Word: hassanal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...giant national picnic. In towns and villages, men and women sang and danced to the din of drums and the ear-splitting piping of flutes; excited children ran through the streets and watched their parents and relatives board trains and buses for the south. King Hassan II's bizarre crusade to "liberate" the Spanish Sahara (TIME. Oct. 27) was ready to begin...
Realizing that an armed invasion might well cause a war with both Spain and Algeria, Hassan had asked for 350,000 volunteers to cross the frontier, armed only with the Koran. By the end of the week, 700,000, including 70,000 women, had signed up for what Moroccan newspapers had dubbed "the Green March" (after Islam's traditional color). Doctors were still giving physical examinations to decide who was up to the arduous 15-day, 60-mile trek across a land as desolate as the moon, where temperatures at this time of year can climb as high...
...Hassan had been preparing his move even before the International Court of Justice ruled that Morocco had not proved its "ties of territorial sovereignty" over the 103,000-sq.-mi. land, which has, outside of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., perhaps 20% of the world's phosphates. All last week a fleet of nearly 8,000 trucks rumbled toward Tarfaya, Morocco's southernmost city, with cargoes that included 42,580 tons of water, food and fuel, along with blankets and tents. Overhead, army helicopters scattered back and forth watching for emergencies, as the never-ending column rolled through...
...tribes before Spain took over the region in 1884, but had not established "territorial sovereignty." Keenly disappointed, Morocco showed no intention of acquiescing in the ruling, and at week's end its troops were massed along a 140-mile border with the Spanish Sahara. Morocco's King Hassan II vowed to send 350,000 people, including 30,000 women-armed only with the Koran-to "liberate" the territory. Meanwhile, Spain, which still has control, warned that its troops in the Sahara, estimated at 15,000 to 30,000, would fire back if fired upon. Algeria had thousands...
Algeria says that it does not want the land for itself, but does not want Morocco's right-wing monarchy to have it either. Instead, Algiers favors self-determination, assuming that the Sahara's 70,000 or 80,000 nomads would opt for Algerian-style Islamic socialism. Hassan also assumes they would go socialist and fears that his own shaky regime could not survive if it were surrounded by hostile states...