Western Saharan leader wins right to return

After a 32-day hunger strike that brought her to the threshold of death at Tenerife Airport in the Canary Islands, Western Sahara leader Aminatu Haidar won the right to return to her homeland, which is still under Moroccan control. The Moroccan monarchy had attempted to expel Haidar when she was returning from the U.S. over a month earlier, but on Dec. 17 it had to concede to the Saharan leader’s courage.

Western Sahara had been a Spanish colony before 1975, taking over the territory as a result of the 1884 Berlin conference where the imperialist powers divided up control of Africa. In 1975 the International Court of Justice decided that neither Mauritania nor Morocco had the right to seize the territory, but that the Saharui people had the right to self-determination.

Nevertheless, when Spain was forced to give up its control of the territory in the fall of 1975, the Moroccan king seized control. The Polisario Front, a movement of the Western Saharans, has disputed Morocco’s rule ever since, waging an armed struggle against the governments of Morocco and Mauritania. Mauritania withdrew from its one-third of the territory, but Morocco took over that part. The armed struggle ended in 1991 with a cease-fire.

Haidar has been a leading spokesperson of the Saharui people’s continued struggle for self-determination. With her family and her political life back in the Western Sahara, she refused to accept exile and challenged the Moroccan regime by risking death in Tenerife. Thousands of people rallied to her support. Now she has returned home to continue the struggle.