Desert by the ocean
Western Sahara is a wide, empty stretch of desert on Africa's Atlantic coast, between Morocco and Mauritania. Most of it is flat stone and sand, with low hills in the south and north-east. Rain hardly ever falls, less than 50 mm in a year, and inland summers pass 45 °C, while a cold ocean current brings fog and heavy dew to the long coast. The sea is rich in fish, and the ground holds phosphate, a mineral used for fertiliser. A sand wall about 2,700 km long, lined with landmines, runs through the desert and splits the territory in two.
A land with two claims
Spain ruled Western Sahara as a colony from 1884. When Spain left in 1975–76, Morocco and Mauritania divided the land between them, after Morocco sent 350,000 civilians on the "Green March" to press its claim. The Polisario Front, a Sahrawi independence movement, proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 1976 and fought both. Mauritania withdrew in 1979, and Morocco took its share.
A UN ceasefire in 1991 promised the Sahrawis a vote on their future, but the vote never took place. Today Morocco governs about three quarters of the territory, west of the sand wall, as part of its Southern Provinces. It offers the region autonomy, or self-rule, under Moroccan sovereignty. The Polisario holds the thinly peopled east and wants the promised vote, with independence as one of the choices. The United Nations still lists the territory as not yet self-governing. The United States and France recognise Morocco's claim, while the African Union counts the Sahrawi republic as a member. Fighting resumed at a low level in 2020, and in 2025 the UN Security Council made Morocco's autonomy plan the basis for new talks.
The Sahrawi people
The Sahrawis descend from Amazigh (Berber) camel nomads who, over several centuries, mixed with Arab tribes and came to speak Hassaniya, a form of Arabic. Their society was organised in tribes ranked as warriors, religious scholars and tribute-payers, with the Haratin, descendants of slaves, at the bottom. That old order still affects who may marry whom. In the 1960s and 70s drought and the phosphate mines drew many nomads into towns such as Laayoune and Smara.
As Spain left in 1975–76, tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled under air attack to Algeria. Their children and grandchildren still live in refugee camps near Tindouf, in the Algerian desert, where the Sahrawi republic has its government.
Newcomers and life today
Somewhere between 600,000 and 650,000 people now live in the territory, most of them in towns; Laayoune alone holds about four in ten. About two thirds are Moroccans from the north who came after 1975, or their children: civil servants, soldiers and traders. Sahrawis make up roughly a third. Smaller numbers of migrants from West Africa have arrived since the 2000s, many hoping to cross to Spain's Canary Islands, some working in Dakhla's fish factories.
Morocco has invested heavily, paying civil servants extra to settle there. Fishing, phosphate mining, greenhouse farming and kite-surfing tourism around Dakhla bring jobs, though many Sahrawis feel the land's wealth and work go to others. Tensions between Sahrawis and settlers have flared into clashes, most sharply around a protest camp in 2010. The UN and human rights groups report that Sahrawis who speak for independence face surveillance, intimidation and prison, and outside journalists are often turned away.
Faith
Nearly everyone is a Sunni Muslim. Sahrawi Islam carries Sufi traditions, mystical brotherhoods with their own prayers and teachers, and families who descend from the Prophet Muhammad or from revered holy men enjoy special respect. Mosques are run by Morocco's religious ministry, and the king of Morocco holds the title Commander of the Faithful. There is no Jewish community.
The church and freedom of belief
Under Spanish rule more than 20,000 Catholics lived here, but they left with Spain. Today two small Catholic parishes, in Laayoune and Dakhla, gather perhaps 40 to 60 worshippers each, mostly African migrants and students and staff of the UN mission. No Sahrawi church is known, though a few dozen Christians of Moroccan background are reported to worship quietly.
Moroccan law applies. Changing faith is not itself a crime, but trying to turn a Muslim away from Islam is, and public evangelism is impossible. Foreigners suspected of sharing their faith have been expelled, and converts face heavy pressure from family and community.
