Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A Rough Start: After Independence
When Mohammed V died suddenly of heart failure in 1961, King Hassan II became the
leader of the new nation. Faced with a shaky power base, an unstable economy and elec-
tions that revealed divides even among nationalists, Hassan II consolidated power by
cracking down on dissent and suspending parliament for a decade. With heavy borrowing
to finance dam-building, urban development and an ever-expanding bureaucracy, Morocco
was deep in debt by the 1970s. Attempts to assassinate the king underscored the need to do
something, quickly, to turn things around - and then in 1973, the phosphate industry in the
Spanish-controlled Western Sahara started to boom. Morocco staked its claim to the area
and its lucrative phosphate reserves with the Green March, settling the area with Moroc-
cans while greatly unsettling indigenous Saharawi people agitating for self-determination.
MARCHING TO THE KING'S TUNE
Talk of 'Greater Morocco' began in the 1950s, but in the 1970s it became the official explanation for
Morocco's annexation of phosphate-rich Spanish Sahara. There was a snag: the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Sagui al Hamra & Río di Oro (Polisario - Saharawi pro-independence militia) declared
the region independent. Putting his French legal training to work, Hassan II took up the matter with the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in 1975, expecting the court would provide a resound-
ing third-party endorsement for Morocco's claims. Instead the ICJ considered a counter-claim for inde-
pendence from the Polisario, and dispatched a fact-finding mission to Spanish Sahara.
The ICJ concluded that ties to Morocco weren't strong enough to support Moroccan sovereignty over
the region, and the Western Sahara was entitled to self-determination. In a highly creative interpretation
of this court judgment, Hassan II declared that Morocco had won its case and ordered a celebratory
'peace march' of more than 350,000 Moroccans from Marrakesh into the Western Sahara in 1975 -
some never to return. This unarmed 'Green March' was soon fortified by military personnel and land
mines, and was vehemently resisted by armed Polisario fighters.
The Green March is no longer the symbol of national pride it once was; Green March murals that
once defined desert-cafe decor have been painted over with apolitical dune-scapes. Meanwhile, phos-
phate profits have dwindled, due to falling prices, mining sabotage and spiralling costs for Moroccan
military operations, exceeding US$300 million annually by 1981.
A truce was finally established in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario, but Morocco's 2010 raid
of the Gadaym Izik protest camp of 15,000 displaced Saharawis resulted in at least a dozen deaths and
hundreds of injuries, according to the BBC, plus more than 100 detentions of activists, as reported by
Human Rights Watch. The actions haven't altered Polisario's demand for a referendum, while Rabat
maintains that it will grant the Western Sahara autonomous status, but not a referendum. So the status of
the Western Sahara remains unresolved - a rallying cry for many Saharawis, and an awkward conversa-
tion nonstarter for many deeply ambivalent Moroccan taxpayers.
