The Emperor's Clothes: The Naked Truth About Western Sahara

Global Directives LLC

New York

Copyright © 2005; revised © 2020 Katlyn Thomas

All rights reserved.

This book is dedicated to Boukhari Ahmed

Contents

Introduction

The History of the Dispute

(1) The Period of Spanish Colonization

(a) Geography

(b) People

(c) History of Colonization

(2) Rise of the Principle of Self-Determination

(3) Rise of Saharawi Nationalism

(4) Rise of the Concept of Greater Morocco

(5) The Seeds of War

(6) The Long Winding Road: The Settlement Plan

(7) Direct Negotiations

(8) Future Prospects

(a) Western Sahara Today

(b) The Refugees

Legal Issues—The Question of Sovereignty

(1) The Legal Basis for Morocco’s Occupation of Western Sahara

(a) The Doctrine of Territorial Integrity

(b) The Historic Ties between Morocco and the Territory of Western Sahara

(c) The Western Sahara Case

(d) The Legitimacy of Morocco’s Occupation of Western Sahara in 1975

(2) The Rights of the Saharawis to Self-Determination

(3) The Right to a Referendum and Enforcement of the Settlement Plan

(a) Under International Law

(b) Under Contract or Treaty Principles

Legal Issues—The Right to Resources

(1) The Rights of An Administering Power

(a) The 2002 Advisory Opinion of the UN Undersecretary for Legal Affairs

(b) Morocco’s Response

(i) Oil Exploration/Exploitation

(ii) Phosphate Extraction

(iii) Wind Power/Renewable Energy

(iv) Fisheries and Agricultural Products

(c) Cases Before the European Courts: Agricultural Accord

(i) Decisions of the Courts

(ii) Analysis

(d) Cases Before the UK and European Courts: Fisheries Partnership Agreement (FPA)

(e) Proposed EU-Morocco Agreements after 2018

(i) Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement and Association Partnership Agreement

(ii) Analysis

(2) Rights of an Occupying Power

Enforcement of Legal Rights

(1) United Nations

(2) Court Actions

(3) United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

(4) International Criminal Court (ICC)

Resolving the Conflict—Autonomy vs. Independence

Political Issues

Index

Introduction

Few disputes have given the international community as clear cut a chance to put into practice the principles of international law and policy that its political members so consistently embrace in their speeches than the dispute over Western Sahara, yet few disputes have been as monumentally mishandled by the international community as the Western Sahara issue.

Western Sahara, known as Spanish Sahara when it was a colony of Spain, is a small place: a territory no larger than the state of Colorado, situated between Morocco to the north, Mauritania to the south, and Algeria to the east. It is mostly desert which, until the very recent past, was the ancestral home of nomadic tribes. Yet for more than forty years this small, remote part of the planet has occupied center stage in the politics of northwest Africa, and the process of its decolonization has raised implications for the application of principles of international law and policy—and the role of the United Nations and the United States in applying such principles—that have given it an importance far beyond its importance as a territory.

Ever since Spain decided to withdraw from the territory in 1974, its future has been in limbo due to conflicting claims of the indigenous tribes of the territory, the Saharawis, and Morocco, who claims sovereignty over it on the basis of alleged historic allegiances between members of certain of these tribes and the Moroccan Sultans in the pre-colonial Alawite dynasty. These conflicting claims set off a war in the mid 1970s that not only ignited the entire African continent, but also engulfed the major superpowers, the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations in decades of dissent and years of costly peacekeeping activities. The fact that more than forty years after the departure of Spain the conflict has still not been resolved, is a monument to the failure of present day international institutions and international law to create a proper mechanism to enforce commonly espoused principles of decolonization, dispute settlement among states, and the right to self-determination under international law, and raises serious questions about United States policy with respect to those issues and the future role of the United Nations in peacekeeping efforts. Why these facts are not common knowledge is a tribute to the skill of diplomats, well-paid lobbyists and others in obfuscating the facts. Indeed, one is reminded of the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes, for most of what has emanated from the United Nations and other official sources on the subject of Western Sahara—not to mention Morocco and its apologists—has been an elaborately concocted smokescreen to hide the naked truth.

This book will attempt to lift this smokescreen to examine the history of the dispute over sovereignty in Western Sahara, the role of the United Nations and the major players in the dispute, and the legal issues that have been raised, and will offer possible solutions to the crisis.

Part I

The History of the Dispute¹

(1) The Period of Spanish Colonization

(a) Geography

Spanish ties to the shores of present day Western Sahara can be traced as far back as June of 1492, when Portugal, the first European power to claim territory in North Africa, ceded to Spain, then Europe’s leading maritime power, the territory from present day Morocco to Cape Bojador along the Atlantic coast to the south, a distance of 400 miles. Spain built a fortress on the coast of this territory at Santa Cruz, opposite its already existing outposts on the Canary Islands. Its presence on those shores, however, was short-lived. When attackers sacked the fort in 1524, the Spanish abandoned it, and with it any attempt to establish permanent links with the African coast for the next three hundred years.

By the time the Western powers gobbled up slices of Africa in the 19th century, Spain’s position as a leading maritime power had declined significantly from what it had been in the mid 15th century. Nevertheless, it attempted to gain at least a foothold on the continent by once again turning to the territory in North Africa it had acquired from Portugal centuries earlier. In 1884, spurred into action by a number of businessmen who hoped to reap commercial rewards from the expansion of Spanish influence in Africa,² a Spanish trader landed on the coast of Western Sahara, and in the name of Spain declared sovereignty over an enormous expanse of territory extending 150 miles inland. His establishment of a trading center at Rio de Oro, with the permission of the local tribesmen,³ permitted Spain to claim the territory at the 1884–5 Conference of Berlin.

Fifteen years later Spain and France delineated the southern border of this colony and the contours of the present day Western Sahara began to emerge.⁴ Four years afterwards, in the Franco-Spanish Convention of 1904⁵—and the secret accords published in 1911 under which Spain recognized French influence in most of Morocco—Spanish rule over Western Sahara and a few of its already established fishing villages to the north was solidified. The borders of the Spanish territory were further confirmed in 1912 by a convention demarcating the French-Spanish zones,⁶ and the Treaty of Fez of 1912 under which Sultan Moulay Hafid of Morocco handed over his country to French protection.

However, the final borders of Western Sahara as we know it today were not established until 1958, after Morocco had won its independence from France. The Spanish at that time controlled both the regions of Rio de Oro and Saguia el Hamra, which together comprised the territory of present day Western Sahara, and a swath of land in the north extending from Saguia el Hamra to shortly beyond Tarfaya, in present day Morocco. Whereas the former lands were considered in the various treaties between Spain and the other Western powers to be outside the lands belonging to Morocco, the later region was deemed to be included in a Morocco protectorate which was to be administered by Spain. In January of 1958 Spain converted the former area and Ifni, an enclave on the coast of Northern Morocco, into fully fledged Spanish provinces. However, it excluded its protectorate region, dubbed Spanish Southern Morocco, and after Morocco gained its independence, in return for aid in quelling Saharawi resistance movements, Spain ceded back to Morocco this territory—including the enclaves of Tan Tan, Goulimene and Tarfaya.

By the 1970s, therefore, the boundaries of Spanish Sahara included the regions of Rio de Oro in the south and Saguia el Hamra to the north,⁷ within which were the small enclaves of El Aiun and Boujdour along the coast, Smara in the interior, and Villa Cisneros on the southern shores.

(b) People

The region of Spanish Sahara was largely an inhospitable expanse of arid land comprised of undulating sand dunes and rocky plateaus, dominated by searing winds called irifi and scorching sun, where seasonal river beds and the occasional oasis provided the only source of water. A land in which only the hardiest animals and men could survive.

But men did survive in this land. Long before the Western powers seized control of Africa, at a time before there were modern day states in the continent, across a huge largely barren expanse of desert in North Africa⁸ extending from the Atlantic ocean in the West to the Nile river and beyond to the gardens of Babylon, small groups of sheep, camel and goat herders wandered in nomadic or semi-nomadic tribal caravans within loosely defined and often overlapping grazing areas. As Hodges noted, the political structure of these units was based on allegiance to family, fraction, subfraction, and tribe,⁹ in that order, and on a stratified political and social system¹⁰ which classified tribes in terms of military power. The goal of each tribe was to achieve dominance in the region and the history of the region for as far back as modern history goes is strife with intertribal warfare to establish such dominance.¹¹

Within each tribe political and legal affairs were usually conducted by elders, called sheikhs, in councils called djemmas.

The tribes which exercised dominion over 19th century Western Sahara, according to historians, included the Oulad Delim, the Oulad Tidrarin, the Reguibat, the Arosien, the Ait Larsen, Izarguien, Oulad Bou Abba, and a number of other smaller tribes.¹² The members of each of these tribes migrated, according to the season and availability of water, over roughly delineated territories in present day Western Sahara, northern Mauritania, western Algeria and southern Morocco.

By the fifteenth century, according to Hodges and other scholars, these tribes had adopted their own language, Hassaniya, a dialect of Arabic that had been introduced a century earlier by the Beni Hassan, a group of tribes originating in the Arab peninsula that began migrating southward from the Draa Valley into the Sahara from about the end of the thirteenth century. The Beni Hassan¹³ had intermarried with the native Berber peoples, called the Sanhaja,¹⁴ to give rise to a people colloquially referred to as the Moors. The Moors, according to historical accounts, migrated with their goats, sheep and camels seasonally over an expanse of the Sahara from the Draa River in the north to the banks of the Senegal and the bend of the Niger in the south, and from the Atlantic seaboard to a series of sand dune zones, the Erg Iguidi, the Erg Cheh and the Majabat al-Kubra, in what is now eastern Mauritania.

When the Spanish established their first settlements on the coast of Spanish Sahara in the late 1880s they found it populated by members of those indigenous tribes that were descendants of the Moors, living their nomadic existence in much the same way as they had for centuries. They were later named the Saharawi.

(c) History of Colonization

By the time of the Treaty of Fez, France had consolidated an empire that at its peak in the 1950s included Algeria, Mauritanian, and the Morocco protectorate, all firmly under the direction of French administration and controlled by the French military.

Spain, on the other hand, struggled during most of the early 20th century to solidify its relations with the inhabitants of three of its tiny protectorate settlements in Morocco: Ceuta, Melilla and Larache, and it did little more than maintain trading posts in present day Western Sahara at Villa Cisneros (present day Dakhla) and two other locations along the coast. It paid virtually no attention to the interior of the Sahara—or the tribes which inhabited it, who were able to retain their ancient ways.

The French method of colonization was vastly different from the laissez-faire attitude of the Spanish. Rather than being content to leave the inhabitants of their colonies to their own devices, the French attempted to impose strict rules upon the population. This policy did not go over well with the proud and independent inhabitants of the region. From the dawn of the 20th century, as France gradually extended its presence in Mauritania, and established firm control over Morocco and Algeria, there emerged resistance among the tribes of the region to French rule. The center of this resistance shifted across the borders to the un-policed desert of Spanish Sahara, from which long range raiding parties, called ghazzi by the natives, would swoop upon the French settlements. One of the foremost leaders of this resistance was the son of the most respected religious leader of the Saguia el-Hamra, Sheikh Ma el-Ainin, a holy man who, through his teachings, inspired rebellion, both in Mauritania and Morocco, until his death in 1910.

After the death of Ma el-Ainin’s son, and as a result of considerable efforts on the part of the French to route out his supporters in the territories they controlled, the resistance to French rule was limited to bases in what was nominally Spanish territory. From deep within the desert Saharawi tribes were to continue to harass the French in Mauritania until the 1930s. However, despite their mastery of guerilla tactics and the desert terrain they were ultimately no match for the better armed French, who eventually were able to coordinate pincer like attacks from their colonies to the north, the south and the east. But it was the completion of the French conquest of southern Morocco in early 1934, and the military campaign of the French that year to wipe out the remaining centers of dissidence in the Anti-Atlas—that was to pave the way for their final pacification.

For most of this period Spain was content to sit on the sidelines, content with the revenue it was receiving from its small coastal enclaves. This was to change in the mid 1930s. After the fall of the Spanish monarchy in 1931 the newly proclaimed head of state, Generalissimo Franco, began to take more of an interest in the Saharan colony. As a result of pressure from the French who wanted to curb attacks on French outposts by anti-French nomads originating in the Spanish territory,¹⁵ Franco finally installed troops in locations within the interior of what is present day Western Sahara. On May 15, 1934 a camel corps unit from Tarfaya reached Smara, Ma el-Ainin’s old capital, and set up permanent residence. This was followed by the establishment of a Spanish military presence in other enclaves in the interior of the colony.

However, even after the Spanish established a presence in the interior of the Sahara, the Saharawis continued their largely nomadic lifestyle and customs. Neither the civil war in Spain in 1937–39 nor the Second World War changed the lifestyle that had dominated the region for centuries. Only one major additional settlement was established during this period: El Aiun—the source—a small village along the coast which became the territory’s capital. But neither this nor any of the other small settlements established by the Spanish attracted much of the Saharawi population.¹⁶ The vast majority remained nomads who continued to administer their own affairs through their djemmas.

This was all to change with the discovery in the 1950s of significant deposits of phosphates in Western Sahara, leading to increased Spanish interest in the territory and the establishment of a state run mining compound Fosboucraa (Boucraa), in 1972. Jobs in the mining industry gradually lured the Saharawis to the small towns. The population of the three major towns—Smara, Villa Cisneros and El-Aiun—more than tripled to 40,000 between 1967 and 1974.

However, the 1950s also brought an awakening sense of nationalism and desire for independence to the peoples of Africa and the dawn of the period of African de-colonization. Calls for independence from colonial domination—initially emanating from ‘freedom fighters’ in colonial capitals—began to be embraced by both the United Nations and the newly created Organization for African Unity (OAU).

Morocco, which had been a protectorate of France since the Treaty of Fez in 1912, was the first state in northwest Africa to benefit from this development. Following the Second World War France had sent Sultan Mohammed V into exile and had replaced him on the throne of Morocco with his uncle. However, a nationalist popular movement—led in large measure by a group of revolutionaries in Morocco who had formed the Istiqlal party—forced his return to the throne in 1955. One year after his return Morocco won its independence from France, inspiring similar independence movements in Algeria and Mauritania—and Spanish Sahara—as well as continued resistance within Morocco itself.

For although Morocco had gained its independence from France in theory, in practice the French continued to dominate the economy of its former protectorate, as well as exert a heavy political influence. The continued influence of France within Morocco, as well as its continued presence elsewhere in the region, inflamed segments of the population to rise in what was euphemistically called the Army of Liberation. From hideouts within the Atlas regions as well as deep within the Sahara, troops of mostly Berber and Saharawi origin swooped on Moroccan and Mauritanian settlements, causing havoc and disrupting commerce during the mid 1950s. Soon the disruption spread into the Spanish colony. Finally, in 1958 the combined efforts of the Moroccan Sultan, now calling himself King, the French Foreign Legion, and the Spanish government, put down the rebellion. By 1969 many of the members of the Army of Liberation who had resided in Spanish Sahara had fled to southern Morocco, Mauritania or western Algeria.

But the victories of the colonial powers on the battlefield did not translate into victories on the political front. One year after Morocco’s independence Spain, in order to forestall a similar move for independence on the part of its African colonies, announced the incorporation of Spanish Sahara into metropolitan Spain, declaring it an integral part of the Spanish state. This move, however, could not stem the tide of decolonization that was rapidly spreading throughout the world or stifle the calls for such decolonization from the inhabitants of the region, who had been inspired by Morocco’s gain of independence from the French, which many of them had fought to achieve.¹⁷

By 1960 colonialism in Africa was clearly on the decline. In that year Mauritania gained its independence, with Algeria gaining it two years later. France and Spain were left with mere remnants of influence in the region. At the same time, fueled by rhetoric at the UN and OAU, freedom movements by the indigenous peoples of African colonies had gained in strength and political influence and, one by one, over the next fifteen years would force the release of all African colonies from the shackles of colonial rule. All but one. Unfortunately for the Saharawis their struggle for independence ran quickly into another political roadblock: the competing territorial claims of their neighbors to the north and south, Morocco and Mauritania. The 1960s and 70s would pit the competing claims of Saharawi nationalists—fueled by the emerging doctrine of self determination for colonial peoples—against sovereignty claims of their neighbors based on the principle of territorial integrity and the argument that the territory once belonged to them—a conflict which in the case of Morocco has persisted to this day.

(2) Rise of the Principle of Self-Determination

The Second World War loosened the chains that had bound the peoples of the third world to colonial overseers and paved the way for a new organization—the United Nations—to be established, founded on principles of emancipation and equality. The ancient regime had collapsed, and with it the assumption that the peoples of Europe were destined to rule the peoples of the Third World.¹⁸

The idea that people should generally be considered entitled to determine their own future free from colonization or coerced annexation by others—what we now refer to as the principle of self-determination—was recognized implicitly in at least three Articles of the United Nations Charter,¹⁹ and swept through the colonies of Northeast Africa like a tsunami underpinning the independence of Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria in the late 50s and early 60s.

However, it was not until a decade after the Second World War, when third world populations began to disengage themselves en masse from their colonial rulers, that a consensus began to emerge that this principle should be considered a right under international law,²⁰ and then, according to some of them, only when applied to non-self-governing-territories, i.,e. colonies.

The fact that this right existed was finally acknowledged in 1960 when the UN General Assembly proclaimed that all peoples have a right to self-determination in a Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, better known as Resolution 1514.²¹ A year later, the General Assembly created a special committee, the Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, dubbed the Committee of 24, to oversee the struggle of colonial populations to enforce this right. Throughout the years Resolution 1514 supported the liberation of a number of third world peoples in non-self-governing-territories—the latest being the inhabitants of East Timor in 1999.

In 1963 Spanish Sahara was included on the UN’s list of non self governing territories to which Resolution 1514 applied, with Spain being designated its administering power. From that date forward demands that the inhabitants of Spanish Sahara be liberated from colonial status resounded with increasing forcefulness in meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. Within a year of its inclusion on the list the Committee of 24 passed was to be the first of a number of resolutions calling on Spain to implement the Saharawis right to self-determination.²² The General Assembly quickly followed suit²³ and went further, reaffirming in 1965 the ‘inalienable right’ of colonial peoples to self-determination in accordance with the principles embodied in Resolution 1514(XV), and requesting Spain …to take immediately all necessary measures for the liberation of…Spanish Sahara from colonial domination…²⁴

In 1966 the General Assembly went a step further, outlining in Resolution 2229(XXI) the process by which such self-determination was to be exercised—a referendum.²⁵

The provisions of Resolution 2229(XXI) formed the basis of all resolutions of the General Assembly on the subject until 1974.²⁶ It affirmed the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination, and stipulated that this was a legal right inextricably linked with the decolonization process. It further mandated that such self-determination be carried out through a referendum conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. The privilege of voting in the referendum would be extended only to indigenous Saharawis, with exiles permitted to freely return to the territory in order to vote. It invited Spain to determine the procedures for this referendum at the earliest possible date²⁷

Resolution 2229(XXI) also requested the Secretary General to appoint a special mission to be sent to Western Sahara for the purpose of recommending practical steps for the full implementation of the relevant resolutions of the General Assembly and in particular for determining the extent of United Nations participation in the preparation and supervision of the referendum.

The essence of Resolution 2229(XXI) was repeated in six additional resolutions adopted by the General Assembly between 1967 and 1973.²⁸

The General Assembly avoided discussing the future status of Western Sahara in its resolutions during this period. However, by 1972 it was clear to most observers that if the indigenous population were to vote freely the result would most likely be the creation of an independent state.²⁹ The General Assembly acknowledged this by reaffirming in Resolution 2983(XXVII) not only the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination, but also to independence.³⁰

Although the theoretical principle of self-determination may have emanated from the United Nations, its application to the colonies of Africa was primarily the result of intense lobbying by the African nations themselves. In the late 1960s a number of African countries banded together to form the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which later was to become the African Union. From its inception its main focus was on the liberation of the countries of Africa from colonial rule. Almost immediately after it was formed it began to urge Spain to withdraw from its African colonies and initiated the idea of a referendum for the inhabitants of Spanish Sahara. At its nineteenth ordinary session, held in Rabat on June 5–19, 1972, the OAU Council of Ministers called on Spain to create a free and democratic atmosphere in which the people of that territory can exercise their right to self-determination and independence and requested African states to intensify their efforts vis-à-vis the Spanish Government to induce it to implement Resolution 2711 of the UN General Assembly and, in particular, its provisions relating to the holding, as soon as possible, of a referendum designed to enable the population of the Sahara under Spanish domination to freely exercise their right to self-determination, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter, under the auspices and with the full guarantees of that international organization. A similar resolution was adopted a year later by a session of the OAU Council of Ministers in Addis Ababa. The UN resolutions were endorsed at the same time by both the nonaligned movement, at the nonaligned states’ fourth summit, held in Algiers on September 5–9, 1973, and the world’s Muslim states, at the fifth Islamic summit, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on June 21–25, 1974.

Spain at first ignored all these resolutions, reasserting the position that its African territories—which it had recently converted to provinces of Spain—were not subject to self-determination.³¹ When this argument failed to be accepted, and wary of the territorial ambitions of Morocco and Mauritania, Franco acquiesced in the calls for self-determination, but sought to buy time to cultivate a political group in the territory that would be friendly to Spain, arguing that because of the nomadic nature of the population it required time to prepare the Saharawi people to participate in an act of self-determination.³²

Morocco, for its part, had by 1966 pronounced a claim to the territory that was in direct conflict with the call for self-determination through a referendum. Nevertheless, perhaps under the impression that the inhabitants of the territory would welcome rejoining the motherland if such a referendum were held,³³ it proposed in 1966 that both the Sahara and the other Spanish colonies in North Africa as soon as possible be granted their independence from Spain.³⁴ Mauritania, which by 1966 had also expressed claims to the territory, advanced the same position, but added that independence meant independence not only from Spain, but also from Morocco.³⁵

However, despite their decade long public support for the idea of a referendum, by the mid-1970s neither Morocco nor Mauritania had ever pushed for its implementation. Instead, as one observer commented, what occurred…was the acceleration of efforts by all parties to arrange their preferred outcome behind a façade of support for self-determination.³⁶

Only the Saharawis themselves—who by 1973 had formed an independence movement called the Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro or POLISARIO—made any serious attempts during this period to see to it that these resolutions were implemented.

(3) Rise of Saharawi Nationalism

The Spanish government’s professed commitment to self-determination as a way to forestall any action by the United Nations, as well as the predatory aims of Morocco and Mauritania, in turned created a nationalist consciousness that was later to rebound against the Spanish by the end of the 1960s.³⁷ As Hodges noted, the leadership of the anticolonial movement of this period was markedly different in background and experience from the nomads who led the Saharawi guerilla forces against the French and Spanish ten years earlier, and the aged sheikhs who presided over the djemma, and by and large reflected the social and political revolutions that had characterized the 60s in other parts of the world.³⁸ They were an eclectic group. Most of them were young—in their early to mid 20s, and many of them were educated—often at universities in Morocco.³⁹ Added to this core group were members who had military experience in the tropas nomadas or experience with prior Saharawi resistance movements in the early 1970s. They took their inspiration from John F. Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson, Che Guevara. They distained the tribal allegiances of old and sought to establish a new trans-Saharan allegiance based on principles of democracy and equality. Above all they believed passionately in the in the United Nations doctrine of self-determination.

Their initial aim was to free the territory from Spanish control, and initially they organized themselves in Rabat, attempting to win the support of opposition groups in Morocco. However, after being rebuffed by these groups and persecuted by the Moroccan authorities they decided to focus on creating an allegiance among groups within Western Sahara itself and among like minded Saharawis in other centers around the world, and relocated to Zouerate, Mauritania.

On May 10, 1973, these young revolutionaries formed the Polisario, and immediately launched a guerilla campaign against the Spanish whose crowning achievement was the sabotage of the Boucraa conveyor belt, which temporarily halted all phosphate deliveries to the coast, in 1974.⁴⁰

In a manifesto adopted at their second congress, in August of 1974, the group defined for the first time their goals, declaring that the Saharawi people have no alternative but to struggle until wresting independence, their wealth and their full sovereignty over their land.⁴¹ As Hodges noted, the program of national action they adopted demonstrated