Sahara war rattles imperialist stooges

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The war in th e Sahara has overthrown another in Mauritania.

Last month a military coup toppled the existing military dictatorship of Ould Salek, which itself had come to power only last July by ousting the one-party regime of Ould Daddah.

Lt. Col. Ould Bouceif;

the new prime minister, has made clear the two main lines of his government's foreign policy-peace in the Sahara, and a continued alliance with the Moroccan state.

Engineered

This latest coup has been engineered as part of the present concerted diplomatic campaign by imperialism to restore bourgeois stability in the Maghreb (Arab-dominated north-west Africa).

The Mauritanian economy has been shattered by the years o: mar in the Sahara, and every day of fighting increases the pressure on the government to resolve the conflict.

But the war. and the policies followed by Guld Daddah. have also virtualiy enslaved Mauntania as a vassal of King Hassan's reactionary dictatorship in Morocco.

The whole Saharan adventure was designed by Hassan, and the occupation of this tract of Greater Morocco' remains essential to his foreign policy.

Ignoring every setback to his• ambitions and defying all attempts. at persuasion, Hassan has so far obstinately refused to entertain the possibility of limiting Moroccan rule, let alone abolishing it to establish an independent republic in the Western Sahara.

Disintegration

But the pressure from Rabat for the Mauritanian leaders to present a united front has become less effective as the economic crisis and social disintegration of Mauritania have reached staggering new heights.

Ould Bouceif has followed his military predecessors in negotiations with the Polisario Front.

These have almost certainly focussed on the exchange of a truce between the two sides for the establishment of some kind of autonomy for the Tiris el-Gharbia (the southern part of the Western Sahara, occupied by the Mauritanian army after its 1975 Madrid agreement with the Francoist and Moroccan dictatorships).

'Left' nationalist

The. imperialist powers, and the left' nationalist leaders of Algeria and Libya would eagerly welcome such a 'solution' to the demands of the Sahrawi (Saharoui) people for self-determination and independence, and such an end to the liberation struggle being waged by.

Best o trienas-Hassar cra C the Polisario Front.

Whatever opposition is mounted by the Polisario against a shoddy deal of this kind. they will certainly be placed under massive pressure io accept from their main backers, the Algerian ruling bureaucracy.

The petty-bourgeois clique of the Algerian 'Revolutionary Council' has long been seeking respectable means to offload the embarrassing burden of its commitment to the Annexations The Libyan dictatorship has played a less prominent role in the Sahara.

Gaddafi has declared support for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Now he has taken time off from his annexations and other exploits in Chad to work more actively towards a restabilisation of the Maghreb.

But Gaddafi's diplomatic initiatives have met an equally energetic rival, the Francoist Suarez government in Spain.

Separated from the Maghreb only by the narrow Straits of Gibraltar, the Spanish bourgeoisie has major economic and military interests in the region, which did not end with the 1975 decolonisation' of the Western Sahara.

Neutralise conflicts

Today Suarez is playing a cautious but ambitious game to reconcle neutralise all the conflicting interests within the Maghreb in a "peaceful coexistence' that can offer golden opportunities to ailing Spanish capitalism.

So far Suarez has been astonishingly successful.

The UCD, ruling party in the Spanish government, has recognised the Polisario Front--but the government itself has not gone beyond careful hopes that liberty' will somehow reign in the Western Sahara.

Gaddafi Over recent months, Spanish ministers and ambassadors have been front-runners in the intense race of diplomats from one capital to another.

Already the 'normalisation' of relations between Algiers and Madrid has produne A gerian scesusts, results abandoning their support for autonomy or independence in the Spanish ruled Canary Islands off the dangerous enough for the imperialists in itself. But its gravest threat lies in the impact of the war on the crisis in Morocco.

Moroccan workers

Today, the future of the Maghreb lies with the proletariat of Morocco. The masses of Mauritania are weakly organised, with little experience political In Tunisia, the working class is recovering from the exertions and bloody defeat of last year's general strike.

The peasants and workers of Algeria remain for the moment demoralised and confused by their precarious but tenacious petty-bourgeois rulers.

Yet in Morocco, the working class is moving forward in a new surge of struggles generated by the economic crisis, and the war which has worsened it many times over.

Of all the Arab states, Morocco is geographically farthest from Iran.

But in social and political terms, the Morocco of Hassan closely resembles the Iran of the 'White Revolution' , and as a 'revolutionary monarch', Hassan took his lessons in tyranny from the Shah.

The exampie of the Iranian revolution was not lost on the Moroccan masses, and the temporary presence in Morocco of the deposed Shah could only spell it out more clearly.

Hassan was forced to rid himself, as soon as decently possible, of a dangerous guest who provoked violently hostile: mass demonstrations wherever he appeared.

Dizzy spiral

But the Shah's departure has brought no end to the ¿/! spiral of inflation or io the constant drain of material and human supplies in the war.

This year has already seen massive strikes on a broadening and deepening scale: railway workers, bank workers, miners, postal and hospital workers, the Casablanca dockers, textile workers, teachers and workers in the civil airline.

All have taken strike action on their economic demands, and alongside them have come the school and college students.

The situation is fast becoming uncontrollable by Hassan's usual methods of repression.

Moth eaten

Last month he played a well-tried card in changing the head of government.

The new prime minister Maati Bouabid, has motheaten 'left' credentials.

But already he has shown himself determined to prosecute the Sahara war MOROCCOT Wester! ALGERIAI Sahara LIBYA MAURLATA!

CHAD Conflict Points and the internal repression with unflagging force.

The old trump cards do not have their old power in this new crisis. The phantom of Iran stalks through Morocco today with strength enough to break a thousand Bouabids. Hassan's dictatorship has never been weaker. Its agony has helped spur the French and Spanish imperialists into their frenzy of diplomacy to resolve the Sahara 'question' But in his hour of need, Hassan can call for help on a force which the Shah had denied himself.

The former Shah The traditional populist, reformist and Stalinist leaders of the Moroccan masses have offered only accommodation and collaboration with the dictatorship.

Hassan's throne now rests upon the ability of these bureaucrats to control, divert and strangle the developing mass movement which holds the power to overthrow imperialism in Morocco.

It is in the struggle to defeat these old traitors and build a new revolutionary leadership, that the immediate future of the Moroccan workers and peasants will be decided.