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Just recently Morocco’s foreign minister, a man who usually shies away from the media spotlight, gave an interview with a Spanish news agency berating Spain’s recent decision to admit the leader of the Algerian-backed Polisario to one of its hospitals.

The interview itself raised few eyebrows in Morocco itself as many commented that Nasser Bourita is just parroting what the Rabat elite and the palace itself would have seen as a betrayal by Spain, Morocco’s largest trading partner and by far most important neighbour. Indeed, there is some logic to questioning why Madrid would take such a move, especially given its special relations with Morocco and not to mention the irony of the number of legal cases against Brahim Ghali being lodged by victims in Spanish courts.

But what is even odder is Morocco’s almost Icarus-like approach to handling this particular spat and others with its EU neighbours. There is an almost auto-self-destruct mode which Rabat goes into when handling problems with EU countries which, for international observers, shines a spotlight on Morocco’s weakness, rather than its strengths, around the world.

For Bourita to instigate such an interview where he delivered his bellicose messages, means a shocking contempt for two professions which would have served his intentions better, if put to good use: diplomacy and public relations.

The fact that Mr Bourita bypassed these two ancient institutions completely signals that Morocco has got some real problems coming up in the future over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

The recent spat with Spain followed one with Germany, a heavyweight in the EU. The subject is always the same: Western Sahara.

Germany has spoken openly since the Trump decision in December which officially made the U.S. acknowledge Morocco’s sovereignty there – dismissing it and underlining that the only process to a solution is the UN one. This, plus one or two other minor rows with Berlin last year, was enough for Rabat to throw a massive tantrum and suspend diplomatic relations in early March.

Any yet, perhaps if Rabat had better diplomatic relations with Germany via its ambassadors and better rapport with German journalists, the overreaction by Rabat might have been avoided.

Or even if it had skills at how to manipulate media, rather like the British government using Bellingcat to stoke a row between the EU and Russia, which we’ve seen lately, Rabat might have a shot at winning over EU governments.

However, in recent years Morocco’s ambassadors, like their ministers in Rabat, have retracted within themselves with the dark art of self-censorship being their main raison d’etre. These days, to reach a government minister over the phone in Rabat as a foreign journalist is impossible. Ministers are just too scared to talk, fearing reprisals from the revered business elite (called the ‘Makhzen’) which is really running the whole show. So, it is hardly surprising that Morocco’s ambassadors have really anything important to say or do around the world, muted by their masters who keep the leach tight. To say that Moroccan ambassadors are hardly important is an understatement. Indeed, Mr Bourita’s previous communications guru who he fired in 2020, was given an ambassador’s job as a severance package.

Equally in recent years, since 2010, Rabat relations with its own foreign journalists has receded with some special privileges removed for those who live in the country and a new mentality akin to contempt, similar to what it has for domestic journalists. While it’s true that international media is less interested in Morocco due to penny pinching, it is also true that Morocco has adopted a new treatment towards its dwindling, remaining few foreign hacks who have to jump through more and more hoops just to get a press card. In 2011, there were over 150 foreign correspondents accredited in Rabat. Now there is barely 80 and in future years, I estimate this will fall to just a handful. The last British correspondent of a UK broadsheet, The Guardian, left last year. There are no salaried correspondents of any British newspaper in Morocco presently, as just one example – a remarkable achievement by Rabat’s elite which no doubt would consider this as a triumph.

But sometimes you need foreign correspondents to oil the wheels.

Pick your fights

Trump’s decision to back Morocco was really all about serving Israel’s interest and in many respects has given Rabat a poisoned chalice. A recent, well overdue, telephone call from Antony Blinken to Mr Bourita, may have assured him that the U.S. will always be a good friend to Morocco, but this friendship will be strained in the coming months when it is clear to Rabat that Biden is uncomfortable about the position he has been put in, over Western Sahara – with Bloomberg even going as far as to call it a “mess”.

Biden will not revert the decision by Trump, but Rabat should brace itself for the U.S. position to remain opaque and lean towards the UN itself to find an amiable solution, even on a token level – and towards the EU to beat the drum.

The problem for Morocco, is that the EU and many of its big guns like Germany, are less likely to be so patient with Rabat over Western Sahara and will happily take up this role. Picking a fight with any EU country is unwise during these delicate times when Morocco should be working overtime to woe journalists in EU countries and bolster existing relations with their countries. But to try and teach Germany a lesson is foolish at best, given that it more or less runs the EU and holds key posts in places, like the prestigious European Parliament foreign affairs committee, just to mention one.

Mr Bourita is going to have to set quite a few interviews with EU news agencies if a new, smarter approach is not cultivated by Rabat as the recent debacles with Germany and Spain are only going to get worse, when the EU finally gets round to developing a policy on Western Sahara which puts the Trump decision in the long grass and finally reigns in Morocco on its human rights record. I don’t envy the role of Mr Bourita’s new attractive press mandarin when she has to explain how prestigious EU news agencies have declined his offer of an interview, refusing to be used as an extension of Morocco’s blundering PR endeavours.

Moreover, the new relations with Israel and in turn the GCC countries should be put into context. A opportunity for Morocco to whip up a foreign investment theme, of course. But the reliance on Israel in the first place to be the choice for outsourced lobbying and public relations comes with a heavy price as the same country might be the only option to continue the theme, given Morocco’s near zero influence in Washington, London and Paris. Heaven forbid that the Makhzen which is running the government now and has reverted back to the period of Hassan II in terms of domestic suppression of liberties and human rights, actually goes back to those days on how it treats foreign correspondents.

The conference, held at a five-star hotel in Marrakech, was paid for by the Moroccan state-owned mining company Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP). The company is charged with numerous human rights violations, particularly in the territory of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony occupied by Morocco since 1975 in violation of international law.

In accepting $12 million from Morocco, the Clintons are advancing a US foreign policy that has supported Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara and its repression of the Sahrawi people. Since 1975, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro (POLISARIO) has waged a struggle for Sahrawi independence in the face of overwhelming Moroccan military and diplomatic might. The Clintons are no different from the Bush family in advancing the interests of mining and military interests over the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination.

In response to the Clinton Foundation reaping a $12 million payoff from Morocco, POLISARIO stated that «OCP is the first beneficiary of the war and the first beneficiary of the occupation — it is the one that is cashing in on the misery of thousands of refugees and hundreds of political detainees for the past 40 years». POLISARIO believes that in return for the cash donation Mrs. Clinton would «support their brutal occupation of Western Sahara».

A Hillary Clinton presidency will also likely see the establishment of a permanent headquarters base for the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Morocco. The Pentagon has already conducted a feasibility study for an AFRICOM headquarters in Morocco. Eight years ago, military experts working on behalf of the Office of Defense Operation at the US Embassy in Rabat conducted a 1000-hectare land survey for the new base at the mouth of the Draa River and inland to a few kilometers southeast of Tan Tan, near Tan Tan's airport. Tan Tan lies between Western Sahara and the former Spanish enclave of Ifni. The area earmarked for the US base is known as the Cap Draa Training Area. The US embassy military team concluded that the new base would cost $50 billion in construction and start-up costs.

In addition to Western Sahara being rich in phosphates and, perhaps, much-sought rare-earth minerals, the offshore area in believed to be rich in oil reserves. Oklahoma City-based Kerr McGee Corporation has enjoyed an offshore oil exploration deal with Morocco since 2001.

Clinton’s foreign policy team has decided that when it comes to annexation of occupied territory, Morocco has the same claim to legitimacy as Israel. Both countries illegally occupy territory in violation of United Nations decisions. Israel, of course, illegally occupies the Palestinian West Bank and has turned Gaza into a «Warsaw Ghetto» – an embargoed strip of 1.3 million people struggling to survive. Morocco and Mauritania invaded and occupied the former Spanish Sahara in 1975, forcing many Sahrawis into squalid refugee camps on the Algerian side of the border. Mauritania later withdrew from its sector, leaving it open for Morocco to fill the void.

Israeli colonialists call the West Bank «Judea and Samaria» while the Moroccans call what the African Union recognizes as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the «Southern Provinces». And Morocco and Israel also share something else in common: both own stakes in Clinton’s foreign policy as results of infusions of campaign cash and donor money into the Clinton campaign coffers and phony non-profit contrivances. Like the Israeli-born Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, who «paid to play» in «Clinton World,» so has King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

Morocco is a keystone of Clinton political malfeasance and chicanery. Sam Kaplan, a Minneapolis-based Democratic Party financier who bundled $200,000 in campaign cash for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, was appointed US ambassador to Morocco, where he served under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Kaplan and his wife Sylvia are prominent members of Minneapolis's Jewish community. From 1994 to 1997, Marc Ginsberg, a major American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) player, served as Bill Clinton's ambassador in Rabat.

In February 2010, with the blessing of Hillary Clinton, and obviously with a great deal of involvement from Kaplan, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations arranged for its top-level delegation to meet King Mohammed VI in RabatB The delegation included James S. Tisch, chairman of the conference and chairman of Loews Corporation and the son of the late CEO of CBS Laurence Tisch; Ronald Lauder, the billionaire son of Estee Lauder and fervent supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu; and Alexander Mashkevitch, chairman of the Euro-Asian Congress and the Kazakh-Israeli co-owner of London-based Alferon Management, a firm with mining operations in Africa. It should also be noted that Bill Clinton has been heavily-involved in the mining business in Kazakhstan and Africa.

Hillary Clinton claims to have championed the cause of human rights while she was Secretary of State. The record, however, speaks for itself. While Mrs. Clinton was making side deals with Morocco as Secretary of State, Rabat expelled from the nation the Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Haidar subsequently went on a hunger strike in the Canary Islands. Morocco finally relented and allowed Haidar to return to her homeland. When it comes to women’s and human rights, Hillary Clinton is «coin-operated». If POLISARIO had donated huge sums of money to the Clinton money machine, the Sahrawi people may have gotten at least a hearing at the State Department.

Among Morocco’s most ardent US congressional supporters for its sovereignty claim over Western Sahara is Mrs. Clinton’s good friend Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. On March 31, 2009, the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University and the neoconservative Potomac Institute jointly issued a report calling on the United States to settle the Saharan issue in favor of Morocco. Among the report’s authors were Mrs. Clinton’s close friend, former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton Madeleine Albright, and another Clinton pal, former NATO commander Wesley Clark.

The plight of Western Sahara is a direct result of the wink and nod that Mrs. Clinton’s self-admitted mentor, Henry Kissinger, while Secretary of State, gave to Morocco in 1975 to invade Spanish Sahara upon Spain's withdrawal. Kissinger also gave the green light for Indonesia to invade the former Portuguese East Timor and India to invade the Kingdom of Sikkim. Yet, Mrs. Clinton has the audacity to condemn Russia for honoring the wishes of the people of Crimea who overwhelmingly voted to join the Russian Federation. Where is her condemnation of Morocco?

How did Mrs. Clinton handle the plight of the Sahrawis while America’s chief diplomat? Abysmally. Rather than placing responsibility for Western Sahara with the US embassy in Algeria, the nation where numerous Sahrawi refugee camps exist, the United States handed responsibility for Western Sahara to the AIPAC-influenced US embassy in Rabat. The Clinton State Department pressured Caribbean nations dependent on US foreign aid to withdrawal their recognition of SADR. These included Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Dominica, Grenada. Burundi was also pressured to withdrawal recognition. As with everything the Clintons are involved with, criminal racketeering is the name of the game.

One reason that Western Sahara became a problem once Africa was decolonized was because Morocco and Mauritania had claims on its territory (Western Sahara covers 266,000 sq. kilometers, making it 20,000 sq. kilometers larger than Great Britain). The population of Western Sahara advocated for independence and the right to determine their own identity, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (POLISARIO) fiercely resisted its country’s occupiers. Currently, only 43 nations support the legality of Morocco’s claims to Western Sahara. Most of the world backs POLISARIO, although only 37 countries have recognized the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as an independent state.

The UN Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples considers Western Sahara to be a non-self-governing territory and an unresolved problem resulting from decolonization. In the early 1990s, when preparations began for a referendum on independence, it seemed that the problem of Western Sahara was nearing a resolution… But then suddenly everything ground to a halt. And both the problem and the state were utterly forgotten.

The resolution on Western Sahara adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2015 clearly lacks teeth. That resolution «[s]upports the process of negotiations» conducted… in 2007-2008 and requests the UN Secretary-General to continue to report on the situation… And that’s it.

However, a few decades ago there were claims that it was the United Nations that was responsible for the people of Western Sahara. The last time the UN Security Council discussed the question of Western Sahara – in November 2015 – for some reason it did so behind closed doors.

In April 2015 the UN Security Council refused to hear (!) the African Union’s special representative for West Africa, the former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano. The vast majority of African countries today recognize Western Sahara as an independent state. But the West does not approve of the African Union’s desire to handle regional crises in Africa on its own – so much so that it refused to even give the union’s representative an audience in the UN Security Council. But Africa can solve its own problems fairly well as long as the «global community» refrains from interfering.

And the UN Security Council has shown its complete impotence in dealing with the Saharan question. The rare UN Security Council resolutions on Western Sahara are overtly formal. They are adopted solely in order to facilitate the latest extension of the mandate of the UN Mission in Western Sahara, although the mission does not take any action, but is simply «present» within the territory of the occupied state. There are no signs whatsoever that they are working to reach a political settlement. This is why the mission is so meagerly staffed, employing only 210 military servicemen and police (26 of which are soldiers, while the others are military observers). However, the mission has an impressive price tag, with a budget of more than $55 million in 2015.

The most recent UN Security Council resolutions on Western Sahara seem artificial in nature. For example, a resolution adopted in April 2015 states that the council «calls upon» the parties to resume negotiations and «requests» the Secretary-General «to brief the Security Council on a regular basis, and at least twice a year, on the status and progress of these negotiations». In other words, the council insists that it must be kept informed about the progress of negotiations that have not yet begun. But the Security Council is aware that the negotiations broke off back in 2008, and no one expects them to be resumed. It seems that the authors of the draft resolution did not bother to read the UN Secretary-General’s report, which refers to «the lack of progress towards a resolution of the dispute over the status of Western Sahara, which has not changed since my last report… [despite]… the efforts of the United Nations». All efforts over the last seven years to once again lead the parties to the negotiating table have led to naught. And this is despite the fact that the two sides in the conflict have been represented by the same people the entire time (King Mohammed VI of Morocco and Mohamed Abdelaziz, the president of the SADR), although their «intermediaries» change. So, is it the «intermediaries» who are the problem?

It is to the benefit of many for the problems of Western Sahara to remain unresolved. This is primarily true of course for Morocco, which siphons resources from both the SADR’s land as well as its water (the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of Western Sahara is rich in natural resources, from fish to oil). Western companies also benefit from leaving the problem of Western Sahara unresolved. Such as, for example, the company San Leon Energy (headquartered in Ireland), which in August 2015 began drilling the El Aaiun-4 well near Tarfaya, in a region occupied by Morocco. The SADR’s president, Mohamed Abdelaziz, has asked the UN Secretary-General to condemn this theft of natural resources belonging to the people of Western Sahara, but Ban Ki-moon remains silent. And the UN Security Council meets behind closed doors…

For decades, the US has had a special interest in maintaining control over Western Sahara. For many years former US Secretary of State James Baker acted as the Secretary-General’s special envoy for Western Sahara. In 2009 another American – Christopher Ross – was assigned to this position.

It must be kept in mind that Western Sahara is very sparsely populated (with only 500,000 inhabitants) and it borders areas affected by terrorism and transnational crime (in particular, drug smuggling from Latin America), hence the importance of the territory of Western Sahara for the world-government regime. This also explains why the problem of the Saharan conflict seems impossible to resolve…