MOROCCO: Shifting Sands

King Hassan's expansionism heats up the Sahara

Morocco's King Hassan II, 50, has long been one of the U.S.'s most valued allies in the Third World. But Washington policymakers worry about the deceptively boyish monarch's ambitious territorial expansion into the former colony of Spanish Sahara. Reason: the more he grabs, the deeper he appears to sink into the sands of economic troubles at home and political isolation abroad.

On the military front, Hassan has been locked for almost four years in a no-win war against the guerrillas of the leftist Polisario Front, which is fighting to turn the barren but phosphate-rich, 103,000-sq.-mi. slab of desert into an independent "Saharan Arab Democratic Republic." At home, he has had to contend with rising public anger and labor strikes prompted by a deteriorating economy; it has suffered both from the decline in the price of phosphates, which provide a third of Morocco's export earnings, and from the war's cost, estimated at $1 million a day. Internationally, he has been virtually ostracized not only by other Third World countries but even by former Western patrons like France. Worst of all, since the Polisario is based in and backed by Algeria, Hassan's socialist antagonist to the east, the King regularly runs the risk of provoking a wider, full-scale war between North Africa's two most populous countries.

Earlier this month Morocco's smaller neighbor to the south, Mauritania (pop. 1.5 million), abruptly made a separate peace with the Polisario and gave up its own claims to Tiris el Gharbia, the lower reaches of the Western Sahara. To forestall a Polisario takeover there, Hassan promptly occupied the area with 2,500 legionnaires and proclaimed it Morocco's 40th province. Though it was cheered by flag-waving children, that annexation sorely raised the level of tension across the Maghreb. Algeria immediately accused Hassan of being manipulated by "colonialists and imperialists." The Polisario vowed to "intensify military operations inside Morocco as well as within the Sahara territory." It was no idle threat, coming as it did on the heels of the insurgents' fiercest military operation to date: a frontal attack by 1,500 guerrillas, equipped with light tanks and Sam7 anti-aircraft missiles, against two battalions of Moroccan regulars at Bir Anzaran, just 60 miles from the Atlantic coast.

Though the six-hour battle left 500 Polisarios dead, compared with 125 Moroccans, according to Rabat's claims, the attack clearly shocked Hassan. Last week the King himself made a somewhat desperate public pitch to justify the annexation and try to regain some international support by portraying himself as the guardian of Western interests in North Africa. Shifting the focus of the conflict, he accused Libya most of all for the destabilization in the region. "Colonel [Muammar] Gaddafi would be happy if a conflict broke out between Algeria and Morocco," the King declared. "We would both come out of it so weakened as to ensure his leadership in North Africa." At the same time, he went out of his way to be conciliatory toward Algeria and invited a negotiated settlement.