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Notes -
It might be of interest to add some more context to recent habbenings involving Morocco.
There is more at stake in this part of the world than two Spanish towns on the coast.
It all hinges on Western Sahara.
What is this Colorado sized thing with weirdly drawn borders?
It is disputed land and the dispute has two sides.
Tl;DR explanation of 56 years old unresolved problem you probably never heard about:
Side A:
This patch of desert is ancient Moroccan land, stolen by infidel colonizers and justly returned. The people living there are Moroccans, who are thanking God every day that they were reunited with their homeland. Everything is fine, everyone except gaggle of grumpy terrorists is happy, no reason for anyone to complain.
This position is hold by Morocco, US and Israel, all alone against the world.
Side B:
This patch of desert is country of Western Sahara, the people living there are ancient Western Saharan nation, dialect they are speaking is separate language. The country is illegally occupied by Morocco, and deserves their self determination.
This position is hold by UN and the whole international community.
Overall, it is issue about #1234 in importance, and the international community is fine with not doing more than ocassionally sending strongly worded protest letter.
Excepting Algeria. Algeria and Morocco are neighbors, and not happy neighbors. Western Saharan problem is still a problem because Algeria supports Western Saharan freedom fighters to such degree that Morocco was forced to build biggest and most beautiful wall in the world to defend this territory.
Morocco-Algeria relations were bad for a long time and are getting worse. OSINT nerds consider this part of the world as top hot spot where another big war, war between two professional state armies, not rag bands on pickup trucks, can erupt at any moment, make the current times yet more spicy and take the world by surprise.
So it is another national honor thing, you might be thinking. Arab Muslim brothers killing each other over useless desert, many such cases.
Not so. This is one of few wars in the world that make economic sense, where Marxist analysis is applicable, together with the infamous Mexican troubles.
We all, except advanced breatharians, need eating regularly, our food comes from plants (whether directly or with animal in between) and plants crave fertilizer. And crucially important are fertilizers containing phosphorus.
Phosphate fertilizer comes from phosphate rocks and these are not renewable resources.
And Morocco, including Western Sahara, is one of world's top producers. Excepting China, the top producer. Looking at proven phosphate resources, the situation is even more lopsided.
So this whole situation is even more important than it looks, and deserves monitoring. Watch Algeria–Morocco border, put your eyes off Rafah and off Hormuz, put them all on Bou Craa. So when in some possible future timeline you will be monitoring empty plate on your dining table, you will know why it happened.
edit: links
This is certainly an interesting framing, given that 120 countries reportedly supported Morocco's proposal of the western sahara under Moroccon sovereign control in the distant long past of... current year.
Truly, a mere 60% of the nations of the Untied Nations on board during contemporarily international negotiations is such lonely, and jewish, company.
This is also an interesting framing, given not just the aforementioned UN nations apparently outside the international community, but African nations supporting Morocco in nparticular.
Normally I'd be inclined to snark about Europeans conflating European diplomatic consensus with the world, except the recent Morocco proposal is backed by such notable American vassals / puppet states / your pejorative of choice, as France and Spain.
Instead, I'm inclined to note the historical context that the historical high point of UN and international community support for Western Sahara was back during the Cold War, with a relative silence in the two and a half decades since then. This not so coincidentally coincided with how Morocco's chief opponent on the Western Sahara issue, Algeria, was a major beneficiary of Soviet sponsorship, while Morocco generally aligned with the western block. In turn, Soviet sponsorship included much of the sort of military aid that Algeria provided to the Polisario Front, one of the major western saharan freedom fighter groups you refer to. As was normal in those time, as the Soviet Union freedom fighter aid went, so did the diplomatic votes of the soviet block, especially in the global south where the pro-Algerian position was the anti-imperialist / anti-western thematic vote as well.
Once the Soviet sponsorship and anti-capitalist politics faded with the Soviet Union, so to did international support for Algeria and western sahara as a cold war proxy issue. Which might be why more than half of the UN states had withdrawn their recognition of the Sarhawi Arab Democratic Republic during the 2000s and 2010s.
Which is not normally something the whole of the international community does... if you consider 80-odd states (which is 40 less than 120, I might add) 'the whole international community.'
If Palestine was either getting wrecked by a larger more advanced Islamic state instead of a Jewish one or the population didn't identify as Muslim it'd be getting substantially less support as a flashpoint.
Yeah, sure, but the same can be said about the Holocaust. (How much sleep did people lose over the Khmer Rouge, or Stalin's mass starvation campaigns?)
The Bolsheviks and Khmer Rouge were both flash points, but they represent separate instances where genocidaires either won a temporary victory or won a longer-term victory. People tried to stop them. They lost.
The Holocaust would be spoke of differently if the Allies lost WWII only for the Third Reich to collapse several decades later.
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I also noticed this surprisingly major border dispute a few years ago. Growing up in the United States, this was never mentioned in school. Occasionally we had maps with a dotted line through Morocco and small-font text that said "Western Sahara", but this was never remarked on in class.
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Interesting... I did a little looking into this. Turns out we need 3 kinds of fertilizer nitrogen (Haber-Bosch process, energy intensive but can be done anywhere with natural gas), phosphate fertilizers (mined in Morocco) and potash/potassium fertilizers (mined in Russia). They do different things for the plants, not interchangeable.
But I think we can get along without them? Sanctions on Russian fertilizer caused price impacts certainly but that mostly hit poor countries? I say 'mined in Morocco' and 'mined in Russia' but other countries do produce them, just with fewer reserves. It could be that phosphate recycling and exploration could kick into high gear in the event of a shortage.
Also Morocco would be an easy country to knock over, Western Sahara moreso. Morocco and Algeria aren't serious countries, they aren't that populous, don't produce weapons and are positioned such that they have no great powers nearby that could back them up if US or Europe came knocking. No amount of imported Russian or American weapons are a substitute for having a real military-industrial base.
These are the kind of countries that a couple of carrier groups could deal with straightforwardly, if it came to it. It looks like Morocco is in the US camp and Algeria is in the Russian camp but they're practically encircled by Europe and far away from Russia.
If there is a war and if that does endanger phosphate shipments and if that actually matters then Europe or the US would be able to quickly sort it out.
Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States of America (1777), and has the longest continuous treaty relationship with the US (since 1836). Of Arabic-speaking nations, it's historically one of the most US-friendly in international relations.
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Canada produces about 1.5x as much as Russia, with around 1/4 of the global total.
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Filing this under nothing ever happens. Algeria might be funding seperatists but they have zero cassis belli to do a direct invasion. And victory condition would be actual invasion of heavily defended territory.
Just shows that it doesn't take being white to be able to colonize
It’s casus belli, but cassis belli would be a good cocktail name.
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