Southern Provinces

The Southern Provinces or Moroccan Sahara are the terms used by the Moroccan government for Western Sahara. These two official Moroccan denominations explicitly include all of Western Sahara. The Moroccan government favours "Southern Provinces" for its geographical obviousness, and because of the sensitivity of the word "Sahara" in Morocco. A frequent use of the term "Southern Provinces" is found for example in Moroccan state television (weather forecasts, displayed maps on the news, government statements, etc.)

The Moroccan government controls and administers 80% of Western Sahara (the part west of the Moroccan Wall) and all the oceanic coasts of Western Sahara, government and private companies exploit coastal areas for fishing and the land areas for phosphate mining. The Polisario Front controls the remaining third, which is isolated from the ocean, mostly empty of any population, dry, and unfit for conventional urbanization or any basic economic activity.

The two thirds of Western Sahara that are controlled by Morocco are treated by the government as normal Moroccan territory. The government conducts various economic and social development programs and includes these "Southern Provinces" in the national budget of government funding, national sport competitions, education programs, and national parliamentary elections. Following the Green March and the Madrid Accords signed with Spain and Mauritania in 1975, Morocco took control of Saguia el-Hamra, and the northern part of Río de Oro, while Mauritania took control of the remaining part of Río de Oro, renamed as Tiris al-Gharbiyya.

A locally based Saharawi national liberation movement, the Polisario Front launched a guerrilla war, with the crucial financial and logistical backing of Algeria and Libya, aiming to win independence of the territory under the "Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic" (SADR). Following bloody clashes with the Polisario troops (SPLA) 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 Sahrawi Republic, Algeria, and Morocco. Morocco then seized the opportunity and took control of the remaining part of Río de Oro as well, which had been recognized by the Moroccan regime as Mauritanian a few years earlier.

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