Moroccan Army of Liberation

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The Army of Liberation (French, Armée de Libération, Arabic, jayshu-t-tahrīr) was a force fighting for the independence of Morocco.

In 1956, units of the Army began infiltrating Ifni and other enclaves of Spanish Morocco, as well as Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara), to claim them as part of Morocco. Initially, they received important backing from the Moroccan government. In the Spanish Sahara, the Army rallied Sahrawi tribes along the way, and triggered a large-scale rebellion. In early 1958, the Moroccan king reorganized the Army of Liberation units fighting in the Spanish Sahara as the "Saharan Liberation Army".

The revolt in the Spanish Sahara was put down in 1958 by a joint French and Spanish offensive. The king of Morocco then signed an agreement with the Spanish, as he asserted control over the rebellious southern border areas, and parts of the Army of Liberation was absorbed into the Moroccan armed forces.

Nationalistic Moroccans tend to see the Army of Liberation battles in Western Sahara as a proof of Western Sahara's loyalty to the Moroccan crown, whereas sympathizers to the Polisario Front) view it only as a anti-colonial war directed against Spanish. There were tensions between Sahrawi guerillas and Moroccan units, and at the end of the conflict, some defections of Sahrawis and instances of fighting between the two groups.^{[citation needed]} Sahrawi veterans of the Army of Liberation today exist on both sides of the Western Sahara conflict, and both the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic celebrate it as part of their political history. Parents of the founder members of Polisario have all been members of the Army of Liberation, most notably the Father of Mohammed Abdelaziz the president of Polisario and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, who is living in Morocco and is a member of CORCAS.

[edit] See also

Ifni War