Rule Britannia
March 15, 2009
So English-language news media don’t know a whole lot about the Maghreb, and that’s sort of understandable even if not quite okay. But that major Arab newspapers can’t even pin down the basics of the region is plain embarrassing: here, al-Quds al-Arabi discusses the dispute over “the former British colony of Western Sahara”. Maybe all the tea had them confused.
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Maghreb Politics Review 
wow, that’s not even close…
Can you blaim them? Some people even think that Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony… and some even think it is Moroccan.
Besides, Spain was British for some time (at least the north) and Britain and Spain are not that far away, relatively speaking. And didn’t Britain rule all the seas once upon a time?
There’s the old joke about the sun never setting on the British Empire because God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark…. But Britain was always content to leave the Sahara to the French and their Latin brethren – “let the Gallic cockerel have as much sand to scratch in as he likes” was a quote from some British statesman or other (and I’m probably paraphrasing). Even my land hungry forebears didn’t see the point in claiming bits of desert just for the sake of it.
Yours from Nelson’s country (we even went to the same school, apparently)
NB