ABSTRACT
When examining Morocco’s foreign policy behaviour over the years, the Western Sahara conflict invariably appears as the ultimate core issue, with the international recognition and legalisation of Rabat’s de facto annexation of the former Spanish colony representing the final goal. This is more than a foreign policy issue in the strict sense of the term: it is a politically existential question which is deeply rooted in the Moroccan political culture and is perceived in this country as being primarily a domestic matter. In practice, the complexity of the ‘Sahara question’ has always resulted from the Moroccan authorities’ need to manage it simultaneously on two fronts, the domestic and the international. At the domestic level, Rabat has had to rule over an occupied territory which has been fully incorporated into its administrative structures as its ‘Southern provinces’ since 1976–1979, even though international law and the United Nations (UN) regarded (and regards) it as a non-self-governing territory awaiting decolonisation. Externally, Western Sahara has been a cross-cutting and almost ubiquitous issue on the Moroccan foreign policy agenda (Zartman, 2013: 55): even when it was not directly at issue in conversations or dealings with other states or international organisations, it could be indirectly discerned in the background of the relations conducted with these actors in various areas. Moreover, each international actor’s support for the Moroccan positions on this conflict, by design or by default, appeared to be the acid test – a necessary and often even sufficient condition – for its good relations with Rabat.
