[The struggles of the Polisario Front in Western…]

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The struggles of the Polisario Front in Western Sahara have escalated to a new level with the capture of eight French technicians in neighbouring Mauritania and renewed attacks on the mining centres and garrison towns controlled by the Mauritanian and Moroccan armies.

These moves have dragged the French government towards the centre of the athering vortex of forces earing down on the Maghreb (Arab-dominated northwest Africa).

No sympathy It is not, of course, sympathy with the nationalist aspirations of the Saharoui leaders that has provoked this international involvement, but competition for the 1.5 billion tons of phosphate deposits in the region.

•Green march' These reserves have long been coveted by the Moroccan government to eliminate competition and boost its own declining share of the world market.

Two years age revoluHassan-self-styled tionary monarch' of Morocco -launched the 'green march' of 350,000 unarmed civilians into what was then a Spanish colony.

Although this force withdrew, subsequent negotiations between the Moroccan, Mauritanian and Francoist governments brought the agreed partition of the territory between the two African states.

The 60,000 nomadic tribesmen of the Western Sahara were not party to this Madrid agreement.

In February 1976 the Polisario Front (the major nationalist grouping) declared the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic, and formed a Since then the guerrilla tactics of the Polisario have successfully prevented the export of any phosphates, and their attacks have seriously disrupted the iron industry, vital to the Mauritanian economy.

Their forces control the whole desert region outside the mining and military centres where the occupation armies are tied down in battles with the Algerianbacked and Russian equipped Saharoui.

Populist tactics

The key to the situation is to be found in Morocco's role.

Threatened by internal economic crisis, widespread rural discontent and recurring outbursts of revolutionary opposition from the urban working class, Hassan i took refuge in populist tactics to defend his beleaguered dictatorship.

The stage props of sham democracy were hastily year.

Behind the facade of parliamentary democracy, Hassan's own ministers engineered support for war initiatives by brandishing the rhetoric of a 'Greater Maghreb'.

The leaders of the opposition parties avidly pursued this deliberate diversion away from the problems within Morocco. Equally chauvinist, they clamoured in support of the regime's expansionist policies.

At one level, the whole war represents an extention of the long-standing rivalry between revolutionary' Morocco and 'socialist' Algera for the colossal mineral wealth of the northern Sahara.

Pawn

The principal supporter of the Polisario in the past, the Algerian government, formerly regarded the Front as a pawn to be deployed in its own nationalist and bureaucratic interests.

Recent signs of cooling Algerian enthusiasm for this particular gambit, may well have prompted the guerrillas to seize the French engineers as hostages.

Hassan has used the escalation of the conflict to revive territorial claims over western Algeria and is once more threatening a border war.

Meanwhile Algeria engaged in mediation for the release of the French captives but in competition with the Libyan government.

Gaddafi has eagerly rushed in, also waving the icon of a Maghreb united-but under his leadership.

Whatever may be the success of the Libyan dictator's maverick strategy, it is clear that the Mauritanian government will be a heavy loser from any settlement of the war.

Verge of collapse With its economy on the verge of collapse as the result of guerrilla warfare; Mauritania was forced to turn to Morocco for a guarantee of survival.

A rabbit might as safely approach a fox for a cure to myxamatosis-Mauritania had always been the primary target of Hassan's imperialist ambitions.

Although during the course of the war the Mauritanian army has grown from 2,500 to 17,000 troops, the country is now largely controlled by the Moroccans.

With a wider focus, the full significance of these developments becomes clear.

The French government supplies both occupying armies with equipment and military advisers: the movement of parachutists into the border region of Senegat was only an extension of this arrangement.

But the direct implication of France is just one part of the total imperialist effort.

In taking an aggressive political stance, Hassan is not simply responding to the requirements -of the Moroccan ruling class.

This foreign policy corresponds with imperialism's need to employ a policeman on the spot in Africa.

Vassal states

Since the victory of the liberation forces in Vietnam, US policy has shifted away from costly wars of intervention in search of reliable vassal states that will accept regional responsibility for defending the interests of international capital.

In Benin, Zaire and now Sahara, Hassan has acted in this way as the local agent of US capitalism, much as his close partner, the Shah of Iran, operates in the Gulf area.

In their struggles, the Polisario face not only the immediate armies of aggression, but behind them the desperate needs of international capital.

Although, as we shall show in future issues of Socialist Press, the Polisario Front has shown extreme political weakness, yet socialists must support the struggle for self-determination of the Saharan

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assembled, with "free' (ie, rigged) elections earlier this