Polisario. What is it? Someone's name? Some sort of police force? Actually, it is the latest in the long list of labels attached to the world's many guerrilla armies.
Like angry ants in a vast sandpile, the combatants in a little-known African war of liberation are carrying out search-and-destroy missions in the desolate 100,000-sq.-mi. area once known as the Spanish Sahara. On one side are an estimated 30,000 troops from Morocco and Mauritania, which claimed the land that Spain surrendered sovereignty over last year under strong United Nations pressure. Opposing are the 5,000 guerrillas of the Frente Polisario (for Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro, the two provinces involved). Polisario is fighting to gain independence for a new "Saharan Arab Democratic Republic" and the 100,000 people, mostly Reguibet tribesmen, it would represent.
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 Wall, 28, in the battle, they consider the shelling of the Mauritanian capital a great victory. They have brought Mauritania close to economic disaster with periodic attacks on the 450-mile rail line, which brings the country's iron ore to the sea. In the north, Polisario has also shut down the vast Moroccan-controlled phosphate deposit at Bu Craa by harassing the mine and its 60-mile conveyor belt to Atlantic Ocean docks at Aaiun. The attacks, ironically, have helped Morocco's domestic phosphate industry by keeping supplies short.
Classic Guerrillas. The war shows no sign of ending, reports Beckwith, even though Morocco and Mauritania have lost about 1,000 men since last February. Other Arab governments—notably Saudi Arabia—have tried to work out a diplomatic settlement, so far without success. Supplied with East Bloc arms by Libya and Algeria, Polisario is able to struggle on from sanctuaries near the Algerian border town of Tindouf, where about 40,000 Saharoui refugees live in 22 camps. By helping the guerrillas, President Houari Boumedienne is able to keep a third of Archenemy King Hassan's Moroccan armed forces tied up in a frustrating and expensive war.
In classic guerrilla fashion, Polisario fighters are mounting up to five raids a week on enemy-held villages to drain the morale of the occupiers. Beckwith accompanied them on one mortaring mission and filed this account of a five-day, 900-mile venture: