Morocco ‘Deeply Regrets’ South Africa, Algeria’s Financing of Polisario’s Separatist Agenda

Rabat – Morocco has renewed its condemnation of hostile campaigns from both Algeria and South Africa, the two leading sponsors and most vocal supporters of the Polisario Front, the separatist group claiming an independent state in southern Morocco.

In two recent letters to the president and members of the UN Security Council, Morocco’s Permanent ambassador to the UN, Omar Hilale, denounced South Africa and Algeria’s continued collusion with the separatist front to undermine Morocco’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“Morocco deeply regrets that South Africa lends itself, once again, to the role of factor of an armed separatist group,” Hilale wrote in his letters, recalling Polisario’s links to terrorist groups in the alarmingly fragile Sahel region.

Hilale drew attention to the case of Adnan Abu Walid Sahrawi, a terrorist leader killed by French troops in the Sahel in September 2021. Sahrawi was a senior member of the Polisario Front before becoming head of the terrorist group Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

The infamous terrorist leader used to take refuge in the Polisario-controlled Tindouf camps before being killed, Hilale recalled, noting that Kahal Sidi Salama, a high-ranking associate of Walid Sahrawi known as Abdelhakim Sahrawi, was also a member of the Polisario Front.

Many reports and security officials have over the past years brought up the security threats Polisario poses to the region due to its well-documented links with terrorist groups.

Earlier this year, former attorney general for the US state of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, condemned Algeria’s interference in other countries’ domestic affairs and cited the country’s regime support for Polisario.

Describing the separatist front as a terrorist organization, Brnovich also recalled recent reports of the Algerian and Iranian regimes’ collusion to provide military and material resources to the separatist group.

“For decades, Algeria, with the help of Iran, has provided military and material support to the Polisario Front, a terrorist organization in Western Sahara that Algeria uses to destabilize neighboring Morocco,” the former attorney general for Arizona said.

Hilale’s letters echoed Brnovich’s concerns, exposing Algeria’s lavish funding to finance Polisario events amid inhumane and deteriorating living conditions in the Tindouf camps.

Last year, Algerian news outlet Algerie Part Plus reported that Polisario costs Algeria’s regime over $ 1 billion annually. Algeria’s pro-Polisario diplomatic activism costs it nearly $250 million, the Algerian news website detailed, adding that the “presidential” expenditures of the Polisario’s self-proclaimed state are estimated at $8.5 million. Meanwhile, securing water, electricity, and gas for Polisario costs Algeria an annual budget of over $53 million.

While not as financially invested as Algeria in what both countries are eager to call “the Sahrawi cause,” SouthAfrica is the other supporter and sponsor of Polisario’s separatist agenda. “Morocco still regrets that the Permanent Mission of South Africa serves as a messenger of a fictitious entity not recognized by the UN, and the alleged results of a farce called 16th congress of the Polisario,” Hilale said in one of his letters to the UN Security Council.

As distressed Sahrawis in the Tindouf camps continue to live in abject poverty amid what many observers have described as “unlivable conditions,” the Algerian regime poured in January “huge sums” of money into organizing the Polisario Front’s congress, stressed the Moroccan diplomat. The money served, among other things, to bring “mercenaries of speech from Europe and elsewhere” in private jets, even as “women and children in the camps of Tindouf suffer from malnutrition, lack of school materials, diphtheria, and anemia.”

The lavish Algeria and South Africa-funded Polisario event came even as a recent report from the World Food Programme (WFP) pointed out the inhumane situation in the Tindouf camps. Apart from the Polisario leadership, who live comfortable lives due to stupendous financial support from their sponsors and off the plight of the distressed Sahrawis, the populations in the camps have to constantly endure food insecurity, which has caused malnutrition and a host of other diseases in the region, the report stressed.

Among the diseases that have become disturbingly common in the Polisario-controlled camps, the WFP report cited “high rates of anemia,” which it said are “due to the scarcity of fresh and diverse food and limited access to water.”

“The situation of Sahrawi refugees has not fundamentally evolved over the last 45 years,” the report noted, explaining that Polisario leaders continue to refuse to allow refugees to engage in activities that could improve their lives. WFP’s report attributed Polisario’s refusal to the separatist group’s leadership’s estimation that any change or improvement in the living conditions in Tindouf “could be perceived as acceptable by the status quo.”