In this written interview, I look at U.S. efforts to force the United Nations to recognize Morocco's illegal annexation of Western Sahara, which it invaded in 1975, and the dangerous precedent it would establish. Please consider circulating. counterpunch.org/2026/10/26/…

The Polisario is not a separatist group. Separatists want to secede and create a separate country from within a nation-state's internationally recognized border. The UN recognizes Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory, however, so it is an anti-occupation and anti-colonial struggle.

The U.S. has drafted a resolution to be placed before the UN Security Council next week that would effectively impose Morocco’s autonomy plan on the people of Western Sahara, essentially endorsing Morocco’s illegal annexation of that occupied nation it invaded with U.S. support in 1975. This is one of the most serious attempts to undermine international law since the founding of the United Nations. It removes the longstanding mandate of MINURSO, the UN peacekeeping force, to oversee a referendum by the people of the territory to choose between independence and incorporation into Morocco, thereby negating the right of self-determination that has long been the basis of decolonization under international law. It will be a gift to Netanyahu, Putin, and any other leader seeking to expand territory by force. It praises “President Trump’s leadership on conflict resolution in Western Sahara” despite his being the first world leader to recognize Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara. It also misleadingly refers to “the recognition by a growing number of Member States of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara” when, in fact, only two additional states—the far-right governments of Israel and Colombia—have done so. It refers to “genuine autonomy” when the Moroccan proposal falls well short of the international legal definition of autonomy. It also seeks to bypass the Polisario, the internationally recognized representatives of the people of Western Sahara, and focus on what it calls “a broad range of Sahrawi constituencies and interlocutors, including those outside the negotiating parties,” presumably meaning collaborationists chosen by the Moroccan government. Furthermore, the clause insisting that funding refugee services should no longer go through UN agencies or the Polisario, which has done a generally admirable job of administering the hundreds of thousands of refugees in their Algerian-based camps for fifty years, and instead go to “individual, voluntary” solutions will likely result in a humanitarian crisis. Despite the legal fiction that there has been an ongoing process towards a referendum or a ceasefire to monitor, most nations see MINURSO’s continuation as important to underscore that the conflict remains unresolved. There will certainly be objections from Pakistan, China, Russia, and perhaps some other countries which could result in changes in the language before it is put to a formal vote. However, with Washington’s history of running roughshod over international legal precedent and the failure of even democratic nations to consistently stand up to Trump’s bullying (particularly on what are considered less-consequential issues), it is hard to predict. Even if the full text isn’t accepted, the Trump administration may succeed in its primary goal is to make the Morocco’s autonomy proposal, which falls way short of the international definition of autonomy and would rule out the option of independence which is required for real decolonization, recognized by the United Nations as the only basis of future negotiations.