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The Western Sahara Conflict: The Role of Natural Resources in Decolonization. Edited by Claes Olsson. Current African Issues, No. 33. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2006. Pp. 31; map. SEK 90 paper.
On April 30, 2006, the Kerr-McGee Corporation, a petroleum exploration and engineering firm headquartered in Houston, Texas, announced that it would not renew its October 2001 contract with the government of Morocco to prospect for oil deposits in the waters off the disputed Western Sahara, occupied by Rabat since late 1975. While it was uncertain at first whether KMG had withdrawn from the former Spanish colony due to its not locating commercially viable quantities of oil there or whether it-like the French-based Total Group and the Norwegian seismic survey firm TGS-Nopec-had bowed to pressure from an increasingly articulate, organized, and broad-based coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) opposing any exploitation of Western Sahara's natural resources without the consent of its indigenous inhabitants, the Saharawis. But the groups in question -including Western Sahara Resource Watch in California-were quick to take credit for this development and pointed out that their arguments had been critically bolstered by a United Nations legal opinion on the subject issued in January 2002 by Hans Corell, the UN's chief lawyer. These NGO's, though, had barely had time to register their satisfaction with KMG's pullout when they were faced, only a fortnight later, with the approval by the European Parliament of a four-year, euro144 million ($185 million) agreement between the European Union (EU) and Morocco to allow mainly Spanish fishermen to operate in the territorial waters of both Morocco proper and Western Sahara. Disturbingly for a continent that was home to far more pro-Saharawi organizations and activists than in North America and elsewhere, only the Swedish...