Sahara Conflict: Preventing the coming “terrorism tsunami.”

To the countries of the Maghreb, the anti-terrorist war is a national issue.  The kind of terrorism that operates today in the Maghreb feels at ease because it takes advantage of the existing political and diplomatic contradictions, being the most evident and regrettable one, the distrust between Algeria and Morocco, with one border closed since 1994, and with the Sahara conflict pending.
More than thirty years after the Spanish colony was ceded to Morocco by virtue of the Madrid Accord, the Western Sahara conflict remains unresolved.  The three parties in question, Morocco, Algeria (which shelters and supports the Polisario Front) and the Polisario Front are entrenched in their positions.  Although the independence of Western Sahara is as ever unacceptable for the Moroccan government and society, the Polisario Front, for its part, wants to hear of no other solution.  For regional geostrategic reasons, it is sustained in its intransigence by the Algerian government. One can only wonder about the viability of "Micro States" in this globalization era.

Morocco, on its side, is ready to find a political solution that would involve brad sahraoui autonomy within the Moroccan national territory. It is clear moreover that, despite its intransigence, the Polisario Front represents only a fraction of the "sahraoui people", and Morocco is extremely concerned about increased terrorist operations in the Sahel region.  It's an enormous area, scarcely populated, with a low level of controls.  A whole range of illicit operations (drug trafficking, human trafficking, terrorists groups) is taking place there.  The link between the Western Sahara issue, terrorist and other security threats from the region is obvious. It's about time that we come to understand that the casualties of terrorist acts, like the police officer in Casablanca, state officials and civilians in Algiers, are our casualties and losses. Given the challenges of radicalization and al-Qaeda that we all face, it would be extremely useful for everybody to have the Sahara conflict resolved because the terrorism strikes against all of us.
 Morocco is a "rampart" defending the whole region, and deserves a lot of credit for fighting the war on terrorism.  It is about time that the countries of the Maghreb start working together to overcome their inter-political fights and find ways to cope with terrorism and extremist groups…..let's opt for a " United Maghreb."