Word: polisario
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Shagari's clout was evident at the July summit of the Organization of African Unity in Freetown, Sierra Leone. When the organization threatened to founder over the divisive issue of Morocco's war against the Algeria-backed Polisario guerrillas in the former Spanish Sahara, Shagari defused the crisis with a compromise peace-keeping plan. Similarly, it was Nigeria's displeasure over the executions of 13 top officials in Liberia that ultimately forced the erratic new regime of Sergeant Samuel Doe to refrain from further bloodspilling. With the exception of those states that actually border South Africa, Nigeria...
...represent the U.S. at the United Nations any more, but that does not mean that Andrew Young has slowed his pace or lost his taste for speaking his mind. This time he was in the Western Sahara with leaders of the Polisario Front, an independence movement that seeks to wrest the land away from Morocco. Washington is sympathetic to King Hassan II, so Young's hosts were happy to lay on the hospitality in a desert town and argue their side. The give-and-take got Andy thinking about the folks back home. "In most Government positions you spend...
...disputed claims over the former Spanish colony on North Africa's Atlantic coast. King Hassan II, 50, one of the West's most reliable allies in the Arab world, has found himself mired in a no-win war of attrition against leftist guerrillas of the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, who are fighting to turn the desolate, phosphate-rich 103,000-sq.-mi. wedge of territory into an independent "Saharan Arab Democratic Republic...
Committed to defending isolated population centers and their own garrisons, Morocco's 36,000 troops in the Sahara have been increasingly harassed by the hit-and-run attacks of Polisario bands armed with Soviet weapons. Last week the Polisario attacked a Moroccan village with Soviet-made Katyusha rockets, and claimed that it shot down a Moroccan air force Mirage fighter with a SA-7 missile. The Polisario command in Algiers also claimed that its forces had killed 329 Moroccan soldiers in a series of engagements near Laayoun, but Moroccan officials in Rabat flatly denied the claim...
...sense, Carter is gambling that Hassan is too beleaguered militarily and politically to resist a settlement of the dispute. Since last summer, the Polisario attacks have grown from small local skirmishes to pitched battles involving thousands of guerrillas. In an attack last month, the Moroccans were forced to abandon a key defense post at Mahbes, about 35 miles inside the Moroccan border. At the same time, Hassan's economy has been hobbled by 25% inflation, skyrocketing fuel bills and bad harvests. He is not particularly popular among his countrymen, but so far they have supported him on at least...