Word: polisario
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...also, at least in part, because of Gaddafi. Last February, he and 25 other leaders of radical and left-leaning African states engineered the recognition of the self-styled Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) as the O.A.U.'s 51st member. That is the name used by the Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara...
...armaments he needs to pursue a six-year-old desert war that neither the Moroccans nor their enemies appear to be capable of winning. The war, centered in the former Spanish Sahara to the south of Morocco, pits Hassan's armed forces against the guerrillas of the Polisario Front. The rebels, who are supported by Algeria and Libya, hope to create an independent state in the barren, 103,000-sq.-mi. territory...
...warfare continued, Mauritania renounced its claim to any part of the former Spanish colony. Hassan held on, but understood that he was in a bind: he could not defeat the Polisario, even though he was spending about $ 1 million a day in trying; and he could not withdraw because his countrymen of every political persuasion, whatever they might think of his other policies, were wildly enthusiastic about the war in the Sahara...
Western Sahara. Following Spain's withdrawal from its former North African colony in 1975, King Hassan II of Morocco dispatched 350,000 of his unarmed subjects into the region to claim it. They were later backed up by Moroccan troops. Opposing the Moroccans is the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, a guerrilla force that claims sovereignty over the area...
Algeria has close links with the Palestine Liberation Organization and strongly opposes U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly the Camp David peace accords. It continues to help Polisario guerrillas in their fight against Morocco to carve out an independent state in the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. The U.S., meanwhile, is quietly backing Morocco to the point of shipping arms for use in the desert...