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Dispute for control of Western Sahara – 1975/1991 (to present day)

 


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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE TERRITORY
Colonial rule

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonising nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population (see also cultural imperialism). It is essentially a system of direct political, economic and cultural intervention by a powerful country in a weaker one.
European colonialism began officially in the 15th century, with Portugal's conquest of Ceuta, today Spanish enclave in Morocco.

 

During the 15th century, a series of Portuguese garrison forts on the Atlantic coast called presidios was established, while in the Mediterranean, Spanish forces threatened the Moroccan littoral.  In the late 1400's, Spain established a colony on the Canary Islands and forced the people of the islands to work on sugar plantations.In the meanwhile the Saadians, who claimed descent from Muhammad and were called sharifs, took a strong position in support of jihad against the Portuguese, a position that put them in immediate opposition to the Wattasid policy of appeasement and collaboration.  By 1530 they held the southern half of Morocco and in 1541 they captured the Portuguese fortress of Santa Cruz (Agadir).

THE SAADIANS (1509-1659)
In 1544
the Saadians won their struggle for supremacy in the region against the Wattasid dinasty, as Muhammad al-Sheik was proclaimed sultan in Marrakesh.  In 1548/49 he occupied Fez, ejected the Wattasids and became sultan of Morocco.  The Saadians defended their territory from both Christian and Muslim incursions, most notably by the Portuguese and by the Ottomans based in Algeria.  Under them Morocco remained the only North African state to evade Ottoman occupation. 

Saadians ruled the region until the half of 17th century, when parts of the country and the Western Sahara came under Portuguese, Spanish and French influence. 

In 1578 the king of Portugal Sebastian I the Pretender, allied to king Philip II of Spain,  tried to reverse the sultan of Morocco Abd El Malik.  Ignoring any warnings, king Sebastian landed Morocco and during the Battle of Three Kings near Ksar to el-Kébir (Morocco), the 40.000 cavaliers of the Saadian sultan destroyed the 18.000 troops Portuguese.  Both King Sebastian and the Sultan Abd El Malik died. 
After Portugal lost its independence to Spain in 1580, under Philip II, the Spaniards became the dominant influence along the coast while Saadians practised a policy of expansion towards the south which was concretized in 1591 by the conquest of Mali, then called "Country of the Blacks".  The principal sovereign of the Saadian dynasty, Ahmed El Mansour, called El Dehbi, "gilded", send an armada of 4000 soldiers equipped with small guns and cannons assembled on camels and a team of Spanish gunners to fire them.  Most of those chosen by al-Mansur to take part in the invasion were not of Moroccan origin.  The force was so overwhelmingly extra-national in origin that the official language of the expedition was Spanish.  The benefit was immense: the gold produced in the gold bearing zones of the rivers Senegal and Niger, but also the ambergris, the skins of leopard and the slaves, which were exchanged against products of agriculture and craft industry. 

In 1603 sultan Ahmed El Mansour died and left left three sons, all rivals to the throne.  Morocco felt into civil war, and was divided into smaller sultanates. 

In 1638 the Spaniards were replaced in the region by the Dutch, who were the first to begin exploiting the gum Arabic trade, produced by the acacia trees of Trarza and Brakna and used in textile pattern printing. 

The Dutch seized from Portugal the Island of Arguin, close to the present-day border with Mauritania, Then the English temporarily controlled it in 1665, the French in 1678, the Prussians in 1685; finally the Dutch again in 1717.  In 1727, by the Treaty of Hague, the Dutch ceded Arguin to France. 
Gum and slaves were too good reasons for all the European powers to take control of western Africa.  But so far the occupation was limited to the coast and it was only at the end of 19th century that the European presence became effective, in the frame of the colonization of the continent. 
 

THE ALAOUITES (1631-today)
In the 17th century a new dynasty, the Alaouites (or Alawites
, ruling Morocco from 1666 to today), gained power in the region and made Morocco a greater power, taking back the control of most of the ports and dominating till Senegal.   

The Alaouite Dynasty is the name of the current Moroccan royal family.  The name Alaouite comes from its founder, Al-Raschid (or Ali Cherif), who became Sultan in 1666.  Al-Raschid, unlike preceding dynasties, did not seize power but was formally invited by the people of Fez to take over the throne of Morocco. 
The Alaouite family claimed descent from Muhammad, through the line of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Fatima Zahra (Muhammad's daughter). 
They entered Morocco from the Hejaz at the end of the 13th Century.  They began to increase their power in southern Morocco during the anarchy following the death of the Saadi Ahmad I al-Mansur in 1603, and in 1659 the last ruler of the Saadi was overthrown in the conquest of Marrakesh, and after the victory over the Dila brotherhood who controlled northern Morocco Mulai al-Rashid (1664-1672) was able to unite and pacify the country. 
The organisation of the kingdom developed under Moulay Ismail (1672-1727) who began to create a unified state against the opposition of local tribes.  Because the Alouites, in contrast to previous dynasties, did not have the support of a single Berber or Bedouin tribe, Ismail controlled Morrocco through an incredible army of 150.000 black slaves, mostly from Sudan.  With these soldiers he drove the English from Tangiers (1684) and the Spanish from Larache (1689), while the Ottoman Turks were sweeping westward.  He exchanged ambassadorts with many leading powers.  Meknes was chosen by Moulay Ismael as the imperial capital city built on the model of Versailles. 
The Alaouites succeeded in stabilizing their position, and while the kingdom was much smaller than before, it remained quite wealthy.  But at the death of Moulay Ismail, his black army sacked the country and a long period of anarchy started. 
Twelve sons of Moulay Ismail ruled one after another, according to the whims of an army which made and demolished the sultans.  The cases of the State were emptied and the country even knew beginnings of famine. 
In 1757, another wise and strong Alaouite ruler came to the throne, Mohamed ben Abdellah, who built the city of Essaouira and invited the English, the French, and the Jewish to settle and to trade there.  Several trade treaties are signed with the European powers.  Then the wild tribes of the Souss area who had not previously acknowledged the central authority were pacified and helped the sultan to keep control of the country. 

READ MORE ABOUT THE PRE-COLONIAL RULE

THE SPANISH COLONISATION
In 1766 a Spanish mission set out to find an outpost on the Atlantic Coast between the desert and the south of Atlas Mountains, but the sultans who at that time governed Morocco could not fulfil the request because they did not have the necessary authority over this territory. 

In 1767 King Charles III of Spain and Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah of Morocco signed the Marrakech peace-treaty in which the Moroccan ruler  recognised the Spanish title to some Presidios, Ceuta and Melilla among them. In the text the Sultan affirmed that he did not exercise effective control of the Oued Noun river region and further. 

MARRAKESH TREATY, art.  18 | May 28, 1767
( http://www.wsahara.net/m_treaty.html)

This treaty has two controversial translations.  The one in Arabic reads:

"His Imperial Majesty (of Morocco) warns the inhabitants of the Canaries against any fishing expedition to the coasts of Oued Noun and beyond.  He disclaims any responsibility for the way they may be treated by the Arabs of the country, to whom it is difficult to apply decisions, since they have no fixed residence, travel as they wish and pitch their tents where they choose.  The inhabitants of the Canaries are certain to be maltreated by those Arabs."

The Spanish text reads:

"His Imperial majesty (of Morocco) refrains from expressing an opinion with regard to the trading post which His Catholic Majesty (of Spain) wishes to establish to the south of the River Noun, since He can not take responsibility for accidents and misfortunes, because Sus dominios (His domination) does not extend so far.  (?) Northwards from Santa Cruz (Agadir), His Imperial Majesty grants to the Canary Islanders and the Spaniards the rights of fishing without authorizing any other nation to do so."

Despite the differences in formulation, both texts make the point that the sultan did not exercise effective control of the Oued Noun region, which now is part of Morocco. 

The real meaning of Article 18 is clarified by a letter sent by the sultan to Carlos III on the day the treaty was signed.  Referring to the "Arabs of the coast of Oued Noun," he said that "they are not subordinate to nor fearful of anyone, because they are greatly separated from my dominions and I do not have power over them ...  These Arabs have no fixed abode and move around as it pleases them without submitting to government or any authority."

This statement was confirmed in 1799 by the Meknes Treaty signed between Spain and sultan Sidi Moulay Souleiman.  

MEKNES TREATY, art.  22 | May 1, 1799
( http://www.wsahara.net/m_treaty.html)

"If any Spanish ship is shipwrecked in the Oued Noun and its coast, where His Moroccan Majesty does not exercise dominion, he offers nonetheless, to prove how much he appreciates the friendship of His Catholic Majesty, to avail himself of the most opportune and effective measures to extract and free the seamen and other individuals who have the misfortune to fall into the hands of the natives there."

The implication of these articles was that the sultan did not exercise sovereignty or effective control of the Oued Noun but was willing to use his influence there to secure the release of shipwrecked Spaniards.  By extension, the article implies that the sultan can not have exercised sovereignty over Western Sahara, which is further south of Oued Noun.    

In the Saharawi tribal culture no tribe had any direct or indirect power over any other (in contrast with its neighbours, for example Morocco, where there was a hereditary monarch with absolute powers, or Mauritania, where it was the strongest tribe which imposed tribute on the weaker tribes and, in general, dominated them) and each one was represented in an overall governing body called the Assembly of Forty. 
Each Saharawi tribe was divided into sub-tribes which had so much autonomy that a colonial historian from Spain described them as living in "complete anarchy".  This was not so, for so organized was the tribal society as a whole that they actually had "kafirs", that is official representatives to neighbouring tribes in Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. 
Disputes were handled either in a friendly way or by compensation according to Islamic laws.  More serious disputes were taken to the counsel of the chiefs of tribes, called Ait Arbein.  Today a similar organised structure exists in the administration of the refugee camps. 

In the last quarter of the 18th century Morocco was affected by a terrible dryness, generator of famine.  In the meanwhile the kingdom was disturbed by an unfortunate war against Spain and by dissidences of sultan's brothers.  The sultan himself died in combat during one of these revolts.  Then a terrible epidemic of plague came.  All these calamities together terribly weakened the country, which perhaps lost half of its population. 

A renewed attempt at centralisation was abandoned and the tribes were allowed preserving their autonomy.  Saguia el-Hamra, the region between Cape Bojador and the today Moroccan border, became known as the "Land of Saints", a centre of Islamic learning and holiness, which attracted people in search of instruction from far and wide. 

Sultan Mulay Muhammad ibn Abdallah (1757-1790) was not willing to accept Spanish rule over Melilla.  He laid siege to the city in 1771 and again in from December 9th 1774 to March 19th 1775, with over 10.000 projectiles shot into Melilla.  On December 25th 1780, Spain and Morocco signed the Treaty of Aranjuez, in which Spain ceded some territory to Morocco, which in turn recognized Spanish rule over the remainder of Melilla. 

At the end of the 18th century colonialism seemed to have become to an end.  Britain had lost its "Thirteen Colonies" in America, Spain and Portugal had lost most of South America and Holland was having difficulties holding onto the East Indies. 
But in the 19th century a second wave of colonisation took place and soon the strategic importance and economic potential of north-west Africa excited the interest of the European powers. 

Sultan Abd ar-Rahman's reign on Morocco (1822-1859) was marked by both peaceful and hostile contacts with European powers.  In 1823 a commercial convention with Portugal was signed, followed by comparable agreements with England in 1824, Piedmont and France in 1825.  By time France became the dominant power in north-west Africa and sought to extend its possessions. 
Abd ar-Rahman sought, unsuccessfully, to take advantage of the overthrow of Turkish rule in Algeria in order to extend his territory.  After France occupied Alger, he allied himself against France with the Algerian emir, Abd al-Kader, but after their defeat at Isly in 1844, he signed the peace with France.  In 1845 the Treaty of Lalla Maghnia fixed the border between Algeria and Morocco.  France was recognized a right on Morocco.

Mohammed IV (1859-1873) tried to foster trading links, above all with European countries and the USA.  The army and administration were also modernised, to improve control over the Berber and Bedouin tribes.  But many local lords where sometimes more powerful that the sultan himself. 
Then the Sultan tried to occupy Ceuta and Melilla in 1859 and as a reaction Spain invaded Tetouan. 
Far from being a small episode of colonialism, the Spanish-Moroccan African war of 1859 caused about 10.000 casualties.
Spanish interest in the territory was principally determined by its desire to protect its nearby Canary Islands and the fishermen that operated from there.  In facts, from time to time, Spain was forced to negotiate with the chieftains of the area to obtain the restitution of its sailors captured by the local tribes. 

In 1860, following its defeat, Morocco gave up Sidi Ifni to Spain and was constrained to pay significant war indemnities.  So, after giving up a good part of its sovereignty in customs, tax and legal matters, it entered a period of great political and economical crisis, growing a heavy debt with foreign banks, mainly English. 

Moulay el Hassan (1873-1894) had the task of pacifying the tribes and was the first monarch to enter the wild Souss area, around Agadir, where the tribes never acknowledged the authority of the state.  But in the same time the Saharawis were out of any real control.  And although the independence of Morocco was guaranteed in the Conference of Madrid (1880), France gained ever greater influence and Tangier turned into a zone of international administration.  Morocco had protested against this, but it was by now so weak that they had to give up even more than before.   

Within twenty years, from 1880 to 1900, every corner of the Earth, from the highest mountains in the Himalayas to the most remote Pacific island and Antarctica, came to be claimed by one or other European power.  Africa saw the most dramatic colonisation.  It was divided up as if it had been a cake split between greedy European leaders.  This was called the "Scramble for Africa". 

THE COLONIAL RULE
In November 1884
, during
the Berlin Conference (1884 - 1885), the Spanish Government announced, by royal decree, its intention to take possession of Western Sahara.  It proclaimed a protectorate from Cape Bojador to Cape Blanc along the Western Sahara coast; then the army, led by captain Emilio Bonelli Hernando, set up a trading post in Dakhla ('Villa Cisneros' in Spanish).  After that some agreements followed with the local tribes.  This act was ratified in the Berlin Conference of 1884/85, where the European powers shared their influence upon Africa.  Western Sahara was placed under the "protection of Spain" and negotiations were started, in 1886, to define the frontiers between the French and Spanish zones. 

The present-day Western Sahara's borders are a result of the three colonial agreements made between France, Spain and Morocco.  The southern border, with the area which will become French-controlled Mauritania, was defined in 1900 when the first Franco-Spanish secret treaty was signed, to be followed by further secret agreements in 1904 (to extend Spanish control into southern Morocco' Tarfaya and Ifni) and 1912 (to define finally Spanish and French zones in West Africa).  But the sandy Atlantic coast to the west, the Quarkziz and Oued Draa mountain chain to the north and the barren desert to the east and south form natural boundaries to the region. 

The local population in the area resisted the changes as much as possible while new borders affected Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania.  The Saharawis themselves fiercely opposed the Spanish forces. 
Three wars were fought between Moroccans and Spaniards in
the Rif area, with thousands of troops engaged:

In 1894 Sultan Moulay Hassan died, and his son Abdu l-Aziz was only 10 years at the accession.  During his reign, Europeans became the main advisors at the court, and local rulers became more and more independent from the sultan's rule.  This brought local leaders, such as Ma Al-Aineen, into the fight.  Al-Aineen was a chieftain from Mauritania and he moved into Western Sahara (Wadi Dahab and Saguia el Hamra) from where he led a coalition of Mauritanian tribes. 

In 1895, by a bilateral agreement, England sold to Morocco for 50.000 British pounds the city of Tarfaya, on the actual border between Morocco and Western Sahara, where Donald Mackenzie's North-West Africa Company had established a trading post in 1879.  The post was handed to Morocco and it was agreed that "no one will have any claim to the lands that are between Oued Draa and Cape Boujdour, and which are called Tarfaya, and all the lands behind it, because this belongs to the territory of Morocco."
Correspondence between British and Moroccan officials prior to the agreement reveals that the British government, in agreeing to sell Tarfaya trading post, which Mackenzie no longer saw as a viable commercial enterprise, wanted to bar rival colonial powers from staking a claim to the area.  In fact, another clause of the agreement read:
"It is agreed that this (Moroccan) government shall give its word to the English government that they will not give any part of the above-mentioned lands to anyone whatsoever without the concurrence of the English Government."

In 1900 a Franco-Spanish Convention defined the southern border of Spain's Saharawi colony.  Between 1900 and 1903 French troops occupied part of Morocco. 

In 1904 the Entente Cordiale between the United Kingdom and Kingdom gave the British a free hand in Egypt in exchange for a French free hand in Morocco.  The same year, the convention of Paris fixed the northern border of Western Sahara and Spain was recognized its influence in the northern Morocco (Rif, Ceuta and Melilla) and on the small territory of Ifni on the Atlantic coast. 
( http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/entecord.html)

DECLARATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENTS OF FRANCE AND SPAIN,RESPECTING THE INTEGRITY OF MOROCCO.
Signed at Paris, October 3, 1904. 

The Government of the French Republic and the Government of His Majesty, the King of Spain,
having agreed to define the extent of the rights and the guarantee of the interests resulting, for
France, from her  Algerian possessions, and, for Spain, from her possessions along the coast of
Morocco, and the Government of His Majesty. The King of Spain, having in consequence given
its approval to the Anglo-French declaration of April 8, 1904, relating to Morocco and to Egypt,
and communicated to it by the Government of the French Republic, 
Declare that they remain firmly committed to the integrity of the Moroccan Empire under
the sovereignty of the Sultan. 

TEXT FROM : Supplement to American Journal of International Law vol 6, 1912, 30.

After recognition by the United Kingdom of French sphere of influence in North Africa, France tried to achieve a protectorate over Morocco, but was opposed by Germany.  In 1905 the German Emperor William II proclaimed in Tanger his hostility to the French wishes.   

The "first Moroccan crisis" of 1905-06 was resolved in Spain at the Algeciras Conference in 1906, which formalized France's "special position" and entrusted policing of Morocco to France and Spain jointly.
The purpose of the conference was to mediate the dispute between France and Germany, and to assure the repayment of a large loan made to the Moroccan sultan two years before.  Thirteen countries met, the full diplomatic corps of the European powers was involved.  The mediator, representing the USA president Theodore Roosevelt, solved the dispute largely in France's favour, though he assured the protection of German investments. 
The conference reaffirmed the integrity and independence of Morocco and formalized France's "special position", being France able to control Moroccan finances.  The Conference entrusted policing of Morocco jointly to France and Spain and put the African country under the political and economical control of the European powers.  The new state bank was to act as Morocco's Treasury Department, but with a strict cap on the spending of the Sherifian Empire, with administrators appointed by the national banks that guaranteed the loans: the German Empire, the U.K., France and Spain.  Spanish coinage continued to circulate.  Rights of Europeans to own land were established.  Taxes were to be levied towards public works.  Opium and hashish continued to be a government monopoly of the Sultan's. 

Increasingly disturbed by Western penetration of the area, Sahrawi tribes performed ghazi raids against the foreign forces, but French troops drew ever closer, conquering one local ruler after another.
In 1904, Ma al-Aineen proclaimed a holy war, or jihad, against the colonizers. He proclaimed that the trab al-beidan (a desert area that includes today's Mauritania, Western Sahara and large swaths of Mali and Algeria) was under the Sultan's rule. While the Sultan was never given control over Ma al-'Aynayn's forces, this display of effective cooperation helped assemble a large coalition of tribes to fight the colonizers. Ma al-'Aynayn set about acquiring firearms and other materials both through channels in Morocco and through direct negotiations with rival European powers such as Germany and Spain, and quickly built up an impressive fighting force. A member of his Gudfiyya brotherhood in 1905 assassinated Xavier Coppolani, who was leading the French conquest of Mauritania, thereby delaying the conquest of the emirate of Adrar for a few years.

In 1905 Ma al-Aineen asked the Sultan of Morocco to support his tribe in the jihad (holy war) against the invaders.  Apart from fine words, the help was limited to the delivery of a few arms, as the monarch was already coming to terms with French imperialism.  Faced with Morocco's weak opposition to the invaders, Saharawis began to fight back in 1906 and turned against the Moroccan king. 

In the same period, a second and a third "Moroccan crisis" provoked by Berlin increased tensions among European great powers.
In 1908 friction arose at Casablanca, under French occupation, when the German consul gave refuge to deserters from the French Foreign Legion.  This dispute was settled by the Hague Tribunal. 
The French Resident-General decided to install the capital in Rabat and obtained the abdication of Moulay Hafid replaced by his brother Moulay Youssef.  French also built the ports of Casablanca and Kenitra, the new towns of Rabat, Fez, Meknes and Marrakec
h, while the old medina of theses cities remained untouched.  A modern educational system was introduced, the administration was modernised and the legal system reformed. 

Shortly afterward in a coup the weak Sultan Abd al-Aziz IV was unseated and his brother, Abd al-Hafid, installed on the throne.  He had difficulty maintaining order and asked France to intervain in the revolt of the local Berber tribes. The rebel warriors were stopped on their march to Fez in 1910 by the French army which had already  occupied some cities like Casablanca.    The French troops entered in Fez on March 21st, 1911.  A new revolt was crushed in April.  Meknes and Rabat were taken in June, Marrakesh in September.  On the other hand, Spain had occupied Larache and Ksar-el-Kébir and Germany had reacted by sending the gunship Panther in Agadir "to protect its economic interests".

After Ma al-Aineen's death, his son went on struggling and entered Marrakesh in 1912.  France reacted by great violence, razing to the ground the city of Smara and destroying its library, that contained more than 5000 manuscripts. 

Ma al-Aineen enjoyed tremendous prestige and his name is invoked by both the Polisario Front and by Moroccans for whom he embodied the unity of Morocco and the Sahara. Today family members of Ma al-Aineen hold high offices in the Polisario Front, in Morocco and in Mauritania.

In 1912, the Treaty of Fez made finally Morocco a protectorate of France, leaving to the sultan Moulay Hafid an only apparent power covered by a Resident-General.  By the same treaty, Germany fastened part of French Equatorial Africa to German Cameroun and Spain assumed the role of protecting power over the whole Rif in the north and the Saharan zones in the south.  A Spanish-French Convention demarcated the borders of Western Sahara and Ifni.  Tanger was declared an international zone.

Still the tribes in the south of Morocco were very rebellious.  France, now in control of Morocco, intensified its military offensive in Mauritania.  Numerous incursions were also made into Saguia el Hamra but a sporadic fighting continued.

During the First World War five regiments of Moroccan riflemen fought in France, counting 34 000 deaths.   

In 1921 a rebellion against Spain was started in the Rif Mountains by the Berber chief Abdu l-Karim.  He led his tribesmen against the Spanish and in the battke of Anoual 15.000 Spanish soldiers were killed.  Then, Abdu l-Karim proclamed the Confederated Republic of Rif Tribes.  Three years later the Spanish were pushed out to their territory along the coast and Abdu l-Karim attacked the French menacing Fez and Tanger.  This war was the origin of a military coup d'etat in Madrid by General Miguel Primo de Rivera. 

Abdu l-Karim remained a threat until he was defeated in 1926 by joint Spanish and French forces of 360.000 troops under the leadership of Marshal Petain.  On the Spanish side Captain Francisco Franco became General during this war.

For many years, Spain’s rule in Western Sahara was confined to a limited presence along the coast.  It did not venture much into the interior nor meddle with the affairs of the Saharawi tribes.  Relations with the new rulers were fairly reasonable.  In fact it was against France’s aggressive colonial agenda that the Saharawi tribes directed their fiercest resistance.  Western Sahara’s interior became an ideal springboard for launching guerrilla attacks against French targets in Mauritania and Morocco.  Bloody clashes intensified between the years 1923 and 1934, until France threatened to occupy Spain’s territories if it did not crush Saharawi resistance activities, to stop raids against the French occupied areas of the Maghreb.  This diplomatic menace led to several joint Franco-Spanish military operations to destroy the resistance movement the whole of the "Spanish Sahara".  Finally in 1934 a joint operation of French forces from French Morocco, Algeria and French West Africa and Spanish forces finally put down the resistance, and Spain finally take full possession of its colony.  The Saharawi Resistance was stamped out and the region was "pacificated". 

In 1936 the Spanish administration attributed to the population a civil status and an identity document and then introduced an obligatory VISA to enter the French territories.  This consolidated in the time the self-identification of the native population in front of the Spanish power.  At the same time the blooming of national liberation movements in Africa, helped the formation of a self-conscience of the Saharawi population against the colonial administration, even if the tribal divisions remained.

Many Saharawi began to live stably close to the enterprises, the garrisons and the Spanish ports, even if the nomads continued to represent the majority of the population.  The feeling of territorial tie to the Western Sahara did not take root immediately.   The concept of national border, stable in the space and the time, did not belong to the Saharawis. 

Still, the Spanish Sahara remained an almost forgotten colony with little economic value, even if there were large French and Spanish strategical interests in the area. The main reason for Spain for maintaining a presence there was to counter-balance the French domination of the region and as a protection for the Canary Islands and the rich fishing waters between these and the Saharan coast.  Still in 1952 there were only 216 civilian employees, 24 telephone subscribers and 366 children attending school in the whole of Spanish Sahara.  The ahel es-sahel continued their nomadic life.  The Spanish colonisers ruled them using their own traditional qabila structures of sheiks.  As in many other places the Spanish imperialists used the largely democratic tribal structures to implement their domination. 

In the 1930s almost 100.000 Europeans were living everywhere in Morocco.  In a few years they became half a million!

In September 1939, the Sultan Mohammed Ben Youssef gave a call in the mosques and asked the Moroccans to support France, committed in the Second World War.   So Moroccans fought side by side with French troops suffering 90.000 deaths.
Spain being not in war, Saharawis were not officially involved in it.

In the same time nationalist movements in Morocco became stronger and stronger.  They based their arguments for independence on such World War II declarations as the Atlantic Charter.

"The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, (...) respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them".
(http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/atlantic.htm)

On 10 décembre 1943 the nationalist Istiqlal Party (Independence party in English) was formed, representing the nascent Moroccan bourgeoisie.  At the beginning of 1944, 58 Moroccan well-known personalities, led by the sultan Mohammed Ben Youssef, signed the Independence Manifesto, one of the earliest demands for idipendence, and forwarded it to French, American, Russian and British authorities, demanding recognition of the independence of Morocco, its national sovereignty and its territorial integrity, comprehensive of the Western Sahara.  Two years after a decree separates Spanish Sahara from the Spanish protectorate in Morocco.

On April 1947, the sultan Mohammed delivered in Tangier a historical speech claiming for Moroccan independence, territorial integrity and entering the Arab Ligue.  The speech marked the revival of the resistance to foreign occupation.  France, supported by some local collaborating chiefs, tried to propose an interdependence agreement based on a common administration, but the sultan rejected the proposal.

In 1953, after some bloody confrontations between French troops and colons and Moroccan nationalists, in answer to his claims for independence, the sultan was deported to Madagascar and his uncle Mohammed Ibn-Arafa was put in his place.
But Moroccans opposed this new rule and the Arabic States asked officially to UN the right to self-determination for Morocco.

The period leading up to Morocco’s independence in 1956 was again a joint struggle in the region against both French and Spanish colonialism.  The Jaich at-Tahir (Liberation Army), mainly composed by Saharawis tribes, was fighting in what today is Morocco, parts of Algeria, Western Sahara and Mauritania.  In 1957/1958 the Liberation Army was engaged in the so-called Ifni War (the "forgotten war" in Spanish) for the liberation of Ifni, Tarfaya and the Western Sahara.    

MOROCCO'S CLAIMS AND SAHARAWI RESISTANCE
In the 1940s, while most of Europe was in prey with the Second World War, Manuel Went Medina, young professor of geology in Madrid, started to map the geological structure of the Western Sahara.  In the 1950s, the discovery in Bou-craa of one of the biggest high grade phosphate deposits in the world led the country to be reproduced on the world chart of the mining resources.  The reserves of this zone were estimated to be more than 10 million tons and 70 to 80% pure.  Later in the 1950s, huge layers of iron ore were discovered in Agracha, on the north-western edge of the plate of Tiris, with a few kilometres of the large iron Mauritanians layers of Zouérate.  The layer of Agracha would contain on the whole 72 million tons of iron ore of a content of 57.3 % of iron and 13.6 % of titanium oxide used in the manufacture of painting.  It contains also 0.6 to 0.8 % of vanadium, making Western Sahara one of the areas of the world
having the greatest quantities of this metal, used in aerospace industry to manufacture light and resistant to heat metal alloys.
For the first time, the Western Sahara appeared valuable to the indigenous population as well as to the governments of Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania. The discovery of the deposits also renewed the historic rivalry between Algeria and Morocco, both of which encouraged Saharawi aggression against the Spanish occupiers.

At the end of 1955 Mohammed Ben Youssef (Sultan Mohammed V) was triumphally welcomed back in Rabat from his exile, to announce the independence of Morocco four months afterwards.  In the same year a joint hispano-Moroccan declaration was published in which Spain recognized the independence of Morocco and underlined the respect of the territorial integrity of the new Kingdom and its sovereignty.  Moroccan control over northern Spanish-ruled areas was restored.  The internationalized city of Tangier was reintegrated with the signing of the Tangier Protocol on October 29, 1956. 

Morocco's claim on Spanish Sahara began at the time of the country's independence, in 1956.  King Hassan of Morocco wanted to re-establish the "Greater Morocco" or "Moroccan Sultanate", pretending that the Moroccan sultans have always been spiritual leaders and rulers of the Saharawi tribes. 
In the meanwhile Spain administrated Sahara like an inner province, represented by three deputies in the Spanish Parliament and governed by a delegate of General Franco.

King Mohammed V, still in the process of consolidating his power, could take advantage of the nationalist fervour and therefore also adopted the cause of Greater Morocco.  Another powerful reason to maintain the claims over Greater Morocco was the fear that the spirit of the liberation movement in Algeria, which had a more left wing and even “socialist” language, would spread to Morocco and lead to the overthrow of the monarchy.  Thus Morocco refused to recognise Mauritania when this country won independence in 1960.  At that time, the idea of territorial integrity was not accepted by all the wings of the nationalist movement.  The more radical and left-leaning wing represented by Ben Barka, which in 1959 split from the Istiqlal to found the National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP), explicitly rejected the idea of a Greater Morocco, defended the independence of Mauritania and opposed the 1963 short Sands War against Algeria, barely a year after it had finally won independence.  The same position was adopted by the main workers organisation at that time, the Union of Moroccan Workers (UMT).  The Communist Party, following the criminal two-stage policies of Stalinism had exactly the same policy as the Istiqlal and even criticised the King for recognising Mauritania in 1970.  At that time the question of the Western Sahara was simply posed as one of the struggles against Spanish colonialism.  Despite the Moroccan claims over the former Spanish colony, the Alaouite monarchy did not make any serious moves for more than a decade and used the conflict mainly as a bargaining chip.  A clear example of this was the disbanding of the Morocco-sponsored Sahara Liberation Front (FLS) in 1969, after Morocco had won the small enclave of Ifni back from Spain.  As a matter of fact the then King Hassan II enjoyed excellent relations with the Franco dictatorship in Spain. 

On the other hand, Mauritania wanted to prevent Western Sahara from falling into Moroccan hands, since that would have given the belligerent Moroccan regime 980 miles of a very difficult to protect common border in the desert.  Furthermore most of the border between Mauritania and the Spanish Sahara runs along a strategic iron-ore railway upon which Mauritania was dependent for about 85% of its exports. 

In 1956 riots and bloody battles between the Spanish troops and the Saharawi resistance began.  The strength of these guerrilla forces was such that during 1957 the Spanish had to retreat to a few strongholds on the coast and even Smara had to be abandoned.  The Saharawis combatants, who had supported the Morrocans (then also Mauritanians and Algerians) in their fight of liberation against France, asked in return for assistance in their fight of liberation against the Spanish domination.  Morocco initially supported them before giving them up, stopping provisioning them assistances and ammunition.   

To maintain control over the country’s natural resources Mohammed V had first to suppress revolts in the Northern Rif region in 1957 and also to smash the rests of the Liberation Army, which were based mainly in the Spanish territories in the South of Morocco and the Sahara, and refused to join in the newly formed Royal Armed Forces (FAR). 
This movement really threatened the process of “controlled” decolonisation that the French imperialists had envisaged for Morocco, and further added to their troubles in Algeria, which they wanted to keep at all costs. 

The Ifni War, sometimes called the Forgotten War in Spain (la Guerra Olvidada), was an important episode of the history of this region. A series of armed incursions led by Moroccan insurgents and indigenous Sahrawi rebels began in October 1957 and culminated with the abortive siege of Sidi Ifni.
In January 12, 1958,
a division of the Liberation Army  attacked the Spanish garrison at Laâyoune . Beaten back and forced into retreat by the Spaniards, the Army turned its efforts to the southeast. The next day the Moroccan/Saharawis fighters (500 troops, 241 died) ambushed a Spanish battalion at Edchera (350 troops, 37 died).
After this battle, to safeguard their interests in the area, Spain and France signed a military treaty, with the approval of the Moroccan regime.  It led to a common military operation, known under the name of operation Ecouvillon/Ouragan, involving 14.000 troops (
9.000 Spanish and 5.000 French) and 130 aircraft (60 Spanish and 70 French), which crushed the insurrection and disbanded the rest of the Liberation Army (about 20.000 fighters). A hundred death are reported among the Franco-Spanish troops and about 1.000 among the Liberation Army's troops, which lost much material, too.
For the first time, massively superior European air power were used in this area.
First to fall were the Moroccan mountain strongholds at  Tan-Tan and Saguia el Hamra. Bombed from above and rocketed from below, the Liberation Army suffered 150 dead and abandoned its war caches.
On February 10, the 4th, 9th, and 13th Legion battalions, organized into a motorized group, drove the Moroccans from Edchera and swept through to  Tafurdat and Smara.
The Spanish army at fron Laâyoune and Villa Cisneros, in conjunction with French forces from Fort Gouraud, struck the Moroccans on February 21, destroying Saharan Liberation Army concentrations between Bir Nazaran and Ausert.

On April 2, 1958, the governments of Spain and Morocco signed the Treaty of Angra de Cintra. Morocco obtained the region of Tarfaya (colony of Cabo Juby), between the river Draa and the parallel 27ş 40', excluding Sidi Ifni and the Spanish Sahara. 
Afterwards, Spain retained possession of Ifni until 1969, when, while under some international pressure (UN resolution 2072/1965), it returned the territory to Morocco.

After the Ifni war, part of the Liberation Army was absorbed into the Moroccan armed forces. Because of this, Morocco claims the Army of Liberation battles in Western Sahara, and the fighting under Moroccan flag of Saharawis as a proof of Western Sahara's loyalty to the Moroccan crown, whereas sympathizers to the Polisario Front view it only as an anti-colonial war directed against the Spanish colonial presence, an authentic manifestation of Saharawi nationalism which reinforced a national and political conscience among the Saharawis.
As a matter of facts, Sahrawi veterans of the LIberation Army today exist on both sides of the Western Sahara conflict, and both the Kingdom of Morocco and the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic celebrate it as part of their political history.

In consequence of this collaboration, through the Cintra agreements on April 1, 1958, the Spanish colony of Western Saraha was reorganized in the provinces of Saguia el Hamra in the north, and Rio de Oro, in the south; Spain yielded to Morocco the current province of Tarfaya, south to Draa River, inhabited by Saharawis. 

In the early 1960s, a profound socio-economic transformation started in the Spanish Sahara, which was to change the nature of the liberation movement.  Before it, the Saharawi people were essentially nomadic, pasturing cattle in the sandy low lying plains.  They moved in accordance with the seasons, their routes dictated by wells and watering holes. 

The Cabila or Djema'a was the main socio-political unit of Saharan society, an assembly of notables of a tribe which acted as a legislative, executive and judicial body, making that society relatively democratic, by the practice of collective decision-making. It organized war efforts, raiding parties, lawmaking and diplomacy, among other things, and also settled disputes between members of the tribe. Sometimes, a larger assembly known as the Ait Arbein (Council of Forty) would be gathered, composed of elders from several tribes, to organize the community against foreign invasion or other such supratribal concerns.
The exact organization of the Djema'a varied from tribe to tribe, but it generally incorporated both old Berber customs, Arab traditions and based its practices on Islamic law. Women served on the Djema'a in at least some of the Saharawi tribes. T
he asabyia or tribal loyalty system organised social relations and helped the most vulnerable within the group.
Saharan traditional society was highly stratified and hierarchical. In each Djema'a some elders, the sheiks or tribal chiefs, were the main source of power/knowledge. Their role was to transmit Saharawi traditions, their ancestral laws and the history of their families to the younger members of their community.

After Spain and France invaded the territory in 1884, the Djema'as remained very active, but as the Spanish Army gradually extended its control and subdued the tribes, resistant Djema'a leaderships were killed or jailed, while others were coerced or bribed into cooperation with the colonizers. The
Ma al-Aineen uprising in the early 1900s, and the rebellions which followed, represented something of a last stand of the traditional tribal society against colonization. In the 1950s, tribal authority was slowly eroding due to urbanization and new ways of life.

The economic situation was difficult.  The school was a rare privilege at that time and few Saharawis were allowed to study abroad, mostly in Spain.
Then serious surveys and the exploitation of the phosphate deposits began, opening a phase of more intense colonization and transformation of the traditional Saharawi society.  The territory’s total deposits of phosphates were estimated at that time at 10 billion tonnes, with particularly rich deposits at Bou-Craa.  The economic exploitation of the new resources demanded many workers and transformed the population from nomadic into sedentary. 

The exploitation of the natural resources by Morocco and Spain and the Ifni war marked the birth of the first Saharawi political movement claiming independence from Spain.

From the beginning of the 1960s, Spain had pursued two different strategies over Western Sahara.  On the one hand a section of Franco’s government represented by Carrero Blanco wanted to maintain an indefinite colonial presence and was convinced of the loyalty towards Spain of the local population as a result of the modernisation it had introduced.  Thus, the Spanish government attempted to form loyal Sahrawi political institutions to support its rule, and draw activists away from the radical nationalists (such as a colonial body called Djema'a like the old Saharawi council and, some years later, the moderate Saharawi National Unity Party or PUNS party, composed mainly of members of the Djema'a).  Another section of the regime, stronger amongst the military, wanted a controlled decolonisation process which would hand over control to some pro-Spanish force through which they could still control the region’s natural resources, mainly the phosphate mines and the rich fishing grounds.  Both strategies coincided in the need to create a separate Saharawi identity in order to pre-empt Morocco’s claims or the emergence of a nationalist pro-Morocco movement.

The proclamation of independence of the Mauritania 28 November 1960 added a new subject in the issue of the territory of the Sahara. 
After independence, President Moktar Ould Daddah, originally installed by the French, formalized Mauritania into a one-party state in 1964 with a new constitution, which set up an authoritarian presidential regime. Daddah's own Parti du Peuple Mauritanien (PPM) became the ruling organization in a single-party system. The President justified this decision on the grounds that he considered Mauritania unready for western-style multi-party democracy. Under this one-party constitution, Daddah wanted to create a "Greater Mauritania" in opposition to the idea of a "Greater Morocco", claiming all the Moorish or Saharawi-populated areas of the north-western Africa.  The basis for his claim was the close ethnic and cultural ties between the Mauritanian Moors and the Saharawis of Spanish Sahara, in effect forming two subsets of the same tri
bal Arabo-Berber population inhabiting the actual Islamic Republic of Mauritania, the Western Sahara and parts of Morocco, Algeria, Niger and Mali.
In 1957, Ould Daddah had stated:
"I therefore call on our brothers in the Spani
sh Sahara to dream of this economic and spiritual Greater Mauritania of which we cannot speak at present. I address to them and I ask you to repeat to them a message of friendship, a call for concord between all the Moors of the Atlantic, in Azaouad and from the Draa to the borders of Senegal." (Ould Ahmed Salem, p. 506, n. 17)

On December 14, 1960, as the aspirations of the colonised peoples to achieve self-determination, and the international community's perception that United Nations Charter principles were being too slowly applied, led to the United Nations General Assembly's proclamation on 14 December 1960 of the Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. 

By the Declaration, the UN General Assembly "Solemnly proclaims the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms and manifestations. And to this end declares that:
1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the United Nations Charter, and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and cooperation
2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their political, cultural and economic development.

5. Immediate steps should be taken, in Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories to transfer all powers to the people of these territories.

Also in 1960, the Assembly approved resolution 1541 (XV), defining free association with an independent State, integration into an independent State, or independence as the three legitimate options of full self-government.

Later, in 1962, the Assembly established a special committee, now known as the Special Committee of 24 on Decolonization, to examine the application of the Declaration and to make recommendations on its implementation

In March 1961, King Mohammed V of Morocco was succeeded by Crown Prince Hassan II who presented a new constitution.  
In April 1961, Western Sahara was declared a "Spanish province".  Spain equipped the territory with the provincial Council and with municipalities, the provincial council being chaired by one Saharawi.  Three elected deputies represented the new province in the Spanish parliament, las Cortes.  In 1967 Sahara's number of seats in the Cortes increased from three to six.

In the meanwhile in 1962 Algeria achieved its independence from France.  As France didn't establish precise borders between the two colonies, Morocco attempted to occupy disputed border areas by force, and by force Moroccan troops were driven out. It was the so-called Sand War, with intense fighting around the oasis towns of Tindouf and Figuig. The Algerian army, just formed from the guerrilla ranks of the FLN's Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN) was still geared towards asymmetric warfare, and had little heavy equipment.  On the other hand, while the modern, western-equipped Moroccan army consistently outperformed Algerian regulars and local guerrillas on the battlefield, it did not manage to penetrate into Algeria. The war stalemated with the intervention of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Arab League and it was broken off after approximately three weeks. The OAU eventually managed to arrange a formal cease-fire on February 20, 1964. A peace agreement was then made after Arab League mediation, and a demilitarized zone instituted but hostilities simmered.

In 1963, the UN included Western Sahara in the list of countries to which the principle of self-determination has to be applied.  Then, in October 1964, the Committee for the Decolonization of the UN adopted a resolution asking to Spain the application, for Ifni and the Western Sahara, of the General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960, on the right to independence of the Countries under colonial domination. 
The question of the liberation of Spanish Sahara was first on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly when two analogous resolutions were adopted, in December 1965 and December 1966, with the common objective to speed up Spain to organize a referendum, under the UN control, allowing the native population to express their wishes and foreseing the return of the refugees.
The UN resolution 2072 (XX) of December 1965 called on Spain to take all measures necessary to ensure the decolonisation of the territory and enter into negotiations relating to its future.  It set the tone of the many resolutions subsequently passed on the Sahara question, both by the UN General Assembly and by other international organisations, especially the Non-Aligned Conference and the Organization of African Unity. 
The UN resolution 2229 (XXI) of 20 December 1966 ratified the inalienable right of the Saharawi people to self-determination, in pursuance of the Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, and expressely urged Spain to hold a referendum to know the wishes of the indigenous Saharawis, including refugees. 
Morocco and Mauritania had supported the right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination and independence at the meeting of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization in June; no year passed thereafter without a resolution being passed to the same or similar effect.
Spain always voted against any resolution, being at that time the only remaining colonial power together with Portugal. 

Even the OAU Council of Ministers had adopted its first resolution on Western Sahara, at its 1st summit in Cairo, July 1966.

The OAU asked the Member States "to respect the existing borders at the time when they reached independence" according to the wishes of Algeria.  But in its final declaration which took again the formula on "the respect of the borders", a paragraph is added treating need for respecting "the territorial integrity of the States" according to the wishes of Maroc.  Since then and until its resolution of 1983 the Organization of African Unity will try to sail laboriously between opposite desires: Morocco and Mauritania initially, Morocco and Mauritania on the one hand and Algeria of the other; between Morocco and the Frente Polisario finally.

In the meanwhile a re-organization of the Saharawi indipendentist forces began in the cities, in the towns and among the refugees in the near countries, starting with sporadic demonstrations against the Spanish domination.  Such process brought Mohamed Sidi Brahim Bassiri to found, in 1967, an indipendentist and clandestine political organization, known as "Harakat Tahrir Saguia El Hamra wa Uad Ed-Dahab" or simply "Movement for the Liberation of the Sahara" (MLS), whose objective was to re-unite and canalize the popular forces and aspirations.
The first actions of the Movement did not have military character and took the shape of civil resistance: strikes, demonstrations, teaching of the Arabic language and the Saharawi history.

A curfew was decreed in 1969, followed by a series of arrestations and expulsions, which moved the UN to recall Spain to the application of resolution 1514 (XV) on the decolonization.
In the same year the Spanish enclave of Ifni in the south became part of the new Morocco, which even claimed the Spanish-controlled enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, as well as Perejil Island (Layla Island). 

In June 17, 1970, the colonial government called for a Saharawi manifestation in Laâyoune in order to express the adhesion to the Mother Native land (Spain).
Bassiri's Movement took advantage of the occasion to organize an intensive campaign to mobilize the Saharawi people on behalf of their independence. This led to a large, peaceful manifestation openly against the colonialism and to forward to Spain a document of demand for independence of the territory. 

As few hundreds of people gathered in the Plaza of Africa in support of the Spanish organized rally, a larger crowd was also gathering in Zemla, a neighborhood on the east side of Laâyoune, and asked the governor-general of Spanish Sahara, General Jose Maria Perez de Lema y Tejero, to come to Zemla in order to receive the movement's petition.  The General came and the petition was read out. Afterwards, he ordered the demonstrators to disperse. A couple hours later, a strong squad of police came to the gathering and began arresting some of the movement leaders. The crowd reacted by throwing stones at the police force which requested the help of the Spanish Foreign Legion (El Tercio).

The intervention of the Spanish Foreign Legion made things worse, their presence infuriated more the demonstrators.  The Legion opened fire and by some accounts eleven people were killed, though there has never been a general consensus on the number of casualties.

After the so-called Zemla intifada, manifestations took place in Smara and Dakhla (the greater centers of the Western Sahara). Severe repressive measures on MSL followed these demonstrations. Hundreds were arrested, some deported and others fled the country. Bassiri (the movement's leader) would be arrested soon after this massacre. This incident marked the death of MLS and laid the grounds for the birth, three years later, of the most successful and better known Saharawi movement: Frente Polisario.

Until this moment, except the "heroic" period of resistance to European colonialisms, the Saharawis were instruments in the hands of the colonial powers or of brother countries.  Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria demanded loudly the departure of the Spaniards from the area and called for self-determination to be exercised in Western Sahara in line with UN resolutions, being their demand about their own claims more than about the freedom of the natives, and mostly they prevented any attempt to hold a self-determination referendum. 
But after Zemla's incidents Saharawis will be more and more on the scene.
The news of the slaughter also created a lot more awareness in the international community concerning the fight of the Saharawi for freedom.

THE PRE-COLONIAL RULE
THE DECOLONISATION
THE WAR

THE DISPUTE FROM 1991 TO PRESENT DAY

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