Global Regional And Local Dimensions Of Western Sahara S Protracted Decolonization

This book explores the traces of the passage of time on the protracted and intractable conflict of Western Sahara. The authors offer a multilevel analysis of recent developments from the global to the local scenes, including the collapse of the architecture of the UN-led conflict resolution process, the advent of the War on Terror to the the Sahara-Sahel area and the impact of the ‘Arab Spring’ and growing regional security instability. Special attention is devoted to changes in the Western Sahara territory annexed by Morocco and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco has adapted its governance and public policies to profound socio-demographic transformations in the territory under its control and has attempted to obtain international recognition for this annexation by proposing an Autonomy Plan. The Polisario Front and Sahrawi nationalists have shifted their strategy and pushed the centre of gravity of the conflict back inwards by focusing on pro-independence activism inside the disputed territory.

The war in the Western Sahara recently entered its sixteenth year. Although progress toward peace has been made, concrete steps to a final resolution have not yet occurred. This has had serious political, social, economic, and military consequences for the countries in the region. Despite the significance of the issue, until now very few scholarly works have dealt with the regional and international dimensions of the conflict. In particular, little attention has been paid to the role of the superpowers and of the United Nations in the region and to the other related issues which are the focus of this book. The Western Sahara conflict raises serious questions about the role of international law and of the United Nations in achieving the decolonization of former colonial territories and resolving regional conflicts. Taken together, the work of the scholars, diplomats, and experts in international law who have contributed to this volume constitutes a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of outside powers in the origins and evolution of the war in the Western Sahara. Their work also casts new light on the efforts of the Maghrebi states to overcome regional divisions by themselves and on the continuing attempts by the United Nations to resolve the conflict in the Western Sahara and restore respect for international law. This work will interest specialists West African affairs and in international law and organizations.

Over the last decades, rivalries, bilateral disagreements, and distrust between Maghreb states have taken a toll on common political and security challenges, like the Western Sahara issue, the Libyan conflict, the destabilisation in the Sahel region and transnational clandestine flows. Moreover, the Maghreb is one of the least economically integrated regions in the world, and this leads to the region’s loss in growth, and the disheartening record of missed opportunities for stability and prosperity. This is the cost of the “non-Maghreb”.This Report aims to unpack the political and economic costs of the “non-Maghreb”, understand its historical genesis and geopolitical implications and, more broadly, what the future might hold for individual countries and the Maghreb as a divided, fractious but potentially coherent whole.

The first book in English on the law and politics of federalism and decentralization in the MENA region.

Fabled for more than three thousand years as fierce warrior-nomads and cameleers dominating the western Trans-Saharan caravan trade, today the Sahrawi are admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. This is a proud nomadic people uniquely championing human rights and international law for self-determination of their ancient heartlands: the western Sahara Desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of this unique desert society's life in one of Earth's most extreme ecosystems. Her extensive anthropological research, conducted over nine years, illuminates an Arab-Berber Muslim society in which men wear full face veils and are matrifocused toward women, who are the property-holders of tent households forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analytical insights on gender relations, strategic tribe-to-state symbiosis and the tactical formation of 'tent-cities'. The book sheds light on the indigenous principles of social organisation - the centrality of women, male veiling and milk-kinship - bringing positive feminist perspectives on how the Sahrawi have innovatively reconfigured their tribal nomadic pastoral society into globalising citizen-nomads constructing their nascent nation-state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities.

To have a State, four distinct conditions must be met. First, there must be a community of people, and it matters not whether they belong to the same color, faith, or ethnicity. Second, there must be a geographical space, a settlement that this community of people calls a home. Third, there must be governing authority. And finally, the government must be sovereign – sovereign in the sense that it is self-governing and independent of any domestic or international body. Palestine, Taiwan, and Western Sahara have met all the forestated conditions -- except for broad international support and recognition and membership of the United Nations. However, this has not been the case with Palestine, Taiwan, and Western Sahara. This edited volume examines some of the endogenous and exogenous factors that have contributed to the ambiguous and contested nature of these political entities and argued that the undermined nature of these entities contributes to regional instability and global insecurity. And finally, the continued denial of statehood is a violation of their collective human rights.

The Mediterranean space, defined by a major sea, a large number of littoral countries and to some extent their hinterlands, is at the same time an interface between Europe, Africa and Asia. This brings complex challenges in terms of achieving peace and stability. Recently it has received intense international attention through the internal destructiveness and spill-over from conflicts, primarily those waged in Libya, Syria and, more remotely, Iraq. This Handbook provides an overview of the political processes that shape the Mediterranean region in the contemporary context. It explores the issues of crucial importance to Mediterranean dynamics through a series of analytical sections that guide the reader towards a comprehensive understanding of the main regional interactions and trends. The Handbook explores: the complex historical formation of the contemporary Mediterranean geopolitical perspectives issues around peace and conflict the political economy of the region the role of non-state actors and social movements societal and cultural trends. The wide range of contributions from many of the leading academic experts on the region offers not only insights into the debates and processes that structure each theme, but also key pointers for a more general understanding of how distinct political, economic, social and cultural dynamics interact across the region. It will therefore be a key resource for policy-makers and students and scholars of Mediterranean politics and international relations.

Communist Parties in the Middle East: 100 Years of History One hundred years since the Russian Revolution, Communist parties have undergone great changes, in an evolution that has affected the entire Left and the social movements. Given that the impact of Communist parties and their evolution in the Middle East is a topic that has not been widely researched, Communist parties in the Middle East. 100 years of history aims to cover a century in the lives of these parties, from the moment the Communist ideology first reached the region in the early 20th century (brought by activists from minority groups) and the creation of the first parties and trades unions after the 1917 revolution, right up to the upheaval caused by the dissolution of the USSR and, more recently, the Arab Spring. The book has been designed to offer a unique, updated and comprehensive study of Communist parties in the Middle East, based on both a theoretical framework of analysis and substantial empirical research and archive documentation. Several issues are examined in this work. When the Russian Revolution took place, the Middle Eastern region as a whole was under colonial control. This meant taking decisions related to the relationship between the class struggle and the national struggle. The composition of the communist parties in the Middle East is also analysed as is their role as the vanguard –understood in the broad sense of the word– in relation to the objectives of liberation, emancipation, revolution and system change or reform, and their connection to mass or popular movements. Furthermore, the volume looks back at the dependency or autonomy of communist parties during the Cold War and the tensions that this generated in them, as well as the search for individual constructions of communism that took into account cultural characteristics and the local context of the struggle. In this respect, one of the recurring themes in the work is the relationship between communist activism and the sectors that mobilized in the name of nationalism or political Islam. Finally, the chapters trace the history of the parties, including –for the first time in the literature– the post-Cold War period and continuing to the current situation, in which communist parties occupy a residual position in the political field, sharing space with other small groups from the real Left, new programmes adapted to neoliberal advancement in the region and the new mobilizations symbolized by the uprisings of 2010-2011. The first section of the book presents the evolution of the CPs in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Israel, Egypt, South Yemen, Sudan, Algeria and Morocco. The second section explores some cross-cutting issues that have affected relations between the communist parties and other political sectors: political Islam and the New Left. Through the testimony of some leading figures, it presents the arguments around the question of gender in the Arab world and in leftist circles as well as an example of the evolution of a female leftist activist, some contradictions and the prominent debates from the most convulsive years to the present.