The Long Road to a Western Sahara Resolution

How sustained US focus and deft Moroccan diplomacy broke a 50-year stalemate.

 Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author only and do not represent the views or policies of the U.S. government.

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Even to most foreign affairs experts, the issue of sovereignty over the former Spanish colonial territories in southern Morocco, commonly known as Western Sahara, is both obscure and little understood. Yet, a little-known diplomatic effort to resolve the issue may be nearing a final solution, underscoring the importance of a unique joint US-Moroccan diplomacy effort.

Resolution of this conflict is not just vital for Morocco or US interests in North Africa. This issue is key to the prospects for peace, stability and prosperity in the Sahara and Sahel regions of Northwest and Central Africa and the ongoing multilateral fight against various international terrorist groups in the region. Indeed, aside from Morocco, most of the states in the region are impoverished, fragile, unstable and under threat from these increasingly powerful non-state actors.

The international community has worked for decades to solve the Western Sahara conflict. And in October 2025, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2797 affirming a 2007 Moroccan proposal to grant the region autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the only viable basis for negotiating a just and sustainable solution to the problem. In doing so, the council renewed the mandate for its peacekeeping force there, MINURSO, for another year and urged the conflict parties to enter into good-faith negotiations to resolve the dispute on the sole basis of Morocco’s proposal. It took nearly 50 years to get to this point. The following is a case study of how US diplomacy helped make it happen, serving as an example of how sustained US diplomacy with key partners can solve contentious, intractable conflicts.

Background: The Western Sahara Conflict

For the United Nations and much of the international community, the problem began in the mid-1970s when Spain—transitioning from Francisco Franco’s dictatorship to democracy—decided, under increasing pressure from Morocco and the international community, to end its colonial presence in Africa. In 1975, it withdrew from the territory and ceded its possessions there to Morocco and Mauritania.

At the time, the territory was sparsely populated, mostly by a variety of separate nomadic tribes collectively referred to now as “Sahrawis,” a term that is the source of much confusion and controversy regarding the Western Sahara conflict. The term Sahrawi means “people of the Sahara,” but there are many tribes living in the Sahara region of northwest Africa that are not at all implicated in the sovereignty dispute over the Western Sahara. The Security Council resolution establishing its peacekeeping mission in the region, MINURSO, only concerns those Sahrawi tribespeople living in what was previously referred to as Spanish Sahara.

Following Spain’s withdrawal, a communist-led insurrectionist movement, soon to be known as the Polisario—with the support of Algeria, Libya, Cuba, the Soviet Union and some of its then satellite states—launched a war to establish an independent state in the former Spanish territory. The initial fighting was intense enough to cause a weak Mauritanian state with little military capacity to quickly withdraw from the conflict and renounce its claims.

Intense fighting continued between Morocco and the Polisario until the 1980s, when it subsided in intensity. By the late 1980s, support from a collapsing Soviet Union faded, and Cuba and Libya also pulled back. With only Algerian support, the Polisario’s effectiveness as a fighting force declined.

In 1991, the United Nations was able to broker a ceasefire between the parties and established MINURSO with the political objective to arrange a referendum of the inhabitants of the former Spanish Sahara to determine whether the region would become an independent state or remain part of Morocco.

This is where matters get complicated.

MINURSO's initial efforts to establish a voter list quickly floundered over the thorny question of who was a bona fide Sahrawi and qualified to vote. When MINURSO finally terminated the registration effort in 1998, there were roughly 86,000 people registered to vote and 130,000 pending appeals of potential eligible voters who had been initially rejected with no agreed adjudication procedure. After seven fruitless years of UN, US and other interested parties’ efforts to settle this question, the referendum experiment had reached a dead end, underscoring the fatally flawed nature of any winner-take-all vote to settle the dispute.

The US initially provided strong support to the UN effort to bring about a vote, including sending the US military to participate in the peacekeeping force. Washington had made a good-faith effort to support a referendum process but it increasingly came to be seen as a losing endeavor that would drive a wedge into its otherwise excellent US-Morocco relations, unless a new approach was found. As Martin Indyk, a US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs in the late 1990s, told then Moroccan King Hassan II, in the presence of the US Ambassador Ed Gabriel and Political Counselor Robert Holley (the authors of this article), the Western Sahara issue was threatening to drive the bilateral relationship into a dark tunnel with no exit. Something had to give.

In late 1998, we advocated for a full interagency review at the State Department on US policy in Western Sahara. The argument to change policy predicted that further attempts to conduct a referendum would fail, and would risk causing irreparable harm to the more important US-Morocco relationship. Given that it was unlikely the loser would accept the outcome, we argued that a winner-take-all referendum would be a source of continuing instability with potentially catastrophic consequences for North Africa’s stability. The Western Sahara could result in another failed state in North Africa due to continuous pressure from competing internal factions and conflicting outside meddling. This was certainly not in the interest of the US.  

Pushing for Political Compromise

Thus, was born a new US policy favoring a political settlement granting an internationally accepted form of autonomy to the people of the Western Sahara, under Moroccan sovereignty. Secretary of State Madeline Albright formally signed off on this policy in February 1999. Subsequently, the objective of US diplomacy became to persuade Morocco that the referendum had become an exercise in futility that would only harm bilateral relations and that it was necessary to embrace a new way forward toward a negotiated political solution.

Morocco was initially skeptical. It had invested heavily in a referendum and championed the vote at the Security Council. Morocco’s then controversial minister of interior, Driss Basri, a close and trusted advisor to Hassan II, had persuaded the king that Morocco would prevail in a referendum if the voter list matched Morocco’s criteria. In a March 1999 meeting with King Hassan II, we expressed pessimism about the prospects of any clear and peaceful outcome of a referendum. King Hassan II also had further doubts about whether US could be relied upon to stay the course. As a test of America’s commitment to its own counsel, he urged the US to consult first with Algeria to determine whether it might be open to any kind of political compromise.

King Hassan’s refusal to abandon the referendum and accept the US sovereignty-autonomy proposal would prove to be an untimely setback as the king’s health was declining and the Clinton administration was entering into its last years with other priorities taking precedence. Nevertheless, the US continued to persist in its advocacy for a change of course and on July 20, 1999, Hassan II told one of the authors (Gabriel) three days before his death that he had come to accept the basic American premise that a negotiated political solution was the best way forward. His rationale in part was the April 1999 election of Abdelaziz Boutiflika as president of Algeria, with whom he thought he could reach a political compromise.

A Change of Power in Morocco

Hassan II was succeeded by his son, Mohammad VI, on July 30, 1999. In early meetings with US embassy officials, the new king explained how difficult it would be for him to break with his father’s long-established policy on this issue of fundamental national importance. Nevertheless, it was clear that he was open minded and pragmatic.

In a decisive meeting with Albright on September 1, 1999, with the authors in attendance, the new king agreed to proceed with the US sovereignty-autonomy plan. He was firm in seeking assurances that the US would ensure that this new approach did not result in a resumption of Morocco-Algeria hostilities and that the US would agree never to oblige Morocco to accept a solution that did not guarantee its continued sovereignty in the territory.

In an historic September 1999 car ride from the streets of Tangier to the mountain village of Chefchaouen—the first visit of a Moroccan monarch to the region in forty years—Gabriel, following instructions from the State Department, replied in detail to the proposed sovereignty-autonomy solution, based on their September 1 meeting. He acknowledged US support for the king’s demands, clearly stating that although the US could not guarantee any particular outcome to a negotiated settlement, it did pledge that it would never endorse any solution that did not guarantee Morocco’s sovereignty in the Sahara.

The Bush Administration and a Storied US Diplomat

At this point in the late 1990s, James Baker was the UN secretary-general’s personal envoy for the Western Sahara. Following King Mohammad VI’s agreement with the US initiative, Baker was supportive and had believed since his 1997appointment as envoy that a political settlement was more viable and sustainable than a referendum.

Baker visited Morocco in March 2000 to confirm for himself that King Mohammad VI was on board with this approach. Subsequently, in a meeting of all the parties in London, Baker attempted to persuade them to abandon the referendum in favor of a negotiated political solution. He made clear to Algeria and the Polisario that independence was not a realistic option and told Morocco that it needed to accept that the Sahara could never be simply integrated into the country as though it were any other Moroccan province.

Following that meeting, Baker publicly proposed an outline for such a solution, which he dubbed his Framework Solution. It was purposely short on details but did provide the broad parameters of how political responsibilities should be divided between Moroccan authorities and its newly established autonomous region in the Sahara. As previously agreed with King Mohammad VI, Morocco publicly endorsed Baker’s framework as a basis for negotiations. Both Algeria and the Polisario flatly rejected it.

Frustrated by Algeria's and the Polisario’s rejection of his proposal, Baker then attempted to persuade the UN Security Council to explicitly endorse a specific path forward and presented four options: (1) proceed with an attempt at a referendum; (2) divide the territory between Morocco and the Polisario, a solution reportedly favored by Algeria; (3) pursue a negotiated political solution, Baker’s preferred option; or (4) simply abandon the UN effort to resolve the problem. The UN Security Council refused to endorse any of these options and urged the parties to continue to work with Baker to find a solution. At this point, it appeared that matters had reached an impasse and little further movement occurred until George W. Bush’s November 2000 election. Baker read Bush’s election as providing him with a free hand to proceed however he saw fit.

Baker’s next step was to begin a series of secret talks with Algerian President Bouteflicka. In the summer of 2003, he dropped a bombshell on Morocco and the US in which he presented a new plan, dubbed the “Peace Plan for the Western Sahara,” that was directly at odds with what had been agreed between the US and Morocco. It was dead on arrival in Morocco because it proposed to simply turn the territory over to the Polisario, with a full and complete withdrawal of all Moroccan military and civil infrastructure for five years. At the end of five years, he proposed a new referendum of all the region’s inhabitants to either endorse and continue the Polisario regime or move to full integration of the territory into Morocco.

The anger and sense of betrayal in Morocco was profound, as King Mohammed had taken a serious risk in agreeing with the Americans to the sovereignty-autonomy proposal. The Moroccan assumption was that Baker had the backing of the Bush administration with whom he was known to be very close and that Baker had persuaded the president to endorse his new plan.

Moroccan diplomats, furious with Baker’s abrupt turnaround, arranged a meeting between President Bush and King Mohammad VI at the 2003 UN General Assembly to seek clarity. In that meeting, Bush made it clear that Baker was representing the UN, not him, and that the president stood behind the agreement and commitments that the US had reached with Morocco during the Clinton administration. However, he advised the Moroccan delegation that if it was dissatisfied with Baker’s latest proposal, they should create one of their own and seek to gain Baker’s cooperation.

The Moroccans followed the president’s counsel and crafted a detailed autonomy proposal that they first took to Washington for review prior to sharing it with Baker. Baker refused to review the plan in detail, but told the Moroccans he had a set of non-negotiable conditions that would have to be included in any agreement.

The Moroccans reworked their proposal, included some modified elements of Baker’s conditions and tried once again to persuade him. He refused and told the Moroccan delegation either they would accept his new plan in its entirety or he would get the Bush administration to oblige them to accept it by moving the Sahara issue from Chapter VI of the UN Charter to Chapter VII, where he could impose sanctions on Morocco until they accepted it.

The Moroccans, secure in the knowledge that they had the support of the Bush administration, debriefed US senior officials on their exchanges with Baker, who resigned as envoy in April 2004, and was subsequently no longer involved. Although it took three and half years into the Bush administration to come to this point with Morocco, the US and Morocco seemed to be clearly in agreement on how to move forward

Little progress was made under UN auspices between 2004-2007 as Morocco worked on its own sovereignty-autonomy initiative, acting on the advice of President Bush. The government also began a long process of conferring and consensus building with the Sahrawi people and residents of the Western Sahara on their views about the sovereignty-autonomy initiative.

In 2007, Morocco presented its long-awaited autonomy framework for negotiations to the Security Council. That proposal, intended to serve as a basis to begin negotiations, was met with a warm welcome in Washington, which described it publicly as “serious and credible.” Moroccan diplomacy took that endorsement as the cornerstone of its renewed effort to build further international support for the US-Moroccan effort to push for a political solution.

Although satisfied with the US support for its initiative, Morocco expected that the US would seek to ensure that the referendum should be abandoned and that any negotiations should be based on the Moroccan initiative. That would have to wait for another thirteen years.

The Obama Administration: From Continuity to Contention

During President Obama’s first term, with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, all was more or less well in the US-Moroccan relationship on the Sahara question. Clinton was well informed on the issue and familiar in detail with the commitments her husband’s administration had made to Morocco. She visited Morocco twice while in office and gave a strong public endorsement of Morocco’s autonomy initiative affirming that Washington continued to view it as “serious and credible,” but adding importantly that it was also “realistic.”

Clinton stated clearly that US policy on the Western Sahara remained unchanged, but stopped short of publicly revealing that the “unchanged” policy specifically referred to a US endorsed sovereignty-autonomy solution. Had she added this additional language this issue may have reached today’s hallmark more than a decade earlier. Regardless, this was another clear signal from Washington that the referendum on independence for the Sahara was off the table. It provoked considerable displeasure with Algeria and the Polisario.

It was not until Obama’s second term with John Kerry as secretary of state and Susan Rice as national security advisor that matters began to become seriously contentious once again between Washington and Rabat on the Western Sahara.

The disagreements evolved not around the basic question of whether US policy should continue to support a political solution in the Sahara, but rather a misguided and destructive National Security Council (NSC) initiative, concentrating highly critical public attention on Morocco’s alleged suppression of dissent in the territory over human rights issues. This criticism undermined the solidity of US statements of support for a political solution and raised further doubts in Rabat about Washington’s commitment and willingness to put the weight of its diplomacy into achieving that end.

Moroccans were highly sensitive to these attacks from Washington on the charge of human rights violations because under King Mohammad VI’s leadership, the Moroccan government had made advancements on political freedoms and respect for human rights. It was a central theme of the government’s on-going and sweeping socio-political and economic reform agenda. Although much more was needed, the Moroccans were proud of the many groundbreaking advancements they had already achieved. The king’s threat to stop the largest joint US-Morocco military exercise led Obama to apologize in April 2013 and propose an official meeting with King Mohammed.

Unfortunately, US criticisms of Morocco’s human rights record surprisingly came to a head again during King Mohammad VI’s visit to Washington the following November. The night before the meeting, the National Security Council’s representative tabled language sharply critical of Morocco’s human rights record to be inserted in their final communique. This came as a shock to the Moroccan delegation because a meeting the day before between Kerry and Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar had discussed this issue in detail and agreed on language acceptable to both sides. The NSC, without coordination with the State Department, was now trying to fundamentally modify that agreement at the last minute. King Mohammed questioned whether the meeting should be held under such circumstances.

Due to smart Moroccan diplomacy and a crucial phone call between Kerry and Mezouar, by the next morning the offensive NSC language had been removed.

These actions managed to smooth over the tensions ahead of the summit and fostered a mutual understanding between the two heads of state. However, for their part, Algeria and the Polisario recognized the wedge value of this issue and intensified their human rights criticisms of Morocco through friendly members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate. These persistent and highly visible Polisario and Algerian efforts in the US Congress continued throughout the remainder of the Obama presidency, sometimes reaching crisis proportions, but tapered off after Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

The Trump Administration: From Status Quo to a Sharp Turn

Following Trump’s inauguration, the US foreign policy bureaucracy settled back into its default mode of maintaining the status quo on the issue. US policy supporting a negotiated political solution remained in place, but little active US diplomacy occurred to support and advance that position.

There was no movement on the issue until late in President Trump’s first term in 2020.

In a deal largely described in the press as a US-Morocco arrangement in the context of the Abraham Accords, Morocco agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel and the US publicly recognized Moroccan sovereignty in Western Sahara. This was a sharp and historic turn in US policy. While it was well known that US policy favored Morocco’s 2007 autonomy initiative, the US had until then publicly supported the UN Security Council’s efforts to bring the parties to the bargaining table without preconditions. Trump’s decision clearly ended any diplomatic pretense of US neutrality and put Washington squarely in Rabat’s corner.

The Biden Administration: Ambiguity Returns

Trump had already lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden when the Abraham Accords announcement was made and many wondered how the new Biden administration would react. Biden’s team stated publicly that US policy had not changed, leaving its position ambiguous. Did the Biden administration mean US policy before or after the Abraham Accords announcement was what had not been changed? One State Department official answered this question privately with one word: “Exactly.”  Nevertheless, the Biden position gave comfort to Morocco, ensuring the continuation of the Trump advances without overt rejection.

US international partners seemed to fall in line and welcome this ambiguity, each in keeping with their own agendas. The US “maintained the pen” on circulating the original drafts of UN Security Council Resolutions on Western Sahara as if nothing had changed. And, indeed, nothing did, as the MINURSO mandate continued to be renewed with the same language.

During this time, Moroccan diplomacy was in full swing, signing up countries in support of the Moroccan initiative and discouraging others from endorsing the Polisario’s plans. By the time of Trump’s return to office in January 2025, Morocco had displayed great diplomatic skill in receiving the endorsement for the Moroccan initiative from Spain, France, and Great Britain and persuading dozens of countries in Africa and South America to open official consular offices in the Moroccan Sahara territories. This was a serious setback for previous Algerian and Polisario support in the developing world. The writing was now on the wall.

The UN’s Historic Turn

In October 2025, when the Security Council renewed the MINURSO mandate for another year, things finally reached the crescendo Morocco had hoped for since 1999. UNSC Resolution 2797 explicitly recognized Morocco’s 2007 autonomy initiative as the only viable path and urged the parties to meet without delay to begin negotiations toward a mutually acceptable political solution based on the Moroccan initiative.

With that, the UN buried any further talk of international support for a referendum to decide the Western Sahara’s future, essentially eliminating any further realistic prospect of an independent state established under United Nations’ auspices. There were no negative votes and only three abstentions, including that of the Russian Federation, a longstanding and foundational ally of Algeria and the Polisario, which chose not to impose its veto on this watershed decision.

The decision is wholly consistent with US-Moroccan diplomacy and policy objectives on the Western Sahara since 1999. It is a lesson on the clarity of Moroccan diplomacy and determination by King Mohammed VI to show patience in methodically moving forward. It is also a lesson for the US: consistent and coherent foreign policy from one administration to the next is essential to gaining trust and results.

Solution or Further Stalemate? The Road Ahead

The question now is whether these new facts on the ground will launch further constructive efforts to achieve a solution or simply become a new iteration of a stalemated status quo.

The Polisario and Algeria have predictably rejected UNSC Resolution 2797. Consequently, unless the Security Council becomes willing to redefine who are the appropriate parties in a negotiation, the Polisario and Algeria hold a de facto veto to moving ahead by simply refusing to participate. That path leads to yet a new stalemate.

On the other hand, it is possible the Security Council could decide that neither the Polisario nor Algeria are essential participants if they persist in their non-compliance. Algeria, has all along, with overwhelmingly evident disingenuity, maintained it is not a party to this issue but merely a concerned and principled observer. If it persists in its abstinence, the Security Council conceivably could decide to take them at their word and exclude them from any active seat at the bargaining table.

The Polisario claims to be the sole legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, but that claim holds little credibility given the questionable number of Sahrawis under their control. While no census has been taken among qualified Sahrawis of the Western Sahara, some estimates are as low as a total of 45,000 people living in the various Polisario controlled camps in southern Algeria, not all of whom are qualified voters, compared to a total estimated population of more than 160,000 Sahrawis living in Morocco’s southern Saharan provinces.

If it decides to comply with UNSC Resolution 2797, the Polisario certainly deserves a seat at the table, but it should only be alongside the Sahrawi population of southern Morocco. The majority Sahrawi population of the region should not be denied what has long been promised them because the Polisario has been denied its objective of total independence. Nor should they be deprived of a voice in the negotiations, which would decide their future.

At a minimum, this population deserves a place at the table with at least as much standing as the Polisario when or if any bargaining begins. The Polisario deserves a moment to reflect, but it has no legitimate or justifiable claim on exclusivity when it comes to negotiating the future of the Sahrawi people. Nor should it be allowed an indefinite veto on the road to that future.

Like Baker’s framework agreement, Morocco’s 2007 sovereignty-autonomy initiative was always a designed to begin negotiations. Negotiators will need to work through detailed and likely disputed positions to achieve an autonomous regime that will take time to finalize. It will require patience and further international and US diplomacy, but the Security Council and especially the US—whose policy choices combined with Moroccan diplomatic deftness are at the very origin of this process—should endeavor to embrace whatever determination and flexibility is required to get them started without further delay.

It is a time to celebrate US and Moroccan diplomacy and for the US to be clear moving forward that it plans to see this issue resolved based upon the UN-endorsed Moroccan initiative.

Edward Gabriel is a former US Ambassador to Morocco (1997-2001). Robert M. Holley is a retired career Foreign Service Officer (1981-2002) who was Political Counselor at the US Embassy Rabat (1998-2001). They were the principal advocates for the Washington policy review in 1999 that led to the adoption of the compromise sovereignty-autonomy initiative as US policy on Western Sahara.