Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara Third ... - Scarecrow Press

INTRODUCTION • lix
network (which now encompassed about three-fifths of the entire territory)
and inflicted additional civilian casualties and property damage,
some of it against buildings which MINURSO itself had planned to utilize.
Moreover, on and after September 6—when the formal cease-fire
went into effect—MINURSO was given only limited cooperation by
Morocco (and after a time by the Polisario Front as well, as the front
perceived its own cooperation was not being reciprocated), and its 300
or so blue-helmeted peacekeeping troops were unable to do much more
than monitor the military forces of both sides and try to survive in the
nearly unbearable desert heat. When the civilian staff of MINURSO got
down to ascertaining voter eligibility, the situation became even worse,
as Morocco and Polisario held—and would continue to hold over the
next decade and beyond—radically differing approaches to determining
which Saharawis were entitled to cast ballots. In particular, the types of
documents to be used by MINURSO in its work proved controversial,
as did the mission’s plans to use the oral recollections of tribal elders
from both Polisario-controlled and Moroccan-administered areas. Both
Rabat and the Saharawi nationalists obviously believed that these elders
were susceptible to undue outside influences.
A long diplomatic drama thus began, with the end of the first act
coming on December 19, 1991, when outgoing Secretary-General Pérez
de Cuéllar submitted a progress report to the UN Security Council. Recounting
the problems attending MINURSO and the slow progress it
was making toward holding a referendum, he also proposed to institute
new voter eligibility criteria. Essentially, this plan would open the voter
rolls to any Saharawi who could establish that he or she had resided
continuously in Western Sahara for six years continuously or 12 years
intermittently prior to 1974 (the date of the last Spanish census); contrary
to what Morocco wanted, this opportunity would be given to one
generation of Western Saharans only. Polisario reacted furiously, calling
into question Pérez de Cuéllar’s impartiality (and indeed, the UN
leader’s own memoirs published several years later revealed a marked
pro-Moroccan bias) and stating that Morocco’s alleged “importation” of
either Moroccans or Saharawis from Morocco proper prior to the arrival
of MINURSO would fatally tilt the outcome of any plebiscite conducted
under the new proposal. Acting on December 31, just before
Pérez de Cuéllar left office to be succeeded by Boutros Boutros-Ghali
of Egypt, the Security Council basically sided with Polisario (and its