Spanish Sahara

Spanish Sahara: see Western Sahara.

formerly Spanish Sahara

Territory, northwestern Africa. Area: 97,344 sq mi (252,120 sq km). Population (2004 est.): 417,000. Capital: Laayoune. Little is known of the area's prehistory, though rock engravings in southern locations suggest a succession of nomadic groups. In the 4th century BCE there was trade across the Mediterranean Sea between the region and Europe, but there was little European contact afterward, until the 19th century. In 1884 Spain claimed a protectorate over the Río de Oro region. Boundary agreements with France were concluded in 1900 and 1912. Spain formally united the area's northern and southern parts into the overseas province of the Spanish Sahara in 1958. The Polisario Front, a Saharawi separatist group formed in 1973, led an insurgency against Spanish colonial rule. In 1976 Spain relinquished its claim; the region then was divided between Mauritania and Morocco. That same year, the Polisario Front declared a government-in-exile, the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic. Sporadic fighting between Moroccan and Mauritanian forces and the Polisario Front began in the mid-1970s. Although Mauritania relinquished its claim in 1979, Morocco promptly annexed their portion. Despite a 1991 cease-fire and a number of United Nations-sponsored talks between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan government, at the beginning of the 21st century the issue of Western Sahara's status remained unresolved. Western Sahara has vast phosphate deposits and some potash and iron ore.

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Spanish Sahara was the name used for the modern territory of Western Sahara when it was ruled as a territory by Spain between 1884 and 1975.

Colonization

In 1884, Spain was awarded the coastal area of present-day Western Sahara at the Berlin Conference, and began establishing trading posts and a military presence. In the summer of 1886, under the sponsorship of the Spanish Society of Commercial Geography (Sociedad Española de Geografía Comercial), Julio Cervera Baviera, Felipe Rizzo (1823-1908), and Francisco Quiroga (1853-1894) traversed the colony of Rio de Oro, where they made topographical and astronomical observations in a land whose features were barely known at the time to geographers. It is considered the first scientific expedition in that part of the Sahara.

The borders of the area were not clearly defined until treaties between Spain and France in the early 20th century. Spanish Sahara was then created from the Spanish territories of Río de Oro and Saguia el-Hamra in 1924. It was not part of, and administered separately from, the areas known as Spanish Morocco.

Entering the territory in 1884, Spain was immediately challenged by stiff resistance from the indigenous Sahrawi tribes. A 1904 rebellion led by the powerful Smara-based marabout, shaykh Ma al-Aynayn, was put down by France in 1910, but it was followed by a wave of uprisings under Ma al-Aynayn’s sons, grandsons and other political leaders.

Modern history

Because of this, Spain proved unable to extend control to the interior parts of the country until 1934. At its accession to independence in 1956, Morocco laid claim on Spanish Sahara as part of its pre-colonial territory, and in 1957, the Moroccan Army of Liberation nearly expelled the Spanish from the country in the Ifni War. The Spanish were only able to re-establish control with the assistance of the French by 1958, and embarked on a harsh strategy of retaliation towards the countryside, forcibly settling many of the previously nomadic bedouins of Spanish Sahara and speeding up urbanization, while many others were forced into exile to Morocco proper. In the same year, Spain returned the provinces of Tarfaya and Tantan to Morocco.

In the 1960s, Morocco continued to claim Spanish Sahara and succeeded in getting it to be listed on the list of territories to be decolonized. In 1969, Spain returned to Morocco the region of Ifni, that served as the seat of the Spanish administration of Spanish Sahara. In 1967, the Spanish colonization was further challenged by a peaceful protest movement, the Harakat Tahrir, which demanded the end of occupation. After its violent suppression in the 1970 Zemla Intifada, Sahrawi nationalism reverted to its militant origins, with the 1973 formation of the Polisario Front. The Front’s guerrilla army grew rapidly, and Spain had lost effective control over most of the countryside in early 1975. An attempt at sapping the strength of Polisario by creating a modern political rival to it, the Partido de Unión Nacional Saharaui (PUNS), met with little success.

Spain proceeded to co-opt tribal leaders by setting up the Djema’a, a political institution (very) loosely based on traditional Sahrawi tribal leaderships. The Djema’a members were hand-picked by the authorities, but given privileges in return for rubber-stamping Madrid’s decisions.

Immediately before the death of the aging Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, in the winter of 1975, however, Spain was confronted with an intensive campaign of territorial demands from Morocco, and to a lesser extent Mauritania, culminating in the Green March. Spain then withdrew its forces and settlers from the territory, after negotiating a tripartite agreement with Morocco and Mauritania in 1975, by which both took control of the region. Mauritania later surrendered its claim after fighting an unsuccessful war against the Polisario. Morocco engaged in a war with the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, although a cease-fire came into effect in 1991, and the territory remains under dispute.

Present status

The United Nations considers the former Spanish Sahara a non-decolonized territory, with Spain as the formal administrative power. UN peace efforts have aimed at the organization of a referendum on independence among the Sahrawi population, but this has not yet taken place. The African Union and at least 44 governments consider the territory a sovereign, albeit occupied, state under the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), with an exile government backed by the Polisario Front.

See also

• International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Western Sahara
• History of Western Sahara
• Saharan Liberation Army
• Southern Provinces
• Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
• Spanish Morocco

References