It is rare for Moroccans to talk about the Eastern Sahara, which has been occupied by Algeria since independence from French colonization. The Algerians have forgotten or denied it, but this territory currently located in the southwest of Algeria is fundamentally Moroccan. The director of the Royal Archives, Bahija Simou, recalled this.
Invited to the MAP Forum, the respected historian, recalled truths that disturb the leaders in Algeria who followed in the expansionist footsteps of Ahmed Ben Bella as soon as he became president.
In his intervention Bahija Simou, explained that the Royal Archives hold evidence of links between the Moroccan monarchies and the Chioukhs (leaders of the tribes) of the Sahara through the Bay’a (the allegiance to the King/Sultan), correspondence, and royal Dahirs, as well as maps showing the outline of the borders.
In addition, the director of the Royal Archives announced that Morocco has obtained documents on the Sahara, eastern and western, from European countries.
“There are not only historical documents attesting to Morocco’s sovereignty over what is called in quotation marks +Western Sahara+ but also over +Eastern Sahara+”, Bahija Simou said.
Official documents exist in significant numbers in the Royal Archives, she said, saying that they “are moreover made available to researchers for examination and study”.
These few statements on proven historical facts were enough to trigger stormy reactions in the Algerian press close to power.
The Algerian media hastened to take these historical and real facts for a “provocation”, forgetting that the greatest provocation that exists is the one that has lasted since 1962 and since 1976 when Algeria appropriated Moroccan lands in the Eastern Sahara. and continues its attempt at masked expansionism in “Western” Sahara through the polisario it created.
Also, the Algerian press should be reminded of some historical facts attesting to the Moroccan character of the Eastern Sahara, such as the founding of the city of Tindouf dating back to 1852 or 1857 by Mrabet Ould Belamech, chief of the Tadjakant tribe who had pledged allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco, according to French historian Bernard Lugan.
The region of Tindouf was only occupied by France in 1934, and was placed successively under the tutelage of the French command of Morocco, then under the authority of the governor general of French Algeria but even with that, its identity and belonging to Morocco has not changed.
Marshal Lyautey had addressed to the French government in 1924, two notes in which he speaks of the borders of Morocco. “The Saharan Oases of Touat, Gourara and Tidikelt have been under the control of the Sultan of Morocco for several centuries. The authority of Sultan Moulay Hassan was restored there in 1892, and Moroccan governors remained there until the French occupation of In-Salah (1902),” he wrote in one of the notes quoted by the French historian.
In 1917, General Gouraud, who was then acting Resident Commissioner General, even asked for the return of Colomb Béchar to Morocco. And the region of Tindouf depended on the khalifa of Tafilalet and its caïds were named by dahir of the sultan of Morocco, which proves once again the belonging of Tindouf to Morocco.
In 1956, at the independence of Morocco, Tindouf was administratively attached to the region of Agadir, and in 1960, a letter from the French President, Charles Gaulle, addressed to the late Mohammed V, explicitly stated that the Eastern Sahara was Moroccan.
“The friendly relations which I am happy to maintain with Your Majesty determine me to inform you personally of the decision I have taken to carry out, from March 31, a new nuclear experiment in the Eastern Sahara” (at the Western Sahara was still occupied by Spain, editor’s note) he declared in his letter.
In July 1962, when France granted independence to Algeria and was militarily present in Tindouf (it will withdraw in October), at the same time the tribes of the region, mainly the Tajakant and the Rguibat had reiterated their allegiance to King Mohammed V.
In October of the same year, with the withdrawal of French troops, the Algerian ALN (National Liberation Army) besieged Tindouf, making it Algerian, and driving out the populations who refused to submit to the invasion.
This reality, which the Algerian leaders refuse to admit, is however transcribed and the documents and proofs attesting to the Moroccanness of Tindouf and Colomb-Béchar, Hassi Beida, Gara Jbilat, Kenadsa, Touat, are numerous, as much in the French archives as in the national archives of the Kingdom, and historians can attest to this.
It is therefore not insignificant that the Algerian regime has chosen to set up the camps of the separatists of the Polisario in the region of Tindouf, leaving it to them to create a kind of state parallel to the Algerian state within what is considered Algerian territory today.
The Algerian soldiers and Ahmed Ben Bella fearing that Morocco will reclaim its lands in the Eastern Sahara, and that their plan to divide Morocco with the polisario will not succeed, have found the solution by leaving it to the separatists to organize their militia and extend their power to originally Moroccan territory.
Consequently, they already planned that in case of failure of their plan, that they were going to have to cede the territory to the separatists without having to lose any Algerian territory.