Fears of War as Polisario, Morocco Head to Confrontation

This morning, the President of the Polisario Front issued a decree announcing the end of the commitment to the ceasefire signed between the Polisario Front and Morocco in 1991.

Earlier today, the "Polisario" Front said that "the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army launched intense attacks on Moroccan army bases in the Al Mahbas, Hawza and Awsard sectors. And Persian, resulting in losses."

Yesterday, Morocco announced that it had launched a military operation in the disputed buffer zone in Guerguerat in Western Sahara, to expel the Polisario militia from the region.

The Moroccan army confirmed that the crossing in the south of the kingdom has become fully secure, while the "Polisario" front responded, considering it that the operation ended the cease-fire between the two sides in place for 30 years, and that "the war has begun."

The new escalation is concentrated in the Guerguerat region, a crossing point between Western Sahara and Mauritania, in a demilitarized zone monitored by UN peacekeepers and patrolling it regularly.

While the Polisario Front protests the transit traffic through this point to Morocco and considers it illegal, the Moroccan side considers the crossing to be vital for trade exchange with sub-Saharan Africa.

The latest conflict began after the Polisario closed the crossing last October, and about two hundred Moroccan truck drivers were suspended there, and last week they issued an urgent call to both Rabat and Nouakchott, in which they said that they are stuck at Guerguerat, after the Polisario prevented them from crossing.

This prompted Morocco, last Friday, to send forces to reopen the road to traffic and build a new sand wall to prevent Polisario members or their civilian supporters from returning there.

In Riyadh, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced its support for the measures taken by Morocco to establish freedom of civil and commercial movement in the buffer zone of Guerguerat in the Moroccan Sahara.

On another hand, France called to do everything possible to avoid escalation in Western Sahara, and the Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “these events demonstrate the importance of quickly re-launching the political process that is going through, especially through the appointment of a new personal envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in shortest time".