Front Polisario Khat Al-Shahid - Creation and Relation To The Polisario Front

Creation and Relation To The Polisario Front

The organization announced its existence on July 4, 2004, issuing a communiqué named "Call to All the Sahrawi Nationalists". It accused the POLISARIO leadership of "incapacity to confront the invasor" and to "make sucessive concessions in the mark of the Peace Plan", also blaming the UN of the "dismal failure to implement its resolutions", and Morocco of "intransigence, sistematic destruction of the Peace Plan" and "rejecting any hint of a solution out of their sovereignity over Western Sahara". The document noted what Khat al-Shahid (until 2005 known as "Front Polisario El Uali") consider the greatest failures of the Polisario Front direction:

• Use of a fatalist, defensive & negative instead of a brave, offensive & positive one.
• The weakness to the UN & to the enemy by offering this one possibilities to continue with its intransigence.
• The lack of initiative has made us lag behind developments, while in the past, with our sacrifice and the blood of our martyrs, we were the protagonists of these initiatives.
• No positive decision has been made since the cease-fire.
• Lack of political will to include new people from the younger generations of scholars in favor of our national cause.
• The gradual discarding of many individuals, both graduates and combat veterans leaders, protagonists of our national glories.
• Scheduled destruction of military force, even though it is the crucial element in ending the conflict.
• Humiliation of the war victims and families of martyrs, leaving them alone in an uncertain and difficult circumstances.
• The General Popular Congresses have become a piece of theatre, whose objective is the consolidation of the actual leadership in power, and the opposition to any sharing of the management of the affairs of the state and the citizens.
• Fraudulent use by some members of the leadership of their positions of responsibility, for their personal affairs in the absence of any control or inspection.

The POLISARIO refused to respond or recognize the organization, insisting that differences be solved within the established system. However, there have been no reports of police intervention against members. Its activities at this stage do not seem to go beyond publishing pamphlets against the present Polisario Front leadership, and while it may affect internal Sahrawi politics, it is of minimal or no significance to the Western Sahara conflict.

Its relation to POLISARIO remains slightly tense. Khat al-Shahid considers itself as a reformist movement inside the Polisario Front, and recognizes it as the only legitimate representative of the Sahrawis, until the end of the conflict. Its Tindouf-based members remain active in the SADR administration and armed forces.