October 31, 2025, will undoubtedly be remembered as a historic rupture in the long and sterile confrontation surrounding the Moroccan Sahara. With the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2797, the international community has closed a decades-long chapter of strategic ambiguity that surrounded the so-called Polisario Front. This resolution, unprecedented in both political weight and normative clarity, leaves no room for ambiguity: the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative is no longer one option among others but the only framework recognized as the exclusive basis for a durable political settlement, in full respect of Morocco’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
This decisive shift is not a coincidence but the outcome of a decade of patient royal diplomacy and a meticulous strategy of influence and credibility. Morocco has shifted the center of gravity of the global debate by transforming the Sahara issue from a frozen political dispute into a model of advanced territorial governance, built upon stability, development, and regional cooperation. In the end, the Polisario and its Algerian sponsor find themselves diplomatically disarmed, stripped of both legal and moral legitimacy. The United Nations now implicitly acknowledges that facts on the ground outweigh ideological fictions: the Moroccan Sahara is a space of functional sovereignty, where stability and prosperity prevail over outdated revolutionary slogans.
A New UN Paradigm: Legality in the Service of Reality
This institutional shift illustrates the maturity of Moroccan diplomacy, now capable of transforming historical legitimacy into normative legitimacy. It reflects a coherent strategic evolution combining political constancy, legal mastery, and economic credibility. Morocco has succeeded in repositioning the Sahara issue within the field of practical and realistic solutions, where geopolitical reality prevails over ideological rhetoric. In this new global dynamic, Resolution 2797 confirms the emergence of a broad and structured diplomatic front around Morocco, proving that the Sahara question is no longer a regional dispute but a global issue of stability and governance.
The United States, as penholder of the dossier at the Security Council, played a decisive role in shaping the final text, explicitly enshrining the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as the sole basis for political negotiation. This American stance, supported by the White House, the State Department, and a bipartisan Congress, falls within a consistent strategic doctrine: for Washington, Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara is a cornerstone of transatlantic security and counterterrorism in North Africa and the Sahel.
Similarly, France and the United Kingdom, Morocco’s historic allies and strategic partners, have consolidated this orientation. Paris, London, and Washington now form a triangle of diplomatic stability, convinced that Moroccan sovereignty is not only a legal reality but also a geostrategic lever for Euro-African energy and maritime security.
To this Western alliance has been added a vast Arab and African coalition. The Gulf Cooperation Council states, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have reaffirmed their unwavering support for Morocco’s territorial integrity, even opening consulates in Dakhla and Laayoune, visible symbols of full diplomatic recognition. Meanwhile, over forty African states now openly support Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara, convinced that Africa’s stability depends on strengthening sovereign states and ending Cold War-era artificial conflicts.
Across Europe, twenty-three countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Croatia, have declared that Morocco’s Autonomy Plan constitutes the only serious, credible, and realistic basis for a lasting political solution. These dynamic forms a transatlantic arc of recognition, grounded in economic, energy, and security convergence.
In this context, the abstentions of Russia and China carry particular geopolitical significance. Far from signaling disapproval, they reflect a calibrated balance at a time of heightened friction with Washington over other strategic theaters—Ukraine, Taiwan, and NATO enlargement. Neither Moscow nor Beijing chose to block the resolution: a tacit gesture of benevolent neutrality toward Morocco’s stability model. Both powers, aware of the Kingdom’s geo-economic weight in South–South trade and Atlantic energy routes, favor a diplomacy of prudence that keeps the door open to deeper cooperation with Rabat in logistics, maritime security, and African corridors.
In stark contrast, Algeria’s absence from the vote was widely interpreted as a political act of evasion with no diplomatic consequence—a sign of a regime trapped in its own strategic isolation. By symbolically withdrawing from the UN process at a decisive moment, Algiers confirmed its doctrinal fatigue and its inability to influence the international stage amid a growing global consensus around Morocco. This diplomatic vacuum speaks volumes: Algeria is no longer perceived as a stabilizing actor but as a source of regional obstruction in a world that now values cooperation, connectivity, and shared security.
The Polisario’s Strategic Dead End
In the emerging order, the Polisario faces a triple erosion—political, geographical, and security-related. Politically, it represents nothing: no major power recognizes the so-called “SADR.”
Geographically, it is confined to a micro-space under Algerian control, cut off from any socio-economic dynamics. The Tindouf camps, once romanticized as a symbol of resistance, have devolved into zones of humanitarian despair and manipulation. From a security standpoint, the Polisario has become a gray zone in the Sahel, entangled in arms trafficking, smuggling networks, and alleged links to Al-Qaeda and Daesh affiliates. This drift turns it into a para-state destabilizing actor, increasingly seen by global chancelleries as a cross-border security threat.
Within this context, the United States could move toward designating the Polisario as a terrorist organization, based on the initiative introduced by Congressman Joe Wilson, which enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. Such a move would mark a strategic inflection: Washington now views the Polisario not as a political movement but as an irregular actor with terrorist potential, undermining stability across the Maghreb and Sahel and threatening critical energy and trade routes linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
If confirmed, this development would anchor U.S. policy in the logic of Resolution 2797, which recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over its southern provinces and reaffirms the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative as the sole basis for a political solution. It would thus seal the convergence between legal legitimacy and strategic security, positioning Morocco as a central actor in countering asymmetric threats in North Africa and the Sahel.
Royal Vision: A Strategic Offer to Algeria
Beyond its institutional scope, King Mohammed VI’s speech, delivered following the adoption of Resolution 2797, marked a geopolitical inflection point. By calling upon the Algerian president for a “sincere and brotherly dialogue, with no winner and no loser,” the king shifted the Sahara issue from the realm of contention to that of strategic consultation. This appeal is not rhetorical but part of a broader logic of regional reconfiguration, in which Morocco emerges as a balancing power and a force of convergence in a long-fragmented Maghreb.
Geopolitically, this outreach reflects a lucid exercise of statecraft: in an unstable Saharo-Mediterranean environment, neither pole of the Maghreb can ensure its own security or prosperity alone. Empowered by its consolidated legitimacy, Morocco presents itself not as a rival but as the architect of a new Maghrebi realism, grounded in interdependence and shared responsibility. Geostrategically, it represents a structural act of de-escalation, aiming to reposition North Africa as an area of stability, energy, and connectivity within the global system. This royal hand extended to Algiers also serves as a test of strategic maturity: remain in isolation, or join a regional project built on trust and cooperation.
From Sovereignty to Strategic Leadership
The equation is now clear: the stability of the Maghreb and the Sahel depends on Morocco’s leadership and its ability to create a viable ecosystem for peace and shared development. In this new reality, the Polisario—instrumentalized for decades by a geopolitics of obstruction—no longer has any role to play. The game is over. The era of Cold War illusions and separatist fantasies has ended. Morocco prevailed not through confrontation, but through strategic coherence, diplomatic constancy, and the quiet strength of its model. Therefore, Resolution 2797 is a genuine game changer. Indeed, it not only affirms Morocco’s legitimacy but also reconfigures the international reading of the conflict, anchoring the political solution exclusively in the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative. This shift turns the Moroccan Sahara into a geo-economic and security hub of the Afro-Atlantic space, granting the Kingdom an unprecedented role as a regional stabilizer and connector.
Thus, this royal speech, imbued with both strategic depth and moral vision, has redefined the very nature of Moroccan power in the region: a leadership that reconciles sovereignty with cooperation, strength with peace, and memory with modernity. By calling for a “dialogue with no winner and no loser” with Algeria, King Mohammed VI has positioned Morocco within the circle of nations that transform victory into a collective project and sovereignty into shared responsibility. Indeed, the geopolitics of the twenty-first century is no longer driven by ideological mirages but by the mastery of flows, the governance of territories, and the ability to generate security and trust. And on this terrain, sustained by royal vision, political stability, and African anchorage, Morocco has definitively taken the lead.
