A newly disclosed report from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has exposed deep cracks within the Polisario Front. According to the document, separatist officials quietly took part in Washington-brokered talks held in Madrid, addressing the practical mechanics of Morocco’s autonomy plan for the Sahara region. In the Tindouf camps, the disclosure landed like a bombshell.
The talks reportedly touched on some of the most sensitive aspects of the proposal: the shape of a possible transitional council, how resources would be shared, an amnesty and reconciliation framework, and the practical steps toward disarmament. For many within the movement, simply discussing these elements amounts to tacitly accepting the very framework of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, a stark departure from the Front’s decades-long public rhetoric.
Scrambling to contain the fallout, Polisario’s representative in New York, Sidi Mohamed Ammar, moved quickly to control the narrative. He insisted the movement would reject any negotiation that failed to guarantee what he described as the right to self-determination. His statement did little to quiet the backlash from hardliners aligned with Brahim Ghali, who view the Madrid discussions as an outright betrayal of the separatist movement’s founding principles.
Analysts tracking the Western Sahara file read the hurried statement as a sign of panic rather than strength, an attempt to paper over a widening rift between factions that increasingly disagree on how to respond to shifting diplomatic realities. Some within the camps have reportedly gone further, accusing the leadership of negotiating behind closed doors while publicly maintaining a hardline stance for its own base.
The episode unfolds against a backdrop of growing international momentum behind Rabat’s position. Morocco’s autonomy proposal, first presented in 2007, continues to gather broader recognition as the most credible and realistic basis for resolving the long-running regional dispute, just weeks ahead of a fresh Security Council deadline on the file.
