The Polisario Front’s rapid and official reaction to an article on the Western Sahara issue by the Wall Street Journal leaves us with a number of questions.
Indeed, the conclusions made by American journalist Dion Nissenbaum are not new. John Bolton, the national security advisor of the United States, had told the New Yorker in December that there are only two Americans who are concerned about the Western Sahara conflict : himself and James Baker, the former UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy to the region (1997-2004).
«The anger of the Polisario is the straw that broke the camel’s back», a well-informed source told Yabiladi on Thursday. Indeed, the same source reveals that the Front has been «losing ground in Washington during the last couple of months».
Algerian lobbyists in the United States have other fish to fry
«Since the start of the social unrest, also known as Algerian Hirak, in February, Algerian lobbyists in the United States have been giving the priority to finding a way of ending the crisis with US officials … Suddenly, the traditional campaign launched to support the Polisario has been affected», the same source explained.
This is obviously noticed in the camps which have not been visited by American senators and American delegations for a while now. In fact, the last visit of this kind is the one conducted in February by Senator James Inhofe, the senior United States Senator from Oklahoma. He was accompanied by Michael Bradley Enzi, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and Senators Mike Rounds and John Boozman.
Since the beginning of the year, Morocco has multiplied its gestures towards the United States. The Kingdom took part in the Warsaw conferences on the threat of Iran and another one in Manama on the economic side of the «Deal of the Century». The Kingdom has also broken its piggy bank for arms contracts totalling billions of dollars.