The native population, which numbers close to 600, 000 people, are known as Sahrawi’s and majority religion is Islam. In 1975, Morocco effectively annexed Western Sahara by staging what was known as the Green March, which was a peaceful procession of about 350, 000 Moroccans and Mauritanians who walked and claimed it as their own. Spain subsequently transferred control of the region to Morocco and Mauritania.
As a result to this occupation, The Polisario Front, which is a Sahrawi movement founded in 1973 to campaign for the independence of Western Sahara, launched a guerilla struggle against what it saw as the unlawful Moroccan and Mauritanian occupation of its indigenous land. During that struggle Mauritania renounced its claim to the region and since then the Moroccan authorities had built a wall through the territory, annexing two thirds of the country and leaving a dangerous no man’s land between what is now patrolled by a UN monitoring force. While the Polisario Front wants an end to Moroccan occupation and full independence for the Sahrawi’s, Morocco wants Western Sahara to remain an autonomous, self-governing part of its territory, in a fashion similar to autonomous communities of Spain.
