Western Sahara War

Western Sahara War
Part of The Polisario Front dispute for independence
Map of the Western Sahara, the red line is the military berm built by Morocco
Date 1975 – 7 September 1991 Location Western Sahara, Morocco, Mauritania Result Spanish withdraw under the Madrid Accords (1976) Mauritanian retreat under the Algiers Agreement (1979) Polisario Front - Morocco ceasefire (1991)
Belligerents
Morocco Mauritania (1975–1979) France (-Limited involvement- Air forces support to Mauritania in 1977-78, Operation Lamantin)	Polisario Front Algeria (-Limited involvement- Army forces support to Polisario Front in 1976, Battle of Amgala) Libya (-Limited involvement- sends weapons to Polisario (1975-1984)
Commanders and leaders
Hassan II Ahmed Dlimi Abdelaziz Bennani Mokhtar Ould Daddah Mustafa Ould Salek Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah Valéry Giscard d'Estaing	Mohamed Abdelaziz El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed † Lahbib Ayoub Brahim Ghali Houari Boumediène Muammar Gaddafi
Strength
Morocco: 30,000 (1976) - 60,000 (1980) - 150,000 (1988) - 120,000 (1991)[citation needed] Mauritania: 3,000-5,000 (1976) - 12,000 (1977) - 18,000 (1978)	5,000 (1976) - 15,000 (1980) - 8,000 (1988)
Casualties and losses
Morocco: 7,000, - 15,000 soldiers killed[citation needed], 2,155 - 2,300 captured Mauritania: 2,000 soldiers killed	1,000[citation needed] - 4,000 combatants killed, 200 captured[citation needed],
Civilian Casualties: 3,000 killed (Eckhardt,1985), 650 missing 40,000 (1976) - 80,000 (1977)displaced

The Western Sahara War was an armed conflict primarily between the Polisario Front and Morocco, the conflict erupted after the withdrawal of Spain from the Spanish Sahara in accordance with the Madrid Accords by which it gave administrative control of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania. The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria and Libya and desiring to establish an independent state in the territory, successively fought Mauritania and Morocco. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict and a cease-fire agreement was reached with Morocco in 1991. Today most of the territory is under Moroccan control.

Background

Spanish Sahara

Main article: Spanish Sahara

In 1884 Spain claimed a protectorate over the coast from Cape Bojador to Cap Blanc. Later, the Spanish extended their area of control. In 1958 Spain joined the previously separate districts of Saguia el-Hamra (in the north) and Río de Oro (in the south) to form the province of Spanish Sahara.

Raids and rebellions by the indigenous Saharan population kept the Spanish forces out of much of the territory for a long time. Ma al-Aynayn the Saharan pro-Moroccan caïd of Tindouf and Smara named by the Moroccan sultan started an uprising against the French in the 1910s, at a time when France had expanded its influence and control in North-West Africa, he died in the same year and his son El Hiba succeded him. French forces defeated him when he tried to conquer Marrakesh, and in retaliation destroyed the holy city of Smara in 1913^{[citation needed]}. Not until the second destruction of Smara in 1934^{[citation needed]}, by joint Spanish and French forces, did the territory finally become subdued. Another uprising in 1956 - 1958, initiated by the Moroccan Army of Liberation, led to heavy fighting, but eventually the Spanish forces regained control, again with French aid. However, unrest simmered, and in 1967 the Harakat Tahrir arose to challenge Spanish rule peacefully. After the events of the Zemla Intifada in 1970, when Spanish police destroyed the organization and "disappeared" its founder, Muhammad Bassiri, Sahrawi nationalism again took a militant turn.

Conception of the Polisario Front

In 1971 a group of young Sahrawi students in the universities of Morocco began organizing what came to be known as The Embryonic Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro. After attempting in vain to gain backing from several Arab governments, including both Algeria and Morocco, but only drawing faint notices of support from Libya and Mauritania, the movement eventually relocated to Spanish-controlled Western Sahara to start an armed rebellion.

The beginnings of armed struggle

The Polisario Front was formally constituted on 10 May 1973 in the Mauritanian city of Zouirate, with the express intention of militarily forcing an end to Spanish colonization. Its first Secretary General was El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed. On 20 May he led the Khanga raid, Polisario's first armed action,^{[citation needed]} in which a Spanish post manned by a team of Tropas Nomadas (Sahrawi-staffed auxiliary forces) was overrun and rifles seized. Polisario then gradually gained control over large swaths of desert countryside, and its power grew from early 1975 when the Tropas Nomadas began deserting to the Polisario, bringing weapons and training with them. At this point, Polisario's manpower included perhaps 800 men, but they were backed by a larger network of supporters. A UN visiting mission headed by Simeon Aké that was conducted in June 1975 concluded that Sahrawi support for independence (as opposed to Spanish rule or integration with a neighbouring country) amounted to an "overwhelming consensus" and that the Polisario Front was by far the most powerful political force in the country.^{[citation needed]}

Timeline

Spanish withdrawal

While Spain started negotiating a handover of power in the summer of 1975, it ceded the administrative control of the territory to Mauritania and Morocco after signing the Madrid Accords in November 14, 1975.^{[citation needed]} After Moroccan pressure through the Green March of 6 November, Spain entered negotiations that led to the signing of the Madrid Accords by which it ceded the administrative control of the territory to Mauritania and Morocco. However, on 31 October Moroccan troops crossed into the territory from the north-east, advancing towards Mahbes and Farciya. Upon the Spanish withdrawal, and in application of the Madrid Accords in 1976, Morocco took over the Saguia El Hamra and the northern two thirds of the territory, while Mauritania took control of the southern third. The Polisario Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic on 27 February 1976, and waged a guerrilla war against both Morocco and Mauritania. The World Court at the Hague had issued its verdict on the former Spanish colony just weeks before, which each party interpreted as confirming its rights on the disputed territory.

Moroccan attack

In the fall of 1975, tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled Morocco-controlled cities into the desert, building up improvised refugee camps in Amgala, Tifariti and Umm Dreiga.

The Polisario Front retaliated with guerilla attacks, and moved their based to Tindouf in western Algeria. For the next two years the movement grew tremendously as Sahrawi refugees flocked to the camps and Algeria and Libya supplied arms and funding. Within months, it had expanded to thousands of armed fighters. The reorganized army was able to inflict severe damage through guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against Moroccan forces in Western Sahara but also raided cities and towns in Morocco and Mauritania proper.

Mauritanian and French involvement

Main article: Opération Lamantin

Mauritania, under the regime of Ould Daddah, had a weakened army of 3,000 men, which was unable to fend off the attacks. After repeated strikes at the country's principal source of income, the iron mines of Zouerate, the government was nearly incapacitated by the lack of funds and the ensuing internal disorder. Ethnic unrest in the Mauritanian Armed Forces also strongly contributed to the ineffectiveness of the army: forcibly conscripted black Africans from the south of the country resisted getting involved in what they viewed as a northern intra-Arab dispute, and the tribes of northern Mauritania often sympathized with Polisario, fearing possible Moroccan regional ambitions and resenting perceived increasing dependence of the Daddah regime on Moroccan support.

France intervened after a group of French technicians was taken prisoner during a raid on the Zouerate iron mines, codenaming its involvement Opération Lamantin. The French Air Force deployed SEPECAT Jaguar jets to Mauritania in 1978 under the orders of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, which repeatedly bombed Polisario columns headed for Mauritania with napalm. The Polisario Front launched a raid on the capital Nouakchott, during which Polisario leader El Ouali was killed, and was replaced by Mohamed Abdelaziz, with no letup in the pace of attacks. Under continued pressure, the Daddah regime finally fell in 1978 to a coup d'état led by war-weary military officers, who immediately agreed to a cease fire with the Polisario. A comprehensive peace treaty was signed on August 5, 1979, in which the new government recognized Sahrawi rights to Western Sahara and relinquished its own claims. Mauritania withdrew all its forces and would later proceed to formally recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, causing a massive rupture in relations with Morocco. King Hassan II of Morocco immediately claimed the area of Western Sahara evacuated by Mauritania (Tiris al-Gharbiya, roughly corresponding to the southern half of Río de Oro), which was unilaterally annexed by Morocco in August 1979. [4]

Stalemate

From the mid-1980s Morocco largely managed to keep Polisario troops off by building a huge berm or sand wall (the Moroccan Wall). The Moroccan army stationed a number of troops roughly the same size as the entire Sahrawi population to defend the wall, enclosing the Southern Provinces, the economically useful parts of Western Sahara (Bou Craa, El-Aaiun, Smara etc.). This stalemated the war, with no side able to achieve decisive gains, but artillery strikes and sniping attacks by the guerrillas continued, and Morocco was economically and politically strained by the war. Morocco faced heavy burdens due to the economic costs of its massive troop deployments along the Wall. To some both economical and military extent aid sent by Saudi Arabia, France and by the U.S.A. relieved the situation in Morocco, but matters gradually became unsustainable for all parties involved.

Cease-fire and aftermath

A cease-fire between the Polisario and Morocco, monitored by MINURSO (UN) has been in effect since 6 September 1991, with the promise of a referendum on independence the following year. The referendum, however, stalled over disagreements on voter rights, and numerous attempts at restarting the process (most significantly the launching of the 2003 Baker plan) seem to have failed. The prolonged cease-fire has held without major disturbances, but Polisario has repeatedly threatened to resume fighting if no break-through occurs. Morocco's withdrawal from both the terms of the original Settlement Plan and the Baker Plan negotiations in 2003 left the peace-keeping mission without a political agenda: this further increased the risks of renewed war.

International incidents

On 24 June 1975, a Land Rover of the Spanish Army struck a land mine as it was patrolling the Spanish Sahara-Morocco border, killing the five soldiers inside.

On 25 June 1975, two reconnaissance planes from the Spanish Air Force were attacked by Moroccan forces near the Spanish Sahara-Morocco border.

On 17 January 1980, the Spanish SPS Almirante Ferrandiz (D22) destroyer was machine-gunned by a Moroccan Mirage airfighter, 5 miles away the southern coast of Western Sahara. The Spanish destroyer had received a S.O.S. from a Spanish fishing vessel that had been previously detained by a Moroccan patrol boat.

On 24 February 1985, the Polar 3, a Dornier 228-type research airplane from the Alfred Wegener Institute was shot down by guerrillas of the Polisario Front over Western Sahara. All three crew members died. Polar 3, together with unharmed Polar 2, was on its way back from Antarctica and had taken off in Dakar, Senegal, to reach Arrecife, Canary Islands. The German government, which did not recognize Morocco's claim to Western Sahara at the time and remained neutral in the conflict, heavily criticized the incident.

In 1984, Polisario shot down two Moroccan and a Belgian airplane as well.

See also

• History of Western Sahara
• Ifni War
• Berm (Western Sahara)
• Operation Lamantin

External links

• The Sahara War 1975-1991
• The War in the Sahara
• Chronology of the Saharawi struggle (BBC)