As it's announced #Morocco will normalise relations with #Israel in exchange for US recognition of the former's claim to the disputed non-self-governing territory of #WesternSahara, I will point out that Morocco controls only ~3/4 of this territory. Some pics from the other 1/4.
Morocco entered #WesternSahara by force in 1975. The indigenous Sahrawi fought them until 1991, when the UK brokered a ceasefire based on the promise of a referendum on self-determination. This has never taken place.
In the 1980s, Morocco constructed a series of massive earthworks to secure occupied territory against attack from the Sahrawi independence fighters of the Polisario front. BY 1991 these had merged into a 1700 mile long wall or Berm, shown here in red.
The above map shows the zones under the UN ceasefire. 5km buffer strip immediately to east of Berm, two 30km restricted areas either side of it, and the rest as areas of limited restrictions. Terms set out in Military Agreement #1.
In Nov. 2020 Morocco sent troops into the buffer strip to disperse Sahrawi protestors who were blocking the road Morocco used for commerce from occupied #WesternSahara through the Berm & buffer strip near Guergerat, into Mauritania. This breached the ceasefire.
The Polisario responded by attacking the Berm and declaring that the ceasefire was over and the war had resumed. Their current position is that the whole of #WesternSahara is "an open war zone." uk.reuters.com/article/us-mor…
The Polisario has been issuing regular communications claiming attacks against the Berm. Morocco has been playing down the situation to give an impression of normality. But the 29-year old ceasefire is over and war has returned. This is the context to Trump's announcement.
A key question is what US recognition of Morocco's claim over #WesternSahara means for the parts of the territory under Polisario control, and for some 200,000 Sahrawi refugees living in camps in Algeria.

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More from @npjbrooks

8 Dec
Today's #WesternSahara photo. There may be more. Fossil sand ripples, Wadi Erni, Northern Sector.
Enigmatic rock engravings, Wadi Erni. Similar to some I've been looking at today from the Canary Islands, but then, we know there was a link. I like to think the one of the right is a comet. But that's based on nothing except my fevered imagination.
The desert is far from barren. Something lives here, at Bou Dheir, #WesternSahara, Free Zone, Northern Sector.
Read 11 tweets
18 Feb
The application to the economic and social spheres of ideas that blend evolutionary theory with ideas of progress is the heart of the free-market ideology that has been promoted by right-wing think tanks for some 60 years. No surprise that they find a welcome in this government.
Of course, these ideas are deeply dodgy. While evolution involves adaptation to variable environmental pressures that have have nothing to do with morality, free-market evolutionism replaces this with the idea of evolution as decontextualised continuous improvement.
As such, these dogmas of progressive evolution owe more to Herbert Spencer, originator of the term 'survival of the fittest', than they do to Charles Darwin. They seek to improve the 'fitness' of individuals, firms & society, without concerning themselves what that fitness is for
Read 11 tweets

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