Unlike last year when the Polisario deployed its armed troops to stop the 10th edition of the Africa Eco Race, the sports event started on Sunday all while keeping its route's Saharan stages. The Front did not react to the Race whose participants will have to cross El Guerguerate on January the 17th before entering Mauritania. The 11th edition of the Africa Eco Race was launched on Sunday from Monaco. The annual rally, organized in North Africa and an answer to the cancellation of 2008 Dakar Rally, linking Monaco to the Senegalese capital will have «a diversified course with as many sandy tracks and dunes as possible», promised the Africa Eco on its website. From December the 30th, 2018 to January the 13th, 2019, competitors will have to cross the desert through Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal before arriving in Lac Rose in Dakar. René Metge, the event's sporting director, announced that in Morocco the rally will «have new exciting routes». According to the 11th edition of the race, participants would enter Morocco through the Mediterranean. Once in Nador, the first stage will start on January the 1st. Maintaining the Saharan stages As usual, the race will stop by several Sahran regions in eastern Morocco before arriving on January the 3rd in Assa Zag. Then three stages will take place in the Sahara, where the participants will have to visit Fort Chakal near Ad-Dchira and Dakhla, going through El Guerguerate border crossing. A stage that can irritate the Polisario Front. But unlike last year, during which the separatist movement had threatened to stop the race, the Polisario has not reacted to the sports event yet. In January 2017, the Africa Eco Race sparked tension in the Tindouf camps. The Polisario deployed its armed forces to El Guerguerate, threatening to prevent participants from crossing the region. Commenting on the crisis, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement that he was «deeply concerned about recent increased tensions in the vicinity of Guerguerat in the Buffer Strip in southern Western Sahara between the Moroccan berm and the Mauritanian border». He stressed that «regular civilian and commercial traffic should not be obstructed and no action should be taken, which may constitute a change to the status quo of the buffer strip» and called the two parties to «to exercise maximum restraint and to avoid escalating tensions».
