Conflict over control of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony in northwest Africa.
Contention over the control of Western Sahara began on the eve of Spain's withdrawal in February 1976. The main protagonists were Morocco, which claimed the territory as an integral part of its historical patrimony, and the Algerian-backed POLISARIO independence movement. Algeria's patronage of POLISARIO was rooted in its larger geopolitical and ideological clash with Morocco. The dispute poisoned their bilateral relations and for a time held out the specter of Algerian - Moroccan fighting. Mauritania, the weakest of the states bordering Western Sahara, initially occupied part of the territory as well but was forced to disengage and then maintain a vulnerable neutrality.
Internationally, both the United States and France had strong strategic, political, and economic interests in North Africa. The conflict did not become an arena for Cold War competition because the Soviet Union adopted a low, pragmatic profile. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was actively involved in attempting to mediate the dispute between 1976 and 1981 but then became an additional arena for it, resulting in temporary organizational paralysis. Beginning in the late 1980s, successive UN secretaries-general energetically promoted a diplomatic solution, albeit without success, as of 2003.
Outbreak of War
The parameters of the conflict took shape in the fall of 1975. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory ruling regarding the legal status of the territory that was ambiguous, but tilted away from Morocco's position. In response, Morocco's King Hassan II seized the initiative by dispatching hundreds of thousands of unarmed Moroccans in a great spectacle of nationalist and religious fervor across the Moroccan - Spanish Sahara frontier. This "Green March" catalyzed the transfer of Spanish control of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania, enshrined in the tripartite Madrid Accords of 14 November 1975. Spain's formal termination of control came on 26 February 1976. Moroccan troops immediately completed their takeover of the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara, and Mauritania took the southern third.
Meanwhile, fighting had already begun between Moroccan forces and POLISARIO units. On one occasion, Algerian forces assisting POLISARIO clashed with Moroccan troops. Concurrently, there was a large-scale civilian exodus (35 - 65% of the population) to camps in the Tindouf region of Algeria.
Militarily, POLISARIO's small units could not hope to block Morocco's advance. POLISARIO thus redirected its military efforts to focus on Mauritania, the weaker of its adversaries. Between 1976 and 1979, POLISARIO attacks helped to destabilize the regime of President Mokhtar Ould Daddah, who was overthrown in July 1978. After renewed pressure, the new Mauritanian military junta agreed in August 1979 to cede their portion of Western Sahara, Tiris al-Gharbia, to POLISARIO. However, the Moroccan army immediately preempted POLISARIO and took control itself.
The next few years witnessed fierce fighting. Morocco was on the defensive against highly motivated and tactically superior POLISARIO mobile units, which conducted a war of attrition against Moroccan forces within Western Sahara and southern Morocco. POLISARIO's goal was to render the economic and political cost too great for Morocco to bear. Morocco responded by tripling the size of its armed forces to approximately 150,000, stationing more than half of them in Western Sahara, and conducting large-scale sweeps of its own. It also threatened to invoke, but never implemented, the right of hot pursuit against POLISARIO sanctuaries situated in both Algeria and Mauritania.
In the fall of 1980 Morocco began constructing a system of defensive sand walls (berms) studded with fortified positions, observation points, and early warning equipment. By 1987 the sixth wall was completed, the network ran over 2,000 miles in length, and POLISARIO had been effectively closed off from 80 percent of the territory. No longer could its Land Rovers traverse the trackless territory from Algeria to the Atlantic; POLISARIO was increasingly limited to sporadic raids along the wall. Concurrently, Morocco poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the region, building schools, hospitals, and telecommunications facilities, staffed by tens of thousands of Moroccan civilians. Morocco's consolidation of its presence was made possible by generous military and civilian aid from France, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.
Whereas POLISARIO's military fortunes declined by the mid-1980s, politically it achieved a number of successes: diplomatic recognition from more than seventy countries for its government in exile, the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), and full membership in the OAU. On the other hand, Algeria gradually reduced its aid to POLISARIO and retired to a mere supporting role for the UN secretary-general's renewed diplomatic efforts. The overall result by the late 1980s was a stalemated conflict, with neither side able to impose its will. By the beginning of 1990 POLISARIO was almost completely dependent on the UN-sponsored process. As of 2003 more than ten countries had withdrawn their earlier diplomatic recognition of SADR.
During the first years of the conflict POLISARIO had believed that time was on its side, and therefore refused to countenance any solution that fell short of full independence. King Hassan II, for his part, had staked his throne on the issue, making it the glue by which he consolidated and reinforced his political authority at home. Strategically, he never wavered in his goal to incorporate Western Sahara into his kingdom. Tactically, he showed great
flexibility and skill. For example, in 1981, operating from a position of relative weakness, he demonstratively accepted the principle of a referendum among the Sahrawi population during an OAU summit at Nairobi and thus bought much-needed time. By 1990, while still negotiating the details of the proposed UN-sponsored referendum, Morocco was operating from a position of strength, as regional and international constellations had shifted in its favor.
UN Efforts at Diplomacy
In April 1991 the UN Security Council authorized the establishment of a combined military and civilian force, the United Nations Mission for t he Referendum in the Western Sahara (MINURSO), to organize and implement a referendum process between September 1991 and January 1992. Eligible Sahrawis were to choose between independence for the territory, necessitating immediate Moroccan withdrawal, and union with Morocco, necessitating the disbanding of POLISARIO. The 6 September 1991 cease-fire called for in the UN plan came into effect, but the timetable for full deployment of MINURSO and implementation of the referendum was repeatedly delayed. This was due to continuing disagreement over the question of voter eligibility. The Spanish census of 1974 served as the basis for the voter registration list - numbering around 74,000 - prepared by UN officials. Morocco, however, insisted on major changes to include up to 150,000 persons who it said belonged to Western Saharan tribes but had migrated north during previous decades for economic or political reasons. POLISARIO wanted small-scale modifications to include more of its supporters.
The efforts of the UN secretary-general's personal representative, former U.S. secretary of state James Baker, generated renewed diplomatic momentum. In 1997 Baker hosted four separate rounds of talks between Moroccan and POLISARIO representatives, the last in Houston, Texas in September. A number of outstanding issues pertinent to the organization of the referendum were resolved, and the laborious process of identifying eligible voters was reinvigorated. However, by the beginning of 2000, hopes for holding the long-delayed referendum faded. The provisional list of eligible voters was approximately 90,000 only, while 140,000 other applicants, nearly all from the Moroccan side, had been rejected. Morocco, fearing electoral defeat, was determined to block the referendum and therefore insisted on appealing the rejections, a lengthy process that would take years. The UN Security Council, led by France and the United States, was unwilling to force Morocco to accept a UN diktat. Consequently, Baker floated variations of an old-new "third way" proposal that would bypass the referendum and create an autonomous Saharan entity federated to Morocco in all or part of the territory, or, alternatively, postpone the issue of sovereignty for anywhere between five and thirty years. The protagonists continued to meet periodically under Baker's good offices and even engaged in occasional confidence-building measures such as the release of prisoners of war. But as of 2003 a solution remained out of reach. SADR's political successes internationally had not paved the way to independence, marking a major departure from prevailing patterns of decolonization in developing nations. Morocco still desired de jure legitimation of its incorporation of Western Sahara, but its de facto rule there seemed to be accepted as unalterable by a large portion of the international community. The unresolved question continued to be the single most divisive issue between Morocco and Algeria.
Bibliography
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Damis, John. "Morocco and the Western Sahara." CurrentHistory 89 (April 1990): 165 - 168, 184 - 186.
Hodges, Tony. Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983.
Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce. "Conflict and Conflict Management in the Western Sahara: Is the Endgame Near?" Middle East Journal 45 (Autumn 1991): 596.
Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce. "Conflict Resolution in the New World Order: The UN and the Western Sahara." Asian and African Studies 26, no. 2 (July 1992).
Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce. "Inter-Arab Relations," and "Morocco." Annual chapters in Middle East Contemporary Survey (1977 - 2002).
Pazzanita, Anthony G., and Hodges, Tony. Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982.
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— BRUCE MADDY-WEITZMAN
