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This book explores the traces of the passage of time on the protracted and intractable conflict of Western Sahara. The authors offer a multilevel analysis of recent developments from the global to the local scenes, including the collapse of the architecture of the UN-led conflict resolution process, the advent of the War on Terror to the the Sahara-Sahel area and the impact of the ´Arab Spring´ and growing regional security instability. Special attention is devoted to changes in the Western Sahara territory annexed by Morocco and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco has adapted its governance and public policies to profound socio-demographic transformations in the territory under its control and has attempted to obtain international recognition for this annexation by proposing an Autonomy Plan. The Polisario Front and Sahrawi nationalists have shifted their strategy and pushed the centre of gravity of the conflict back inwards by focusing on pro-independence activism inside the disputed territory.

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Introduction

1. Introduction: Towards a Multilevel Analysis of the Western Sahara Conflict and the Effects of its Protractedness

Irene Fernández-Molina



I. Global Level

2. The United Nations´ Change in Approach to Resolving the Western Sahara Conflict since the Turn of the 21st Century

Anna Theofilopoulou

3. The Geopolitical Functions of the Western Sahara Conflict: US Hegemony, Moroccan Stability and Sahrawi Strategies of Resistance

Jacob Mundy

4. The EU´s Reluctant Engagement with the Western Sahara Conflict: Between Humanitarian Aid and Parliamentary Involvement

María Luisa Grande-Gascón and Susana Ruiz-Seisdedos



II. Regional Levels

5. Western Sahara and the Arab Spring

Inmaculada Szmolka

6. Algerian Foreign Policy towards Western Sahara

Laurence Thieux

7. Beyond Western Sahara, the Sahel-Maghreb Axis Looms Large

Luis Martinez and Rasmus Alenius Boserup

8. The Role of Sahrawis and the Polisario Front in Maghreb-Sahel Regional Security

Miguel G. Guindo and Alberto Bueno



III. National and Local Levels (1): Moroccan Governance of the Western Sahara Territory

9. Western Sahara in the Framework of the New Moroccan Advanced Regionalization Reform

Raquel Ojeda-García and µngela Suárez-Collado

10. The Western Saharan Members of the Moroccan Parliament: Diplomacy and Perceptions of Identity

Laura Feliu and María Angustias Parejo

11. Changes in Moroccan Public Policies in Western Sahara and International Law: Adjustments to a New Social Context in Dakhla

Victoria Veguilla



IV. National and Local Levels (2): Saharawi Resistance and Identity

12. Memory and Resistance: A Historical Account of the First "Intifadas" and Civil Organizations in the Territory of Western Sahara

Claudia Barona and Joseph Dickens-Gavito

13. Western Saharan and Southern Moroccan Sahrawis: National Identity and Mobilization

Isaías Barre¤ada

14. The View from Tindouf: Western Saharan Women and the Calculation of Autochthony

Konstantina Isidoros

15. "For us, Parliament is a Tool for Liberation": Elections as an Opportunity for a Transterritorial Sahrawi Population

Alice Wilson



V. Conclusion

16. Conclusion

Francesco Cavatorta

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