Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara Third ... - Scarecrow Press

Introduction
THE TERRITORY
Western Sahara, or, as Morocco would prefer to call it, the “Saharan
provinces” of that country, is one of the most remote, arid, and thinly
populated territories in the world, encompassing 266,000 square kilometers
of desert; that is, roughly the size of Great Britain or half the size
of Spain yet without a single permanent river or an oasis of any consequence.
The Western Saharan terrain contrasts sharply with the preconceived
notions of many persons who would expect such a land to be
covered entirely by sand dunes, but instead, dune belts are found for the
most part only in the general vicinity of the 1,062 km Atlantic coastline,
with the rest of the territory being primarily flat gravel, albeit with several
lowlying mountain ranges. The waters off Western Sahara are extremely
dangerous, as swift currents, a steep drop-off of the continental
shelf, and an often rock-strewn coast have spelled doom for many generations
of seafarers. Western Sahara also has only two natural harbors
along the Atlantic (Dakhla and La Guera), and the climate of the territory
is legendary for its harshness. Temperatures can soar during the
daytime to over 50 degrees Celsius and drop to zero at night, and annual
rainfall seldom exceeds 50 mm per year and is often much less, with
some areas not seeing rain for years at a time.
Western Sahara also has long and poorly demarcated borders with
neighboring countries, stretching a total of 2,045 km, of which 1,570
km are with Mauritania in the south and east, 435 km are with Morocco
in the north (at any rate, before the 1975–76 occupation and annexation
of the territory by Rabat), and only 30 km with Algeria far to the northeast.
In addition, the ex-colony hosts some of the largest deposits of
phosphate ore in the world, is suspected to hold substantial amounts of
other minerals which as yet have not been exploited, and, starting in the
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