Everything about Green March totally explained
» This article is about the historical event. For the aerobatic team see: Marche Verte.
The Green March was a strategic mass demonstration in November 1975, coordinated by the
Moroccan government, to force
Spain to hand over the disputed
province of
Sahara to Morocco.
The Green March
The Green March was a well-publicized popular march of enormous proportions. On November 6, 1975, approximately 350,000 unarmed
Moroccans converged on the city of
Tarfaya in southern Morocco and waited for a signal from
King Hassan II to cross into
Western Sahara. They brandished
Moroccan flags, banners calling for the "return of the
Moroccan Sahara," photographs of the King and the
Qur'an; the color
green for the march's name was intended as a symbol of
Islam. As the marchers reached the border
Spanish troops were ordered not to fire to avoid bloodshed.
In order to prepare the terrain and to riposte to any potential counter-invasion from
Algeria, the
Moroccan Army entered the northeast of the region where it met with sporadic resistance from the
Polisario, by then a two-year-old independence movement.
Background
Morocco, to the north of the Spanish Sahara, had long claimed that the territory was historically an integral part of Morocco, and shouldn't be
independent after Spain left.
Mauritania to the south argued similarly that the territory was in fact Mauritanian. Since 1973, a Sahrawi
guerrilla war led by the Algerian backed Polisario had challenged Spanish control, and in October 1975 Spain had quietly begun negotiations for a handover of power with leaders of the rebel movement, both in
El Aaiún, and with foreign minister
Pedro Cortina y Mauri meeting
El Ouali in
Algiers.
Morocco intended to vindicate its claims by demanding a verdict from the
International Court of Justice (ICJ). The
ICJ stated that there were historical legal ties of allegiance between "some, but only some" and the
Sultan of Morocco, as well as ties including some rights relating to the land between Mauritania and other Sahrawi tribes.
(External Link
) However, the ICJ stated also that there were no ties of territorial sovereignty between the territory and Morocco, or Mauritania, at the time of Spanish
colonization; and that these contacts were not extensive enough to support either country's demand for
annexation of the Spanish Sahara. Instead, the court argued, the indigenous population (the Sahrawis) were the owners of the land, and thus possessed the right of
self-determination. This meant that regardless of which political solution was found to the question of sovereignty (integration with Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, partition, or independence), it had to be explicitly approved by the people of the territory. Complicating matters, a
UN visiting mission had concluded on October 15, the day before the ICJ verdict was released, that Sahrawi support for independence was "overwhelming".
However, the reference to previous Moroccan-Sahrawi ties of allegiance was presented by Hassan II as a vindication of his position, with no public mention of the court's further ruling on self-determination. (Until, seven years later, he formally agreed to a referendum before the
Organisation of African Unity). Within hours of the ICJ verdict's release, he announced the organizing of a "green march" to Spanish Sahara, to "
reunite it with the Motherland".
The Moroccan arguments for sovereignty
According to
Morocco, the exercise of sovereignty by the Moroccan state was characterized by official pledges of allegiance to the sultan. The Moroccan government was of the opinion that this allegiance existed during several centuries before the Spanish
occupation and that it was a legal and political tie. The sultan
Hassan I, for example, had carried out two expeditions in 1886 in order to put an end to foreign incursions in this territory and to officially invest several
caids and
cadis. In its presentation to the ICJ, the Moroccan side also mentioned the levy of
taxes as a further instance of the exercise of sovereignty. The exercise of this sovereignty had also appeared, according to the Moroccan government, at other levels, such as the appointment of local officials (governors and military officers), and the definition of the missions which were assigned to them.
The Moroccan government further pointed to several treaties between it and other states, such as with
Spain in 1861, the
United States of America in 1786, and 1836 and with
Great Britain in 1856
(External Link).
The court, however, found that "neither the internal nor the international acts relied upon by Morocco indicate the existence at the relevant period of either the existence or the international recognition of legal ties of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and the Moroccan State. Even taking account of the specific structure of that State, they don't show that Morocco displayed any effective and exclusive State activity in Western Sahara."
(External Link)
The Madrid Accords
Spain feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to war, and with its government in disarray (the
dictator,
Franco, lay dying), it was in no mood for trouble in the colonies. Only the year before, the
Portuguese government had been
toppled, after becoming bogged down in colonial wars in
Angola and
Mozambique. Therefore, following the Green March, and with a view to preserving as much as possible of its interest in the territory, Spain agreed to enter direct bilateral negotiations with Morocco, bringing in also Mauritania, who had made similar demands. This resulted in the November 14
Madrid Accords, a treaty which divided Spanish Sahara between Mauritania and Morocco.
Spain received a 35% concession in the
phosphate mines of
Bou Craa, and offshore
fishing rights
(External Link). Morocco and Mauritania then formally annexed the parts they'd been allotted in the Accords. Morocco claimed the northern part, for example
Saguia el-Hamra and approximately half of
Río de Oro, while Mauritania proceeded to occupy the southern third of the country under the name
Tiris al-Gharbiyya. Mauritania later abandoned all claims to its portion in August 1979 and this area was occupied by Morocco.
The Polisario, now with heavy
Algerian backing, refused the Madrid Accords, and demanded that the ICJ's opinion on Sahrawi
self-determination be respected; it turned its weapons on the new rulers of the country, sticking to its demand for independence outright, or a referendum on the matter. The conflict has still not been resolved. Currently, there's a
cease-fire in effect, after a Moroccan-Polisario
agreement was struck in 1991 to solve the dispute through the organization of a
referendum on independence. A UN peace-keeping mission (
MINURSO) has been charged with overseeing the cease-fire and organizating the referendum, which has still not taken place
as of 2007. Morocco has rejected the idea of the referendum as not workable in 2000 and is suggesting an
autonomy for Western Sahara within Morocco. That proposal been rejected by Polisario, and also by its Algerian backers; according to the Moroccan government, it'll be presented to the UN in April 2007.
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