Word: sahara
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Hassan brandishes an elite new force in the Sahara...
...right, but we are fighting for the West as well," said Moroccan Brigadier Muhamed Abruk, scanning the desert horizon from his headquarters at Laayoun, deep in the western Sahara. "We are the last fort protecting Western interests in this part of the world." For four years, Morocco has been waging a costly campaign to maintain its 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...
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...
...Morocco with badly needed arms assistance, notably Bronco planes and helicopter gunships. The other is Rabat's deliberate attempt to modify the army's defensive garrison mentality and try to seize the military initiative with an elite new fighting force. After touring Moroccan positions in the western Sahara for five days, TIME Correspondent David Halevy cabled this report...
...present case, the question is in what way the U.S. can best use its influence toward bringing about a cease-fire in the Western Sahara between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario guerrillas, who want to establish an independent state in the area formerly ruled by Spain. Morocco's King Hassan II is pressing the U.S. to sell him the Bronco planes and Cobra helicopter gunships he feels he needs to continue the fight against the guerrillas. The U.S. State Department opposes the sale and cites a CIA assessment that Morocco cannot win the war against the Polisarios...