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timestamp: "00:00"
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title: "Historical Claims and the Birth of a Conflict"
quote: "The kingdom dreams of regaining control over its historical regions to constitute what it calls 'Greater Morocco'."
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The conflict's origins are traced back to 1956, the year of Moroccan independence from France. While the population celebrated, King Mohammed V expressed dissatisfaction, believing true independence would only be achieved with the recovery of all historical provinces. This vision was encapsulated in the concept of "Greater Morocco," a territorial ambition based on the influence of ancient Moroccan dynasties over the past millennium. The Western Sahara was a central component of this irredentist project, desired not merely for historical reasons but for its significant strategic resources, including phosphate—a vital ingredient for global fertilizers—and its rich fishing waters. However, a major obstacle stood in the way: the territory was under Spanish colonial control, a situation formalized during the 1884 Berlin Conference where European powers partitioned Africa.
By the 1970s, the situation evolved as Spain, under Francisco Franco's weakening regime, began to consider decolonization and granting greater autonomy to the territory. This prospect triggered immediate and divergent reactions from Morocco and its regional rival, Algeria. For Algeria, supporting the nascent Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front, served a dual purpose. Officially, it was a matter of upholding the principle of self-determination for colonized peoples. In reality, it was a strategic maneuver to weaken its Moroccan neighbor and potentially gain access to the Atlantic Ocean. This intervention internationalized the dispute from its inception, transforming it from a simple decolonization process into a proxy conflict between two North African powers.
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timestamp: "00:04"
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title: "The Green March and the Forced Creation of Facts"
quote: "The Green March was prepared by the Moroccan executive, by the king, and he will say that it is the will of his people but in reality, it was about colonizing, in the legal sense of the term, the Sahara, to settle there."
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King Hassan II, succeeding his father, initially pursued a legal strategy to claim the Western Sahara. He brought the case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, seeking an arbitration that would legitimize Morocco's historical ties. However, the 1975 ruling was a significant setback for the Moroccan position. While the court acknowledged the existence of "allegiance ties" between the Sultan of Morocco and some Sahrawi tribes, it unequivocally stated that these links did not establish "any tie of territorial sovereignty." Legally, the territory was not Moroccan. Undeterred, Hassan II performed a masterful act of political reinterpretation, publicly claiming the court's opinion as a victory that supported Morocco's sovereignty claim, thereby twisting the legal finding to serve his nationalistic agenda.
Just days after the ICJ's opinion, Hassan II launched the "Green March" on November 6, 1975. This was a massive, state-organized civilian mobilization where 350,000 unarmed Moroccans, waving flags and Qurans, were sent to march across the border into the Spanish Sahara. The operation was a calculated gamble, using human waves as a political and media weapon to force Spain's hand. While presented as a spontaneous popular movement, it was a meticulously planned act of creating facts on the ground. In parallel with this public spectacle, secret negotiations were underway with Spain, resulting in the Madrid Accords. This agreement saw Spain transfer the administrative control (though not formal sovereignty) of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania, a move the United Nations never recognized as legal and which effectively partitioned the Western Sahara between the two claimants.
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timestamp: "00:07"
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title: "War, The Berm, and Demographic Strategy"
quote: "Against this fortified line, the raids of the Polisario, confined to the east, are much less effective."
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The Madrid Accords plunged the region into a brutal 16-year war. The Polisario Front, backed militarily and logistically by Algeria, declared the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and engaged in a highly effective guerrilla war against the occupying forces of Morocco and Mauritania. Utilizing pickup trucks for swift mobility in the desert terrain, the Sahrawi fighters executed devastating ambushes against the less-adaptable Moroccan army, inflicting heavy losses. The conflict also triggered a massive humanitarian crisis, with approximately half of the Sahrawi population—around 100,000 people—fleeing the combat zones to seek refuge in camps in the Algerian desert near Tindouf, where many remain to this day.
To counter the Polisario's guerrilla tactics, Morocco embarked on one of the most defining and controversial military engineering projects of the late 20th century: the construction of a 2,700-kilometer-long defensive barrier, often called the "Berm." Starting in 1980, this series of sand walls, fortified with bunkers, barbed wire, radar systems, and one of the world's largest continuous minefields, effectively bisected the territory. Its strategic purpose was to secure the economically valuable western parts (containing the cities and phosphate mines) from Polisario incursions originating from the eastern "liberated" zones. The Berm fundamentally changed the nature of the conflict, stalemating the war and allowing Morocco to consolidate its control over roughly 80% of the territory.
With the military front stabilized by the Berm, Morocco shifted to a long-term strategy of demographic engineering. The government initiated extensive settlement campaigns, offering financial incentives and subsidies to encourage Moroccans to move to the "Southern Provinces." This policy had a dual objective: to alter the ethnic and political demographics of the territory to favor Morocco in any future referendum on self-determination, and to develop the area as a showcase of Moroccan investment, with modern infrastructure, mosques, hospitals, and hotels designed to demonstrate the benefits of integration with the kingdom.
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timestamp: "00:11"
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title: "Diplomatic Offensive and the Politics of the Fait Accompli"
quote: "The Sahara dossier is the prism through which Morocco measures the sincerity of friendships and the effectiveness of the partnerships it establishes."
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Under King Mohammed VI, Morocco's strategy evolved into a sophisticated and relentless diplomatic offensive. In 2007, he proposed an Autonomy Plan for the Western Sahara, which on the surface appeared to be a concession. The plan offered a locally elected parliament and executive to manage areas like education and economic development. However, crucially, it retained Moroccan sovereignty over the territory, including control of defense, foreign affairs, and key natural resources. This proposal became the central pillar of Moroccan foreign policy, used as a litmus test for international relations. Support for the plan was demanded as a sign of friendship, while opposition was met with diplomatic pressure and retaliation.
This strategy of "diplomatic chantage" has yielded significant results. A landmark victory came in 2020 when the United States, under the Trump administration, formally recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. This historic shift in U.S. policy was explicitly linked to Morocco's agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, demonstrating the territory's use as a bargaining chip in wider geopolitical deals. Subsequently, Morocco applied pressure on Spain, its former colonizer, by orchestrating a migrant crisis at the border of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. This coercion led Spain to abandon its decades-long neutrality and endorse the Autonomy Plan in 2022, a move followed by other key European nations like Germany.
As the diplomatic landscape shifts in its favor, Morocco is increasingly treating the Western Sahara's resources as its own, despite the legal ambiguities. It has signed trade deals, notably with the European Union, for the export of agricultural products and fisheries from the territory, all without the consent of the Sahrawi people. This represents a policy of irreversible "fait accompli," making the prospect of independence increasingly remote. While the Polisario has indicated a conditional willingness to accept the autonomy plan, it insists on a referendum for the Sahrawi people to validate it—a condition Morocco has consistently rejected. The conflict thus remains in a precarious stalemate, with Morocco consolidating its control on the ground and in international forums, while the fundamental issue of self-determination remains unresolved and risks future instability.