Bucharest, September 10, 2025 – RBJ – By Constantin Radut – Few people imagine in this political turmoil of the world that there are still 17 non-self-governing territories on planet Earth. They are places populated by people who are not allowed to decide their own fate. They are like creatures forced to live under the accidental subordination of masters. Anguilla, Bermuda, Gibraltar, Guam, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), the Turks and Caicos Islands, the American Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, New Caledonia, Pitcairn, and French Polynesia are among these territories.
Among them is Western Sahara, a desert territory flanked to the north by Morocco, to the south by Mauritania and to the northeast by Algeria, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Its surface area is close to that of Romania, but the total population does not reach 500-600 thousand people.
This is our assessment, not that of the authorities of any neighboring country or international organization. Worldometer predicts a number of about 602 thousand individuals, but no one has carried out an official population census
Until 1975, Western Sahara was a declared colony of Spain, but in 1975 General Franco decided that he had no benefit from this poor and unpromising territory. This year a war began between the Sahrawi forces organized into liberation groups, then led by POLISARIO, the armed wing of the Sahrawi Republic, and the Kingdom of Morocco. Tangiers claimed control of Western Sahara on its own, to the bellicose annoyance of its rival Algeria and the liberation forces.
In 1991, a ceasefire and agreement were reached, as a result of which Western Sahara was divided in two, an area of 80% in the Moroccan vassalage and 20% in that of the Sahrawi Republic. The population of the west occupied by Morocco was forced to take refuge in Algeria, where camps of about 250 thousand Sahrawi Bedouins were established, who elected a Parliament, Government, health institutions and armed forces led by the Polisario. It was agreed that a referendum on the status of Western Sahara would be held under the auspices of the United Nations, but Morocco did not agree.
A status quo is tenuously maintained in the battle for control of Western Sahara. In recent years, Morocco has engaged in aggressive diplomacy to convince the major powers to grant it full rights over Western Sahara. As the US has remembered that it is the World Police, in recent years, especially the Trump administrations have given Morocco a victory. Not without interests. The most important is Morocco’s support for Israel in its policy of creating domination over Palestine. Unfortunately, for mercantile interests, this position has also been joined by France, the UK and Spain.
Last week, an online publication Maroc diplomatique announced with great fanfare that on September 5, 2025, Massad Boulos, Donald Trump’s father-in-law and the US president’s senior advisor for the Middle East and Africa, said in Rabat: “True autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only viable solution” to the dispute over the Sahara.
Stimulated by this new “news”, the Kingdom of Morocco expects to be invested as the master of Western Sahara at the next UN Security Council meeting.
If such a decision is agreed upon by the great powers, then North Africa will once again be a theater of war.
Let’s hope that vested interests will not prevail in the only and most just decision: the state autonomy of Western Sahara.
