Executive Summary
The Western Sahara conflict—once a Cold War–era standoff between Morocco and a separatist insurgency—has reemerged as a volatile front in today’s great power rivalry. No longer frozen, it now poses a direct challenge to American security interests. At its center is the Polisario Front, a paramilitary organization formed in Algeria in 1973. The Polisario presents itself as a movement for self-determination. But it functions as a destabilizing militia—smuggling arms, indoctrinating young Moroccans and Sahrawis, and aligning itself with the strategic agendas of Iran, Russia, and China.
Morocco is a major non-NATO ally of the United States and the linchpin of regional stability. In 2020, President Donald Trump broke from America’s longstanding yet ineffective policy toward the region by officially recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a region Rabat has long administered. To move toward long-term stability in the region, the United States should take the next step and designate the Polisario Front as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).
The Polisario Front’s activities go far beyond the standard for a terror designation. Among other transgressions, the organization (1) violates the United Nations–backed 1991 ceasefire agreement in Western Sahara, (2) siphons humanitarian aid to fund its militant infrastructure, (3) collaborates with FTOs like Hezbollah and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), (4) receives drones from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) through transfers facilitated by the Algerian regime, and (5) smuggles arms to jihadist insurgencies that threaten American forces across the Sahel.
Designating the Polisario as an FTO would do more than cripple a proxy network. It would strengthen the US position in great power competition, demonstrate Washington’s commitment to its allies, and serve as a warning to America’s enemies.
Meanwhile, the Sahel is unraveling. Wagner mercenaries, Iranian weapons, and Chinese strategic encroachment contribute to rising instability. Morocco is the last reliable bulwark against this collapse. But the Polisario’s ability to operate with impunity weakens that bulwark—and Washington’s inaction sends the wrong signal in a region where strength alone shapes outcomes.
Fortunately, Washington is waking up to the Western Sahara’s importance. Congressman Joe Wilson has pledged legislation to expose the Polisario threat. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed Morocco’s autonomy plan as the sole credible path to peace. An FTO designation for Polisario is a lawful and strategically sound next step to address this urgent situation.
Historical and Geopolitical Context
The Western Sahara, a sparsely populated territory on Africa’s northwest coast, has been contested since Spain’s 1975 withdrawal. Morocco, citing historical and legal ties, administers most of it and has invested heavily in infrastructure, education, and governance in the region.
The Polisario Front claims to fight for self-determination in the region. But the organization carries a legacy of destabilization. Supported by Algeria and the Soviet Union, armed by former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and backed by Cuba, the front was designed to weaken pro-Western Morocco and advance Eastern Bloc interests in North Africa. Its tactics—guerrilla warfare, ideological indoctrination, and disinformation—still echo in the Tindouf camps of Algeria, which remain largely under Polisario control. A 1991 UN-brokered ceasefire paused major fighting. But the conflict remains unresolved, and hostile powers—namely Iran, Russia, and China—are again seeking to exploit it.
Algeria’s support for the Polisario is rooted in a longstanding rivalry with Morocco, inflamed by the 1963 border war and reinforced by ideological opposition. As Morocco expands its regional influence—driven by economic modernization, deepening US ties, and normalized relations with Israel—Algiers has entrenched itself in opposition. Algeria’s alignment with Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran is not incidental; it is strategic. Through military aid, financial backing, and diplomatic recognition of the so-called Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Algeria sustains the conflict and obstructs any path to resolution.
For years, US policymakers believed that neutrality might foster reconciliation between Algiers and Rabat. But Algeria’s ideological rigidity and its heavy investment in the Polisario made disengagement politically unjustifiable for the US. As Morocco strengthened its Western partnerships—especially through intelligence-sharing and joint military exercises like African Lion—the divide between Algiers and Rabat deepened further.
In December 2020, Trump broke with prior administrations’ failed belief in disengagement and recalibrated US policy to match the strategic realities of the region. By recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, he replaced ambiguity with strategic clarity—and helped facilitate normalization between Morocco and Israel.
The first Trump administration recognized Morocco’s effective control over Western Sahara, acknowledged its significant investment in developing the region, and highlighted the Western Sahara Autonomy Proposal—introduced by Morocco in 2006—as a credible framework for resolving the conflict. France and Spain followed Trump’s lead in endorsing Rabat’s autonomy plan. With this action, Trump aligned US policy with a key reality: that seeking reconciliation with an Algerian regime committed to perpetual proxy war is futile.
This was more than a policy change. It shifted US strategic posture in North Africa from a framework based on misguided neutrality to one grounded in geopolitical realism and alliance consolidation. In his second term, Trump should operationalize that shift by targeting the region’s primary source of instability: the Polisario Front.
The Legal Case for FTO Designation
The Polisario Front’s camps in Tindouf, Algeria, are militarized enclaves, not refugee havens. In these camps, Polisario enforces strict control over a population of approximately 90,000 people. Human Rights Watch reports that these camps have neither elections nor a free press, and that citizens face forced conscription backed by a penalty of imprisonment. The report even suggests some refugees under Polisario control may be enslaved. Moreover, the European Anti-fraud Office has documented the Polisario’s theft of aid to sustain its militias while residents suffer. These are the actions of a coercive regime, not a liberation movement. In contrast, Sahrawis in Moroccan-administered Western Sahara participate in Moroccan elections and have the same access to state services as Moroccan citizens.
On the military side, the Polisario Front’s deadly ties to extremist networks are well documented. Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, who reportedly held a role in the Polisario, became the emir of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). Under his leadership, ISGS carried out numerous attacks across the Sahel, including a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four US soldiers.
In 2021, the US government placed a $5 million bounty on al-Sahrawi. That same year, President Emmanuel Macron declared that France had struck a major blow against terrorism in the region when it killed the insurgency leader in a drone strike. Al-Sahrawi’s rise from the Polisario to the Islamic State underscores how militant ecosystems in the region overlap and evolve. It also demonstrates that the Polisario’s political infrastructure in Tindouf has long facilitated radicalization, trafficking, and terrorist mobilization—threatening regional stability, US interests, and the lives of American soldiers.
According to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Polisario Front meets all three statutory criteria for an FTO designation:
- First, the Polisario is a foreign organization. The Polisario operates entirely outside the United States. Its leadership, infrastructure, and militant activities are based in Algeria’s Tindouf region.
- Second, the Polisario engages in terrorist activity as defined under 8 U.S.C. § 1182. This includes attacks in violation of ceasefire agreements, violence against civilians, and logistical and operational coordination with FTOs like Hezbollah. In 2018, Morocco severed ties with Iran over the presence of Hezbollah training camps in Tindouf.
- Third, the Polisario’s activities threaten US nationals and harm American security interests. The group undermines Morocco, a major non-NATO ally and key US counterterrorism partner. It enables hostile actors like Iran, Russia, and China to expand their influence in the Sahel, a region critical to US military and economic interests. And the organization’s destabilizing actions threaten US personnel deployed in the Sahel and disrupt regional intelligence and security cooperation.
The Strategic Case for FTO Designation
The Iran-Russia-China axis and its partners, namely Algeria and South Africa, support the Polisario in multiple ways in pursuit of varying strategic ends.
- Iran’s IRGC and its Hezbollah proxy provide the Polisario drones and training. Tehran hopes to destabilize Morocco, a US and Israeli ally, raising the risk of a Yemen-like proxy war.
- China views Morocco’s Western alignment and deepening ties to the US and Israel as a threat to its influence in Africa. By covertly sustaining the Polisario conflict, Beijing diverts Moroccan resources away from regional leadership and slows Western economic integration across the continent. This allows China to pursue its African interests while maintaining official neutrality.
- Russia’s strategic partnership with Algeria bolsters its military export industry while quietly expanding Moscow’s presence across North Africa. Algiers, Russia’s largest African arms buyer, recently received Su-35 fighters. The ongoing Western Sahara conflict allows Russia to position itself as an indispensable interlocutor that Morocco cannot entirely sideline. This complicates diplomatic calculations while allowing Russia to encroach on NATO’s southern flank. By promoting instability in the Sahel, Moscow weakens US allies and disrupts maritime security across the Atlantic-African corridor, advancing its broader objective of strategic penetration into the region.
- Algeria, fearing Morocco’s Western alignment and growing ties to the US and Israel, provides military and diplomatic support, aligning with Iran, China, and Russia to perpetuate disorder.
- South Africa’s recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic—rooted in anti-Western ideology—obstructs UN involvement. This allows jihadists and Wagner mercenaries to more effectively sow instability in the region, undermining African stability and threatening US economic and security interests.
In response, the US should designate the Polisario as an FTO. This designation advances US strategic interests in seven critical ways:
- First, it would freeze Polisario assets. This would help dismantle the group’s smuggling and arms networks, sever its ties to Iran, Russia, and China, and deter other proxy threats from attacking US forces or allies.
- Second, it would contribute to regional stability by empowering Moroccan counterterrorism efforts, reinforcing Trump’s 2020 recognition of Western Sahara as Moroccan territory, and bolstering the legitimacy of Rabat’s autonomy plan.
- Third, it would disrupt Iran’s ability to wage proxy wars by disrupting a key IRGC supply line into Africa, reducing strain on US resources in the broader region.
- Fourth, it would expose and isolate Algeria’s regional destabilization strategy. By formally designating the Polisario Front as a terrorist organization, the United States would signal that it will not tolerate state-sponsored militancy—even under the guise of liberation. This will reinforce international norms against armed separatism and challenge Algeria’s use of proxy warfare to undermine neighboring states.
- Fifth, it would diminish arms flows to Sahel jihadists and strengthen America’s African partnerships. Morocco’s intelligence-sharing and hosting of US-led exercises like African Lion underscore Rabat’s value as a cornerstone of US-Africa policy.
- Sixth, it would undercut the Polisario Front’s international propaganda campaign. For decades, the group has used humanitarian narratives and legal ambiguity to win sympathy in global forums. A US terrorist designation would strip the Polisario of this veneer of legitimacy, curbing its ability to manipulate institutions like the African Union and the European Parliament.
- Seventh, it would address the Polisario’s longstanding abuse of refugee status in the Tindouf camps. The group has used these camps—populated by Sahrawis denied resettlement or citizenship—as both political leverage and recruitment grounds. A terrorist designation would spotlight this exploitation, discourage the instrumentalization of displaced populations, and pressure Algeria to allow independent oversight of the camps it hosts.
These benefits project American power efficiently, conserving resources while empowering allies.
Conclusion
The Western Sahara is no longer a marginal issue. It is a geostrategic intersection of counterterrorism, critical mineral access, and great power competition. Polisario-linked militant networks fuel instability across the Sahel, threatening US personnel, undermining regional governments, and disrupting access to uranium, gold, and rare earths deposits that are vital to global supply chains. Amid this turbulence, Morocco remains a steadfast US partner—neutralizing terror cells, training regional forces, and serving as a gateway for constructive Western engagement.
Designating the Polisario Front as a foreign terrorist organization would solidify the US-Morocco alliance, degrade a key node in Iran, Russia, and China’s architecture of influence, and demonstrate that American commitments carry strategic consequences. Inaction only further erodes US credibility.