Word: mauritanian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Moroccan brigade, moving fast across the southern desert near the Mauritanian border somewhere between Bir Anzaran and El Aargub, was an impressive sight. Armored cars and tanks, halftracks and armored personnel carriers, trucks and Jeep-type vehicles, churned across the sands as far as the eye could see. With light reconnaissance aircraft pointing the way, the battalions roared by in long columns. Supply trucks and gasoline tankers were tucked safely into the middle of the convoy, with a Jeep battalion covering flanks and rear. The cloud of dust raised by the vehicles was almost enough to lay a shadow across...
Citizens of the quiet, sand-swept Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott (pop. 103,500) were trudging to their jobs early one morning last week when a brusque military order was broadcast: Go home. A political storm had blown up in the hot Sahara wind. Shortly afterward, as army Land Rovers equipped with machine guns appeared on street corners, the nature of the tempest became clear. Officers of the 15,000-man Mauritanian army, led by Lieut. Colonel Mustapha Ould Mohammed Salek, 42, had overthrown the regime of President Moktar Ould Daddah, 53, the mild-mannered strongman who had ruled the poverty...
TIME Correspondent David Beckwith, who spent two weeks with Polisario guerrillas in the desert, reports that so far the shadowy Sahara war is a standoff. The Moroccans and Mauritanians hold the villages but venture cautiously into the desert for fear of ambush; Polisario fighters as a result roam freely over much of the territory, boastfully but inaccurately declaring it "liberated." The guerrillas, though, have carried the war into both Morocco and Mauritania. Last June Polisario even attempted a mortar attack on the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott (see map). Although the guerrillas lost 200 men, including Polisario's founder, Mohammed...
...says, "it's not the kind of thesis where I'm constantly looking for books--there isn't very much written on the subject." Instead, Sharry has culled his data from a series of visits he made to the continent, beginning with his 1974 stay with the Mauritanian Moorish ("Mauritanian means 'white Moor'") family. His hosts introduced the brotherhood into the Sahara and have been instrumental in its spread across black Africa...
...December, as Moroccan and Mauritanian occupying forces moved in, guerrillas from an acronymic Algerian-trained liberation group known as the Frente Polisario staged a series of violent clashes and ambushes against both armies. Polisario spokesmen claim to have inflicted particularly heavy losses on Mauritania's tiny (3,800 men) army-219 killed and 37 P.O.W.s. Two weeks ago, Polisario guerrillas downed a Moroccan F-5 fighter flying close cover during a clash between the guerrillas and Mauritanian forces. Meanwhile, Algerian diplomats denounced Moroccan "aggression" in world forums. Some 35,000 Moroccans living in Algeria were deported, and the bulk...