What draws attention in the UNSG thorough report are the first points taken down to the grassroots that involve three key facts, some of which define the MINURSO’s mandate and others that impact its scope: the legal framework, the temporal frame, and the external impacts on the action of the Mission, which are the security, or lack of it, in the territory and the lockdown due to the pandemic, which will not be tackled due to their modest impact on the action of the Mission, per se.
All of these points lead to the preeminence of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan for the Sahara.
The rest of the report is the usual (very) detailed annual review based on a “logbook” mechanism carried out in the name of the impartiality of UN peace missions. It explains the itemized transcription of exchanges between MINURSO personnel and the parties, of actions on the ground, and investigations into events requested by the parties or due to the purpose of MINURSO operations.
Let’s go back to the core of this report, knowing that the UN records the verified facts and alleged events whenever one of its bodies is called upon.
Once the legal framework, based on resolution 2602 voted at the Security Council (October 2021) that extended for one year the mandate of MINURSO, is set, the reader acknowledges that MINURSO action should be facilitated by all parties as mentioned in the resolution (Morocco, Algeria, polisario, and Mauritania). The question is paramount to Guterres as he cites the previous resolutions 2440 (2018), 2468 (2019), 2494 (2019), and 2548 (2020), stating that it is a political process that requires the participation of all parties, including Algeria, using them as an authority argument.
From here, if obstacles remain, the question will not be to seek the why of the bad faith but to accelerate mechanisms of a realistic and sustainable solution. And that is to avoid a deeper issue of malnutrition in the Tindouf Camps and other concerns related to instability and fatal injuries due to mined fields, mainly the east of the berm. We cannot escape the contradictory discourse of the Algerian authorities and the polisario concerning their participation in the political process established by the resolutions cited in the report and mainly resolution 2602, which sets the framework of the mandate of MINURSO.
Since this is out of the scope of MINURSO’s mandate, let us go back to the report’s basics and the other two critical facts.
The temporal frame that emerges from the data review shows that thanks to the securing of the border post of El Guergarat in November 2020 and the restoration of free movement at its level, minimal skirmishes remain in the concerned zone, and more specifically on the outskirts of Mahbes (which is near Tindouf camps, the polisario headquarters). In Antonio Guterres words, they “decreased steadily”, over almost the same period, and more precisely since January 2021.
That led Guterres to repeatedly praise the action of the Royal Moroccan Army and its cooperation that helped the MINURSO military observers and personnel to carry out operations east of the berm despite the material and practical obstacles and obstructions of the polisario. The UNSG urged to remove these impediments. Not to mention that the Minurso Force Commander observed new commercial developments, infrastructure, and facilities in the Guergarat area, by September 2021.
Regarding the third and final fact on the security issue, the report highlights the discrepancy between the security cooperation shown by Morocco and the polisario’s denial of MINURSO access to its units and headquarters. It also points out the limitations of MINURSO logistic flights and investigation aerial or ground patrols east of the berm intended to enable the mission “to directly observe exchanges of fire across the berm or verify the specific details of individual incidents. Instead, the Mission continued to rely on information reported daily by the parties, which it could not independently verify”.
Hence, the opacity and lack of access to certain areas combined with what the report identifies as networks of drug smugglers linked to other criminal elements that could potentially increase the risk of terrorist attacks meets Morocco’s advocacy for stability and security in the area.