Portal:Western Sahara

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The Western Sahara Portal – بوابة الصحراء الغربية

Coat of Arms of the Sahrawi Republic

Western Sahara is a disputed territory on the northwest coast of Africa. About 20% of the territory is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR); the remaining 80% is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco. It has a surface area of 266,000 square kilometres (103,000 sq mi). It is the second most sparsely populated country in the world and most sparsely in Africa, mainly consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at about 500,000, of which nearly 40% live in Morocco-controlled Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara.

Occupied by Spain until 1975, Western Sahara has been on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories since 1963 after a Moroccan demand. In 1965, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on Western Sahara, asking Spain to decolonize the territory. A year later, a resolution was passed requesting that a referendum be held by Spain on self-determination. In 1975, Spain relinquished administrative control of the territory to a joint administration by Morocco and Mauritania. A war erupted between those countries and a Sahrawi nationalist movement, the Polisario Front, which proclaimed itself the rightful leadership of the SADR 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. The UN considers the Polisario Front to be the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, and maintains the Sahrawis have a right to self-determination. Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and has been dubbed "Africa's last colony".

Since a UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement in 1991, most of the territory has been administered by the Moroccan government, with tacit support from France and the United States. The remainder is administered by the SADR, backed by Algeria. The only part of the coast in SADR territory is the extreme south. Internationally, countries such as Russia have taken an ambiguous and neutral position on each side's claims and pressed parties to agree on a peaceful resolution. Morocco and Polisario have sought to boost their claims by accumulating formal recognition, especially from African, Asian, and Latin American states in the developing world. The Polisario Front has won formal recognition for SADR from 46 states, and was extended membership of the African Union. Morocco has won support from several African governments and most of the Muslim world and Arab League. In most instances, recognitions are extended or withdrawn due to a change in relations with Morocco. Until 2020, no other member state of the UN had ever recognized Moroccan sovereignty over parts of Western Sahara. In 2020, the US recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Moroccan normalization of relations with Israel. In 2023 Israel recognized Moroccan sovereignty. (Full article...)

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as the Sahrawi Republic and Western Sahara, is a partially recognized state, recognized by 46 UN member states and South Ossetia, located in the western Maghreb, which claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of that territory. Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony (later an overseas province). The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea.

The SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlou, Western Sahara. The SADR government calls the territories under its control the Liberated Territories or the Free Zone. Morocco controls and administers the rest of the disputed territory, and calls these lands its Southern Provinces. The claimed capital city of the SADR is El Aaiún (the capital of the territory of Western Sahara). Since the SADR does not control El Aaiún, it has established a temporary capital in Tifariti, although most of the day-to-day administration happens in Rabuni, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps located in Tindouf, Algeria. (Full article...)

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Gathering of Sahrawi troops, near Tifariti (Western Sahara), celebrating the 32nd anniversary to the Polisario Front (2005).

The Western Sahara conflict is an ongoing conflict between the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic/Polisario Front and the Kingdom of Morocco. The conflict originated from an insurgency by the Polisario Front against Spanish colonial forces from 1973 to 1975 and the subsequent Western Sahara War against Morocco between 1975 and 1991. Today the conflict is dominated by unarmed civil campaigns of the Polisario Front and their self-proclaimed SADR state to gain fully recognized independence for Western Sahara.

The conflict escalated after the withdrawal of Spain from the Spanish Sahara in accordance with the Madrid Accords. Beginning in 1975, the Polisario Front, backed and supported by Algeria, waged a 16-year-long war for independence against Mauritania and Morocco. In February 1976, the Polisario Front declared the establishment of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which was not admitted into the United Nations, but won limited recognition by a number of other states. Following the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco and Mauritania in 1976, and the Polisario Front's declaration of independence, the UN addressed the conflict via a resolution reaffirming the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people. In 1977, France intervened as the conflict reached its peak intensity. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict and territories, leading to a stalemate through most of the 1980s. After several more engagements between 1989 and 1991, a cease-fire agreement was reached between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan government. At the time, most of the Western Sahara territory remained under Moroccan control, while the Polisario controlled some 20% of the territory in its capacity as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, with additional pockets of control in the Sahrawi refugee camps along the Algerian border. At present, these borders are largely unchanged. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Western Sahara-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Western Sahara 1876 (from Western Sahara)
Image 2Sahrawi national police (from Western Sahara)
Image 3Western Sahara in Africa (from Western Sahara)
Image 4Remains of the former Spanish barracks in Tifariti after the Moroccan airstrikes in 1991 (from Western Sahara)
Image 5Topography of Western Sahara (from Western Sahara)
Image 6Museum of the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army (from Western Sahara)
Image 7A Moroccan police checkpoint in the suburbs of Laayoune (from Western Sahara)
Image 8Sahrawi people (from Western Sahara)
Image 9Intermittent lake Dait Um Saad (from Western Sahara)
Image 10Two women outside a hospital emergencies at a Sahrawi refugee camps (from Western Sahara)
Image 11System of the Moroccan Walls in Western Sahara set up in the 1980s (from Western Sahara)
Image 12Sahrawi human rights defender Ali Salem Tamek in Ait Meloul Prison, Morocco (from Western Sahara)
Image 13A MINURSO car (left), and a post of the Polisario Front (right) in 2017 in southern Western Sahara (from Western Sahara)
Image 14Natural products in a pharmacy (from Western Sahara)
Image 15A sangar (fortification) from the Western Sahara conflict. The fortification is built of rocks on top of a mesa overlooking the Grart Chwchia, Al Gada, Western Sahara. The Sangar is facing north and was probably built by the Sahrawis in the 1980s. (from Western Sahara)
Image 16Spanish and French protectorates in Morocco and Spanish Sahara, 1912 (from Western Sahara)
Image 17Morocco built several empty towns in Western Sahara, ready for refugees returning from Tindouf. (from Western Sahara)
Image 18A demonstration in Madrid for the independence of Western Sahara (from Western Sahara)
Image 19Commemoration of the 30th independence day from Spain in the Liberated Territories (2005) (from Western Sahara)

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... that Polar 3, the first German airplane to reach the South Pole in December 1984, was shot down by Polisario Front rebels over Western Sahara on its way home in February 1985?

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