Dividing up the World by Doe Paul;

Author:Doe, Paul;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: non-fiction;international borders;entertaining;fascinating history;author has MBE
Publisher: The Conrad Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Morocco has built a wall, or berm of sand for 1,500 miles across the entire length of Western Sahara and maintains its troops along its length separating the larger majority (80%) of the county in its control from a smaller area controlled by Sahrawi people, who claim the entire country for themselves. Built in the 1980’s the wall is actually a series of large sand barriers filled with land mines, fences and barbed wire. The cost of building, maintaining and supporting the wall with troops is huge for Morocco but considered a price worth paying to secure Western Sahara.

So how did we get here? How did a poor but vast old Spanish colonial territory end up with the world’s biggest militarily defended sand wall cutting out 20% of its territory? As ever, as we have found, with all of our borders, there is some history to consider.

The old story; claims of territory in nomadic lands

Long before the colonial European powers dived into Africa, the Sahara was the home of nomadic tribes, uncontested in their travel and ‘criss-crossing’ the desert undeterred by borders. The only, yet essential, limitations were the lack of pasture and water and the territory of other wandering nomads. Nomadic groups ranged across the huge western seaboard of the Sahara through what is now Mauritania to Algeria and Morocco. Portuguese and Spanish colonists began to arrive from the fifteenth century but focused their activities on coastal trading ports rather than the huge dry hinterland. Within this hinterland were the Sahrawi nomads of Berber stock who had become Muslims from the 13th century. They were largely autonomous in the area from Morocco down to Mauritania and ruled themselves through their own councils.

Spanish settlers on the coast used the coastline as strategic support for the Canary Islands and local fishing. The Spanish took more formal control of the coastline from Cape Bojador (south of the current borderline with Morocco) to Cape Blanc (on the current Mauritania Border) by a royal decree in 1885 but showed little interest in the interior. This decree was no doubt motivated by the Congress of Berlin decisions earlier in 1885 that required colonial powers to establish effective administration of their colonies. In 1887 a further decree extended the administrative control 150 miles inland.

Even at this time as Tony Hodges notes, this extension of control required military assistance to fend off hostile Sahrawis. Rezette, comments that Sahrawis were ‘practically abandoned to themselves’ but that didn’t stop them objecting to imposed control. As the interest in using the interior to promote trade grew Spain set about agreeing with France, the colonial controller of land south of Cape Blanc, where a border line should run. In 1886 talks settled on running a line from the southern tip of Cape Blanc east on the parallel 21 degrees 20’,’into the interior along the above mentioned parallel’. Where to was not agreed, just east into the desert.

By 1900 the southern limit as explained by Frank Trout, was agreed with France as

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