[LINK] "A vision for Western Sahara and the Moroccan protest movement"

[rfmcdonald]

At Open Democracy, Mohammed Ben Jelloun links the fate of Western Sahara to a democratization of Morocco generally.

Some claim Morocco's 20 February protest movement has largely failed as a transformational social movement capable of articulating an alternative discursive and coherent challenge to the regime. They say that a striking constant feature of the movement was its fragmented centrifugal leadership and horizontal mobilisation.

These observers are correct in claiming the protest movement did not manage to articulate a strong alternative discourse to that of the monarchy, especially in its traditional and religious appeal. However, they fail to correctly assess what they describe as the ideological fissures that amplified the 20 February movement's weakness. Indeed, the fissures are not only those between radical leftist Marxists and the banned Islamist al-Adl wal Ihsane, but also predominantly between the annexationist nationalists (PSU) and the separatist internationalists (pro-Polisario voices), via the Islamist neutralists (AWI). More importantly, the critical fissure is not between diverse philosophical orientations but one between ideologies as such and a strictly pro-democratic politics.

This normative approach to the Western Sahara conflict is largely inspired by the political theory of John Rawls. Since the international community cannot realistically guarantee political self-determination for the Sahrawi population, I argue they should be at least guaranteed maximal political democracy in whatever outcome of the current conflict.

The idea is to have opposite wills to freedom work for democracy, and to have democracy promotion depend on rational hopes and fears

I am not pleading for self-governance in the sense of true autonomy or true confederation. Nor do I claim some global individual right to democratic self-determination as distinct from an internal or collective self-determination. Leaving the options relatively open, I ask for much more: if autonomy is to prevail then it should be an autonomy within a fully and strictly democratic Morocco, and if confederation is to prevail then a confederation within a fully and strictly democratic Western Sahara.

I am not suggesting the Sahrawis should give up on their hope for freedom, only that they should think along different lines and make the best of a situation where the justice of international law is stubbornly refuted by French and US geo-strategic concerns. The international community should make the present stalemate work for a democracy owed the Sahrawi people, give them a push in the footsteps of democratic Tunisia, so they do not have to be ruled by an authoritarian regime, be it theocratic or military.

The suggestions to follow are not about simply trading freedom for democracy; they aim at favouring democratic freedom over undemocratic freedom. The idea is to have opposite wills to freedom work for democracy, and to have democracy promotion depend on rational hopes for next-best freedom and rational fears of the worst unfreedom. I first argue it is for the UN Security Council both morally defensible and politically feasible to promote a pro-democracy approach in the Western Sahara conflict. I then turn the political culture of the Arab uprisings against the geo-strategic argument and draw on Rawlsian insights to outline context relevant characteristics, principles, and values of constitutional democracy.