The Polisario Front, which claims to represent Sahrawi and support their statehood in the Western Sahara under the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, is a vestige of the Cold War. Algeria founded the group, and the Soviet Union and Cuba supported it, to use as a proxy against Morocco.
The Polisario Front’s existence today is an affront to human rights. Algeria embraces the group both to give itself a seat at the table and to embezzle humanitarian aid sent to refugee camps under Polisario control.
The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) engages the Polisario and allows it to operate refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, in the same way that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) allows Hamas effectively to operate refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. So, too, do some countries like South Africa, which use the Polisario as a diplomatic lever against Morocco.
Perhaps it is time to question why the international community should consider the Polisario Front to be legitimate representatives of the Sahrawi when no one has ever elected them to such a position and no one has given the Sahrawi any say.
The Sahrawi Movement for Peace may be relatively new, but it already has more legitimacy than the Polisario.
Among Sahrawis now, a new grassroots group—Sahrawi Movement for Peace—is coalescing. Sahrawis recently met in the Canary Islands, just 60 miles off the coast of the Western Sahara, to discuss their future and their representation, for the second time since 2022. The concluding “Canary Islands Manifesto II” urged “the UN Secretary-General to persuade his Personal Envoy to invite and include the Sahrawis for Peace Movement as a fully recognized interlocutor in the political process, along with representatives of the Sahrawi traditional authority, represented by its notables or chiujs.” The Sahrawi noted, with oblique reference to the Polisario, “another entity that seeks to permanently monopolize the representation of the Sahrawi people” increasingly challenges tribal authority.
The Sahrawi Movement for Peace may be relatively new, but it already has more legitimacy than the Polisario. Socialist International recognizes it. Today, the organization represents more the center-left than the hardcore socialism of the Cold War, and so Socialist International’s endorsement of the Sahrawi Movement for Peace follows the imprimatur Social International once gave Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
While Spain traditionally has favored the Polisario Front, due both to bitterness at the loss of its colonial Western Sahara holdings to Morocco and Spain’s reliance on Algerian gas, the current Spanish government also has begun to reach out to the Sahrawi Movement for Peace. Although some opposition parties doubled down on their past investment in Polisario, Madrid recognizes that, history and Algeria aside, it is simply time to move on.
President Donald Trump has little patience for the waste of international assistance or those who use funding to preserve terrorism rather than bring peace. MINURSO clearly represents a multibillion-dollar failure; the 34-year-old United Nations entity has yet to achieve even the first stage of its mission to conduct a referendum.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should demand that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres pay heed to the Sahrawis for Peace Movement and immediately cut off any recognition of the Polisario Front as the Sahrawis’ representative. If the United Nations wants peace, this should be an obvious step. After all, while the Polisario Front doubles down on the demand for armed conflict, the Sahrawi Movement for Peace not only rejects violence but also seeks consensus across broad segments of the Sahrawi population.
It’s time to end the fiction that the Polisario Front represents Sahrawi and allow one of the last Cold War relics to fade into history.
