November 10, 2025 | LBC
The Moroccan plan is a path to peace with Algeria
The United Nations Security Council has voted in support of a resolution calling for autonomy in Western Sahara as the best solution possible to Rabat’s longstanding territorial dispute with the separatist Iranian and Algerian-backed Polisario Front.
November 10, 2025 | LBC
The Moroccan plan is a path to peace with Algeria
The United Nations Security Council has voted in support of a resolution calling for autonomy in Western Sahara as the best solution possible to Rabat’s longstanding territorial dispute with the separatist Iranian and Algerian-backed Polisario Front.
Drafted by the United States, the resolution called on all parties to negotiate on the basis of Morocco’s autonomy plan, first put forward in 2007. Western Sahara’s status has been disputed since Spain’s withdrawal in 1975, with last week’s UNSC resolution marking an international acceptance of Morocco’s fifty-year-old claims to sovereignty.
The Moroccan plan offers local executive, legislative, and judicial autonomy in Western Sahara while Rabat would retain oversight of foreign, defence, and religious affairs.
If successful, it could also realise and pave the way for a comprehensive peace between Morocco and Algeria, which the US is currently working on under the aegis of President Trump’s Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff.
The autonomy plan should also sideline and marginalise the separatist Polisario Front which has engaged in armed struggle against Morocco since the 1970s.
Bankrolled, armed, and trained by Algiers and Tehran, the Polisario Front operates out of the Tindouf camps of southern Algeria and the Western Sahara. It has been implicated in a range of human rights abuses, including employing child soldiers and acts of terror against Moroccan civilians.
Their drones have been supplied by Iran, while Hezbollah are reported to have trained their members in urban warfare. They cannot be allowed any stake in the Western Sahara’s future as an autonomous region within Morocco. They should be recognised as another malignant example of Iranian intervention in the Arab world.
Morocco is a country on the up, poised to become a recognised emerging economy by 2035. It’s preparing to host this year’s Africa Cup of Nations in December, as well as the 2030 World Cup, along with Spain and Portugal, after becoming the first African national team to reach the semi-finals.
Its economy is growing, and can only benefit from an inevitable peace dividend that would result from the overdue recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara and settlement of that territorial dispute. Good things will follow, and can only benefit London’s strong bilateral relationship with Rabat.
Edmund Fitton-Brown is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and previously served as the UK’s Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017.