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CounterPunch
January
8, 2003
Big Oil and James Baker Target
the Western Sahara
By WAYNE MADSEN
In the midst of America's international campaign
against terrorism, the Bush administration is permitting Big
Oil to legitimize the illegal occupation of an invaded country--Western
Sahara. Formerly known as Spanish Sahara and invaded by Morocco
in 1975 (the same year Henry Kissinger acquiesced to Indonesia's
invasion and annexation of East Timor and India's annexation
of the Himalayan Kigdom of Sikkim)), Western Sahara's occupation
by Morocco has neither been recognized by the United Nations
nor the Organization of African Unity. The latter actually recognizes
the independence of Western Sahara's exiled Sahrawi Arab Democratic
Republic, which is headquartered in remote and squalid desert
refugee camps on the Algerian side of the Western Sahara-Algeria
border.
In the New World Order of the Bush family,
the Western Saharans have little future. That is because the
lifeblood of what it means to be a Bush--oil--has been discovered
off the coast of Western Sahara. Although Morocco is the illegal
occupier of Western Sahara, that did not stop the Oklahoma City-based
Kerr McGee Corporation (the company infamously portrayed in the
movie "Silkwood") from signing an off-shore exploration
 deal
with Morocco on September 25, 2001, just days after the terrorist
attacks on the United States. The timing for Kerr McGee could
not have been better.
The group fighting for Western Sahara
independence, POLISARIO, once waged a bitter guerrilla war against
Morocco. In 1991, POLISARIO signed a cease fire with Morocco
but Moroccan troops remained in the disputed territory.
Meanwhile, Morocco continued to pour
thousands of native Moroccans into the territory. The 1991 cease
fire agreement with Morocco was to have resulted in a referendum
on the territory's future. However, Morocco kept delaying the
vote until it could salt the territory with enough of its own
emigres until they constituted a majority, thus ensuring a final
vote would result in voter approval for merger with Morocco.
In 1997, U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan, who, ironically, was awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize,
named former Secretary of State James Baker as his personal envoy
to settle the Western Sahara problem. Baker, who would later
serve as George W. Bush's fix-it man in Florida's disputed presidential
election, began considering rather novel ideas to settle the
Western Sahara problem.
Unfortunately, for the Sahrawis, Baker's
ideas were all stamped with the imprimatur of Morocco.
Baker, who is as connected to the Houston
oil big wigs as J.R. Ewing was to the oil czars in the TV show
"Dallas," has his own close ties to Kerr McGee.
His James Baker Institute at Rice University
funded a study Called "Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges
for the 21st Century." The author of that report is Matt
Simmons, President of Simmons and Company Investment Bankers
and member of the Board of Directors of Kerr McGee.
It also helps the cause of Kerr McGee
that Baker's former spokesperson at the Departments of State
and Treasury and close personal friend, Margaret Tutwiler, serves
as the U.S. ambassador to Morocco. One former associate of Tutwiler
confided that it was no coincidence that landed Tutwiler in Morocco,
"She was obviously placed there by Baker and his oil buddies
to help cut oil deals." Tutwiler is not only in a commanding
position to influence U.S. policy on Western Sahara but she can
count upon one of her best friends, former White House Communications
Director and close Bush confidant Karen Hughes, to ensure that
Morocco's case receives the personal attention of President Bush.
The plan that Baker drew up for Western
Sahara (while he was ensconced with his friends at his Jackson
Hole, Wyoming ranch) will undoubtedly result in the territory's
eventual merger with Morocco. Approved by the UN Security Council,
with the strong support of France, whose TotalFinaElf conglomerate
also just signed an offshore oil exploration, the plan calls
for a five-year delay for a final referendum. In the meantime,
Western Sahara will have a weak territorial assembly that will
be packed with loyalists of Morocco's
King Mohammed, a close U.S. ally. When
the referendum is finally held, sometime around 2006 or 2007,
all the Moroccan squatters and occupying troops will be allowed
to vote.
On January 7, 2003, the UN announced
that Baker would be visiting Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, and
Western Sahara to revive his peace plan. But it now seems that
with impending war with Iraq and the paralyzing Venezuelan oil
strike, Baker is under pressure from his friends in the Bush
administration to bring about the commencement of oil drilling
off of Western Sahara. Thus the sudden new interest by Baker
in a Western Sahara "peace" deal.
U.S. oil companies are chomping at the
bit. In its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Kerr
McGee continues to list Western Sahara's Boujdour block (where
it has been given permission to drill by Morocco) as being within
Moroccan territory, a claim neither supported by the United Nations
nor officially recognized by the United States.
Although Baker was to have been an honest
broker, even he had to admit to
the U.N. Security Council in 2001 that
the plan had been heavily influenced by Morocco. Since Bush has
enlisted the support of Algeria's President Abdelaziz Boutefllika
in the worldwide war against terrorism, it is clear that he was
pressured to limit Algeria's historic support for POLISARIO and
the Sahrawis. Bouteflika even endorsed Baker's plan. French President
Jacques Chirac has referred to Western Sahara as Morocco's "southern
provinces," a clear indication of where the West sees the
future of the territory.
For its part, the Western Saharans are
claiming the deals between Morocco and TotalFinaElf and Kerr
McGee are in violation of international law and previous UN resolutions.
The Sahrawi President, Mohammed Abdelaziz, condemned the oil
deals as an illegal "provocation." The Sahrawi cause
is supported by a number of NGOs, former French First Lady Danielle
Mitterand, and East Timor's leadership, which knows all too well
about being held hostage by oil interests and brutal occupying
dictatorships allied with the West. But the oil companies and
the Baker-Bush team still holds the trump card. If the Sahrawis,
out of desperation, break the cease fire and go to war with Morocco,
the anti-terrorism measures undertaken by the United States may
seal their fate.
All the State Department has to do is
simply declare POLISARIO and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
terrorist organizations. Their international assets would be
frozen, their leaders would be arrested and could be tried by
secret U.S. military tribunals and executed, and Big Oil and
Morocco would rule the day in Western Sahara. Even groups that
support their cause could be targeted and their assets seized.
Furthermore, the American public, conditioned to be suspicious
of all things Arab, would have little sympathy for nomadic Arabs
fighting against a U.S. "ally." It is a scenario that
could be replayed in every part of the world where local secessionist
groups are pitted against brutal regimes and greedy multinational
corporations--the Aceh region of northern Sumatra, West Papua,
and Nigeria's Delta Region, to name but a few.
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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