The Sahara Is Bought
Rachid M. — Dakhla, Sahara occidental — 2026-10-11
Western Sahara was not conquered. It was bought. And what is remarkable, in this fifty-year history, is that the bill was never settled by the party claiming ownership of it.
We must begin with a sentence few people quote, and which is not ours. It comes from the French National Assembly, in a 2015 fact-finding report devoted to France's external operations. It bears on the year 1977, on Zaire, on the soldiers Rabat sent there — and it says this:
“This Moroccan aid finds its counterpart in the military and diplomatic support of France in the conflict against the Polisario.”
The counterpart. The word is written, it is official, and it is French. We have nothing to add: it is enough to read it.
1. April 1977: what France transported
On 8 March 1977, the Congolese National Liberation Front entered Shaba, in southern Zaire. Kinshasa was reeling. Marshal Mobutu called on his protectors.
Morocco answered. On 7 April, the operation was launched: around 1,500 Moroccan soldiers were moved to Shaba, their arrival confirmed in Kinshasa on 10 April.
But Morocco cannot project a force three thousand kilometers from home. France handles it. According to the press archives of the time, eleven French aircraft were made available — ten Transall C-160s and one DC-8 — with 170 French airmen. The French army gives this operation the name of a flower, as it always does: “Verveine”, from 7 to 18 April 1977, thirteen C-160s committed.
The National Assembly report states it without detour: “Unable to project its land forces, Morocco asks France to ensure the deployment of its contingent.”
A year later, in May 1978, Kolwezi fell. Morocco sent 1,000 additional soldiers, whom The New York Times of 5 June 1978 described as the “core of the peacekeeping force in Africa”. This time, it was eighteen American C-141 transport aircraft that carried them.
That is the service rendered. It remains to be known what it bought.
2. The Safari Club: what is established, and what is not
Behind this machinery there exists a structure of which little is said, and of which we must state exactly what is known.
A secret agreement dated 1 September 1976, found in the archives of the Shah of Iran and reproduced by the Egyptian writer Mohamed Heikal, brought together the services of five countries: France, through Alexandre de Marenches, then head of the SDECE; Saudi Arabia, through Kamal Adham; Egypt, through Kamal Hassan Ali; Iran, through Nematollah Nassiri, the head of SAVAK; and Morocco, through Ahmed Dlimi, head of the DGED.
The division of roles is documented: Saudi money, French technology and logistics, Egyptian and Moroccan manpower. That is the thesis of the historian Rachel Bronson, and it is consistent with everything that precedes.
We must now state what weakens this account, because that is our job and not the opposite.
The name itself is fragile. The only archival mention we found — a CIA assessment of 1988 — does not use the expression “Safari Club”. It speaks of a “five-power intelligence committee”. And the only academic who has worked on this file in the French, British and American archives, Farid Boussaid, concludes that serious doubt remains as to “the extent to which this club really functioned as a coordination mechanism”.
In other words: the club existed as an intention and as a network. Its operational character remains contested. We write both.
One thing, however, must be corrected, because many repeat it: the Safari Club could not have conducted the 1975 intervention in Angola. The charter dates from September 1976. Chronology forbids it.
3. And what Washington did not do
This is where the story becomes interesting, because it does not say what the conventional account would have it say.
If Morocco sent its soldiers to Zaire to obtain weapons and support on the Sahara, then the United States should have paid their share. Yet the American archives establish the opposite.
A National Security Council memorandum dated 5 June 1978, a few days after Kolwezi, notes that King Hassan II is “tempered by the disappointment that the United States still refuses to sell him weapons intended to be used in the Sahara and in Mauritania against the Polisario”.
The American policy of that year is written in black and white in these same documents: no American weapons for Moroccan use in the Sahara, no recognition of Moroccan sovereignty.
And the conclusion of the researcher who sifted through these archives is unambiguous: the intervention in Shaba did not strengthen the King's position in his negotiations with Washington. The American reversal came later, in 1979 and then in 1980, and for entirely other reasons: Ethiopia, Afghanistan, the fall of the Shah.
So in 1977, a single country paid: France. And it paid in Mirage F1s, in Jaguars committed in Mauritania from October 1977, and in constant diplomatic support.
4. Where the bill became public
It takes forty-three years for the mechanism to change hands — and for it to cease being secret.
On 10 December 2020, the proclamation of the American president Donald Trump recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The text was transmitted to the United Nations five days later.
What was exchanged is, this time, written and public. Morocco recognizes Israel. A tripartite declaration was signed on 22 December 2020. And the same month, an American arms sale of around one billion dollars was notified to Congress.
The rest follows, through the specialized press and without any official confirmation on our part: an Israeli Barak MX system announced for 500 million dollars, ATMOS 2000s, Elbit PULS, Hermes drones, a factory at Benslimane. We cite them as the press reports them, and we do not certify them.
The mechanism itself is identical. What has changed is the client.
5. What we cannot demonstrate
We prefer to write it here rather than let a reader discover it elsewhere.
We have found no written exchange agreement between Rabat and Paris in 1977-1978. The counterpart is an official French qualification — and it dates from 2015, thirty-eight years after the facts.
We have found no American payment in that period. The opposite is documented.
Moroccan diplomatic archives are closed: the researcher we cite writes that access to them is impossible. Part of this story is therefore, literally, out of reach.
And the passage from 1977 to 2020, the continuity of the mechanism, remains a hypothesis — plausible, consistent with the facts, but not proved by any piece that would link the two eras.
6. The law, for its part, was never paid for
One detail remains that money does not settle.
On 16 October 1975, the International Court of Justice delivers its advisory opinion. It concludes that no tie of territorial sovereignty exists between Western Sahara and Morocco or Mauritania.
On 6 November 1975, the Security Council adopts resolution 380. It “deplores” the Green March, and calls for the withdrawal of the participants.
On 14 November 1975, three weeks after the opinion, the Madrid Accords transfer the administration of the territory to Rabat and Nouakchott. The text is registered in the United Nations Treaty Series.
Fifty years later, no power has made the Moroccan Sahara a territory recognized by international law. It remains a non-self-governing territory, and the United Nations mission operating there is still called the Mission for the Organization of a Referendum in Western Sahara.
One can buy support. One does not buy an advisory opinion.
📚 COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY (rule no. 19)
1. French National Assembly, fact-finding report no. 2777, 20 May 2015 (Chauveau, Gaymard), p. 116 — operation “Verveine” (7-18 April 1977), 13 C-160s, and quotation: “Unable to project its land forces, Morocco asks France to ensure the deployment of its contingent”; “this Moroccan aid finds its counterpart in the military and diplomatic support of France in the conflict against the Polisario” — https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/pdf/rap-info/i2777.pdf
2. Keesing's Contemporary Archives, June 1977, p. 28399 — 10 French Transall C-160s and 1 DC-8, ~1,500 Moroccan soldiers in Shaba as of 10 April 1977, 170 French airmen — https://www.stanford.edu/group/tomzgroup/pmwiki/uploads/2150-1977-06-KS-b-RRW.pdf
3. FRUS 1977-1980, volume XVII/3, document 32, memorandum Quandt → Brzezinski, 5 June 1978 (Carter Library) — 1,000 Moroccan soldiers in Zaire; “the U.S. still is unwilling to sell Morocco weapons for use in the Sahara and Mauritania against the Polisario” — https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v17p3/d32
4. The New York Times, 5 June 1978 — “U.S. Airlifts Moroccans to Zaire” (cited from the reference in the file)
5. Mohamed Heikal, Iran: The Untold Story, 1982, p. 113-114 — agreement of 1 September 1976 and list of the five services
6. Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia, 2006, p. 132 — division of roles among the five countries
7. Farid Boussaid, The International History Review, vol. 43, no. 1, 2021, p. 187 and 194-195 — “doubt exists in how much it has really functioned as a mechanism through which actions were coordinated”; “access to Moroccan diplomatic archives is not possible”
8. CIA, Morocco: Foreign Policy Dilemmas, an Intelligence Assessment, NESA 2150-88-N, 1 June 1988, p. 6 — mention of a “Five Power Intelligence Committee” (second-hand reference)
9. International Court of Justice, advisory opinion of 16 October 1975 on Western Sahara — operative conclusions taken from the Court's official communication
10. United Nations Security Council, resolution 380 (1975) of 6 November 1975 — “Deplores the holding of the march”
11. Madrid Accords, 14 November 1975 — full text, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 988, no. I-14450, entered into force on 19 November 1975
12. United States presidential proclamation of 4 December 2020 (published on 10 December), transmitted to the UN on 15 December 2020 — document S/2020/1210
13. Tripartite declaration Morocco–United States–Israel of 22 December 2020 (El Otmani, Kushner, Ben-Shabbat)
14. Morocco–Israel defense memorandum of 24 November 2021 (Gantz / Loudiyi) — a memorandum, and not a treaty
15. United Nations Security Council, resolution 2797 (2025) of 31 October 2025 — adopted by 11 votes in favor, 3 abstentions, Algeria not participating; MINURSO extended until 31 October 2026
16. Specialized press, for the Israeli arms contracts (Barak MX, ATMOS 2000, PULS, Hermes, Benslimane factory) — reported by the press, not confirmed by any official source; the date of the Barak contract is contradictory depending on the source
⚠️ Published reservations.
(1) No written exchange agreement between Rabat and Paris in 1977-1978 has been found. The French counterpart is an official qualification, formulated in 2015.
(2) No American payment in the same period: the archives establish the opposite.
(3) Moroccan diplomatic archives are closed. Part of this story is not verifiable by an outside researcher.
(4) The continuity between 1977 and 2020 is presented as a hypothesis, not as an established fact.
(5) The operational character of the Safari Club is contested by the only academic who has worked in the archives; the name itself does not appear in the only archival item we cited.
(6) The amounts of the Israeli contracts come from the press.