Portal:Western Sahara

The Western Sahara Portal – بوابة الصحراء الغربية

Coat of Arms of the Sahrawi Republic

Western Sahara is a United Nations–designated non-self-governing territory in north-western Africa. It has a surface area of 272,000 square kilometres (105,000 sq mi). Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and has been dubbed "Africa's last colony". With an estimated population of around 600,000 inhabitants, it is the most sparsely populated territory in Africa and the second most sparsely populated territory in the world after Greenland, consisting mainly of desert flatlands.

Francoist Spain previously colonized the territory as the Spanish Sahara until 1975, when the Spanish transition to democracy took effect. In 1976, when Spain attempted to transfer its administration to Morocco and Mauritania while ignoring a verdict of the International Court of Justice that those countries had no sovereignty over Western Sahara, a war erupted and the Polisario Front—a national liberation movement recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate representative of the people of Western Sahara—proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) with a government-in-exile in Tindouf, Algeria. Mauritania withdrew its claims in 1979, and Morocco secured de facto control of most of the territory, including all major cities and most natural resources. A UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement was reached in 1991, though a planned referendum monitored by the UN's MINURSO mission has since stalled.

Approximately 30% of the Western Sahara is controlled by the Polisario Front and the remaining 70% is occupied by Morocco. Morocco maintains the Berm, a 2,700 km-long (1,700 mi) wall lined with land mines that splits the territory. The Polisario Front is primarily supported by Algeria and has received partial international recognition for the SADR and membership in the African Union. Morocco is supported by France and the United States; several states and the United Nations Security Council began expressing support for its autonomy proposal in the 2020s. (Full article...)

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), also known as the Sahrawi Republic and Western Sahara, is a partially recognised state in the western Maghreb, which claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of that territory. It is recognised by 38 UN member states and South Ossetia. Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony (later an overseas province). The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea.

The SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlou, Western Sahara. The SADR government calls the territories under its control the Liberated Territories or the Free Zone. Morocco occupies the rest of the disputed territory, and calls these lands its Southern Provinces. The claimed capital city of the SADR is Laayoune (the largest city of the Western Sahara territory). Since the SADR does not control Laayoune, it has established a temporary capital in Tifariti, although most of the day-to-day administration happens in Rabuni, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps located in Tindouf, Algeria. (Full article...)

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Protesters carrying Polisario flags in front of the Western Sahara berm (2011)

The Moroccan Western Sahara Wall or the Berm, also called the Moroccan sand wall (Arabic: الجدار الرملي, romanized: al-jidār ar-ramliyya, lit. 'sand wall'), is an approximately 2,700 km-long (1,700 mi) berm running south to north through Western Sahara and the southwestern portion of Morocco. It separates the Moroccan-occupied areas (the Southern Provinces) on the west from the Polisario-controlled areas (Free Zone, nominally Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) on the east. The wall was built in order to restrict independence-seeking Sahrawis to the eastern part of the desert, away from the region's natural resources, located in the Moroccan-occupied part of the territory.

According to maps from the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in many places the wall extends several kilometers into internationally recognized Mauritanian territory. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various Western Sahara-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Natural products in a pharmacy (from Western Sahara)
Image 2A Moroccan police checkpoint in the suburbs of Laayoune (from Western Sahara)
Image 3Image showing Western Sahara divided between the Moroccan-held area (in red) and the SADR-held area (in green). (from Western Sahara)
Image 4Morocco built several empty towns in Western Sahara, ready for refugees returning from Tindouf. (from Western Sahara)
Image 5Western Sahara 1876 (from Western Sahara)
Image 6Sahrawi people (from Western Sahara)
Image 7Commemoration of the 30th independence day from Spain in the Liberated Territories (2005) (from Western Sahara)
Image 8A demonstration in Madrid for the independence of Western Sahara (from Western Sahara)
Image 9Topography of Western Sahara (from Western Sahara)
Image 10System of the Moroccan Walls in Western Sahara set up in the 1980s (from Western Sahara)
Image 11Museum of the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army (from Western Sahara)
Image 12Spanish and French protectorates in Morocco and Spanish Sahara, 1912 (from Western Sahara)
Image 13A MINURSO car (left), and a post of the Polisario Front (right) in 2017 in southern Western Sahara (from Western Sahara)
Image 14Two women outside a hospital emergencies at a Sahrawi refugee camps (from Western Sahara)
Image 15Intermittent lake Dait Um Saad (from Western Sahara)
Image 16Sahrawi human rights defender Ali Salem Tamek in Ait Meloul Prison, Morocco (from Western Sahara)
Image 17Remains of the former Spanish barracks in Tifariti after the Moroccan airstrikes in 1991 (from Western Sahara)
Image 18As part of the Israel–Morocco normalization agreement, the United States became the first state to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. (from Western Sahara)
Image 19A sangar (fortification) from the Western Sahara conflict. The fortification is built of rocks on top of a mesa overlooking the Grart Chwchia, Al Gada, Western Sahara. The Sangar is facing north and was probably built by the Sahrawis in the 1980s. (from Western Sahara)

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... that Polar 3, the first German airplane to reach the South Pole in December 1984, was shot down by Polisario Front rebels over Western Sahara on its way home in February 1985?

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