Unpacking the power plays over Western Sahara
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Loading... - Katrien Vliet
- 01 Aug 2022
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The western Mediterranean region has recently witnessed an intensifying set of diplomatic and economic stand-offs between neighbours Morocco, Algeria, and Spain.
In 2021, Algiers completely severed its already fractured relations with Rabat, and then halted gas exports via the Maghreb-Europe pipeline that flows through Morocco.
More recently, Algeria has launched a number of diplomatic protests against Spain and frozen some of its trade relations. It has also suggested that it no longer views Madrid as a reliable political and economic partner.
At the centre of these tensions is the disputed territory of Western Sahara, a 266,000km² country slightly larger than the whole of the United Kingdom. It is located across from Spain’s Canary Islands along Africa’s Atlantic coast, primarily between Mauritania and Morocco.
For a long time the Western Sahara dispute was considered a frozen conflict. But it roared back to life in late 2020 when the Algerian-backed Sahrawi nationalist movement, the Frente Polisario (Polisario Front), resumed its armed struggle. Read More...
