It forced Mauritania to relinquish its claim over Western Sahara in 1979 and continued its military campaign against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire, pending the holding of a UN-backed referendum which has been consistently postponed ever since.

[8] In 1971 a group of young Sahrawi students in the universities of Morocco began organizing what came to be known as The Embryonic Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro.

[9] After attempting in vain to gain backing from several Arab governments, including both Algeria and Morocco, but only drawing faint notices of support from Libya and Mauritania, the movement eventually relocated to Spanish-controlled Spanish Sahara to start an armed rebellion.

[14] On 20 May, the new organization attacked El-Khanga,[1] where there was a Spanish post manned by a team of Tropas Nomadas (Sahrawi-staffed auxiliary forces), which was overrun and rifles seized.

[16] After Moroccan pressures through the Green March of 6 November and the Royal Moroccan Army's previous invasion of eastern Saguia el-Hamra of 31 October, Spain entered negotiations that led to the signing of the Madrid Accords whereby Spain ceded Spanish Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania; in 1976 Morocco took over Saguia El Hamra and Mauritania took control of Río de Oro.

The Polisario Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) on 27 February 1976, and waged a guerrilla war against both Morocco and Mauritania.

The International Court of Justice at The Hague had issued its verdict on the former Spanish colony just weeks before, which each party interpreted as confirming its right to the disputed territory.

The reorganized army was able to inflict severe damage through guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against opposing forces in Western Sahara and in Morocco and Mauritania proper.

A comprehensive peace treaty was signed on 5 August 1979, in which the new Mauritanian government recognized Sahrawi rights to Western Sahara and relinquished its own claims.

The area of Western Sahara evacuated by Mauritania (Tiris al-Gharbiya, roughly corresponding to the southern half of Río de Oro), was annexed by Morocco in August 1979.

[citation needed] The 30-year cease-fire between Morocco and Polisario Front was broken in November 2020 as the government tried to open a road in the Guerguerat buffer zone near the border with Mauritania.

[21][22][23][24] The Polisario Front is a Sahrawi nationalist and Arab socialist[2] organization, whose main goal is the independence of Western Sahara from Moroccan occupation.

In 1991, Polisario voted for free market economics and multi-party politics, however a liberal economy has been difficult to implement in a society dependent on humanitarian aid organisations.

In interactions with non-Sahrawi audiences, Polisario leaders have made reference to notions of secularism and religious tolerance to substantiate the "ideal" nature of the Sahrawi refugee camps.

[27] In contrast, Polisario-Mauritanian relations following a peace treaty in 1979 and the recognition of the SADR by Mauritania in 1984, with the latter's retreat from Western Sahara, have been quiet and generally neutral without reports of armed clashes from either side.

The series of protests and riots in 2005 by Sahrawis in "the occupied territories" received strong vocal support from Polisario as a new pressure point on Morocco.

[citation needed] Algeria has shown an unconditional support for the Polisario Front since 1975, delivering arms, training, financial aid, and food, without interruption for more than 30 years.

But after the movement took on the role as a state-in-waiting in 1975, based in the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, this structure proved incapable of dealing with its vastly expanded responsibilities.

A more comprehensive merger of these different organizational patterns (military organization/refugee camps/SADR) was not achieved until the 1991 congress, when both the Polisario and SADR organizations were overhauled, integrated into the camp structure and further separated from each other.

This followed protests calling for expanding the internal democracy of the movement, and also led to important shifts of personnel in the top tiers of both Polisario and SADR.

It is probably intended to strengthen the movement's underground network in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, and link up with the rapidly growing Sahrawi civil rights activism.

In 2004, an anti-ceasefire and anti-Abdelaziz opposition fraction, the Front Polisario Khat al-Shahid announced its existence, in the first break with the principle of "national unity" (i.e., working in one single organization to prevent internal conflict).

Mauritania also attempts to avoid involvement and to balance between Morocco and Polisario's backers in Algeria, although it formally recognizes the SADR as Western Sahara's government since 1984 and has a substantial Sahrawi refugee population (around 30,000) on its territory.

This was mainly because both sides tried to avoid overt involvement, which would necessitate a crash in relations with either Morocco or Algeria – the major North African players – and because neither viewed it as an important front.

In 2004, South Africa announced formal recognition of the SADR, delayed for ten years despite unequivocal promises by Nelson Mandela as apartheid fell.