Congress Must Judge Western Sahara on Its Own |
Congress Should Not Outsource Its Judgment on Western Sahara
By Mohamed Elbaikam Independent Sahrawi activist
In Sahrawi culture, serious matters do not begin with noise. They begin with listening. Even tea in the desert is served in stages: the first glass strong, the second balanced, the third light. Judgment should work the same way. That is why it is troubling to watch some members of Congress speak about Western Sahara with the certainty of slogans and the weakness of borrowed narratives.
This concern is no longer abstract. On March 13, Sens. Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Rick Scott introduced the Polisario Front Terrorist Designation Act of 2026. Rep. Joe Wilson has pushed a similar line for years, casting the Sahrawi national movement through a security narrative that closely mirrors Morocco’s preferred message. Lawmakers are free to take positions. But a great nation should expect more from those who speak in its name.
America’s representatives, whether in Congress or the executive branch, should bring legal discipline, moral seriousness and factual care to questions that can shape lives far beyond U.S. borders. That is not an idealistic standard. It is a practical one. What American officials say inside the machinery of power does not remain in Washington. It travels. It affects U.S. credibility, long-term interests and the image of the American people themselves.
When officials flatten a conflict, ignore its legal framework or repeat the claims of a foreign state without showing command of the record, the damage lasts. It can legitimize distortion. It can deepen injustice. It can place the United States in positions that do not serve either its principles or its strategic interests.
Western Sahara is not an empty space onto which outside politicians may project whatever geopolitical story is convenient. Under the United Nations framework, it remains a Non-Self-Governing Territory. In its 1975 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice did not find a territorial sovereignty tie between Morocco and Western Sahara sufficient to displace the principle of self-determination. Americans do not have to endorse every position taken by the Polisario Front to grasp the legal point. This is not a settled question that can honestly be reduced to a terrorism slogan.
For many outside the United States, that is exactly why institutions such as Congress, the British Parliament and the European Parliament once commanded respect. They were not admired because they were old. They were admired because they seemed to embody a larger promise: that law could restrain power, that ethics could discipline office, and that democratic institutions existed to test narratives, not simply repeat the most useful one.
That image has already been damaged in Europe by what many came to describe as “Moroccogate,” shorthand for the corrosive fear that outside influence can bend parliamentary language away from principle and toward power. America should be careful not to invite the same suspicion. Great institutions rarely lose their standing all at once. More often, they weaken slowly, each time they surrender scrutiny for convenience.
The deeper problem here is not disagreement with Sahrawis. It is incuriosity. Too much commentary in Washington treats the Sahrawi issue as if it began yesterday, as if it were merely a regional proxy file, and as if the people at its center had no political history of their own. But the Sahrawi struggle emerged from anti-colonial politics and a claim to self-determination, not from a project of expansion beyond its borders.
One of the least understood features of Sahrawi political culture is its restraint. Despite decades of war, exile, diplomatic betrayal and Morocco’s de facto control over most of the territory, the Sahrawi people did not build their cause around external adventurism. They learned, through hardship, a difficult truth: what is gained quickly in someone else’s conflict is often lost many times over later.
That is why American lawmakers should do something elementary before escalating this file any further: read. Compare the political logic of Morocco’s monarchy, grounded in allegiance to the throne and a centralized doctrine of authority, with the liberationist and republican tradition that shaped Sahrawi political identity. Compare a system organized around bay‘ah — structured loyalty to a monarch — with a national movement that defines itself through anti-colonial struggle, collective sacrifice and self-determination. One may still choose a side. But no senator should pretend these are morally, legally or historically interchangeable projects.
A great America cannot be represented by power alone. It must also be represented by standards. The people who speak for the United States should possess the ethical and legal depth required by a country whose decisions can alter the fate of distant peoples. Otherwise, America does not merely fail others. It diminishes itself.
Congress weakens its own authority when it speaks about Western Sahara without rigor, humility or respect for the record. It weakens itself further when foreign narratives appear to find in Washington not scrutiny, but willing repetition. If America wants to remain more than feared — if it wants to remain respected — it should demand from its lawmakers what it asks of the world: seriousness, honesty and responsibility before power.
The American press, policy community and intellectual class also have a duty here. They should watch their politicians closely when those politicians speak about vulnerable peoples, disputed territories and conflicts far from home. Democratic accountability does not end at the ballot box. It requires public scrutiny, institutional memory and a willingness to ask where a narrative comes from, whose interests it serves and what legal reality it ignores.
Because when a powerful institution stops asking what is true and starts repeating what is useful, it does not only injure a vulnerable people. It gives away part of its own moral standing.