Fifa’s super-careful technical committee looks at every eventuality in examining candidates to host the football World Cup.
But full-out war is hardly likely to be on its list of dangers. Countries presenting an outside chance of this are unlikely to make the short-list.
Nevertheless, the possibility presents itself in Morocco where an exasperated United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has flighted the possibility of removing peacekeepers from the Western Sahara.
UN peacekeepers have been there for the past 13 years. At a cost of $600-million they have kept the Polisario Front, the Saharawi liberation movement, from the throats of occupying Moroccan forces hiding behind a giant sand wall.
In that time the UN has determined exactly who is eligible to participate in a referendum on the future of the territory occupied by Morocco since 1975.
Morocco has reneged on repeated UN plans involving a test of popular Saharawi opinion, but this time it has surpassed itself by rejecting a plan drawn up at its behest by former United States secretary of state James Baker.
Because it proposed delaying the referendum for five years and left vital organs of government, including defence and foreign affairs, in the hands of the occupiers, Morocco assumed it would be rejected by the Saharawi government in exile.
However, the canny Saharawi leader, Mohamed Abdelaziz, called the Moroccan bluff and accepted the Baker plan, with all its drawbacks, last July.
Knowing that no amount of delay would ever change the Saharawis’ determination to get rid of the occupiers, Morocco embarked on yet another round of equivocation and delay.
It was supported, as ever, by the French government. But there are signs that the United States is losing patience with Rabat.
Certainly, Annan has lost his. When the UN Security Council met to consider renewing the mandate for the peacekeeping force, he said ”enough”.
”After the passage of more than 13 years and the expenditure of more than $600-million, it has become apparent that the United Nations is not going to solve the problem of the Western Sahara without requiring that one or both of the parties do something that they would not voluntarily agree to,” he told the UN news service.
The international community faces the choice of either pushing ahead with the process, bogged down by Moroccan intransigence, or pulling the peacekeepers out.
Since the Saharawis have already accepted the plan, the message is clear to Morocco. King Mohammed VI remains fearful that any concession on Western Sahara will result in the unravelling of his broke and divided kingdom, many parts of which remain no-go areas to the royal family. Like his father he also feels safer against any coup attempts by having the bulk of the army out of the way in the Western Sahara.
Abdelaziz told United Press International last month that Polisario remains ready to go back to war if the UN peace process option runs out.
”So long as there is hope, and the UN demonstrates its engagement for this referendum, we will continue collaborating with the UN,” he said. ”But when it fails to convince Morocco to accept the self-determination plan, we will be forced to defend our legitimate rights including by armed struggle.”
Facing an increasing domestic terrorism problem, Mohammed VI is in no position to go to war in the occupied territory.
Observers believe that if he was hoping to improve the kingdom’s case for hosting the World Cup by behaving reasonably on Western Sahara, he would have done so earlier.
Certainly, if Morocco loses the bid, the king will be obliged to dig his uncertain heels even deeper into the sand.