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Marrakech – Everyone is talking about Africa Intelligence’s report claiming that a new mission, MANSASO, will replace MINURSO and usher in the “final phase” of the Sahara resolution.
On the surface, it seems convincing, presenting a historic and irreversible shift as the United States, France, and the United Kingdom allegedly marshal their collective diplomatic weight to consolidate a definitive outcome based on Morocco’s Autonomy Plan. This would effectively relegate the decades-old referendum option to the dustbin of history, where many analysts argue it has long belonged.
This transformation was branded by the Africa Intelligence report as a fundamental reorientation of the international approach, abandoning the failed referendum path that has served primarily as a tool for Algerian obstructionism and embracing the pragmatic reality of implementing autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
The new mission would focus exclusively on facilitating the autonomy process, marking a definitive end to the referendum option that Algeria and its Polisario proxy have desperately clung to despite its manifest impracticality. This paradigm shift, as presented in the report, effectively would pull the rug from beneath Algiers’ decades-long strategy of perpetuating a diplomatic fiction to undermine its western neighbor.
Empty talk?
Yet, according to diplomatic sources who spoke to Morocco World News (MWN) on condition of anonymity, Morocco – known for working in silence until decisive, strategic decisions are formally announced – is unlikely to allow such leaks or premature declarations.
If such a shift were truly happening, it would have been announced by King Mohammed VI himself or Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, not through reports citing a former ambassador no longer involved in the file. In reality, these are waves of speculation, not substance.
What is certain, however, is that the Western Sahara dispute is entering its endgame – not through the creation of a new mission, but through the steady consolidation of Morocco’s Autonomy Plan, the only proposal the Security Council has recognized since Resolution 1754 (2007) as serious and credible, a process that has left Algeria’s Polisario proxy facing an unprecedented diplomatic encirclement.
The proposed MANSASO (Mission d’assistance pour la négociation d’un statut d’autonomie au Sahara occidental) would supposedly replace MINURSO, the UN mission established in 1991 that has become emblematic of diplomatic stagnation and unfulfilled mandates.
But MWN’s diplomatic sources stressed that Morocco’s position has never rested on acronyms or bureaucratic reshuffles. While such reports speculate about creating new structures to replace MINURSO, Morocco’s diplomacy has already rendered the referendum obsolete. Since 2002, the referendum option was taken off the table, and since 2007 it has effectively been declared dead in practice.
With or without MINURSO, or any renamed mission, the only solution is autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. The real breakthrough would be the Security Council explicitly demanding Algeria to sit at the negotiating table with Morocco. That, not the rebranding of a mission, would be a decisive step towards a final solution.
Experts have pointedly criticized this mission multiple times. In March, American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin argued that “thirty-four years and billions of dollars later, MINURSO has not even conducted a census,” accusing the UN of perpetuating the problem by “funding these camps and inflating Polisario legitimacy.” He went further, ridiculing officials: “Today, the best way to find MINURSO officials in Western Sahara is to visit one of Laayoune or Dakhla’s bars.”
Likewise, in April, Sarah Zaaimi of the Atlantic Council observed that MINURSO has remained a “spectator mission,” sustaining only a “state of paralysis throughout the years,” a verdict that captures its persistent failure to actively contribute to peace.
Diplomatic sources added that creating a new mechanism could take years, and Morocco – now in a position of strength – would never accept an arrangement that risks pulling it backward.
According to an August 12 World Press Review briefing, after a series of diplomatic successes, Morocco has shifted its Sahara strategy from a security-based narrative to one centered on economic development.
Rabat has intensified its outreach since President Donald Trump’s 2020 recognition, using flagship infrastructure projects to attract investment and reinforce global support for its Autonomy Plan, now focusing on economic development as its main lever to consolidate sovereignty over the Sahara.
Morocco already curtailed MINURSO’s scope in March 2016 by expelling around 80 civilian staff, mostly from the political and administrative sections, showing with resolve that it will never allow international mechanisms to become tools of obstruction. Today, its strengthened position makes any regression impossible – a Trojan horse dragging the process backward will not be tolerated.
Since 1991, MINURSO has nominally held a mandate to organize a self-determination referendum that proved impossible to implement due to intractable disagreements over voter eligibility.
Coordinated diplomatic offensive
The diplomatic sequence has intensified in recent weeks, beginning in late July with a meticulously planned regional tour by Massad Boulos, advisor to Trump for Middle East and African Affairs.
In a calculated diplomatic maneuver, Boulos first met with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot in Paris before heading directly to Algiers without stopping in Rabat – a significant diplomatic signal identifying Algeria as the true belligerent in a conflict it has long pretended merely to observe from the sidelines.
In Algiers, Boulos delivered an unambiguous message, urging Algerian officials to accept an “honorable solution” based on Moroccan autonomy instead of persisting with the referendum charade.
Days later, King Mohammed VI reinforced this coordinated approach in his 26th Throne Day speech, extending an olive branch by calling for a “consensual solution with Algerian brothers,” demonstrating clear strategic alignment between Rabat and Washington that left Algiers diplomatically outmaneuvered.
The American diplomatic offensive continued unabated when Richard Duke Buchan III, newly appointed US Ambassador to Rabat, stressed before the Senate that Morocco’s Autonomy Plan remains “serious, credible and realistic” – the only viable solution to a conflict artificially prolonged by Algerian intransigence.
This forceful statement echoed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s April declaration reaffirming American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, crystallizing a bipartisan American consensus that has shattered Algiers’ hopes for policy reversals with changing administrations.
On August 2, in a decisive diplomatic coup, Trump sent an official letter to King Mohammed VI. In it, the US president unequivocally reiterated support for Morocco’s territorial integrity and the 2007 autonomy initiative while explicitly rejecting the referendum option that has served as Algeria’s diplomatic crutch for decades.
This high-level endorsement left no room for ambiguity or baseless accusations of “just a tweet,” indicating Washington’s determination to resolve the conflict on terms favorable to its 250-year-old Moroccan ally.
It even led the military regime’s propaganda machine to falsify a clearly scandalous document, supposedly from the White House, alleging that Trump had not sent a letter – a desperate attempt to keep their narrative alive.
A concrete plan taking shape
The strategic blueprint is rapidly materializing into concrete action. An American delegation composed of senior diplomats and military officials conducted a significant visit to Laayoune and held substantive discussions with Alexander Ivanko, head of MINURSO.
These talks centered on systematically reducing the mission’s size, particularly its civil and political components that have perpetuated the referendum fiction, while maintaining only the essential peacekeeping forces to monitor the ceasefire – a practical step toward reconfiguring the UN presence to align with geopolitical realities rather than diplomatic abstractions.
Enthusiasts of the newly-floated MANSASO argue that it would have far-reaching implications: removing the Sahara from the UN list of non-self-governing territories under the Special Committee on Decolonization (C-24), definitively excluding the increasingly marginalized Polisario from the African Union, and cementing international recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over a region where Morocco’s development investments have already created irreversible facts on the ground.
Yet this analysis overlooks a crucial point: while the Security Council is the only UN entity that has the prerogative to search for a political solution to the Western Sahara dispute, it has no power to remove the Western Sahara from the list of non-self-governing territories with the General Assembly being the only framework where such a goal could be achieved.
Diplomatic battlefield: The Security Council
Some suggest that Washington, leveraging its position as the penholder on this issue at the Security Council, has strategically timed the introduction of a resolution in October that could fundamentally transform the UN mandate.
France, abandoning its traditional diplomatic equivocation, now strongly backs the supposed initiative the report refers to. This means Morocco’s diplomatic machinery can now focus on methodically persuading non-permanent members: Slovenia, South Korea, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Panama, and Somalia.
For the resolution to secure passage, it requires at least nine favorable votes while avoiding any veto. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom already constitute a formidable bloc supporting Morocco’s position.
Rabat’s diplomatic strategists anticipate securing twelve votes, calculating that Russia and China – despite their historical alignment with Algeria – will likely opt for abstention rather than expend diplomatic capital on a lost cause, allowing the transformation to proceed without obstruction.
Algeria, despite its current Security Council seat, finds itself increasingly isolated and impotent to prevent the diplomatic avalanche threatening to bury its separatist ambitions.
But as our above-cited diplomatic sources have made clear, the establishment of a new mission appears to be a far-fetched idea that would most likely fail to get Morocco’s buy-in.
The most realistic approach that would bring the dispute closer to a final solution would be for the Security Council to adopt, next October, a resolution calling unambiguously on Algeria to sit to the negotiations table with Morocco and search for a final, face-saving solution in line with King Mohammed VI’s Throne Day speech offer.
A carrot-and-stick approach
The United States is implementing a sophisticated carrot-and-stick approach to neutralize Algerian obstruction. The stick: actively exploring the classification of Polisario as a terrorist organization, which would devastate its already fragile international legitimacy and inflict serious diplomatic damage on Algeria’s credibility as the group’s primary sponsor. Bills advancing this designation are gaining traction in Congress, championed by influential figures like Joe Wilson and Jimmy Panetta.
The carrot: tantalizing promises of substantial American investments in Algeria’s energy and mineral sectors, with major corporations already signaling interest, offering Algiers a face-saving economic incentive to abandon its diplomatically untenable position.
France has assumed the role of diplomatic bridge-builder between Washington and Rabat. Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita is imminently expected in Paris to finalize a comprehensive settlement text whose fundamental principles were already sealed during high-level consultations between King Mohammed VI and President Macron at their landmark 2024 summit in Rabat.
This Franco-American diplomatic pincer movement has effectively cornered Algeria, leaving it with diminishing options as its traditional diplomatic shields crumble.
Algeria and Polisario: Defiance against reality
Algeria will not relinquish its obstruction so easily, and a final showdown – whether in the form of diplomatic grandstanding, threats of escalation, or mere bluff – remains likely.
Such claims, even when not properly substantiated, nonetheless reveal a certain willingness and audacity on the UN’s part to edge closer to reality, even if half-heartedly or in ways meant to avoid outright alienating Algeria and the global leftist and “decolonial” circles whose voices still carry some weight in UN corridors.
Despite this overwhelming diplomatic pressure, Algeria’s military-dominated regime stubbornly maintains its anachronistic stance, defending a referendum that international consensus has declared unworkable. On August 20, in a display of diplomatic tone-deafness, Polisario leader Brahim Ghali reaffirmed to the UN Secretary-General that the referendum remains “the only legitimate framework for decolonizing the Sahara.”
In a desperate attempt to resuscitate a moribund approach, he even resurrected the long-discredited proposal to expand MINURSO’s mandate to include human rights monitoring, revealing the bankruptcy of a strategy that has failed to adapt to evolving geopolitical realities.
This diplomatic obstinacy reflects the Algerian military establishment’s strategic paralysis and inability to recalibrate its foreign policy in response to shifting international dynamics.
By persisting in a losing battle that continues to hemorrhage financial resources and diplomatic capital, Algeria’s generals have sacrificed regional economic integration and development on the altar of an ideological vendetta against Morocco that increasingly appears divorced from rational statecraft.
Read also: US Under Trump’s Leadership Propels Push for Final Resolution of Sahara Dispute
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