Day three after the tragedy of Agadir. My contact in Laayoune says students are being rounded up and arrested. In Agadir, things can't be much better. As I left the station, four garrisons of police vans were stationed at the far end of the concrete tarmac. Somewhere on that concrete pad once laid the crushed bodies of 22-year-old Baba Khaya and 20-year-old Lheussein Abdsadek Laktei.
Eugene Delacroix said that in Morocco, glory is a word empty with meaning. The vibrant colors of the Atlas mountains, the drive from Agadir to Marrakesh, the desolation of the deserts in Laayoune. Yes, all that matters in such a time when a resistance movement, thirty years in the making, weaves itself through the psychology of identity – the identity of resistance.
The Saharwi, a noble people, kind and generous, seek only what is their due cause. A justice and a right for self-determination. The kind granted to so many other people and denied to those forgotten and those without any benefit of a proper media campaign.Let the power hungry seek their glory somewhere else. What can be said of the new European economic pact with Morocco? Lucrative fishing agreements off the disputed coastline have been signed. The phosphate mines in Boucraa exploited. The plunder of natural resources in a territory still under litigation. What happened to international justice?
I see MINURSO in Laayoune. I see the fleet of UN SUVs parked at the expensive hotels. Shining in the hot sun. A man walks his mule with his goods past a mandate that has no political will. A double row of Morocan flags wave alongside MINURSO HQ. Moroccan soldiers “guard”the HQ and as I walk by they politely if firmly ask me to walk on the street opposite. Indeed, the neutral arbiter has succumbed to the real-politik of the Security Council, a bloated and incohorent institution pillared to resolve conflicts and maintain global security.
And now here I am. In Marrakesh and just received a text message from a young man who can no longer meet me. “I am being followed by the police.” Two more days before I board that plane back home. And I feel ashamed and bitter.
