In April 2021, I told The Guardian that Sahrawi activists were having their phones and internet connections hacked.

At the time, we could describe what was happening to us. We could not see the machinery behind it.

Five years later, Amnesty International’s new investigation, “We Start With the Verdict”: Inside Morocco’s Surveillance Machine, gives those warnings a disturbing new context.

Amnesty describes a surveillance ecosystem involving spyware, physical surveillance, location tracking, informants, judicial pressure and smear campaigns. Western Sahara is not peripheral to its findings.

The organisation devotes a case study to Sahrawi activists and reports that a former member of Morocco’s domestic intelligence service, identified as “Safir,” described Sahrawis and Riffians as priority intelligence targets, including beyond Morocco. Amnesty says it independently verified his identity, employment and key elements of his testimony.

The report also contains forensic evidence involving Pegasus spyware and documents cases connected to Sahrawi activism that reached European territory.

The people Amnesty examined are the tip of the iceberg. They are documented cases: people researchers could interview, devices they could examine, or targets for whom other evidence was available.

Surveillance is secret by design. Most people never learn that their phones have been compromised, and most suspicious devices will never reach a forensic laboratory.

That is why the chronology matters.

Chilling effect

On 8 April 2021, The Guardian quoted my warning that Sahrawi activists’ “phones and internet connections are hacked.” We were describing the symptoms years before Amnesty’s latest investigation exposed more of the machinery.

But surveillance is not simply about collecting information.

When a security service knows who an activist speaks to, where that person travels and what exists inside a phone, information can become power.

Amnesty documents cases in which private information gathered through surveillance later appeared in media coverage and coordinated smear campaigns against human rights defenders.

The organisation is careful: it could not independently establish the source of every piece of private material published. But it says the nature of some material raises serious concerns that surveillance-derived information may have reached media actors.

For Sahrawis, that raises an obvious question: How does private information about activists move from their lives and devices into the public sphere?

That question deserves independent forensic investigation.

But Amnesty’s report should provoke another examination — this one in Washington and European capitals.

For decades, Western governments have built close security relationships with Morocco around counterterrorism, intelligence cooperation, migration and regional stability.

The question is not whether those relationships should exist. It is whether the West has adequately examined what happens to security capabilities once they are in the hands of its partners.

Amnesty does not establish that every security capability Morocco obtained through Western cooperation was used against Sahrawis. The evidence does not support such a sweeping conclusion.

It does, however, justify harder questions.

What safeguards accompanied security cooperation? Who monitored end use? What happens when capabilities developed or acquired in an environment shaped by counterterrorism are directed toward peaceful human rights activism?

That is the line separating security from repression.

Western Sahara struggle

The contradiction is especially striking because Sahrawi human rights activism has often relied on peaceful means: demonstrations, documentation, journalism and engagement with international institutions.

Amnesty reports restrictions on expression and assembly concerning Sahrawi rights, alongside reports of arbitrary arrests, prolonged surveillance, restrictions affecting families and the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations.

Europe has encountered similar contradictions in its relationship with Morocco.

In June 2021, the European Parliament explicitly rejected Morocco’s use of border control and migration, particularly involving unaccompanied minors, as political pressure against Spain.

Yet the same resolution emphasised the longstanding relationship and cooperation between the European Union and Morocco in counterterrorism, migration and trade.

That contradiction should matter to Europeans.

When democratic governments make another state indispensable for stopping terrorism, controlling migration or providing intelligence, they provide more than resources. They provide leverage. Eventually, fear of losing cooperation can make scrutiny of a partner more difficult.

Europe has confronted another warning sign. In its response to the corruption scandal that engulfed the European Parliament, the Parliament itself denounced alleged attempts by Morocco and Qatar to influence lawmakers and staff through acts of corruption.

These remain allegations. They do not mean that every European position favourable to Morocco was corrupt. But they demonstrate why foreign influence over democratic institutions requires serious scrutiny.

European vs American foreign policy

Western Sahara remains an issue on the United Nations agenda and is tied to a decades-long international process concerning the political future of the territory.

That should matter to an EU that regularly invokes a rules-based international order.

Morocco has rejected previous allegations concerning Pegasus and described earlier Amnesty findings as baseless. Amnesty says it provided Moroccan authorities with a summary of its latest findings before publication and invited a response but received none before the report was published.

Those denials belong on the record.

So does the evidence.

The test of a human rights policy is not only how a democracy responds to abuses by its adversaries. The harder test is what it does when credible allegations concern a security partner.

For Sahrawis, however, this story is older than spyware.

For nearly half a century, generations of Sahrawis have lived through restrictions and documented abuses connected to political expression over the future of Western Sahara. Children have grown into adults watching what can happen when someone speaks publicly: surveillance, imprisonment, smear campaigns, pressure and fear.

After all these years, what Sahrawis are asking for is not complicated.

We are not asking the world to choose an answer for us. Nor should the outcome be written in advance in our favour.

We are asking for something more elementary: Treat the Sahrawi as a free human being, capable of thinking, choosing and expressing a view about the future of the land he or she calls home without fear.

It is easy to live in a democratic society, protected by freedom of expression and equality before the law, and then propose a political solution for a distant people who will have to live with its consequences every day.

But a human question should come before the geopolitical one:

Would you accept for yourself and your children a political order in which expressing your views about your homeland could expose you to surveillance, intimidation or punishment?

A Sahrawi is not a number in a diplomatic file, a detail in a geopolitical bargain or a security problem to be managed.

A Sahrawi is a human being, with a memory, a family, a homeland, an opinion and a future.

After nearly 50 years, perhaps it is time simply to hear that voice as it is, rather than as others interpret it.

Give Sahrawis one day without fear.

One day to speak without surveillance, without pressure and without wondering whether their words will reach their phone, their workplace, their home or their family.

Do not write the answer for them.

Just let them speak.

If any political solution is truly just, why should it fear the voice of the human being who will have to live under it?

Over the past two weeks, Moroccan authorities have intensified their crackdown on political activists calling for a boycott of the September 23 legislative elections.

Opposition parties, including left-wing Workers’ Democratic Way Party and islamist Justice and Charity Association, have announced that they are boycotting the upcoming elections, urging Moroccan people to join the boycott campaign.

The Workers’ Democratic Way Party believes that the existing political system falls short of meeting the basic standards of a genuine democracy, and therefore would not “allow for fair and competitive elections capable of bringing about real change.”

Meanwhile, the Justice and Charity Association argues that the reason for boycotting the electoral process is the lack of “conditions for free and fair political competition.”

Activists involved in the boycott campaign face state repression

In the lead up to the September 23 elections, the Workers’ Democratic Way Party has organized field campaigns across multiple cities, including Tangier, Al Hoceima, Kenitra, Casablanca, Beni Mellal, Salé, Rabat, Khenifra and Fez, urging citizens to boycott the legislative elections.

These campaigns faced intensified repressive measures by the authorities such as physical assaults, the confiscation of leaflets, and the detention of over a dozen party members, including leaders.

However, the repressive acts also drew widespread solidarity from civil figures and citizens. Party leaders also emphasised their resolve, stating: “We will continue the struggle for our country, because it is worth sacrificing for.”

It is worth noting that the party has boycotted the elections in the country since its establishment in 1995, considering them as a “democratic smokescreen” for the Makhzen (the local name for the Moroccan political regime).

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Problem

Around 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in 24 hours between July 30th and 31st, overwhelming the territory and exposing divisions within the EU.

The immediate cause is unclear. Morocco’s authorities have yet to issue an official explanation. Spanish officials have pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling ending the automatic return of migrants intercepted while attempting to swim to Ceuta and Melilla. But the sheer scale of the crossings suggests Morocco might have deliberately relaxed border controls. The timing is also suspicious. The crisis came just ten days after Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez visited Algeria— Morocco’s arch-rival—and announced a “new phase” in Spain-Algeria relations.

The reaction within Europe has been striking. Rather than display solidarity with a member state facing pressure at the EU’s external border, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni not only blamed Sánchez’s migration policies but also called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen area. Madrid responded by summoning the Italian ambassador and rebuking Rome’s “partisan demagoguery”.

Responses from other leaders have been similarly unsympathetic. Finnish interior minister Mari Rantanen supported Italy’s proposal to suspend Spain’s Schengen status. Manfred Weber, president of the centre-right European People’s Party, urged the European Commission to hold Sánchez accountable for failing to protect the EU’s external border. Meanwhile, France has reinforced controls along its frontier with Spain. Remarkably, little criticism was directed at Morocco itself.

Solution

In the immediate term, the EU should demonstrate solidarity with Spain. European leaders need to treat migration pressure against a member state as a collective problem and a challenge to the integrity of the EU’s external border. Publicly blaming the targeted member state lowers the political cost of weaponising migration.

Brussels should make clear that any use of migration as blackmail will carry European rather than merely Spanish consequences. Around two thirds of Moroccan exports go to the EU, which is also its largest source of foreign investment. Brussels should also be prepared to suspend negotiations on a comprehensive partnership upgrade with Rabat.

Europe also needs to revise its migration policy, which largely shapes its relations with North Africa. In the absence of a common European approach, relations default to bilateral bargains, leaving North African leaders holding the lever. And until Europe changes the incentives, Rabat will keep pulling it.

Context

Spain has managed the migration relationship with Morocco bilaterally for decades, leaving Madrid increasingly hostage to Rabat. The latter has repeatedly used migration as political leverage, most notably in 2021, when it allowed some 6,000 migrants into Ceuta in a single day amid a diplomatic rift over Western Sahara.

The following year, Spain abandoned its longstanding neutrality on Western Sahara by endorsing Morrocco’s autonomy proposal, a policy shift many attribute to the 2021 crisis. Government sources unofficially said at that time that the new bilateral understanding included Moroccan commitments to avoid a repeat of the episode.

Rabat also appears particularly emboldened at present. It enjoys strong backing both from the US and Israel, and both have become increasingly hostile towards Sánchez government. The White House responded to the latest crossings by celebrating it as evidence of the “destructive philosophy” of “extreme left and globalist policies, including those that facilitate massive migration”.

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