Rabat’s Secret Drones: Assessing Morocco’s Quest for Advanced Uav Capabilities | ISPI
On the night between April 7th and 8th, the chief of the Polisario Gendarmerie, Addah Al-Bendir, was reportedly killed under unclear circumstances by an alleged airstrike in a Polisario-controlled desert area in the disputed Western Sahara territory near Tifariti, according to an official press release by the Sahrawi Ministry of Public Defence then quoted by several media outlets, though it was almost immediately removed from the official Sahrawi Presse Service’s website.
Bendir’s death is only the latest episode in a decades-old struggle between Morocco and the separatist Polisario Front over the control of Western Sahara, and it follows a period of tensions along the heavily militarized border that separates the Kingdom’s occupied territories from those controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
These tensions escalated last November when Rabat deployed the army to reopen the Kingdom’s only highway into West Africa, blocked by pro-Polisario groups claiming it was built in violation of a 1991 UN-mediated truce. For its part, the Polisario — which has long demanded an independence referendum— has so far ruled out any autonomy offer proposed by Morocco under Rabat’s administration and reacted by announcing daily attacks against Morocco positions. The resumption of hostilities after thirty years of truce not only indicates the profound divide that persists between the two sides; it also highlights the substantial ineffectiveness of diplomacy, with the threat of a larger military confrontation dangerously looming on the horizon.
