Brief history of Western Sahara
The origins of the Saharawi people
The first settlers of the Western Sahara, after the Neolithic, were the Sanhaja, the ancestors of the Berbers who came down from the Atlas Mountains to the Sahara Desert around the 3rd century.
The climate, characterized by low and irregular rainfall-and the arid terrain, forced the Sanhaja to move constantly in search of water and pasture for their herds of camels and goats, leading them to adopt a nomadic lifestyle.
Over the centuries, and especially with the arrival of Islam, the culture and population of the Sanhaja mixed and merged with the tribal societies that came to the area, including the Maquil Bedouins from what is now Yemen, who brought the Hassaniya language, that soon came to dominate the area and became the form of communication between the different tribes.11 This is how the Saharawi people became a tribal people.
Thus it was that the Saharawi people came to be composed of multiple nomadic tribes inhabiting the territory marked by the Saguia el Hamra - or the Red Canal - and the Rio de Oro, and sharing the Arabic dialect called Hassaniya.
1884
Spanish colonialism
After the division of Africa at the Berlin Conference (1884), Spain, as the colonizing power, set the borders of what would become Western Sahara, which would become the 53rd province; a territory that, until then, was inhabited by nomadic tribes that moved freely through the territory.
Spain, formerly a big European power that had been reduced to a third-rate position, had been humiliated by the Americans at the end of the 19th century, just when other Europeans were busy grabbing territory in Africa. It acquired the tiny Western Sahara, but delayed the materialisation of its territorial claims on the ground through effective occupation. Its neighbor, both in Europe and in Africa, was France, and France was more efficient than Spain in looking after its colonial interests.
Spain suffered as a virtual international pariah in the early 20th century. It played a minor role in the First World War, was embroiled in a civil war and sympathized with Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War. Rehabilitated by Cold War exigencies, it was admitted to the United Nations in 1955 and became subject to new international rules requiring colonial powers to demonstrate how they intended to decolonise their foreign possessions.
By 1970, Spain held only Western Sahara. Faced with the mobilisation of the Sahrawi people, organised in the Polisario Front, the regime agreed to hold a referendum on self-determination. However, the internal crisis of Franco's regime in 1975, with Franco nearing death, and the fear of confrontation with Morocco, which claimed sovereignty over the territory, accelerated and diverted the process.
Although prince Juan Carlos traveled to El Aaiún and assured that the rights of the Saharawis would be defended, weeks later the tripartite agreements were signed in Madrid, which the UN declared illegal, in which Spain divided the Saharawi territory between Morocco and Mauritania.
The Polisario Front, the liberation army, then launched a battle against neighboring countries and declared, in Bir Lehlu, the reality of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), recognised today by more than 80 states, and led by the Polisario Front until the referendum on self-determination required by international law is held.
Natural resources and their economic exploitation have contributed, and continue to contribute, to a kind of occupation of the territory of Western Sahara, which would introduce a more complex resolution to a conflict that has been raging for more than 44 years. The Sahrawi people were marginalized and impoverished in both the Spanish and Moroccan colonial eras. We can say that the economic slope of the phenomenon of colonialism constitutes the decisive characteristic feature of the Spanish presence in Western Sahara.
Indeed, the international economic crisis that began in the 1870s contributed to the origin of Spain's rush to colonize the southern flank of Western Sahara, while the other parts of Western Sahara were only pacified in late 1934, stimulating the imagination of those trapped to find means of escape from a precarious situation.
1975
Occupation by morocco
Hassan II, wanting to take advantage of Spain's withdrawal from an area that had proved to be very rich thanks to numerous natural resources that Morocco lacked, decided to claim sovereignty over Western Sahara, claiming that, prior to colonization, the territory had been under the rule of the Sultanate of Morocco. With this discourse, and ignoring the ruling of the Court of Justice in The Hague that such a sovereignty link never existed, he encouraged the Green March, in which more than 350,000 people, including military and civilians, occupied the territory, forcing the Saharawis to flee their homes, and even bombing them on their way out with banned weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus - "The Genocide of Um Draiga, Western Sahara" - "The Genocide of Um Draiga, Western Sahara" - "The Genocide of Um Draiga, Western Sahara".
Since then, Morocco and its allies (EU, especially France, the US and the Arab monarchies), driven by authentic geostrategic and economic interests, have vetoed attempts to sanction Morocco for not complying with international law and, moreover, any initiative to demand that it comply with the 1991 agreement.
In November 2020, after nearly three decades of legal and diplomatic efforts that have failed to bring a solution to the conflict any closer, Morocco broke ceasefire agreements by taking its military into a no-go zone to put an end to a multi-day peaceful demonstration in which a group of Saharawis blocked the illegal Guerguerat road, used by Morocco to transport resources plundered from Western Sahara. Once again, the Saharawi people and the invader, Morocco, are at war.
Morocco uses the same process as during the Spanish colonial era. In fact, Morocco will begin to relentlessly exploit the natural resources (fishing, phosphates, agriculture, other precious metals, solar and wind energy) of the Saharawi people, while marginalizing the indigenous populations, favoring the Moroccan settlers who today represent an undeniable majority in the daily life of the occupied territories.
Morocco uses the same process as during the Spanish colonial era. In fact, Morocco will begin to relentlessly exploit the natural resources (fishing, phosphates, agriculture, other precious metals, solar and wind energy) of the Saharawi people, while marginalizing the indigenous populations, favoring the Moroccan settlers who today represent an undeniable majority in the daily life of the occupied territories.
Spain and Morocco have an important common denominator in that they are despotic regimes, and their aim is to eliminate the Sahrawi political and cultural identity. However, the international law of Non Autonomous Territories distorts the equation of the colonizing country.
