Hello, you're very welcome to Long Reeds, the Jacobin podcast where we look in depth of political

topics and thinkers. My name's Daniel Finn. I'm the features editor here at Jacobin, and I'll be

presenting the show. This week's episode is the second part of a two-part interview about the history

of Western Sahara. We finished our last

episode at the point when Morocco invaded the country in 1975. Today, we're going to cover the

50 years of occupation and the recent push by the Trump administration to legitimize Moroccan rule.

Our guest, Jacob Mundii is a professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University. He's the co-author of Western Sahara, War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution.

When Morocco did manage to intervene and establish control, de facto control,

over Western Sahara from 1975,

what was the nature of the rule and the regime that the Moroccan monarchy established there,

and what kind of resistance did it face from Palisario and from other forces?

Yeah, the tripartite agreement between Morocco, Mortania and Spain in November, 1975,

has a transitional period where Spain is allowed to basically pack up and leave by March

1976. So the Moroccans begin to arrive. The actual Moroccan military invasion began on

October 30th, 1975. And this wasn't well known at the time because it was done in secret.

But Moroccan forces cross into Spanish Sahara and soon begin confronting Polisario

units.

At the same time, this situation creates a refugee crisis where Western Saharan aren't sure about what is going to happen, what

is Moroccan control look like. And so they begin fleeing to the eastern parts of the territory

and then eventually to Algeria. It was during this refugee flight that one of the

worst atrocities of the conflict happened when civilian areas or civilian groupings of

Sahrawis were bombed with napalm by the Moroccans and things of that sort.

...