searing DAWN report by journalist Rena Netjes has just confirmed again that Polisario fighters, trained by Hezbollah, fought alongside Assad’s forces in Syria and are now facing trial there.
The irony is that Algeria’s intentions are not coming to light only today. In fact, a 1978 Swiss diplomatic letter already exposed, since the earliest days of the artificial dispute, how Algiers hijacked the Polisario to destabilize Mauritania, strangle Morocco’s economy, and impose its hegemonic ambitions across the Maghreb.
Together, these findings have pulled back the curtain on the Polisario’s real face, stripping away any remaining façade of legitimacy and exposing the separatist front as a criminal militia.
These reports collectively dismantle decades of propaganda, showing how the group thrives on destabilization, hostage-taking, and smuggling. The evidence confirms Morocco’s warnings: the Polisario is not a political actor but a dangerous destabilizer whose days of hiding behind false legitimacy are rapidly closing.
Nouakchott dismantles safe havens for separatists
Mauritania’s patience is visibly wearing thin. Just days before this attack, President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani humiliated Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune by flatly refusing his proposal to meet Polisario leader Brahim Ghali during the African intra-trade fair in Algiers.
Observers noted how El Ghazouani avoided even greeting Ghali or appearing in a photograph alongside him – a calculated snub that underscored Nouakchott’s growing unwillingness to be dragged into Algiers’ separatist agenda.
This follows a decisive diplomatic trajectory. Since El Ghazouani’s official visit to Morocco in December 2024, where he met King Mohammed VI, Mauritania has quietly but unmistakably downgraded its dealings with the Polisario, tightening military control on the border and refusing to serve as a platform for insurrectionary activity.
The trend is impossible to ignore. Over the past year, the Mauritanian army reportedly prohibited Polisario units from operating in sensitive frontier zones such as Lebriga, declared entire stretches “off-limits,” and intercepted separatist fighters attempting incursions into Mauritania.
Each of these moves signals a recalibration: Nouakchott, long tolerant of Polisario passage, is now asserting sovereignty and protecting its citizens from a militia that has morphed into a full-fledged cross-border criminal syndicate. As analysts put it, the Polisario is no longer just a party to a regional dispute; it is an immediate security threat to Mauritania’s civilians.
Instead of dialogue, Polisario thrives on hostage-taking
The international implications are severe. The abduction of miners on Mauritanian territory is not only a violation of sovereignty but also an assault on civilian life – one that recalls the worst practices of warlords and terrorist factions in the Sahel.
If Algeria is the heart pumping oxygen and arms into the Polisario body, Mauritania has become the lungs struggling to breathe under its poisonous activities. Since Algeria bankrolls and protects this militia, it bears direct responsibility for every civilian targeted in its neighboring states.
And the world must ask itself: How much longer will the UN and the so-called international community indulge the pretense that Polisario is a legitimate representative of Sahrawis, when its true face is that of kidnappers and highway robbers?
Mauritanian miners have been forced to defend themselves on their own soil against armed foreign aggressors, but their government’s response is muted, and Algeria remains complicit.
The time for illusions is over. The Polisario has chosen the path of terrorism and cross-border aggression.
Mauritania, through its recent moves, seems to be slowly awakening to that truth. What remains is for the wider world to recognize it too – and to stop allowing Algeria’s protégés in Tindouf to destabilize an entire region under the cover of a false liberation cause.
Instead of engaging with Morocco’s Autonomy Plan – now endorsed by more than 120 countries and formally recognized by the UN as the only realistic basis for a settlement – the Polisario chooses reckless adventurism.
In doing so, it hands the world evidence to accelerate its designation as a terrorist organization, a process already spearheaded in Washington by Congressman Joe Wilson’s 2025 “Polisario Front Terrorist Designation Act,” which explicitly calls for stripping the separatist group of any pretense of legitimacy.
