King Mohammed VI has decided that the most fitting tribute to the American president is a road. Not a medal, not a state visit, not a statue, but a ribbon of asphalt running more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from southern Morocco down the Atlantic coast into the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The Tiznit-Dakhla expressway is now officially the Donald J. Trump Highway.
The announcement came Saturday through the official Moroccan news agency, which published the king’s letter to Trump. The message was dated July 2, and its meaning was explicit: the road is payment for Trump’s 2020 decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a break with decades of American neutrality that the king wrote would stay with Moroccans for generations.
A president who announced his own honor
Trump announced the naming on his Truth Social platform on July 26, a week before Rabat officially confirmed it. The president celebrated his own honor early, thanking the king and saying he looked forward to driving the highway’s full length someday. Moroccan officials then confirmed what their patron had already told the world.
The sequence captures the balance of the relationship. Morocco grants the honor, the United States receives it, and the announcement is made by the honoree before the donor can speak. It is difficult to imagine any other head of state being allowed to pre-announce a royal decree. Then again, no other head of state delivered what Trump delivered in December 2020.
What the road is for
The highway is described by the king as the longest road infrastructure in Africa, a claim the numbers support: 1,055 kilometers (656 miles), with an estimated cost of around 850 million euros, roughly 980 million dollars. It runs from Tiznit in the south of Morocco proper, passes through Laayoune, the largest city of the disputed territory, and ends at Dakhla, a coastal city near the Mauritanian border.
Roads in this part of the world are never just roads. Western Sahara is a territory the United Nations has never recognized as Moroccan, where the Polisario Front has fought for decades for an independent Sahrawi state, and where the UN has repeatedly called for a referendum that has never been held. Morocco’s answer to the referendum has been facts on the ground: settlements, ports, phosphate mines, and now a 1,055-kilometer (656-mile) expressway carrying the name of an American president deep into the disputed zone.
The road binds the territory to the kingdom physically. It moves people, goods, and soldiers down the coast. It makes the idea of a separate Sahrawi state harder to imagine, because a territory connected by a modern highway to the capital is, in the eyes of its administrators, no longer separate. Infrastructure is how Morocco is winning this dispute: not with arguments in New York, but with asphalt and concrete.
The price of the 2020 decision
For the United States, the naming is a reminder of what the recognition bought and what it cost. The December 2020 move, made in the same push that saw Morocco normalize relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, made Washington the first major Western capital to endorse Morocco’s claim. It pleased Rabat and cost the United States little at the time. The highway named for Trump is the receipt.
What the receipt does not show is the other side of the ledger. The Polisario Front and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic still call Western Sahara occupied territory. Algeria, which backs the Polisario, broke diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021. The United Nations position has not changed. The recognition did not settle the dispute; it aligned Washington with one side of it.
Trump reaffirmed his support for the Moroccan position in a message to the king this week marking twenty-seven years since he took the throne. The message and the highway are two halves of the same exchange: the king keeps the American commitment alive, and the president keeps his name on Moroccan territory. Whether the road ever carries its namesake from Tiznit to Dakhla is another matter. The point of the gesture was never the drive.
Source
- Franceinfo: Le Maroc baptise une autoroute du nom de Donald Trump au Sahara occidental
- Asharq Al-Awsat: Morocco Names Highway in Western Sahara After Trump
- Middle East Eye: Morocco names new highway in occupied Western Sahara after Donald Trump
- The Standard: Morocco names highway after Trump in Western Sahara