Western Sahara War

The Western Sahara War was an armed conflict between the Polisario Front, representing the indigenous Sahrawi people, and Morocco from 1975 to 1991, with Mauritania also a party from 1975 to 1979. It began after Spain withdrew from the Spanish Sahara under the Madrid Accords, which passed administration, but not sovereignty, to Morocco and Mauritania. Morocco organized the Green March of some 350,000 citizens escorted by about 20,000 troops, and it then fought a long guerrilla war against the Sahrawi nationalists, who wanted an independent state. Mauritania left the war in 1979 by signing a peace treaty with the Polisario Front. Fighting continued at low intensity through the 1980s, and a cease-fire between the Polisario Front and Morocco was reached in September 1991. Some sources put the death toll between 10,000 and 20,000 people.