Frontiers in North Africa

2.9 The Problem of Territorial Sovereignty

The issue as far as the old Spanish controlled areas of Morocco and the Western Sahara are concerned - as it has been with Mauritania, where Morocco was only prepared to recognise the state's independent existence in 1970 - is not one of border delimitation but one of sovereignty. Morocco does not necessarily dispute the colonial delimitations but does dispute the proposition that such colonially defined and created entities are entitled to an independent political existence. The formalistic basis for this rejection is the principle enunciated in paragraph 6 of the UNGA resolution 1514 (XV) of 1960, even though this originally was only meant to apply to small enclave territories. However, there is an underlying reality that goes far beyond this and confronts assumptions of territorial sovereignty that underlie modern precepts of international law and the principles of communal sovereignty that determined relationships between independent political entities in the pre-colonial period.

Modern concepts of territorial sovereignty derive from the situation in Europe in the mid seventeenth century as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, which brought the Thirty Years War to an end (Mazrui and Tidy 1984; 373-375). As a result of the treaty then created, rulers in Europe acquired sovereign power in the territories that they ruled. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this concept of a unique territory over which sovereign power could be exercised became associated with the additional concept of a single and unique nation which occupied it and, by the end of the eighteenth century, it had been accepted that sovereignty derived from the collective will of the nation situated on that unique sovereign territory (Joffe 1986; 8). Thus, the archetypal independent political unit in Europe became the nation state, with a homogeneous yet unique population defined by its cultural qualities, particularly language - the nation - living on a precisely defined and delimited territory that was uniquely its own - the state.

With the development of the industrial revolution, first in Britain and then in France and other European nations, the homogeneity of the nation was reinforced by an enforced population mobility which transferred rural populations to urban settings in order to service the nascent industrial base. The mobility itself, in a geographical sense, resulted from the radical change in occupation as agriculture ceased to be the mainstay of popular employment. At the same time, access to education and training began to change to allow for the changes in occupational activity and status which also incidentally generated a sociological mobility. Thus the concept of nation - which developed as these other changes in social and economic organisation took place became associated with that of modernisation - itself the rallying cry of industrialisation, particularly in the nineteenth century. At the same time, European powers began a process of expansion which, in the case of France, brought it into contact and conflict, inter alia, with the diverse populations of North Africa where a different set of cultural assumptions held sway.

The colonial process, particularly in the case of France, was a process of cultural confrontation (Mazrui and Tidy 1984; 382). It was also at the same time, one of enforced dialogue, in that indigeneous opposition, once the initial period of primary resistance had given way to secondary resistance (Ranger 1968; 437-453), had to find a means of communicating its demands to the colonial authorities it faced. Even if the process was violent, eventually negotiation had to occur. However, for this to take place, there was a crucial need for the development of a common vocabulary in which the dialogue could be couched. Necessarily, however, the vocabulary would be dictated by colonialist preference, since the colonising power was the one which controlled the opportunities for discussion - and was also the one with the military power to ensure that dialogue could be denied or cut short if it did not follow acceptable patterns.

There was, however, usually another consequence particularly if the nationalist opposition itself realised that dialogue was eventually inevitable, as was the case in North Africa. Since the opposition movement was inherently modernist in its outlook, it tended to incorporate much of the philosophical assumptions of the colonising power into its own ideology - particularly those which dealt with the formation of a modern nation state. It often therefore considered a nationalist ideology to be an essential part of the ideology that it would use to confront the colonising power in any dialogue. This meant that, inevitably, indigeneous nationalist movements mobilised around ideologies that owed much to their colonial precursors and that the states they later created owed much to the territorial constructs of colonial times.

This tendency was particularly significant in North Africa, largely because two of the modern states there had no precolonial precursors while the other two now have forms very different from those of pre-colonial times. There was also the tradition of an ideological precursor which made use of similar methods of mobilisation, albeit on a different scale and for different purposes - Islam. This made acceptance of nationalist ideologies which owe much to European precursors easier to accept, particularly amongst the population at large and particularly if the ideology itself was expressed in terms that related to more traditional political symbols (Joffe 1985a; 307). Nonetheless, the colonial legacy has generally obliged successor states to attempt to justify colonial administrative creations in terms of a nation that is assumed to occupy the state that has thus been created even if the concept of a 'nation' had been alien or irrelevant to the precolonial situation. Over time, of course, nations have emerged in response to the immense efforts of independent governments to weld a political consensus out of often disparate colonial and precolonial sociological legacies. Nonetheless, the precolonial, political and sociological reality still persists and the 'nations' thus formed are often uncertain creations. Equally, assertion of the existence of such nations as a justification of territorial sovereignty is often open to dispute - as has been the case in the Western Sahara.

Libya, for instance, has acquired a political and territorial unity than not even the Ottomans or the Sanusi could create. Algeria now covers a territorial extent that no pre-colonial ruler could ever have imagined. Morocco, on the other hand, is truncated, having lost the Saharan provinces which it clearly controlled in the nineteenth century to Algeria, yet now defiantly justifying a 'recovery' of the Western Sahara that it claims corresponds to its communal links in the pre-colonial era. Only Tunisia, with its Saharan extension, has avoided major problems over its territorial claims and control. In each case, the state concerned has also made great efforts to describe its population in terms of a fully integrated nation to justify its territorial claims and has reacted very strongly to any example of particularistic sentiment (Joffe 1985b; 39-49).

The justification used by each state for its right to the territory it now controls or claims is also in keeping with its adoption of European values and definitions of the concept of 'state'. Algeria, which sprang new born from the colonial era, justifies its territorial extent and its borders by the twin principles of the inviolability of colonial frontiers as laid down by the OAU and of uti possidetis in that it is the successor to a colonial entity created by France. Libya claims the same, adding only that its justification derives not only from the Italian experience but also from the prior Ottoman occupation. In addition, it would claim that the French administrative record, on which Algeria bases its case for the Ghat region, is defective and that the true extent of uti possidetis is different from that argued by Algeria. In reality, however, behind the Libyan claim lurks an earlier vision - that of communal sovereignty and the umma. The Sanusi, after all, extended control south to Northern Chad and traditional economic links brought the Fezzan and the Tebu together.

Morocco, too, would argue a very similar case even more forcefully over the Western Sahara. Here, after all, the descendants of the original Moroccan conquerors of Timbucktoo, the arma, continued to elect their own pashas until the 1790s while recognising an overall Moroccan suzereinty throughout (Trout 1969; 144). Furthermore, the Ma al-Ainin family, in the Saquiat al-Hamra, was formally linked to the Moroccan sultanate during the reign of Moulay Abd al-Aziz at the start of the twentieth century and also accepted Moroccan suzereinty (Trout 1969; 156-160). International treaties, too, also lend credence to this view (Trout 1969; 204), although it must also be noted that the International Court of Justice was very cautious in refusing to consider that these links actually amounted to full territorial sovereignty when it investigated Morocco's claims in 1974 (ICJ 1974).

The Moroccan government has, nevertheless, been adamant about not abandoning its pretensions to the Western Sahara. Even though a ceasefire, under United Nations monitoring, has been in place since September 1990, ostensibly to allow the long-awaited referendum on self-determination to take place, the situation is still unresolved, over twelve years later. Formally, the two sides cannot agree on the registration of those to participate in the referendum, in accordance with the Spanish 1974 census of the area. In reality, Morocco merely looks for confirmation and legitimisation of its annexation whilst the Polisario Front believes that a genuine sampling of local opinion will confirm its desire for independence. Now the United Nations has sought a compromise but no compromise seems to exist on which the two sides can agree!