Sovereignty in Exile: A Saharan Liberation Movement Governs by Alice Wilson

Excerpt

Sovereignty in Exile: A Saharan Liberation Movement Governs explores the construction of sovereignty and statehood in the Western Sahara, Africa’s last remaining colony. On 14 November 1975, Spain, Morocco, and Mauritania signed the Madrid Accords, under which the territory of the Western Sahara was divided into two, with the northern part being annexed by Morocco and the southern part being incorporated within Mauritania. In 1979, Mauritania relinquished its claims and withdrew from the southern part of the territory, which was ultimately also annexed by Morocco. Consequently since 1975, the territory of the Western Sahara has been the subject of a long-running dispute and conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front liberation movement, which claims the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and an independent state. In 1976, the Polisario Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), with the government-in-exile based in the refugee camps of Tindouf, Algeria. This is where Alice Wilson carried out her fieldwork, between 2006 and 2014, in order to understand the rehearsal of statecraft by what she calls the “state-movement” formed by the Polisario Front and the SADR. …