For over thirty years Morocco has been firmly committed to spending a
great deal of money and effort on Western Sahara without any prospects
of return on this investment.
Even were Western Sahara to achieve
independence or autonomy it has no (zero) prospects of ever being a
viable economy. The United Nations would
prefer to spend money and resources elsewhere.
There is no solution to this scenario.
However, if one can obtain a little bit of flexibility from Morocco and
groups like the Polisario and invert
the objective of the United Nations a very interesting Nash equilibrium
("all win") is obtained.
We would be
inclined
to
offer at least one non-binding referendum with biometric validation (to
insure only one vote per person and that few dead people vote) for
Moroccan citizens. The choices by region (or whatever the Moroccan
government prefers) would be
A.
Morocco attempts to retain all of the Western Sahara; no maglev from
Laayoune to Casablanca to Cairo and Mecca; with diligence, no major
declines in education, employment, poverty, health care or the
Moroccan economy.
B. Morocco retains the northern portion of the
Western Sahara including Laayoune. The southern portion is ceded to the
United Nations for their new world headquarters near Ad Dakhla. A 10,000
kilometer maglev network starting in Equatorial Guinea or even further
south follows the western coast past Casablanca and Rabat to Tangier
before turning east to Mecca. Detailed rail routes and predicted changes
to social and economic measures would be provided for each of the 16
Moroccan regions.