US-Russia Standoff Kills UN Mission as Morocco Celebrates

The Security Council failed to renew the mandate of Minurso, the UN's peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, after a US-Russia showdown threw the vote off the rails. Morocco's royal palace welcomed the collapse outright. In Laayoune, the territory's largest city, footage showed crowds pouring into the streets, waving Moroccan flags and holding up portraits of King Mohammed VI.

For years Minurso served as the region's eyes and ears, tracking military developments and cooling the risk of escalation between Morocco and the Polisario Front. Its departure leaves a real hole. Oxfam warned that scrapping the mission's monitoring and de-escalation role could undermine stability, with serious consequences for civilians. Moroccan international relations expert Issam Laaroussi told the BBC the exit doesn't create the conflict — it's already there — but could make an already fragile security environment worse.

The territory itself carries a long, contested history. Western Sahara was a Spanish colony until 1975, and as Spain prepared to leave, both Morocco and Mauritania claimed it. The International Court of Justice found historical ties of allegiance but no territorial sovereignty that could override the Sahrawi people's right to self-determination. Morocco's King Hassan II answered with the Green March: on 6 November 1975, around 350,000 Moroccan civilians crossed into the territory. Days later Spain signed the Madrid Accords, handing Morocco the northern two-thirds and Mauritania the southern slice. The Polisario Front, founded in 1973, rejected the deal as swapping one colonial ruler for two. Mauritania dropped its claim in 1979; Morocco kept fighting Polisario.

None of that legal ground has actually shifted. Western Sahara still sits on the UN's list of non-self-governing territories, and the African Union recognises it as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. But the political ground has. In 2020, the US recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory as part of a deal to open diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, and France backed Morocco's autonomy plan as the basis for a settlement in 2024. Laaroussi told the BBC the decision gives Rabat room to push that autonomy proposal and steer talks away from an independence referendum.

The UN vote has also fired up nationalist energy online, with Moroccan users sharing AI-generated images of themselves in military uniform and declaring readiness to fight for sovereignty. Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said the mission's end does not mean the end of the ceasefire, and that Rabat remains committed to it. Polisario hasn't revealed its next move. Any return to fighting could pull in Algeria, whose tensions with Morocco stay high — SIPRI says both countries sharply raised military spending last year, citing the Western Sahara dispute as a key driver, with Algeria spending an estimated $25.4bn against Morocco's $6.3bn.