Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has announced that he, along with Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott R-FL), have introduced a bill targeting what they call the “Iranian Regime’s Polisario Front,” designating that popular North African nationalist movement as a “terrorist organization.” Those of us knowledgeable of the Middle East and North Africa have been scratching our heads trying to figure out about what they could be referring to.

Since the early 1970s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Frente Polisario) has been leading a fight first, initially for independence from Spain and, after subsequently for freedom from Morocco’s efforts to forcibly annex the territory.  The Polisario is a moderate secular movement whose leadership is democratically elected by refugees, consisting of nearly half of the nation’s population, residing in camps in neighboring Algeria

In the 50 years of resistance against Moroccan occupation forces, the Polisario has never engaged in any acts of terrorism. Not once. Indeed, they have formally ratified the Geneva Conventions and their protocols and they are a party to the African Union’s Convention on Counter-Terrorism. A 2009 State Department report noted how they were an active force against extremism in that volatile region.

Given that Western Sahara is recognized by the United Nations as a non-self-governing territory and thereby has the right to self-determination, Morocco’s irredentism is recognized as a flagrant violation of international law. Despite decades of mediation efforts by the United Nations to allow for a referendum on the fate of the territory, Morocco has refused.

The Polisario has been recognized by the United Nations as the sole representative of the Western Saharan people, known as Sahrawis. The Polisario-led Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been recognized by over eighty countries and is a full member state of the United Nations.

Why, then, are Senator Cruz and his colleagues insisting that Frente Polisario is working with Iran’s reactionary Islamist regime and affiliated terrorist organizations and should be designated as a terrorist group as well?

For years the autocratic Moroccan government has actively spread disinformation claiming that the Polisario has collaborated with everyone from Al Qaeda to ISIS to Hezbollah to various communist groups. They have never presented any credible evidence supporting any of these charges, which have been refuted by even cursory examination.

Now, with the United States waging war against Iran, Senator Cruz and his colleagues have decided to try to associate the Polisario with yet another one of Washington’s enemies in order to undermine the Sahrawis’ right to national self-determination.

Ironically, some of the United States’ leading Iran hawks are also supporters of Western Sahara’s right of self-determination under the leadership of the Polisario, including Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), the late Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), and former Secretary of State James Baker.  Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, one of the most hardline critics of Iran and its proxies, recently noted that allegations of Iranian influence on the Polisario are “without evidence.”

Does Senator Cruz and his colleagues really believe that these individuals would support a group doing Iran’s bidding?

We would strongly suggest these senators undertake a visit to the region, including to the refugee camps and the Moroccan-occupied territories, to meet with Polisario officials and ordinary Sahrawis on the ground. To introduce legislation targeting a legitimate nationalist movement they clearly know nothing about is dangerous and irresponsible. At a time where there are very real terrorists targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East and North Africa, it does not serve U.S. interests to go after a phantom threat.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. serves as the co-coordinator of the US Campaign for Western Sahara, is a former president of TransAfrica Forum, and is a long-time trade unionist, including as an Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press, 2022)

Stephen Zunes is an American international relations scholar specializing in Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, and strategic nonviolent action.

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