Morocco has illegally occupied Western Sahara for half a century. From Henry Kissinger to Donald Trump, US government officials have worked tirelessly to help the Moroccan monarchy maintain its oppressive rule over the Sahrawi people.

Fifty years ago, Morocco threatened to start a war with Spain in order to seize Madrid’s colony in Western Sahara. Hassan II, Morocco’s embattled monarch, rolled out this exercise in brinkmanship on October 16, 1975, just hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a landmark opinion calling for the territory’s independence.

While Morocco’s stated aim was to “recover” Western Sahara, the ICJ indicated that the territory had never belonged to Morocco in the first place, even according to the tortured, self-serving definitions of sovereignty t

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