Marrakech – The Sahrawi Movement for Peace (MSP), a secessionist offshoot that abandoned the Polisario Front, has blasted UN envoy Staffan de Mistura and MINURSO for perpetuating a “chronic stalemate” in the Western Sahara dispute, accusing the UN mission of transforming into a “bureaucratic relic” after 34 years of failure.
In a scathing statement posted on social media, Hach Ahmed Baricalla, First Secretary of the Polisario-renegade faction, lambasted the UN envoy for lacking courage to propose concrete solutions while hiding behind humanitarian rhetoric and warnings of “regional escalation risks.”
“Despite his repeated calls for creativity and commitment, de Mistura does not dare to present concrete proposals or a clear strategy to revive negotiations,” Baricalla wrote. “His discourse is dominated by humanitarian aspects and warnings of ‘regional escalation risk,’ reflecting caution rather than political leadership.”
Baricalla savaged de Mistura’s performance, noting that “after three years in the role, the UN envoy continues asking more questions than providing answers, even about his personal performance.”
Instead of establishing clear direction or creating a roadmap, “he merely directs questions to the Council and parties as if his role were limited to observation rather than active mediation with initiative.”
The MSP leader condemned de Mistura’s failure to address the collapsed 2020 ceasefire that has “cost hundreds of young Sahrawis their lives.”
He attacked the UN envoy’s contradictory position of expressing concern about humanitarian conditions in Tindouf camps while ignoring the military reality. This indicates “a disturbing disconnect between the field situation and official discourse delivered in the Security Council chamber,” he argued.
Baricalla further denounced de Mistura’s “clear inability to innovate or introduce genuine elements of change.”
He criticized the envoy for failing to acknowledge transformations within the Sahrawi community, particularly “the emergence of Sahrawis for Peace, which is neither the voice of Polisario nor Algeria nor Morocco, but calls for a realistic political solution and rejects the military option.”
The MSP leader accused de Mistura of “clinging to an outdated text that has lost its effectiveness,” arguing that “this stagnation and lack of flexibility and initiative deprives the political process of any new momentum, and establishes low-pitched diplomacy concerned with avoiding embarrassment more than achieving progress.”
Baricalla also ridiculed de Mistura’s call for resuming “roundtable” talks before year-end, saying it “lacks any effective content” and offers neither alternatives nor new ideas to bridge positions.
He suggested the envoy’s immediate goal is “merely organizing a new round of meetings, perhaps in search of a group photo alongside participating delegations, forgetting that photo was previously taken without success during his predecessors’ terms, James Baker and Horst Kohler.”
He concluded that de Mistura “appears to have surrendered to the comfort of the status quo, content with managing the conflict instead of seeking to resolve it politically.” The UN envoy’s role as a “political actor and builder of understandings has disappeared into a contemplative administration that does not exceed the limits of cautious diplomacy lacking tangible results.”
‘Dysfunctional and obsolete’
MINURSO was initially created in 1991 to organize a referendum that never materialized – sabotaged by Algeria and the Polisario Front’s manipulation of voter lists and obstruction of verification mechanisms, and now officially rendered obsolete within UN corridors.
The mission’s intent collapsed under the weight of fraud, as the so-called “voters” included thousands of people trucked in from neighboring countries with no ancestral or tribal links to the disputed territory.
Algeria still refuses to allow a simple census in the Tindouf camps precisely because such a count would expose this demographic fiction: many “Sahrawis” are either hostages or economic migrants coerced into serving a separatist narrative. After thirty-four years, MINURSO has become a bureaucratic relic – an expensive mechanism sustaining inertia, not peace.
The criticism coincides with mounting calls from international think tanks for MINURSO’s termination. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published a scathing op-ed in March urging the Trump administration to eliminate “failed UN peacekeeping operations,” specifically targeting MINURSO.
“Thirty-four years and billions of dollars later, MINURSO has not even conducted a census,” Rubin wrote in the Washington Examiner. He accused the Polisario of holding “wives and children as hostages to prevent refugee resettlement” and ridiculed MINURSO officials, claiming “the best way to find MINURSO officials in Western Sahara is to visit one of Laayoune or Dahkla’s bars, where MINURSO vehicles are ever-present.”
Sarah Zaaimi, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, echoed this criticism, describing MINURSO as “dysfunctional and obsolete” in an April analysis. She stressed that the mission now only serves to maintain a “state of paralysis throughout the years,” noting that MINURSO personnel “remained spectators, even during the rare skirmishes that were reignited along the sand wall, when Morocco decided to retake the strategic Guerguerat crossing in November 2020.”
These criticisms emerge as a draft resolution circulating at the UN Security Council proposes drastically reducing MINURSO’s mandate to just six months while explicitly framing future negotiations around Morocco’s 2007 Autonomy Initiative.
The draft states that “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the most viable solution” to the 50-year conflict and calls for negotiations “without delay or preconditions, on the basis of the Moroccan autonomy proposal.”
The resolution also proposes potentially “transforming or terminating MINURSO based on negotiation outcomes” before the shortened mandate expires, signaling a potential end to one of the UN’s longest-running and most criticized peacekeeping operations.
Read also: Sahara Endgame: Not MINURSO or MANSASO, but a More Coercive UN Security Council
