University Daily Kansan, April 15, 1981
Page 9
Moroccan war details related
By CORAL BEACH Staff Reporter
Continued Western military support of Morocco in its war with the people of the Western Sahara could destroy the economics of both nations, Barbara Tucker said in a representation of the American Universities Field Staff, last night.
The U.S. government agreed March 25 to sell the Moroccan military virtually anything it needed to continue its war against the Polisario Front and the Sahrawi, the native people of the Western Sahara.
"The continued support of this war is slowly destroying Morocco. There have been massive strikes and the soldiers are often motivated to fight." Harrell said.
Harrell visited the University of Kansas during the past week as part of a lecture tour. She has been a member of AUFUs for the past four years and her specialty is Western Africa. The AUFUs was founded in 1961.
AUFS REPRESENTATIVES live in foreign countries and publish reports about the peoples, societies, economics, cultures and customs of their respective countries. The representatives are also required to tour the United States periodically, lecturing on university campuses about their work.
Harrell said she was most concerned with the war over the possession of the Western Sahara. Both the Moroccan government and the Sahrawi claim land. The war is partly a result of the "economics of fertilizer," Harrall said.
"Seventy-one percent of the world's supply of phosphate is in the western wheat belt where it is fertilized which is in short supply all over the world. It was also recently
discovered that uranium could be extracted from the rock."
This discovery has increased the demand for phosphate, Harrell said, and has thus increased the Moroccan's control for control of the Western Sahara.
The Westinghouse Corp. developed technique of extracting uranium from phosphate and would like to sell the method to Morocco, Harrell said She would also be helping adding the Moroccos and encouraging the U.S. government to do likewise.
"If you like your taxpayer dollars supporting corporate interests then you can get more."
BEFORE THE REST of the world got interested in the control of phosphate, the war was basically over territorial rights. Harrell said.
"All of the boundary lines on the African map were arbitrarily drawn by European colonial powers during the 'scramble for Africa,'" she said. "When the African nations were under British control, the African Unity) agreed to respect the colonial boundaries even though they were not really fair."
Harrell said that the decolonization actually existed only on paper because Spain declared the Western Sahara a province in 1956.
Morocco and Spain then joined Mauritania, the African nation directly south of the Western Sahara, in a tripartheid in 1975. The agreement included a division of the Western Sahara, giving most of the land to Morocco and 35 percent of the phosphate profits to Spain.
The Moroccan government then attempted a genocide of the Sahrawi people because they would not accept the Moroccan rule, Harrell said.
HARRELL SAID that the Sahrawi outside of the Western Sahara then
organized their political party, the Polisario Front, to try to protect the civilians from the Moroccan military. With the help of Algeria and other African nations, the Polisario moved 90,000 Sahrawi refugees to camps in the Sahara in Algeria in 1977. Half of the area are still living in the tent camps.
Harrell sent 15 days in January and February visiting the refuge camps. She said the Polisario put a heavy emphasis on literacy and health in the camps, with almost all of the people attending some kind of school.
She said there were many myths and stereotypes about the Sahrawi.
"I read in your Lawrence paper that every child over 10 gets military training," Harrell said. "That's absolute nonsense."
She said that the children were taught the importance of preventive medicine, nutrition and equality of the sexes. The preservation of their culture is also stressed, she said, even to the point of paramedics regulating dosages of traditional herb and mineral medicines.
IN ADDITION to preserving traditions, the Sahrawi are also very adept at maintaining optimism and impatience in unmountable odds, Harryll said.
"The Moroccan government spends $3 million on the war every day. The combined aid to the Polisarib Front, including the money from the African nations, the U.N. and other sources, is less than $90 million a year."
Harrall said that the war was at a crucial point now, and that the continued support of Morocco by the United States, France, Russia and China has been a destructive of the Moroccan economy as well as the Sahrawi neonle.
"In our world, unfortunately, it's might not right that prevails," she said.
Special to the Kansan
These Sahrawi refugees have been living in tent camps in the in Algerian Sahara since 1977. The name of this region translates to English as "Oh it is hot; Oh it is cold" because of the extreme temperature changes from season to season.
City planning session open to public
A city-sponsored "listening session," designed to channel public input into the fomulation of Lawrence's pending comprehensive downtown plan, will begin at 7 p.m. tonight in the City Commission chambers.
Bruce Heckman of Robert Teska and Associates, Lawrence's urban planning consultant and the plan's designer, will be there to "get the ideas on anyone who needs to come" according to D. C. Palos, a member of the city planning staff.
"This whole thing is in the very first stages of getting started," Palas said. "That's why we're having the listening part to get public input right off the bat."
"This comprehensive plan will get more into the nuts-and-bolts of the whole issue," Palos said. "The plan will deal with things that the downtown area needs to meet in transport and circulation problems we're likely to encounter downward."
The city hire Teskla last year to help in its attempts to upgrade its downtown retailing scheme. The comprehensive plan will be much more detailed than the city's retail study that deal with the city's retail development problems, Palas said.
The listening session would precede a series of workshops that Teskia will conduct in the future, Palos said.
"This is the only listening session that we'll be having, per se." Palos said.
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