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

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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 xliii
xliv • INTRODUCTION 1960s and extending into the early 21st century, has been the object of serious exploration for possible petroleum reserves, a search which by 2005 had not resulted in the discovery of commercially viable deposits but which has greatly raised the stakes in the overall political equation surrounding the future of Western Sahara, given that the conflict between Morocco and the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el- Hamra y Río de Oro (Polisario Front), which seeks an independent Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in the territory, was at the threshold of entering its fourth decade. And finally, the efforts to resolve the Morocco-Polisario dispute by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations highlighted some of the limitations on the effectiveness of those international bodies, particularly with regard to a situation in which a sense of diplomatic urgency was mostly lacking and there were strong temptations on the part of the great powers to accept the political status quo, even though Western Sahara was Africa’s last substantial issue of decolonization and had a refugee population which had been waiting to leave its encampments in southwestern Algeria for upwards of 30 years. FROM THE PRECOLONIAL ERA TO THE LATE 19TH CENTURY In spite of the austere conditions characterizing Western Sahara in modern times, the territory has known a period when it enjoyed a far gentler climate and a richer variety of plant and animal life than during the last 3,000 years or so. So far as can be inferred from the archaeological and geological record, the Neolithic period in Western Sahara featured nearly unending grasslands, abundant animal life, and a relatively stable (if very small) population of nomadic hunter-gatherers known as the Bafour, a dark-skinned people who left behind paintings and drawings in caves and on rocks to remind observers of their presence. But beginning in about 2500 BC, these peoples were obliged by the ongoing southward expansion of the desert to migrate far to the south, into what is presently sub-Saharan Africa. From 2500 to about 1000 BC, the region gradually became less and less hospitable to life, as watercourses, larger wildlife, and forests and savannas were slowly replaced by the deserts found there today. But just as the process of desertification was reaching its conclusion in Western Sahara, another group of people, the
Page 1 and 2: Historical Dictionary of Western Sa
Page 3 and 4: Editor’s Foreword While nearly al
Page 5 and 6: Preface As was the case in the seco
Page 7 and 8: Reader’s Notes The Western Sahara
Page 9 and 10: Acronyms and Abbreviations AMD Alli
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Page 17 and 18: continues his resistance until 1919
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Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara Third ... - Scarecrow Press

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