Foreign Policy Blogs

One is the loneliest number . . .

One is the loneliest number . . .Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s reminded the world of the unchanged US support for Morocco’s “serious, realistic, and credible” compromise autonomy proposal to end the three-decades old Western Sahara conflict.  Days after, two more countries officially withdrew recognition and support of the “Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic” (SADR) “the pseudo country” run by the Polisario Front in southern Algeria.   

         Zambia’s Foreign Minister, Kabinga J. Pande confirmed that his country officially “withdrew its recognition of the SADR on March 29, 2011.” Zambia joins Papua New Guinea, which also withdrew its recognition of SADR in March and nearly 50 other nations that have done the same.

As Secretary Clinton said, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations have supported the Moroccan autonomy plan as have bi-partisan majorities of both the US House and Senate.

In 2007, King Mohammed VI submitted the proposal to the United Nations in order to peacefully resolve a conflict from a “long-gone era” and to give a voice to thousands of Sahrawis being held in refugee camps by the Polisario Front in southern Algeria. According to Secretary Clinton, the plan is “a potential approach to satisfy the aspirations of the people in the Western Sahara to run their own affairs in peace and dignity.” The plan would also remove the largest obstacle to regional stability and cooperation in North Africa.

 

Author

Calvin Dark

Calvin Dark is an international policy and strategic communications professional based in Washington, DC. For more than 10 years, he has advised US and international bodies and organizations, primarily focusing on political, economic and cultural relations with Latin America, Western Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. Calvin is also a social media enthusiast trying to connect the world one tweet, post and #hashtag at a time.

Calvin was a Fulbright Scholar to Morocco where he conducted research on civil society’s role in increasing transparency and public confidence in Morocco’s government institutions and services. Calvin received his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and French from Duke University and has studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Paris, France. He speaks French, Spanish, Arabic and English (North Carolina’s special dialect.)

Calvin is also passionate about Southern storytelling and oral histories and is the author of Tales From My Dark Side [www.talesfrommydarkside.wordpress.com], a collection of stories about the Darks, a central North Carolina family and their unique ways of reconciling the complex notions of race, community and family.

Anything else? Oh yea, he loves to spin and is a spin instructor. http://www.expressnightout.com/2012/01/just-ask-for-directions/

Contact Calvin at [email protected]