Western Sahara
Western Sahara is a United Nations–recognized non-self-governing territory in north-western Africa. It has a surface area of. Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and has been dubbed "Africa's last colony". With an estimated population of around 600,000 inhabitants, it is the most sparsely populated territory in Africa and the second most sparsely populated territory in the world after Greenland, consisting mainly of desert flatlands.
Spain previously colonized the territory as the Spanish Sahara until 1976, when it attempted to transfer its administration to Morocco and Mauritania while ignoring a verdict of the International Court of Justice that those countries had no sovereignty over Western Sahara. A war erupted and the Polisario Front—a national liberation movement recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate representative of the people of Western Sahara—proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic with a government-in-exile in Tindouf, Algeria. Mauritania withdrew its claims in 1979, and Morocco secured de facto control of most of the territory, including all major cities and most natural resources. A UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement was reached in 1991, though a planned referendum monitored by the UN's MINURSO mission has since stalled.
Approximately 30% of the Western Sahara is controlled by the Polisario Front and the remaining 70% is occupied by Morocco. Morocco maintains the Berm, a wall lined with land mines that splits the territory. The Polisario Front is primarily supported by Algeria and has received partial international recognition for the SADR and membership in the African Union. Morocco is supported by France and the United States, and several states began expressing support for its autonomy proposal in the 2020s.
History
Early history
The earliest known inhabitants of Western Sahara were the Gaetuli. Depending on the century, Roman-era sources describe the area as inhabited by Gaetulian Autololes or the Gaetulian Daradae tribes. Berber heritage is still evident from regional and place-name toponymy, as well as from tribal names.Other early inhabitants of Western Sahara may be the Bafour and later the Serer. The Bafour were later replaced or absorbed by Berber-speaking populations, which eventually merged in turn with the migrating Beni Ḥassān Arab tribes.
The arrival of Islam in the 8th century played a major role in the development of the Maghreb region. Trade developed further, and the territory may have been one of the routes for caravans, especially between Marrakesh and Tombouctou in Mali.
In the 11th century, the Maqil Arabs settled in Morocco. Towards the end of the Almohad Caliphate, the Beni Hassan, a sub-tribe of the Maqil, were called by the local ruler of the Sous to quell a rebellion; they settled in the Sous Ksours and controlled such cities as Taroudant. During Marinid dynasty rule, the Beni Hassan rebelled but were defeated by the Sultan and escaped beyond the Saguia el-Hamra dry river. The Beni Hassan then were at constant war with the Lamtuna nomadic Berbers of the Sahara. Over roughly five centuries, through a complex process of acculturation and mixing seen elsewhere in the Maghreb and North Africa, some of the indigenous Berber tribes mixed with the Maqil Arab tribes and formed a culture unique to Morocco and Mauritania.
Spanish province
The Spanish presence in the region of modern-day Western Sahara lasted from 1884 to 1975. While initial Spanish interest in the Sahara was focused on using it as a port for the slave trade, by the 1700s Spain had transitioned economic activity on the Saharan coast towards commercial fishing. By the 19th century, Spain had claimed the southern coastal region and penetration of the hinterland gradually followed; later in 1904 the northern region was acquired. After an agreement among the European colonial powers at the Berlin Conference in 1884 on the division of spheres of influence in Africa, the same year Spain seized control of Western Sahara and established it as a Spanish colony. Despite establishing their first colony in the region at Río de Oro Bay in 1884, the Spanish were unable to pacify the interior of the region until the 1930s. Raids and rebellions by the indigenous Saharan population kept the Spanish forces out of much of the territory for a long time. The territory was eventually subdued by joint Spanish and French forces in 1934, the same year the Spaniards divided their Saharan territories into two regions named after the rivers: Saguía el-Hamra and Río de Oro. After 1939 and the outbreak of World War II, this area was administered by Spanish Morocco. In 1958, Spain joined the district of Saguia el-Hamra in the north with the Río de Oro to form the province of Spanish Sahara, following Morocco's claiming these regions in 1957. As a consequence, Ahmed Belbachir Haskouri, the Chief of Cabinet, General Secretary of the Government of Spanish Morocco, cooperated with the Spanish to select governors in that area. The Saharan lords who were already in prominent positions, such as the members of Maa El Ainain family, provided a recommended list of candidates for new governors. Together with the Spanish High Commissioner, Belbachir selected from this list. During the annual celebration of Muhammad's birthday, these lords paid their respects to the caliph to show loyalty to the Moroccan monarchy.As time went by, Spanish colonial rule began to unravel with the general wave of decolonization after World War II; former North African and sub-Saharan African possessions and protectorates gained independence from European powers. Spanish decolonization proceeded more slowly, but internal political and social pressures for it in mainland Spain built up towards the end of Francisco Franco's rule. There was a global trend towards complete decolonization. Spain abandoned most territories within neighboring Morocco in 1956, but resisted encroachment by the Moroccan Liberation Army within Ifni and Spanish Sahara from 1956 to 1958. In 1971, Sahrawi students in Moroccan universities began organizing what came to be known as The Embryonic Movement for the Liberation of Saguía el Hamra and Río de Oro. The movement tried without success to gain backing from several Arab governments, including Algeria and Morocco. Spain began rapidly to divest itself of most of its remaining colonial possessions. By 1974–75 the government issued promises of a referendum on independence in Western Sahara.At the same time, Morocco and Mauritania, which had historical and competing claims of sovereignty over the territory, argued that it had been artificially separated from their territories by the European colonial powers. Algeria, which also bordered the territory, viewed their demands with suspicion, as Morocco also claimed the Algerian provinces of Tindouf and Béchar. After arguing for a process of decolonization to be guided by the United Nations, the Algerian government under Houari Boumédiènne in 1975 committed to assisting the Polisario Front, which opposed both Moroccan and Mauritanian claims and demanded full independence of Western Sahara.
The UN attempted to settle these disputes through a visiting mission in late 1975, as well as a verdict from the International Court of Justice. It acknowledged that Western Sahara had historical links with Morocco and Mauritania, but not sufficient to prove the sovereignty of either State over the territory at the time of the Spanish colonization. The population of the territory thus possessed the right of self-determination. On 6 November 1975 Morocco initiated the Green March into Western Sahara; 350,000 unarmed Moroccans converged on the city of Tarfaya in southern Morocco and waited for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross the border in a peaceful march. A few days before, on 31 October, Moroccan troops invaded Western Sahara from the north.
Demands for independence
In the waning days of General Franco's rule, and after the Green March, the Spanish government signed a tripartite agreement with Morocco and Mauritania as it moved to transfer the territory on 14 November 1975. The accords were based on a bipartite administration, and Morocco and Mauritania each moved to annex the territories, with Morocco taking control of the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara as its Southern Provinces, and Mauritania taking control of the southern third as Tiris al-Gharbiyya. Spain terminated its presence in Spanish Sahara within three months, repatriating Spanish remains from its cemeteries.The Moroccan and Mauritanian annexations were resisted by the Polisario Front, which had gained backing from Algeria. It initiated guerrilla warfare and, in 1979, Mauritania withdrew due to pressure from Polisario, including a bombardment of its capital and other economic targets. Morocco extended its control to the rest of the territory. It gradually contained the guerrillas by setting up the extensive sand-berm in the desert to exclude guerrilla fighters. Hostilities ceased in a 1991 cease-fire, overseen by the peacekeeping mission MINURSO, under the terms of a UN Settlement Plan.
Stalling of the referendum and Settlement Plan
The referendum, originally scheduled for 1992, foresaw giving the local population the option between independence or affirming integration with Morocco, but it quickly stalled. In 1997, the Houston Agreement attempted to revive the proposal for a referendum but likewise has hitherto not had success., negotiations over terms have not resulted in any substantive action. At the heart of the dispute lies the question of who qualifies to be registered to participate in the referendum, and, since about the year 2000, Morocco considers that since there is no agreement on persons entitled to vote, a referendum is not possible. Meanwhile, Polisario still insisted on a referendum with independence as a clear option, without offering a solution to the problem of who is qualified to be registered to participate in it.Both sides blame each other for the stalling of the referendum. The Polisario has insisted on only allowing those found on the 1974 Spanish Census lists to vote, while Morocco has insisted that the census was flawed by evasion and sought the inclusion of members of Sahrawi tribes that escaped from Spanish invasion to the north of Morocco by the 19th century.
Efforts by the UN special envoys to find a common ground for both parties did not succeed. By 1999 the UN had identified about 85,000 voters, with nearly half of them in the Moroccan-occupied parts of Western Sahara, and the others scattered between the Tindouf refugee camps, Mauritania and other places of exile. Polisario accepted this voter list, as it had done with the previous list presented by the UN, but Morocco refused and, as rejected voter candidates began a mass-appeals procedure, insisted that each application be scrutinized individually. This again brought the process to a halt.
According to a NATO delegation, MINURSO election observers stated in 1999, as the deadlock continued, that "if the number of voters does not rise significantly the odds were slightly on the SADR side". By 2001, the process had effectively stalemated and the UN Secretary-General asked the parties for the first time to explore other, third-way solutions. Indeed, shortly after the Houston Agreement, Morocco officially declared that it was "no longer necessary" to include an option of independence on the ballot, offering instead autonomy. Erik Jensen, who played an administrative role in MINURSO, wrote that neither side would agree to a voter registration in which they were destined to lose.