'final' offensive halted

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Polisario troops on the march in Morocco In El Salvador the ten-day offensive of the guerrilla forces of the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional) which was widely proclaimed-as have so many before it-as "final" appears to be over for the time being.

The forces of the dictatorship have retaken almost all of the key centres captured by the guerrillas in their first push in the second week of January.

The junta's temporary regaining of military momentum coincided with speedy delivery of US weapons and 'advisers' combined with statements of unprecedented belligerence towards Cuba and Nicaragua from the American State Department.

Unfounded

But the basis on which US allegations of 'intervention' by Nicaragua and Cuba were made is now agreed even by the US ambassador in San Salvador to be unfounded.

There can be no doubt that the army's junta headed by the petty politico Duarte but controlled by the ultra-rightist colonels who backed former dictator Romero, exists from day to day only thanks to cash and arms from Washington. .. a These will have to be greatly increased if it is to survive further offensives.

This is because, despite the trumpetings of the bourgeois press, the guerrillas have not been defeated, while the repressive apparatus, which suffered five separate mutinies, is highly nervous and far from consolidated.

Infusions of blood, in the form of Honduran and GuateO_SA Important successes have recently been, won by the people of the Western Sahara in their struggle for national independence.

These claims were made at a meeting of the Labour Middle East Council held in the House of Commons on 15 February by Kamel Lahiar, who represents the Polisario Front in Britain.

The speaker outlined the details of a struggle against colonialism by the people of the Western Sahara going back as far as 1958 and since 1973 against the Moroccan efforts to occupy their country.

He showed that as long ago as 1975 a United Nations delegation including ambassadors Victim of right wing violence malan troops and ex-members of Somoza's national guard will only hold the breach for a while. The current lull repres ents a critical conjuncture in the accumulation of forces.

However, this critical military question is underpinned by a comical polițical one.

It is increasingly apparent that while the FMLN are engaging in the struggle for national liberation in the countryside and towns, the bourgeois opposition, organised in the Frente Democratico Revolucionario (FDK). 1s taking a tighter hold of the political direction of the movement.

The foreign representatives from Cuba and Iran had tried to get agreement between the Moroccans and the Polisario guerrillas. Support has been growing amongst neighbouring states.

Since August 1979, the government of Mauritania have ended military operations, signed a treaty and ceased to contest their claims to the area.

The Algerians have always recognised the rights of the West Sahara people to self-determination.

For this the Algerians in particular have been attacked in the western capitalist press as in some way manipulating the independence movement, and the Moroccans have been portrayed as the injured party!

The fighting during 1980 of the FDR, of which there are a great number, continually stress the danger of US intervention-but in the same breath proclaim their ardent desire to talk to Reagan.

According to the FDR's London representative, the whole purpose of the last offensive was to force talks in Washington rather than destroy the dictatorship militarily.

Such talks would be designed to produce an agreement whereby the FDR would agree to maintain business links, respect private property and safeguard members of the existing army.

The FDR have launched was mostly concentrated around the efforts of Moroccan forces to construct a sort of 'Maginot Line' in the north of the country and hold on to a useful triangle' of phosphate-rich Land in the north, in advance of the inevitable negotiations.

Enclaves

The Polisario guerrillas have responded to this by confining the Moroccans to a number of enclaves in the Northern part of their country.

They have also themselves occupied, in order to defend themselves, areas of Moroccan territory.

The extent of the control exercised by the Polisario was made clear to a delegation of themselves on the road of Mugabe and Nkomo. And they have gone far further down the path of selling out the popular struggle than did their bourgeois counterparts in Nicaragua at the corresponding stage of conflict.

Radicalisation

No doubt this difference is because of the undoubted radicalisation which the extended civil war in Nicaragua generated amongst the masses . of EI Salvador.

It is very far from clear that a victory for the guerrillas of the FMLN in El Salvador would be a victory for the capitalist members of the four main parties in the French Chamber of Deputies, who visited the area in the first days of 1981, led by Alain Vivien, a deputy from the Socialist Party.

During a period of several days travel throughout the Western Sahara the French parliamentarians saw no evidence at all of Moroccan occupation, even in the air.

The delegation saw clearly the hollowness of the boast of King Hassan of Morocco that there would be peace by the end of 1980.

Nor was the French delegation the only indication of growing international acceptance of the Polisario.

The US State Department also sent a delegation to the Left wing gunmen run for cover politicians of the FDR.

It remains to be seen it Reagan's staff are as perceptive as some of those in Carter's State Department who argued vociferously for an 'entente cordiale' • along the : lines proposed by the FDR as the best way of extricating themselves from the crisis.

Similarly, European social democracy, allied with Mexico, has pushed for such a solution.

Under these circumstances the campaign against US intervention must be supported by an equally strong campaign against the FDR's strategy for We must call for the FMLN liberated areas-even while continuing to supply arms to Morocco.

Also in October 1980 the United Nations General Assembly once again called for the withdrawal of Moroccan troops and for the settlement of the conflict on the basis of the principles of self-determination.

As a result of these developments, the independence of Western Sahara cannot now bir fat off.

The anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle of the Saharan people will then continue against the big corporations which are no doubt already preparing to move in to exploit the mineral wealth now slipping out of the . grasp of the Moroccans. to break from the bourgeoisie which is engaged in open treason even whilst guerrillas and large numbers of workers and peasants die in battle.

The "popular front" politics of the FDR, to which the FMLN is a party and the principal transmission belt to the masses is strengthened by the fact that the struggle has been largely confined to the countryside.

This has brought an effective marginalisation of the urban working class whose role is reduced to awaiting the call for a lightning general strike at the end of the fighting.

This leaves the working class demobilised and vulnerable to violent attacks from the state and the ultra-right terror squads as we have seen in recent weeks.

The dangers of petty bourgeois guerrillaism, so acutely evident in Nicaragua, are increasingly threatening even the task of defeating the dictatorship in El Salvador. a S01sirst Press 2-47 10p Price 32p incl. p&p from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX From back page No wonder the Soviet press now talks of joint military manoeuvres between the Polish and Russian army. They are even saying that sections of the "Solidarity" leadership are "counter-revolutionary"

The Kremlin leaders need desperately to witch-hunt "political elements" Such attacks will, they hope, intimidate the Solidarity leaders: failing this, they will provide a pretext for a military interven-.

tion into Poland.

Walesa's declaration that he no longer needs assistance from the dissident group KOR is in this context a concession to the strategy of the Kremlin leaders.

But in the unstable balance of forces in Poland such concéssions serve not to lessen the possibility of Soviet intervention but actually to strengthen it.

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Wednesday Black African jigsaw and a

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