<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>On November 14, 1975, exactly fifty years ago today, the Tripartite Agreement was signed in Madrid, which entailed Spain handing over the territory of Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania.</strong></h4> Just eight days before the signing of the agreement, on November 6, 1975, the King of Morocco, Hassan II, had launched a spectacular mass rally to seize control of what was then Spanish Sahara: the so-called Green March, a particularly skillful maneuver by a monarch who knew how to manipulate the political climate and take advantage of the political turmoil in Spain caused by the dying days of dictator Francisco Franco, whose military and political career had begun, precisely, in North Africa. In 1974, Spain solemnly announced its intention to hold a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara to end a dispute that had begun in 1955 with the country's entry into the UN and its forced acceptance of the international organization's principles on decolonization. UN pressure throughout the 1960s had compelled Spain to accept a brief period of autonomy for its province and to set 1975 as the date for the referendum on self-determination. During this time, a faction of the Sahrawi people decided to take up arms and, in May 1973, formed the Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario Front), led by Mustafa Sayed. In that context, and knowing he had very little chance of winning the referendum, Hassan II decided to appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the highest judicial body of the United Nations, to claim sovereignty over this 266,000-square-kilometer territory, rich in minerals and fishing grounds and under Spanish control since the 19th century. The ICJ's ruling was issued on October 16 with conclusive arguments: at the time of Spanish colonization, the Sahara was by no means an "ownerless territory," and although certain ties of subordination and land rights existed between some Sahrawi tribes and the Sultan of Morocco, there were no ties of sovereignty between Western Sahara and Morocco. Therefore, the referendum had to be held. Hassan II, as on so many other occasions, seized upon the "certain ties of subordination" to claim that, according to the ICJ, Western Sahara had been Moroccan "since time immemorial." That same October 16, the Alawite monarch announced, in a radio and television address, his intention to organize a peaceful march of 350,000 Moroccans, men and women, to "recover" the territory. "I will be the first to sign up on the list of volunteers," he asserted. The "pilgrims" would carry only one weapon, the Quran, he added, clarifying that, should they encounter "foreign elements, other than Spanish," the Moroccans would exercise their right to defend themselves "without halting the march," a warning that implied they carried other weapons besides Islam's holy book. <h5><strong>The Green March</strong></h5> Around this same time, Spain's position gradually shifted, along with the names and ranks of the Spanish dictatorship's interlocutors with the Moroccan monarchy. With Foreign Minister Pedro Cortina Mauri removed from the negotiations, along with his intransigent stance in favor of the referendum, Franco's representation before Hassan II fell to the then-Prince Juan Carlos and the Minister of the National Movement, José Solís. Prince Juan Carlos visited El Aaiún on November 2nd to reassure the Spanish military and the Sahrawi people. On November 4th, 1975, the 8th Battalion of the Spanish Legion, stationed in what was then the province of Spanish Sahara, received orders to deploy to the border and attempt to halt "the enemy invasion." Operation Against Marabunta had been launched, and the legionnaires had laid minefields and artillery barrages with the mission of opening fire in case of a threat. The following day, Hassan II announced the start of Operation Al Masira, the Green March, and on November 6, 350,000 civilians and 25,000 Moroccan soldiers converged on the Tarfaya region in southern Morocco and peacefully penetrated up to 12 kilometers into Sahrawi territory, waving red and green flags and led by the then Prime Minister and the King's brother-in-law, Ahmed Osman. Morocco not only completely ignored the UN Security Council's request to end the "invasion," but also, on November 6, implied that, if necessary, the Royal Armed Forces could take military action, "potentially leading to a situation of belligerency between Spain and Morocco." The Spanish Army, with its full deployment, not only offered no resistance, but the following day, Francisco Franco's government announced its decision to negotiate the transfer of the territory's administration to Morocco. On November 8, the Minister of the Presidency met with Hassan II, and on November 9, the Alawite king ordered the withdrawal of the Green March. <h5><strong>The Madrid Agreement</strong></h5> On November 10, the Green March began its return, and four days later, on November 14, 1975, Spain signed the Tripartite Agreement, by which it handed over territorial control (but not sovereignty) to Morocco and Mauritania. Hassan II's gamble had paid off. The Tripartite Agreement, which envisioned a decolonization process based on respect for "the opinion of the Sahrawi population, expressed through the Yemaá" (General Assembly of the Sahara), established Spain's commitment to decolonize Western Sahara and the transfer of "the responsibilities and powers" of the former colonial power to a temporary tripartite administration in which Morocco, Mauritania, and the Yemaá were to participate. This point was rendered ineffective almost immediately following the military occupation by the two North African countries. The UN has never recognized the validity of this agreement nor has it admitted Morocco as the administering power of the territory, which legally remains the “only Spanish territory pending decolonization.” Finally, on the night of February 26, 1976, the Madrid Agreement came into effect, with which Spain ended its colonial presence in the Sahara. On February 27, 1976, the Polisario Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), recognized in November 1984 by the majority of countries in the Organization of African Unity (OAU). From then on, the exodus of large numbers of Sahrawi refugees began, who settled in camps in the Algerian desert region of Tindouf. <h5><strong>Mauritania</strong></h5> Although those negotiations had introduced Mauritania as a third party, what they really did was pave the way for Morocco to definitively seize the entire territory in August 1979. For Mauritania, that agreement—adopted outside the framework of the UN Decolonization Committee—represented an attempt to curb Morocco's expansionism. Morocco had just formally recognized the existence of the Mauritanian state and had not hidden its interest in integrating the country into its Greater Morocco project. However, the overthrow of President Mohtar Ould Dadah in July 1978 and his replacement by a Military Committee led by Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidala marked a shift in policy in a country that, in just three and a half years, had lost up to a thousand soldiers in its war with the Polisario Front. On August 5, 1979, Mauritania signed a formal peace agreement in Algiers with the Polisario Front—later endorsed by the UN Security Council and General Assembly—in which, in the name of “the rights of peoples to self-determination,” it “solemnly” declared that it no longer had “territorial or other claims in Western Sahara,” pledged to withdraw its troops and end the “unjust war,” and recognized the Polisario Front as “representative of the Sahrawi people.” On August 11, King Hassan II of Morocco responded to this decision with a military invasion and the annexation of the southern part of Western Sahara abandoned by Mauritania. Both the Mauritanian withdrawal and the subsequent Moroccan annexation effectively invalidated the Tripartite Madrid Agreement, as it had been unilaterally broken by two of the three parties. “Its terms have been altered by the unilateral actions of Mauritania (prone to peace) and Morocco (prone to war), which, in any case, completely deviate from what is stipulated in the agreement,” wrote lawyer and politician Emilio Menéndez del Valle, future Spanish ambassador to Jordan and Italy and socialist MEP between 1999 and 2014, in the newspaper El País around that same time.
