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Join on Telegram Half a century has passed since the Madrid Agreement of 1975, and the same city returned to the forefront of the settlement scene in February 2026, when the United States Embassy in the Spanish capital hosted a quadrilateral meeting bringing together Morocco, Algeria, the Polisario Front, and Mauritania. The paradox lies not merely in the repetition of geography, but in the fact that the city which witnessed the birth of the dispute may now serve as the stage for closing its chapter.
Yet rushing to interpret the moment as the end of history conceals more than it reveals. The current process is less the culmination of a mature consensus than a reengineering of the rules of the game. This requires moving beyond a chronological reading of successive events — from Madrid to Washington to the Smara attack — toward unpacking the deeper structures operating beneath the surface.
What has actually changed?
The structural shift produced by UN Security Council Resolution 2797, adopted last October, does not lie solely in its literal content, but in options it effectively removed from the menu for resolving the dispute.
When the resolution describes Morocco’s autonomy initiative as the “basis” for negotiation, and considers that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty could constitute a most feasible solution,” it effectively closes the door on the referendum that had served, since 1991, as the founding reference of the MINURSO mission.
Perhaps the most striking paradox is that the “Referendum” mission continues to operate while the referendum itself is being withdrawn from its conceptual foundation.
In truth, this new orientation does not constitute a complete rupture with the traditional UN framework. The resolution preserved the principle of self-determination while underscoring the plurality of its forms. Self-determination no longer necessarily means a referendum that includes the option of independence; it may instead be realized through genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
Here lies the real semantic battle: is autonomy a legitimate expression of self-determination, as Rabat and Washington insist, or a circumvention of it, as Algeria and the Polisario maintain?
The current moment, with the regional and international support it carries for the Moroccan position, did not emerge from a single diplomatic initiative. Rather, it crystallized through the convergence of multiple structural transformations.
First, the Trump administration has returned with an approach in which security, economic, and geostrategic interests intersected with the Moroccan position, at a time when an unprecedented Western consensus has reached critical mass, with the alignment of Spain, France, and the United Kingdom alongside the American position publicly declared since 2020.
In parallel, Algeria — which had historically relied on Russia and China — faces a structural erosion of its diplomatic position. This became principally manifested in its inability to obstruct Resolution 2797. Moscow and Beijing abstained from the vote rather than resorting to the veto, revealing how the cost of obstructing the American-led process had exceeded, for both, the threshold of expected returns.
On a broader scale, the separatist narrative has declined across the Global South. More than 120 states have expressed support for the Moroccan initiative as a basis for resolution, while numerous countries have withdrawn their recognition of the so-called Sahrawi Republic, and more than thirty consulates have opened in Laayoune and Dakhla. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is increasingly moving toward classifying the Polisario Front as a terrorist organization, thereby reshaping the map of legitimacy.
The convergence of all these factors simultaneously should not be viewed as coincidence, but rather as what international relations literature calls a “window of opportunity”: a rare configuration of conditions that may not recur if squandered.
From conflict management to settlement engineering
The deeper transformation lies not in the shifting balance of power alone, but in the philosophy that governs the international handling of the dispute. For decades, the prevailing logic was one of “conflict management.” This means the international system principally sought to freeze the situation, contain its repercussions, avoid escalation, and renew MINURSO’s mandate annually without any real political horizon. The implicit assumption was that the dispute was unresolvable, and that the lowest cost strategy lay in keeping it dormant.
What the Trump administration is now proposing, with near-complete European backing, is a different logic that could be described as “settlement engineering.” That shift implies treating the dispute as a solvable equation, provided that incentives, pressures, and timing are skillfully calibrated.
Several developments explain this transformation, from the insistence on a roadmap with defined deadlines, to the scheduling of successive meetings within a short timeframe, to the push for a framework agreement before next summer, alongside gathering of all parties around the same negotiating table. We are not witnessing traditional diplomacy, but intensive negotiating engineering.
Four structural dilemmas
Yet this diplomatic engineering, however refined, collides with dilemmas that cannot be solved through technique alone.
The first of these dilemmas concerns Algeria, which has founded part of its legitimacy upon a structural enmity with Morocco that over the past decades has become an ideological pillar of the Algerian state. Any retreat from supporting the Polisario would therefore require redefining the regime’s domestic legitimacy, which is a politically costly process that the system may struggle to absorb without disruption.
The historical paradox is that this “structural enmity” was not a foregone destiny. In September 1970, King Hassan II, President Houari Boumédiène, and Mauritanian President Moktar Ould Daddah met in Nouadhibou and agreed on Maghrebi coordination regarding the future of the Sahara. At that time, Algeria viewed the issue as a decolonization matter concerning the entire region, not as a battleground with a fraternal neighbor.
What unfolded after 1975 was not the revelation of a latent hostility, but a conscious political construction that reshaped Algerian doctrine toward Morocco, transforming a circumstantial disagreement into a fixed component of identity. Herein lies the difficulty of dismantlement: what has been built over half a century of media, institutional, and diplomatic mobilization cannot be undone by a negotiating session in a hotel in Madrid or Washington.
For this reason, Algeria has come to the negotiating table for the first time since the Geneva talks ended in 2019, yet refuses to take the group photograph and exits the room through the back door. This suggests that its participation is not genuine engagement in a settlement process, but a constrained response to internal calculations, including fear of potential sanctions, or of the Polisario being classified a terrorist organization.
The second dilemma touches the Polisario itself, whose legitimacy — both internally and within the Tindouf camps — is tied to the slogan of independence. Accepting autonomy, even in its expanded form, would in practice negate the existential justification of five decades of conflict. The question is not reducible to a negotiating position; it extends into a crisis of legitimacy.
From this perspective, the projectiles that targeted the city of Smara on May 5 do not appear as a deviation from the path, but as a revealing symptom of this contradiction. We are facing a leadership negotiating over what would strip it of its raison for existence, and therefore attempting to raise its negotiating cost through hostile field operations.
Accepting an expanded autonomy may seem a political defeat for the Polisario Front, but rejecting it could lead to complete marginalization. Morocco’s new document — forty pages instead of three — appears designed to offer a dignified exit that is difficult to refuse without cost.
The third dilemma concerns Morocco, and it may appear counter-intuitive. Complete victory carries its own risks, for any settlement imposed entirely to other parties from a position of strength may be legally final yet politically fragile.
Historically, sustainable settlements require that each party retain something that preserves dignity and allows concessions to be justified before domestic audiences. The real challenge facing Moroccan diplomacy is not maximizing gains, but to design an agreement that the adversary can market domestically as an achievement rather than a defeat.
The fourth dilemma concerns the United Nations. Resolution 2797 enshrines the UN framework in form, yet the operational leadership of the process has shifted to Washington, through Senior Advisor Massad Boulos and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Michael Waltz. The current Trump administration views the dispute as an opportunity to add a diplomatic achievement to its record, which explains the accelerated pace.
While this growing momentum accelerates the search for a resolution, it also raises the question of sustainability: what if the American administration changes before the resolution process is complete? Can a settlement engineered by Washington withstand the shifts of U.S. domestic politics?
Open scenarios
Anticipating the path forward necessarily requires moving beyond the binary of optimism and pessimism, toward sketching scenarios with their practical implications.
The most likely scenario in the foreseeable future is the conclusion of a framework agreement on the basis of the autonomy proposal, followed by gradual implementation. Such an agreement, potentially reached before next summer, would establish principles and set timelines, followed by technical committees working on the details for months, perhaps years. Its advantage lies in avoiding collapse while preserving dignity for all sides. Its drawback is that it could transform settlement into an endless procedural process.
The second scenario involves a symbolic settlement without effective implementation, an agreement signed for diplomatic considerations, but whose application stumbles before the complexities of the field.
The third scenario leads to renewed deadlock, particularly if the parties fail to formulate a mutually acceptable framework agreement amid the Polisario’s intransigence, especially given that the core gap — a referendum with an independence option versus exclusive autonomy — has yet to be bridged.
Yet the 2026 roadmap will most likely not mirror what preceded it, particularly given Morocco’s consolidation of its gains, the deepening isolation of the Polisario, and a qualitative shift in Algeria’s position. Even a new deadlock, should it occur, will not replicate the old one.
The fourth scenario is a return to military tension along the lines of what occurred at Guerguerat in 2020. This remains the least likely, given its prohibitive international costs, foremost an imminent terrorist designation. Nevertheless, it remains conceivable if the Polisario, confronted with its existential dilemma, chooses to drag the dispute back from “settlement engineering” into “crisis management.” This is the option the Polisario Front hinted at in its response to Resolution 2797, and which the projectiles striking Smara seemed to embody.
The forgotten challenge: what comes after settlement
Public debate is confined to the question of how to reach an agreement, while the deeper challenge lies in what comes afterward. Even if the settlement succeeds, it will open files that have not yet been addressed with sufficient seriousness. Even if the political page is turned, will the societal page be turned with it?
Half a century of conflict has produced divergent identities at the heart of the Sahrawi space and identity — between the Sahrawis integrated into Morocco’s national fabric, and those in the camps, shaped by a culture of resistance and hostility.
How will Moroccan-Algerian relations be rebuilt after decades of structural enmity? What will become of the inhabitants of the Tindouf camps, who have inherited generations of hostility and instability? What concrete form will autonomy take? Will it become a genuine constitutional and institutional arrangement, or merely the minimum threshold acceptable to the international community? How will the economic and social tensions be managed in territories that have witnessed accelerated demographic transformations since 1975? How will Morocco’s geostrategic position be reframed once this dispute is settled, particularly in Africa and the Sahel?
These are not technical details, but substantive questions that will determine whether the settlement leads to a sustainable peace or merely a cessation of conflict.
On the nature of the moment
Both the celebration of a historical end to the dispute, and the standardized pessimism rooted in the failure of previous roadmaps — the Baker Plan, the Houston Agreement, the Köhler Roadmap — miss the mark.
The present moment is structurally different, not because the international will is stronger, but because the configuration of objective factors is fundamentally distinct. Yet, the settlement engineering, however refined, remains incapable of dissolving structural contradictions by a single decision.
What the coming months are likely to witness is not an end, but the beginning of an end. Shaped by a gradual settlement process that advances and stumbles, succeeds on some axes and lags on others, and may yield an incomplete agreement that nonetheless shifts the dispute from the category of “open dispute” to that of “settlement under implementation.” This, if achieved, would be a historic transformation in itself.
Yet converting this framework into a sustainable settlement requires something beyond a momentary balance of power; it requires mutual recognition of the legitimacy of the other side’s concerns — which has not yet happened.
The question that ought to be asked today is no longer whether the dispute will be resolved, but rather what form of resolution are we constructing, at what cost, and over what horizon of sustainability?
Answering this question requires careful attention to what is happening away from the spotlight, particularly in the corridors of the standing technical committee, in the side conversations between Rabat and Washington, in the internal dynamics of the Algerian regime, and in the Tindouf camps, where psychological and political transformations are unfolding beyond the news headlines.
Half a century of stagnation does not end with a decision, but with a process. And this process has, in fact, already begun.
