Polisario Front
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The Polisario, Polisario Front, or Frente Polisario, from the Spanish abbreviation of Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro ("Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro") is a Sahrawi movement working for the independence of Western Sahara.Please see the relevant discussion on the [
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HistoryThe beginningsPolisario is a successor of the Harakat Tahrir in the late 1960s, led by Bassiri, which hoped to gain independence for the Spanish Sahara through peaceful protest. In 1970, Spanish troops under Franco's regime destroyed the movement following the Zemla Intifada, and killed most of the leadership including Bassiri. This pushed Sahrawi nationalists into supporting a violent struggle.In 1971 a group of young Sahrawi expatriates in the universities of Morocco began organizing what came to be known as The Embryonic Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro. After attempting in vain to gain backing from several Arab governments, the movement eventually relocated to Spanish-controlled Western Sahara to start an armed rebellion. The Polisario was constituted on May 10, 1973 with the express intention of militarily forcing an end to Spanish colonization. Its first general secretary was El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed. On May 20 he led the Khanga raid, Polisario's first armed action, in which a Spanish post was overrun and rifles seized. Polisario then gradually gained control over large swaths of desert countryside, and its power grew from early 1975 when forcibly recruited Sahrawi auxiliaries of the Tropas Nomadas began deserting to the Polisario, bringing weapons and training with them. At this point, Polisario's manpower included perhaps 800 men and women, but they were backed by a vastly larger network of supporters.[[Citing sources citation needed]] A UN visiting mission headed by Simeon Aké that was conducted in June 1975 concluded that Sahrawi support for independence (as opposed to Spanish rule or integration with a neighbouring country) amounted to an "overwhelming consensus" and that the Polisario Front was by far the most powerful political force in the country. InvasionWhile Spain started negotiating a handover of power in the summer of 1975, in the end the Franco regime decided to throw in its lot with Western Sahara's neighbours instead. After Moroccan pressures through the Green March of November 6, Spain entered negotiations that led to the signing of the Madrid Accords between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania. Thus, immediately upon Spain's withdrawal in 1975, Moroccan and Mauritanian troops invaded and occupied the Western Sahara and expelled most of its native population. This brought widespread international condemnation, since the World Court at The Hague had found in favor of Western Sahara's self-determination just weeks before.The Polisario kept up resistance and rebased in Tindouf in the western regions Algeria. For the next two years the movement grew tremendously as Sahrawi refugees flocked to the camps and Algeria supplied arms and funding. Within months, its army had expanded to several thousand armed fighters, camels been replaced by modern jeeps and 19th century muskets by assault rifles. The reorganized army was able to inflict severe damage through guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against occupation forces in Western Sahara and in the occupying countries, but took care not to strike at civilian targets.[[Citing sources citation needed]] Polisario strikes backThe weak Mauritanian regime of Ould Daddah, whose army numbered only around 5,000 men, was unable to fend off the guerilla incursions. After repeated strikes at the country's principal source of income, the iron mines of Zouerate, the government collapsed into internal disorder. Not even overt French Air Force backing proved enough to save it, and the regime fell in 1978 to a coup led by war-weary military officers, who immediately agreed to a cease fire with the Polisario. A peace treaty was signed August 5, 1979, in which the new Nouakchott government recognized Sahrawi rights to Western Sahara and relinquished its own claims. Mauritania withdrew, but the area it had occupied was now additionally taken by Morocco, and the war went on.From the mid-1980s Morocco largely managed to keep Polisario troops off by building a huge berm or sand wall (the Moroccan Wall), staffed by an army roughly the same size as the entire Sahrawi population. This stalemated the war, with no side able to achieve decisive gains, but artillery strikes and sniping attacks by the guerillas continued, and Morocco was economically and politically strained by the war. Today Polisario controls the part of the Western Sahara on the east of the Moroccan Wall, comprising about a third of the territory, but this area is economically useless, heavily mined, and almost uninhabited. Cease-fire and the referendum processA cease-fire between the Polisario and Morocco, monitored by MINURSO (UN) has been in effect since September 6, 1991, on the promise of a referendum on independence the following year. The referendum, however, stalled over disagreements on voter rights, and numerous attempts at restarting the process (most significantly the launching of the 2003 Baker plan) seem to have failed. The Polisario has repeatedly threatened to resume hostilites if a referendum cannot be held and claims that the current situation of "neither peace, nor war" is unsustainable. Pressures on the leadership from the refugee population to resume fighting are apparent, but to date the 14-year old cease fire has been respected.In 2004, a breakout organization, the Front Polisario Khat al-Shahid announced its existence, in the first break with the principle of "national unity" (i.e. working in one single organization to prevent factionalism). It remains of minimal importance to the conflict, however, and Polisario has refused dialogue with it. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic RepublicOn February 27 1976, the day after Spain formally ceded its colony, Polisario proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). It has a government in exile, a parliament and a judiciary. Its constitution states that Western Sahara will be founded as a multi-party democracy with a "market economy and free enterprise". Abdelaziz is president. The SADR is a member of the African Union, but not of the United Nations. It is currently recognised by 45 countries, and has been acknowledged as a state by over 80 states although about 35 have since withdrawn recognition; nearly all of these are African or Latin American. Some countries have not recognised the SADR, but do recognise Polisario as representative of the Saharawi people. Still other countries do not recognise Polisario at all, but also do not recognise Morocco's unilateral annexation of the area. No state has formally recognized Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara. The SADR and Polisario are both based in the vast Sahrawi refugee camps south of Tindouf, but has its symbolic temporary capital of Bir Lehlou in north-eastern Western Sahara, rather than the constitutional capital of El Aaiún.Political ideologyThe Polisario is first and foremost a nationalist organization, with the independence of Western Sahara as its main goal, and it believes ideological disputes should be left for a democratic Western Sahara to deal with. It views itself as a "front" encompassing all political trends in Sahrawi society, and not as a party. As a consequence, there is no party programme. The Sahrawi republic's constitution however gives a hint of the movements ideological context: in the early 1970s Polisario adopted a vaguely socialist rhetoric, but this was abandoned relatively quickly. In the late 1970s, all references to socialism in the republic's constitution were removed, and by 1991, the Polisario was explicitly free-market.After independence, the Polisario will either function as a party within the context of a multi-party system, or be completely disbanded. This will be decided by a Polisario congress. Polisario has consistently opposed terrorism, condemning suicide bombings and even sending condolences to Morocco after the terrorist strikes in Casablanca in 2003. StructureThe Polisario's organizational structure should not be confused with that of the Sahrawi republic, although the two frequently overlap. The organizational order described below applies today, and was roughly finalized in the 1991 internal reforms of the movement.The Polisario is led by a general secretary. The first general secretary was El-Ouali, followed by Mahfoud Ali Beiba as interrim secretary upon his death. In 1976, Mohamed Abdelaziz was elected and has held the post ever since. The general secretary is elected by the General Popular Congress (GPC), regularly convened every four years. The GPC is in turn composed of delegates from the Popular Congresses of the refugee camps in Tindouf, which are held biannually in each camp, and of delegates from the women's' organization (UNMS), youth organization (UJSARIO), workers' organization (UGTSARIO) and military delegates from the SPLA (see below). Between congresses, the supreme decision-making body is the National Secretariat, headed by the general secretary. The NS is elected by the GPC. It is subdivided into committees handling defense, diplomatic affairs, etc. The 2003 NS, elected at the 11th GPC in Tifariti, Western Sahara, has 41 members. Twelve of these are secret delegates from the Moroccan-controlled areas of Western Sahara. This is shift in policy, as the Polisario traditionally confined political appointments to Sahrawis within the diaspora, for fear of infiltration. It is probably intended to strengthen the movement's underground network in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, and link up with the rapidly growing Sahrawi civil rights activism. According to The European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center [(ESISC)] Polisario's " "leftist' ideology" [...] was to have a powerful influence on the way in which the Polisario was to be organized. In 1976, the Polisario Front bestowed upon itself a structure that was to remain unchanged. It was run by its Secretary-General assisted of an executive of nine members, themselves belonging to a "Politburo" of 21 members of whom three were more particularly charged with the "mass organizations" encompassing three "categories" of Saharawis: workers, peasants and women. With 19 elected officials of the "Basic People's Committees", the members of the Politburo formed the "National People's Council". Basically, each group of ten people was organized into a cell and each camp had its own military and political hierarchy. It was a question therefore of the most classical kind of Marxist pyramid structure [...] . It hardly mattered that there was no plethora of "workers" in the Saharawi ranks or that the "peasants" were really an under-represented class [...] as the Marxist-Leninist vulgate emanded that revolution could only by accomplished by the working class reinforced by the poor peasantry [...]. What was important was to believe in it and to look good to the States sponsoring the cause (mainly, at the time, on the left) and to the sympathizers who were starting to appear in Europe." *[The European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC) report on the Polisario] According to Pierre Olivier Louveaux, who went to the camps under cover of a humanitarian mission, the Polisario is now controlled by a few people who put their personal interests first in the conclusion of the conflict [...]. The Polisario leaders periodically exchange the various positions of responsibility between themselves. It is difficult to know whether there exist, within the leadership, different political tendencies or conflicting interests. It seems that the leaders, in total or only in part, are hugely benefiting from the current situation to consolidate their political, social and economic power. The fact that they consider themselves as leaders of a State with territory and population, and at the same time as refugees needing humanitarian aid to survive reveals a duality that they skilfully exploit." [Le Sahara Occidental aujourd’hui] Armed forces (SPLA)The Sahrawi Popular Army of Liberation, SPLA, is the Polisario's army. Its commander-in-chief is the general secretary. The SPLA's armed units are considered to have a manpower of possibly 6-7,000 active soldiers today, but during the war years its strength appears to have been significantly higher: up to 20,000 men. It has a potential manpower of many times that number, however, since both male and female refugees in the Tindouf camps undergo military training. Women formed auxiliary units protecting the camps during war years.It is equipped mainly with outdated Soviet-manufactured weaponry, donated by the sympathetic Algerian government, but its arsenals display a bewildering variety of materiel, much of it captured from Spanish, Mauritanian or Moroccan forces and made in France, the United States, South Africa or Britain. The SPLA has several armored units, composed of old tanks and somewhat more modern armored cars and halftracks. It has used land rovers and other originally civilian vehicles extensively, mounting machine guns and employing them in great numbers, relying on speed and surprise. On 3 November 2005, Polisario signed the Geneva Call, committing itself to a total ban on landmines. Morocco is one of [40 governments] that have not signed the 1997 mine ban treaty. Both parties has used mines extensively in the conflict, but some mine-clearing operations have been carried out under MINURSO supervision since the cease fire agreement. The Polisario traditionally employed ghazzi tactics, i.e., motorized surprise raids over great distances, but after the construction of the Moroccan Wall this changed into more conventional tactics, with a focus on artillery and other long-range attacks. In both phases of the war, SPLA units relied on superior knowledge of the terrain, speed and surprise, and on the ability to retain experienced fighters. The SPLA is considered well organized, and its desert warfare tactics were groundbreaking. The United States Army is reported to have studied Polisario tactics in preparation for the 1991 Gulf War. Foreign relationsSupport for the Polisario came mostly from African countries, Morocco's traditional rivals within the Arab world, and from third world non-aligned countries. The main political and military backers were Algeria and, a distant second, Cuba. For some years Libya's support was strong, but this has declined. Valuable contributions also came from the strong Spanish solidarity organizations and from some other third world liberation movements. Ties with the Fretilin liberation movement were exceptionally strong and remain so after East Timor's independence.The United States firmly backed Morocco against Polisario during the Cold War, but Polisario never received counter-support from the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China; both rival powers preferred ties with Morocco and refused to recognize the SADR. In the 1990s, world interest in the conflict seemed to expire as the Sahara question gradually sank from public consciousness with the implementation of the cease-fire. Libya withdrew support in the early 1980's, after forming a brief political union with Morocco, and its support of the Polisario today is verbal and infrequent. Support from Algeria remains strong, but the government seems to have barred Polisario from returning to armed struggle, attempting to curry favor from the US and France and to mend the inflamed ties with Morocco. In 2004, South Africa announced its formal recognition of the SADR, delayed for 10 years despite unequivocal promises by Nelson Mandela as apartheid fell. The recognition came since the announced referendum for Western Sahara never was held. Kenya and Uruguay followed in 2005, and relations were upgraded in some other countries. ReferencesSee also
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