The original inhabitants of the Western Sahara were Berber tribes who practiced cattle breeding. Arab wars of conquest reached the region in the 6th century. In the 8th–11th centuries it belonged to the Kingdom of Ghana and in the 11th–12th centuries to the Almoravid Empire. From the 11th century, the region Arabized and embraced Islam.… Read More »
Western Sahara ( Arabic : الصحرة الغربية, tr. aṣ-Ṣaḥrā’ al-Gharbīyah ); officially: Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)) is a land area in northwest Africa. Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony, which both Morocco and the freedom movement Polisario claim the right to control. Geography Western Sahara lies between Morocco to the north, Algeria to… Read More »
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Western Sahara or Spanish, which extends from the Draa River to the Güera in the Peninsula of the Cabo Blanco in its Atlantic ridge is limited within political boundaries, which are to the north the Kingdom of Morocco, separated by the Uad Draa and to the south with Mauritania. Part of the Great Desert or Sahara,… Read More »
New mediators Baker’s successor as UN envoy, the Dutchman Peter van Walsum, announced in 2008 that he considered Polisario’s goal of an independent Western Sahara to be no longer “realistic”. To break the deadlock, van Walsum therefore called on the Security Council to propose another way forward, that is, to allow him to explore some… Read More »
Disagreement over voting power The Polisario only accepted in principle that people who had demonstrably lived in Western Sahara before the invasion and their descendants would be allowed to vote, based on a Spanish census from 1974. Morocco also demanded participation for the Moroccans who moved into the area after 1975 and during the ceasefire,… Read More »
Western Sahara is at the center of one of the world’s most protracted conflicts. Most of the former Spanish Sahara colony is occupied by Morocco, while the Western Saharan liberation movement Polisario has declared the area an independent state. The UN has long sought to hold a referendum on the future status of the territory.… Read More »