Western Sahara: Washington wants to strike the word "referendum" from MINURSO's mandate

According to Courrier international, which relays an analysis from the Algerian site Twala, the United States is preparing to table a draft resolution before the UN Security Council this Friday, 30 October, aimed at removing the word "referendum" from the mandate of MINURSO, the UN mission in Western Sahara. Still according to Twala, the self-determination of the Sahrawis would thus be "definitively sacrificed" by Paris and Washington, and only a genuine balance of power could still serve the Polisario Front.

Let us state at the outset what we do not know: the dispatch gives neither the exact text of the draft, nor the timetable for the vote, nor the position of the other Council members. It is, moreover, an opinion piece, Algerian to boot, and therefore a party to the dispute. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

It comes down to a simple point: the word "referendum" has been in MINURSO's mandate since its creation, and that is precisely why it is being targeted. A word in a resolution is a small thing, until it becomes the only written trace of a right. Removing it turns a people who are waiting to vote into a "file" to be managed. Nobody denies self-determination; it is simply allowed to fade through omission, which is tidier and leaves fewer diplomatic traces.

Cabral distinguished between direct domination and the kind exercised by a more indirect political power, and described how imperialism can produce "paralysis, stagnation, even regression" in the history of a dominated people. The Sahrawi case lends itself to this sadly: a territory listed for decades on the UN's list of non-self-governing territories, a population whose future hangs on a process that never arrives. In this logic, waiting is not an accident; it is a method. This is not new, but it is becoming official.

Why now, and to whose benefit? The dispatch does not spell this out, and we will not invent an answer. The structural question, however, is posed: the Security Council is not a tribunal but a salon where five powers hold a veto, and where stateless peoples have no seat. When Paris and Washington, former colonial or imperial powers, arbitrate the fate of a colonised people, it would be naive to expect law to prevail over interest. The territory's resources and regional alliances no doubt weigh in the balance, but this is a point the file does not document and one we await being substantiated.

Then there is Twala's warning: without a balance of power, nothing. It is grim, and it says a great deal about what international law is worth when it has neither an armed arm nor a powerful ally. For the Sahrawis, many of whom have lived far from their land for decades, the message would be crystal clear: you were promised a vote, and you are being offered a communiqué. We will follow the text and the vote, and we will see who raises a hand to keep that word.