Word: polisario
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...military front, Hassan has been locked for almost four years in a no-win war against the guerrillas of the leftist Polisario Front, which is fighting to turn the barren but phosphate-rich, 103,000-sq.-mi. slab of desert into an independent "Saharan Arab Democratic Republic." At home, he has had to contend with rising public anger and labor strikes prompted by a deteriorating economy; it has suffered both from the decline in the price of phosphates, which provide a third of Morocco's export earnings, and from the war's cost, estimated at $1 million...
Earlier this month Morocco's smaller neighbor to the south, Mauritania (pop. 1.5 million), abruptly made a separate peace with the Polisario and gave up its own claims to Tiris el Gharbia, the lower reaches of the Western Sahara. To forestall a Polisario takeover there, Hassan promptly occupied the area with 2,500 legionnaires and proclaimed it Morocco's 40th province. Though it was cheered by flag-waving children, that annexation sorely raised the level of tension across the Maghreb. Algeria immediately accused Hassan of being manipulated by "colonialists and imperialists." The Polisario vowed to "intensify military operations...
...ambitious program of industrialization, especially the largely automated natural gas plants, provided too few jobs for a population that has grown from 12 million to 18 million since he took over. In foreign affairs, Boumedienne lost some prestige in the Arab world by backing and providing bases for the Polisario rebels, who seek to wrest the former Spanish Sahara from neighboring Morocco and Mauritania. His successor must decide whether to continue that fight...
...Sudanese security men had to break up a wrestling match between Algerian and Moroccan delegates over a map of Africa that classified the Western Sahara as a nonindependent country. The Algerians, who support Polisario guerrillas fighting for the area's independence, were penciling in "independent" when the Moroccans chanced along and tried to ink in boundary lines indicating that Western Sahara had been partitioned between Morocco and Mauritania. A brief, fierce struggle ensued...
...change of regime, however, does not necessarily mean that Mauritania will abandon its costly prize. While announcing that he would "confront the problem of the Sahara," Salek had by week's end not yet taken up a cease-fire offer from the Polisario guerrillas...