Spanish Sahara

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Spain and the Western Sahara Colony Spanish Morocco Protectorate (with the Cape Juby Strip) French Morocco Protectorate Other French colonies Tangier International Zone





Spanish Sahara ( Spanish Sahara Español ) was the name for a Spanish colony in northwest Africa that existed between 1884 and 1975. From 1958 to November 1975, El Aaiún was the administrative seat of the Spanish Sahara.

colonization

1884 Spain received the coastal area of present-day Western Sahara at the Berlin Conference in Berlin awarded and began to set up a trading post, the city of Villa Cisneros, later Dakhla on a peninsula in the southern part of present-day Western Sahara, the colony Río de Oro was declared . In the years that followed, other small trading branches were established and, if necessary, expanded into military bases.

In the summer of 1886, the Spanish Society for Commercial Geography ( Sociedad Española de Geografía Comercial ) carried out two expeditions to the Western Sahara, supported by the Government of Spain, one to the coast between Cape Juby and Cape Bojador , the other to the area between Cape Bojador and Cape Blanco . The participants made topographical and astronomical observations in a country whose characteristics were hardly known to European geographers. The trips are considered to be the first scientific expeditions in this part of the Sahara . A special aim of these expeditions was to conclude contracts with the inhabitants of the region, which should bring about the international recognition of Spanish rights in Western Sahara. The Spanish government had sponsored the expedition, but refused to publish the contracts officially. A Spanish-French agreement of November 27, 1912 established the borders of the northern area of Saguia el Hamra , which had been changed several times since 1902 .

Spanish Sahara Colony

Colony postage stamp

Spanish Sahara (Sahara español) was created in 1924 from the Río de Oro area in the south and the northern Saguia el Hamra . However, neither Spanish Morocco , which was administered separately as a protectorate, nor the Protectorate Cape Juby belonged to the Spanish Sahara .

Since 1884, Spain had met the strong resistance of the indigenous Sahrawi tribes. In 1904 an uprising began , led by the powerful marabout Sheikh Mā al-ʿAinin . The starting point was the city of Smara , founded by Mā al-ʿAinin around 1900 , which had developed into the religious, political and economic center of the region. The uprising could only be put down in 1910 with the help of French troops. A wave of revolts ensued among Mā al-ʿAinin's sons, grandchildren, and other leaders. It was not until 1934 that the interior came under the control of the Spanish colonial power with the conquest of Smara.

Spanish West Africa

The territory of the Spanish Sahara colony was merged with Ifni to form Spanish West Africa (África Occidental Española) in June 1946 . Since 1934 Sidi Ifni was the seat of the governor general of Spanish Sahara.

Since its independence in 1956, Morocco has been claiming the Spanish Sahara as part of its pre-colonial rule. In 1957 the Moroccan Liberation Army succeeded in gaining control of most of the Ifni area in the Ifni War . Only with the support of the French were the Spaniards able to regain control through a strategy of retaliatory measures against the interior, the forcible settlement of many previously nomadic Bedouins and the acceleration of urbanization . It was not until February 1958 that the Spanish and the French Legion succeeded in breaking the military resistance during the so-called Ouragan offensive. On April 2, 1958, the governments of Spain and Morocco signed the Angra de Cintra Agreement. Morocco was awarded the region of Tarfaya (Cape Juby Colony) between the Draa River and the latitude of 27 ° 40 ', Spain kept Ifni and Spanish West Africa.

Overseas Province of Spanish Sahara

Actions as part of the Green March in October / November 1975
Map of the area from pre-colonial times (1876)

On January 10, 1958, Río de Oro and Saguia el Hamra were declared direct Spanish territory under the name: "Overseas Province of Spanish Sahara" (Provincia Española del Sáhara) . In the 1960s, the development of the world's largest deposit of phosphate began in the so-called “useful triangle” near Bou Craa .

The Sahrawi nomads had settled in Western Sahara in the 1960s. In 1963 the United Nations put the area on the list of countries to be decolonized. In 1967 the Spanish colonial power was confronted with a peaceful protest movement, the Harakat Tahrir , which demanded the end of the occupation. In 1969 Spain had to cede Ifni to Morocco under international pressure.

After the violent suppression of the freedom demonstration in the Zemla district of El Aaiún on June 17, 1970, the Western Saharan national liberationist movement returned to its militant roots with the establishment of the Frente Polisario in 1973. The Polisario guerrilla army grew rapidly, and Spain had already lost control of its colony in the spring of 1975. An attempt to weaken the Polisario by creating a political rival, the "Party of the National Sahrawi Association" (Partido Unión Nacional de Saharaui) , had little success.

Immediately before the death of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in the winter of 1975, Spain faced an intense campaign of territorial claims from Morocco, and to a lesser extent Mauritania , culminating in the Green March . Spain withdrew its armed forces and settlers from the area after negotiating a tripartite agreement of November 14, 1975 with Morocco and Mauritania, both of which took control of different parts of the region. On February 26, 1976 the last Spanish troops left the Spanish Sahara.

Western Sahara

Mauritania renounced its claim after an unsuccessful fight against the Polisario. Morocco now occupied the southern part of Western Sahara and waged war against the Algerian- backed Polisario Front until the ceasefire that came into force in 1991 . The area remains controversial. The United Nations believes that the former Spanish Sahara is a non- decolonized territory with Spain as the formal administrative power.

James Baker , UN special envoy from March 1997 to June 2004, proposed a referendum on the independence or affiliation of the area, monitored by the UN peacekeeping mission MINURSO . In 2008, further talks between Morocco and the Polisario under UN auspices were unsuccessful. The Polisario rejected the Moroccan offer of extensive autonomy. Morocco categorically rejected a referendum with the three options of independence, affiliation with Morocco or autonomy.

literature

  • John Mercer: Spanish Sahara . Allen and Unwin, London 1976, ISBN 0-04-966013-6 .
  • Attilio Gaudio: Sahara espagnol. Fin d'un mythe colonial? Arrissala, Rabat 1975.
  • Abdelfadil Gnidil: The international legal situation of the former Spanish Sahara . Dissertation, University of Tübingen 1987.
  • Juan Bautista Vilar: El Sahara español. Historia de una aventura colonial (= Coleccion Piel de toro. Volume 2). SEDMAY, Madrid 1977, ISBN 84-7380-260-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Umberto Romano: Sahraui, a people in exile . In: Rabbia di Sabbia , August 8, 2003 Society for Threatened Peoples
  2. ↑ Biodiversidad amenazada y espacios protegidos en África. ( Memento of February 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Boletin oficial de la zona de influencia española en Marruecos
  4. ↑ World History at KMLA Rio de Oro, 1884-1924
  5. ^ Gobierno General de África Occidental Española
  6. ^ Anouar Majid: Dispatches from Morocco. Tingis - A Moroccan-American Magazine of Ideas and Culture. ( Memento of July 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Normativa básica española sobre la organización de excolonia del Sahara.
  8. ↑ Spanish Sahara becomes an object of dispute . In: Die Zeit , No. 27/1970
  9. ^ Alfred Hackensberger: Battle for the Western Sahara
  10. ↑ Spanish Legion / former Spanish Foreign Legion
  11. ↑ United States Institute of Peace July 1, 2006: The United Nations and Western Sahara: A Never-ending Affair
  12. ↑ www.ag-friedensforschung.de / Gerd Schumann (2008): motionless, Morocco also blocks round three of the Western Sahara negotiations
  13. ↑ see also Scientific Services of the German Bundestag (May 25, 2016): Effects of the international legal status of Western Sahara on Moroccan citizenship law and the asylum procedure in Germany (p. 6)