Smara

Smara or Semara (Arabic: السمارة‎, French: Smara) is a city in the northwest of Western Sahara. Currently integrated into the province of Smara in the El Ayoun-Saguia el-Hamra region of Morocco in occupied Western Sahara. In 2004 it had some 40,347 inhabitants.

History

Mosque of Esmara (end of the centuryXIX) rehabilitated in 2010

In 1898, the Saharawi sheikh Ma al-'Aynayn founded the town in the oasis of Smara, an area rich in pastures and water far from the coast. It was also well placed to control the caravans that headed north, to Guelmin from the salt flats of Iyili or Tumbuktu and the Niger. The unfinished mosque in the rabida or citadel of Smara, built with the support of the Fez, thanks to the influence on the heir Abd al-Aziz of Morocco. It is, therefore, the only major city in Western Sahara that was not founded by the Spanish.

This sheikh named himself imam and declared jihad against the French and English, resisting thanks to the help of the Sultan of Morocco until 1910. That year the sultan withdrew his help due to French pressure for the signing of the Treaty of Fez with Morocco and the Spanish-French treaty for the recognition of the sovereignty of each country over their territories in West Africa. The sheikh will help anti-French fighters in southern Morocco. In 1913 France occupied Smara and returned it to Spain. The resistance against the French decreased until it ended in 1920. Finally, on July 15, 1934, Captain Carlos de la Gándara, commanding indigenous meharis, entered the oasis, making occupation effective. In the following months, fortification works were undertaken, in the wells and the aerodrome.

From the end of the fifties, the VII Flag of the Spanish Legion stands out in the precarious facilities of the citadel of the Blue Sultan. The modern and well-equipped barracks from the 1960s are due to the impulse of Lieutenant Colonel Víctor Lago Román. In addition, the Group of Nomadic Troops of the Sahara stood out in Smara, a barracks currently used by the Moroccan Army. A modern urban nucleus was created around the headquarters and civilian personnel of the Administration, with services such as the Post Office, a medical clinic, school, gas station, airfield, etc. It was the third most populous city in Spanish West Africa with some 2,600 inhabitants, behind El Aaiún and Villa Bens. In the pre-war environment of 1956, the Smara troops were assigned to reinforce the position of El Aaiún, and the European evacuated to Sidi Ifni. During the Ifni-Sahara war, troops moved to and from Smara based on the reinforcement needs of El Ayoun against the Liberation Front and definitively with the entry of France into the war. The offices of Istiqlal and Derham Boaida were closed by collaborators and accomplices in the attacks on the nomadic troops. The current Smara mosque dates from 1969.

The Polisario Front was founded in this city on May 10, 1973.

After the Madrid Agreement, on November 27, 1975, the VII Banner of the Legion handed over Smara to the Moroccan Army, causing an exodus of Sahrawis opposed to Morocco to Algeria to escape Moroccan reprisals for their support of the Polisario Front. In their flight towards Algeria, the Moroccan air forces used napalm, white phosphorus and fragmentation bombs against the civilian population. Amnesty International has estimated the casualties at more than five hundred. Within the Western Sahara war, the battle of Smara took place on October 5, 1979, with unprecedented violence in combat to date. In the early eighties, Morocco built the first section of the Moroccan wall in the Sahara Occidental, reinforced by a second wall years later.

In 2005, the city became the scene of serious protests against the Moroccan occupation. On May 25, 2005, the Moroccan police broke up a peaceful demonstration in support of independence and the Polisario Front in the framework of the new Intifada in the streets of the main urban centers of Western Sahara along with pro-Saharawi protests in some Moroccan university centers.

In 2010 the mosque from the end of the XIX century was rehabilitated.

Economy

In the surroundings of this city, a multitude of trees of the species called argan grow, giving rise to industries that produce the valuable oil that is extracted from their seeds.