Western Sahara War
Western Sahara War | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the berm built by Morocco | |||||||||
| |||||||||
Belligerents | |||||||||
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Algeria (1976,[1] aid from 1976) Supported by: Libya (until 1984) | |||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya Mohamed Ould Bah Ould Abdelkader Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (President and Commander-in-Chief) Michel Claude Forget | |||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
30,000 (1976)[5] 60,000 (1980)[6] 150,000 (1988)[7] 120,000 (1991)[8] 3,000[9]–5,000[5] (1976) 12,000 (1977)[9] 18,000 (1978)[10] |
5,000 (1976)[11] 15,000 (1980)[6] 8,000 (1988)[7] | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
Unknown; 2,155[12]–2,300 captured[13] 2,000 soldiers killed[14] | Unknown | ||||||||
Civilian Casualties: More than 3,000 Sahrawis killed (Eckhardt,1985)[15] 3 West German pilots killed[16] 853+ (Project Disappeared) 40,000 (1976)[19] – 80,000 (1977)[20] Sahrawis displaced Estimated death toll: 10,000–20,000[21] |
The Western Sahara War (
The conflict has since shifted from military to civilian resistance. A peace process, attempting to resolve the conflict has not yet produced any permanent solution to Sahrawi refugees and territorial agreement between Morocco and the Sahrawi Republic. Today most of the territory of Western Sahara is under Moroccan occupation, while the inland parts are governed by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, managed by the Polisario Front.[24]
Background
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
Conception of the Polisario Front
In 1971 a group of young Sahrawi students 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
Timeline
Part of a series on the |
Western Sahara conflict |
---|
Background |
Regions |
Politics |
Clashes |
Issues |
Peace process |
Spanish withdrawal
While
Moroccan government organized the Green March of some 350,000 Moroccan citizens,[30] escorted by around 20,000 troops, who entered Western Sahara, trying to establish Moroccan presence.[22] While, at first meeting just minor resistance by the Polisario, Morocco had later engaged in a long guerrilla warfare with the Sahrawi nationalists. During the late 1970s, 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 unilaterally the administrative control of the territory to Mauritania and Morocco on November 14, 1975.[31] The United Nations did not officially recognize the accord, considering Spain as the administrative power of the territory. In the fall of 1975, as a result of the Moroccan advance, tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled Morocco-controlled cities into the desert, building up improvised refugee camps in Amgala, Tifariti and Umm Dreiga.
Moroccan recovery
On December 11, 1975, the first Moroccan troops arrived in El Aaiún, and fighting erupted with the POLISARIO.[30] On December 20, Mauritanian troops succeeded taking over Tichy and La Güera, after two weeks of siege.[30] On January 27, the First Battle of Amgala erupted between Morocco and Algeria with the Polisario.
In January 1976, the
On February 26, 1976, Spain officially announced its full withdrawal from the area.[30]
Declaration of Sahrawi Republic and guerilla warfare
The Polisario Front proclaimed the
The Polisario Front retaliated the Moroccan offensive with guerrilla attacks and moved their base to Tindouf in western Algeria, where first refugee camps were established in May 1976.[30] For the next two years the Polisario movement grew tremendously, as Sahrawi refugees flocked to the camps fleeing from the Moroccan and Mauritanian armies, while Algeria and Libya supplied arms and funding.[citation needed]
Within months after the 1975–1976 Moroccan offensive, Polisario 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
Mauritania, under the regime of President
In 1977,
Under continued pressure, the Daddah regime finally fell in summer 1978 to a coup d'état led by war-weary military officers,[37] who immediately agreed to a cease fire with the Polisario. A comprehensive peace treaty was signed on August 5, 1979, in which the new Mauritanian 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.[38] 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 on 7 August 1979.[39]
Stalemate (1980s)
From the mid-1980s Morocco largely had kept Polisario troops off by building a huge
Escalation (1989–1991)
On 7 October 1989, Polisario launched a massive attack against Moroccan troops in Guelta Zemmour (Centre of Western Sahara) and Algeria but sustained heavy casualties and withdrawn after leaving more than 18 tanks burning and a dozen more vehicles. This setback let the Polisario consider a ceasefire.
Cease-fire and aftermath
A cease-fire between the Polisario and Morocco, monitored by
In mid-October 2020 tensions deepened between Morocco and the Polisario Front, when the
International incidents
On 17 January 1980, the Spanish
In 1984, Polisario shot down a Belgian airplane as well as two Moroccan aircraft.[51]
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.[16] 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.[51]
See also
References
- ^ "Argelia acusa la derrota de Angola". ABC (in Spanish): 41. 1976-02-07. Retrieved 2012-07-24.
- ISBN 978-1-4422-2686-9.
- ISBN 978-1-317-69778-7.
- ISBN 978-1-135-26511-3.
- ^ JSTOR 3011206.
- ^ a b "Multinational Monitor, November 1980". multinationalmonitor.org.
- ^ NY Times. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
- ^ "Keeping it secret – the United Nations operation in Western Sahara". Human Rights Watch. October 1995. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
- ^ a b "Marruecos incrementa su presencia en Mauritania" (in Spanish). El País. 1977-07-21. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
- ^ Jose Ramón Diego Aguirre, Guerra en el Sáhara, Istmo, Colección Fundamentos, Vol. 124, 1991, Page 193
- ^ "North Africa: Shadow war in the Sahara". Time. 1977-01-03. Archived from the original on December 15, 2008. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
- ^ "Western Sahara, the facts". New Internationalist Issue 297. 1997-12-05. Retrieved 2010-10-01.
- ^ "El misterio de la guerra del Sáhara" (in Spanish). El País. September 10, 2006. Retrieved August 6, 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-8039-1777-4.
- ISBN 978-0-918281-05-0. War statistics table by William G. Eckhardt.
- ^ a b Aviation safety network – Report on Polar 3 accessed: April 18, 2009
- ^ "Project Disappeared: Western Sahara". www.desaparecidos.org.
- Lewinston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. p. 102.
- ^ Asistencia en favor de las víctimas saharauis. Revista Internacional de la Cruz Roja, 1, pp 83–83 (1976) (in Spanish)
- ^ "Open Society Foundations" (PDF). Open Society Foundations. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 2011-02-09.
- ^ a b EKSKLUZIVNO ZA LUPIGU: Podupiremo mirno rješenje, ali zadržavamo mogućnost da i silom oslobodimo našu zemlju Lupiga.com, 2 March 2013 (in Croatian)
- ^ a b c http://www.spectrezine.org/Africa/windisch.htm Archived 2017-10-27 at the Wayback Machine A brief history of the Western Saharan people's struggle for freedom
- ^ "Retrait de la Mauritanie du Sahara occidental | Evenements | Perspective Monde". perspective.usherbrooke.ca. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
- ^ "Western Sahara profile". BBC News. 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
- )
- JSTOR 721268.
- ^ "Telquel Online – Online Financial Industry". Telquel Online.
- OCLC 276406143.
- ^ "The United States and the Western Sahara Peace Process | Middle East Policy Council". www.mepc.org. Retrieved 2018-05-30.
- ^ a b c d e "MINURSO". MINURSO. Archived from the original on 2017-08-08. Retrieved 2018-10-24.
- ^ "Aux termes de l'accord conclu entre Madrid, Rabat et Nouakchott La présence espagnole prendra fin le 28 février 1976". Le Monde.fr (in French). Retrieved 2023-11-15.
- ^ http://www.tryktenyheder.dk/DK/dkikrig1/red5/842/ Archived 2007-06-03 at the Wayback Machine Nationalism, Identity and Citizenship in Western Sahara 17 August 2007– THE JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES PABLO SAN MARTIN
- ^ Surendra Bhutani, Conflict on Western Sahara, Strategic Analysis, 1754-0054, Volume 2, Issue 7, 1978, Pages 251 – 256.
- ^ Tomás Bárbulo, (in Spanish) La Historia prohibited del Sáhara Español, Destino, Colección Imago Mundi, Vol. 21, 2002, Pages 284–285
- ^ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+mr0128)[dead link]
- ^ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+mr0032)[dead link]
- ^ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+mr0034)[dead link]
- ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-11-15.
- ^ "Mauritania profile – Timeline". BBC News. 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2021-05-05.
- ^ Antonio Díaz Fernandez, Los Servicios de Inteligencia Españoles, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2005, p. 176.
- ^ http://www.domingodelpino.com/index.php?id=1087 Washington defines to king Hassan II the range of their military aid (in Spanish), published: October 10, 1979, accessed: December 27, 2009.
- ^ "MOROCCO AND ALGERIA SHOULD NEGOTIATE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF WESTERN SAHARA QUESTION, MOROCCAN REPRESENTATIVE TELLS FOURTH COMMITTEE | Meetings Coverage and Press Releases". www.un.org. Retrieved 2022-05-17.
- ^ "Algeria/Western Sahara: Three Dissidents Behind Bars". Human Rights Watch. 16 July 2019. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
- ^ "Activistas saharauis bloquean el paso del Guerguerat, principal carretera de conexión con Mauritania". Público (in Spanish). 25 October 2020. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
- ^ "Polisario Front threatens to end Morocco ceasefire". Middle East Monitor. 12 November 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
- ^ "Rabat deploys army in WSahara border zone after Polisario warnings". Radio France Internationale. 13 November 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020 – via Arab News.
- ^ Karam, Souhail (13 November 2020). "Military Clashes Erupt in Western Sahara After 30-Year Truce". Bloomberg. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
- ^ "Morocco PM says Western Sahara wall at centre of dispute completed". Reuters. 2020-11-17. Retrieved 2021-05-05.
- ^ "Morocco launches military operation in Western Sahara". Associated Press. 13 November 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
- ^ "Un destructor español, ametrallado en aguas del Sahara por un avión marroquí" (in Spanish). El País. 1980-01-22. Retrieved 2010-09-26.
- ^ a b Rakete traf die Polar 3 (in German) Hamburger Abendblatt, published: February 28, 1985, accessed: April 18, 2009
External links
- The Sahara War 1975–1991 Archived 2014-10-09 at the Wayback Machine
- The War in the Sahara
- Chronology of the Saharawi struggle (BBC)