Polisario then gradually gained control over large swaths of desert countryside, and its power grew from early 1975 when the Tropas Nomadas began deserting to the Polisario, bringing weapons and training with them.

This turned into a major exodus from 1975 onwards, when Morocco and Mauritania seized control of what was then called Western Sahara, and Algeria retaliated by allowing the Polisario Front, a nationalist Sahrawi movement, to use the area as its main base.

In order to prepare the terrain and to riposte to any potential counter-invasion from Algeria ( according to Morocco ) or in order to invade militarily the land and kill or deport the Sahrawi population ( according to the Polisario Front ), the Moroccan Army entered the northeast of the region on October 31, where it met with hard resistance from the Polisario, by then a two-year-old independence movement.

The GPC also elects the National Secretariat, an executive organ of the Polisario, and its Secretary-General, who then becomes President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

The Polisario will then be dissolved or transformed into an ordinary political party.

Algeria expelled some 45, 000 Moroccan citizens then living in Algeria., and began radio broadcasts in support of both the Polisario and-more briefly-a separatist group in the Canary Islands, the latter presumably in an attempt to punish Spain.

After a Sahrawi demonstration in Tan-Tan in June 1972, a group of 20 participants including Ouali were detained and tortured by the Moroccan police, then he met with other groups of Sahrawis from inside Western Sahara, Algeria & Mauritania, and in 1973 founded with them the Polisario Front.

Taya made his first visit to Morocco in October 1985 ( prior to visits to Algeria and Tunisia ) in the wake of Moroccan claims that Polisario guerrillas were again traversing Mauritanian territory.

The majority of Saharaui People supported its patriotic actions and identified with this movement, which later was called Polisario, and gradually had more misunderstandings with the Autonomous and Central Government of the Metropoli for the signs of a vacilante, or feeble foreign policy, made up by Generals that had the " última palabra " or " last word ", feeling a possible betrayal of the Motherland.

Polisario made the weak Mauritanian army its main target, and after a bold raid on the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott ( where a gunshot killed El-Ouali, the first president of the SADR ), Mauritania succumbed to internal unrest.

The presence of a large number of Sahrawi nationalists among the country's dominant Moorish population made the Mauritanian government's position yet more fragile, and thousands of Mauritanian Sahrawis defected to Polisario.

After the government quarters in Nouakchott had twice been shelled by Polisario forces, unrest simmered, but Daddah's only response was to further tighten his hold on power.

With the CMSN's leader reluctant to break with France and Mauritania, the country refused to give in to Polisario demands for a troop retreat, and Ould Salek's careless handling of the ethnic issue ( massively discriminating against Black Africans in nominating for government posts ) contributed to further unrest.

Following bloody conflicts with the Polisario and deteriorating ties with Algeria, Mauritania pulled out in 1979 and gave up its share in the Western Sahara in order to avoid further complicated conflicts with the Polisario, Algeria, and Morocco.

This document was signed by a local judge or an official civil serant, which further proves that whilst the Polisario Front officially opposes any forms of slavery, the practice is till common in the traditional circles of the judiciary system.

There is some criticism against him from within the Polisario for preventing reforms inside the movement, and for insisting on a diplomatic course that has so far gained few concessions from Morocco, rather than re-launching the armed struggle favored by many within the movement.

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic ( SADR ) was proclaimed by Polisario on 28 February 1976, and Libya began to recognize the SADR as the legitimate government of Western Sahara starting 15 April 1980.

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic ( SADR ) was proclaimed by Polisario on 28 February 1976, and Libya began to recognize the SADR as the legitimate government of Western Sahara starting 15 April 1980.

However, after nearly three years of raids by the Sahrawi guerrillas of the Polisario Front, Mauritania's economic and political stability began to crumble.

However, buoyed by the increasing defection of the chiefs to its cause, the Polisario drew up a constitution and announced the formation of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic ( SADR ).

Through the agreement with Mauritania, Morocco sought to tighten its control over the Western Sahara by denying the Polisario one more avenue for infiltrating guerrillas into the disputed territory.

The territory — an area of wasteland and desert bordering the Atlantic Ocean between Mauritania and Morocco — is contested by Morocco and the Polisario ( an independence movement based in the region of Tindouf, Algeria ).

This plan won the unanimous approval of the Security Council through SC Resolution 1495, and was unexpectedly accepted by the Polisario.

The mission, headed by Simeon Aké, also declared that the Polisario Front seemed the main Sahrawi organization of the territory-the only rival arrangements to what the mission described as Polisario's " mass demonstrations " came from the PUNS, which by this time also advocated independence.

Two subsequent attempts to resolve the problem by means of a negotiated political settlement by James Baker, acting as Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary General, the first in 2000 and the second in 2003, failed to gain acceptance, the first being rejected by the Polisario and second by Morocco.

The subsequent crackdowns and arrests drew media attention to the Moroccan occupation, and Sahrawi nationalists seized on the opportunity: in May 2005, a wave of demonstrations subsequently dubbed by the Independence Intifada by Polisario supporters, broke out.

Polisario demanded international intervention, but declared that it could not stand idly by if the " escalation of repression " continues.

In 2007 Morocco requested U. N. action against a congress to be held by the Polisario Front in Tifariti from December 14 to December 16.

The Polisario Front said Moroccan security forces had killed a 26-year-old protester at the camp, a claim denied by Morocco.

The conflict is largely between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Algerian-backed nationalist organization the Polisario Front ( Popular Front for the Liberation of the Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro ), which in February 1976 formally proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic ( SADR ), now basically administered by a government in exile in Tindouf, Algeria.

A referendum on independence or integration with Morocco was agreed upon by Morocco and the Polisario Front in 1991, but it has yet to take place.

Western Sahara, formerly the Spanish colony of Spanish Sahara, is a disputed territory claimed by both the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front.

Another section, the Liberated Territories, is administered by the Polisario Front as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic ( SADR ).

The regime was not saved even by overt French Air Force backing in 1978, when SEPECAT Jaguar fighters strafed and bombed Polisario guerrilla columns en route to Mauritania.

The Polisario, now with heavy Algerian backing, refused the Madrid Accords, and demanded that the ICJ's opinion on Sahrawi self-determination be respected ; it turned its weapons on the new rulers of the country, sticking to its demand for independence outright, or a referendum on the matter.

He is considered a secular nationalist and has steered the Polisario and the Sahrawi republic towards political compromise, notably in backing the United Nations ' Baker Plan in 2003.

Without Spanish backing, and with Franco declaring his intent to release the territory, many of the Djema ' a members hastily defected to the Polisario Front, a rebel movement which was involved in a rapidly growing guerrilla war against the Spanish presence.

A locally based Sahrawi national liberation movement, the Polisario Front launched a guerrilla war, with the crucial financial and logistical backing of Algeria and Libya ( under Gaddafi ), aiming to win independence of the territory under an " Arab Saharan republic ".

While the Polisario, anxious to have a strong mediator with US backing in charge of the UN process, deplored his resignation, Moroccan officials viewed it in a positive light ; foreign minister Benaissa publicly called the resignation a result of " the tenacity of Moroccan diplomacy ".

Libya also was one of the main supporters of the Polisario Front in the former Spanish Sahara – a nationalist group dedicated to ending Spanish colonialism in the region.

* Libya was also was one the main supporters of the Polisario Front in the former Spanish Sahara – a nationalist group dedicated to ending Spanish colonialism in the region, and from 1975, to combatting the Moroccan occupation of what is now known as Western Sahara.

Polisario immediately declared a cease-fire, and peace negotiations began under the sponsorship of Polisario's main backer, Algeria.

The Polisario is first and foremost a nationalist organization, whose main goal is the independence of Western Sahara.

Its main function was to exclude the guerrilla fighters of the Polisario Front, who have sought Western Saharan independence since before Spain ended its colonial occupation in 1975, from the Moroccan-controlled part of the territory.

The role of women in camps was enhanced by their shouldering of the main responsibility for the camps and government bureaucracy during the war years, as virtually the entire male population was enrolled in the Polisario army.