In 1958 Spain joined the previously separate districts of Saguia el-Hamra (in the north) and Río de Oro (in the south) to form the province of Spanish Sahara.

Ma al-Aynayn, the Saharan Caïd of Smara, started an uprising against France in the 1910s, at a time when the French had expanded their influence and control in North-West Africa, he died in the same year and his son Ahmed al-Hiba succeeded him.

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 Western Sahara to start an armed rebellion.

On 20 May he led the Khanga raid, Polisario's first armed action,[32] in which a Spanish post manned by a team of Tropas Nomadas (Sahrawi-staffed auxiliary forces) was overrun and rifles seized.

[citation needed] While Spain started negotiating a handover of power in mid 1975, it ceded the administrative control of the territory to Mauritania and Morocco only after signing the Madrid Accords.

In late 1975, as a result of the Moroccan advance, tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled Morocco-controlled cities into the desert, building up improvised refugee camps in Amgala, Tifariti and Umm Dreiga.

After the completion of the Spanish withdrawal, and in the application of the Madrid Accords in 1976, Morocco took over the Saguia El Hamra and the northern two-thirds of the territory, while Mauritania took control of the southern third; this was formalized under the Western Sahara partition agreement.

[34] For the next two years the Polisario movement grew tremendously, as Sahrawi refugees flocked to the camps fleeing from the Moroccan and Mauritanian armies, while Algeria and Libya supplied arms and funding.

The reorganized army was able to inflict severe damage through guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against Moroccan forces in Western Sahara but also raided cities and towns in Morocco and Mauritania proper.

After repeated strikes at the country's principal source of income, the iron mines of Zouerate, the Government was nearly incapacitated by the lack of funds and the ensuing internal disorder.

Under continued pressure, the Daddah regime finally fell in summer 1978 to a coup d'état led by war-weary military officers,[41] who immediately agreed to a ceasefire with the Polisario.

The Moroccan army stationed a number of troops roughly the same size as the entire Sahrawi population to defend the wall, enclosing the Southern Provinces, the economically useful parts of Western Sahara (Bou Craa, El-Aaiun, Smara etc.).

Economic and military aid was sent to Morocco by Saudi Arabia,[44] France and the United States[45] to relieve the situation but matters gradually became unsustainable for all parties involved.

On 7 October 1989, Polisario launched a massive attack against Moroccan troops in Guelta Zemmour (Centre of Western Sahara) and Algeria but sustained heavy casualties and withdrawn after leaving more than 18 tanks burning and a dozen more vehicles.

The 1991 Tifariti offensive was the last military operation and successful maneuver in the Western Sahara War launched by Moroccan forces against the Sahrawi guerrilla fighters of the Polisario Front.

On 8 April 2021, the head of the Sahrawi National Guard, Addah Al-Bendir, was killed by what reports claim to be a drone strike while attempting a raid on Moroccan positions along the berm sand wall.

[53] On 17 January 1980, the Spanish destroyer Almirante Ferrandiz was machine-gunned by a Moroccan Mirage fighter aircraft, 8 kilometres (5 mi) from the southern coast of Western Sahara.