الجبن: februari 2014

dinsdag 11 februari 2014

EH is for Western Sahara, een open briefje aan een Amerikaan

Dear Robert,

Just noticed your contribution to War is Boring about the domain name dispute on the EH extension. I'm afraid I have to ask your attention for some misconceptions on your side. You call the conflict in Western Sahara "civil war". You call the Polisario Front a "bunch of rebels". You wrote: "the United Nations considers Western Sahara an independent state". This is incorrect.

Western Sahara is listed at the United Nations as a "non self governing territory".
http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/nonselfgovterritories.shtml

In 1990, the General Assembly reaffirmed that the question of Western Sahara was a question of decolonization which remained to be completed by the people of Western Sahara.

The dispute is not a "civil war" within Morocco. Western Sahara is not part of Morocco. The Polisario Front is not a rebel organization. It is a liberation movement.

Morocco has the domain name extension .MA. One nation can not have two domain names.

Btw. Western Sahara has the extension .EH as country code listed at ISO
https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:EH

and the country code EH for Western Sahara is also listed at the EU

http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-5000600.htm

The dispute about the domain name is a dispute between Morocco that does *not* want any distinction between Morocco and Western Sahara and the international community that does make such a distinction by assigning and reserving the EH domain. The question is who should administer the domain. In my mind that very well could be a temorary United Nations council. That could serve the peace process, which after all is about communications just like the internet

yours sincerely,

Machmoet van Kaas