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The Death of the leader of the separatist Polisario Front: Bad News, Good News.. No News
Mohammed Abdelaziz, the secretary general of the separatist movement Polisario Front, has died on Tuesday afternoon after a long battle with illness.
The movement ordered a 40-day mourning period, after which a new secretary-general will be chosen, it added.
Khatri Abdouh, one of the front leading members was appointed as interim Polisario Front leader.
However, for Morocco, Rabat has acted as a ¨no news generating incident¨. This might be because of the fact that Mohammed Abdelaziz has played a major role in expanding hostilities between Morocco and Algeria, through his placement as a delegated agent, backed by Algerian army to advocate separatist thesis. Also, for his misleading role that triggered three decades of separations of thousands of Sahraouis from their families, through sequestration, ideological indoctrination and starvation mechanism.
According to information published by Spanish news website lainformacion.com, the late Polisario leader Mohammed Abdelaziz, revealed to one of his close friends that the lung cancer he battled for years led him to believe that his old convictions “had become obsolete over time.”
Since its creation, the Polisario is not the master of its destiny. Decisions are not made in the Tindouf Sahrawi refugee camps, but in Algiers.»
Today, after the death of Mohammed Abdelaziz, the new leadership of Polisario might handle a new approach to the Western Sahara conflict and bring a new dynamic to the conflict, based on willingness to open up to Morocco and show readiness to negotiate a political solution . Or it will just stick to the Algerian sponsored thesis of separatism.
Nevertheless, whatever happens, the new leadership will not be able to refrain Saharawi young people from inquiring their rights to have self-worth life based on freedom to choose their representatives and to express their will.
The death of Mohammed Abdelaziz was in ground a convenient opportunity for young Sahraouis to see how the Polisario former leader , was just a rebellious Moroccan citizen, descended from a father who fought in the Moroccan army for the Moroccan territorial Integrity.
Mohammed Abdelaziz was born in Kasbat Tadla, outside of Marrakech, along with many of his siblings. He studied in Agadir, then in Rabat, like several other founding members of the Polisario.
His father, Khalili Ben Mohamed Al-Bachir Rguibi was born in 1912 and served as a member of the Moroccan Liberation Army, which was formed following Morocco’s independence in order to fight Spanish colonialism in southern Morocco. He later joined the Moroccan Armed Forces until he retired in 1976.
It is expected that Mohamed Abdelaziz will be buried Bir Lahlou , located in the Moroccan land in the buffer zone in Western Sahara. But for Moroccans, this is not an issue that generates disputes, since Abdelaziz was born in Morocco of Moroccan father and a mother, it gives him a natural right to be buried inside Moroccan territory, regardless of their political convictions
News from the field talked about the existence of a state of emergency in various camps in Tindouf and around, due to tensions that prevail among sahraouis, especially among young groups that claimed just after the death of the front leader, the lifting of the ban on three files related to the suspected involvement Mohamed Abdelaziz,mainly in:
- The context related to the assassination of the founder leader of the Polisario Front Mustafa el Ouali
- The file related to the Deviation of humanitarian aid
- Then the behavior of nepotism initiated by Abdelaziz at the top level of the decision-making inside the Front, including his political protection granted to his wife Khadija inside the Sahrawi Women’s Federation, and to his sons inside the so called ¨Sahraoui Television and inside the so-called Sahraoui Army
In this video published on YouTube: Abdelaziz’s father said that he had not seen his son since 1975. The former member of the Moroccan army also disowned his son due to his involvement with the Polisario.
