Armed Only by Allah

The International Court of Justice in The Hague was designed to settle disputes between nations. Last week the World Court came through with a decision that was so Solomonic in adjudicating territorial claims that four countries--Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria and Spain--may soon be at one another's throats.The area in dispute is the Spanish Sahara, a barren, 103,000-sq.-mi. piece of land on the coast of North Africa that has nothing to recommend it but 10 billion tons of phosphate underground.

Morocco, said the World Court, had had "certain legal ties" to Saharan tribes before Spain took over the region in 1884, but had not established "territorial sovereignty." Keenly disappointed, Morocco showed no intention of acquiescing in the ruling, and at week's end its troops were massed along a 140-mile border with the Spanish Sahara. Morocco's King Hassan II vowed to send 350,000 people, including 30,000 women--armed only with the Koran--to "liberate" the territory. Meanwhile, Spain, which still has control, warned that its troops in the Sahara, estimated at 15,000 to 30,000, would fire back if fired upon. Algeria had thousands of its own soldiers ready for action at the Tindouf oasis. Neighboring Mauritania, to whom the court also conceded historic "rights relating to the land," but not enough for territorial sovereignty, watched and waited--but made it clear that it would enjoy picking up as much of the Sahara as the others would let it have.

Algeria says that it does not want the land for itself, but does not want Morocco's right-wing monarchy to have it either. Instead, Algiers favors self-determination, assuming that the Sahara's 70,000 or 80,000 nomads would opt for Algerian-style Islamic socialism. Hassan also assumes they would go socialist and fears that his own shaky regime could not survive if it were surrounded by hostile states.

Spain, for its part, recognized back in the early '60s that it would have to give up the region some day; like Algeria, it also favors self-determination for the Sahara. Whatever the eventual political coloration of a Saharan regime, Madrid figures, it would probably still want the revenue the state-owned Spanish phosphate company could give it for allowing it to stay on. As it is, Spain has invested $447 million in the territory's phosphate mines.

Phosphate Monopoly. The phosphate, however, has only whetted Morocco's appetite. Outside the U.S. and U.S.S.R., Morocco has about 60% of the world's phosphate--an essential ingredient in fertilizer--and the Spanish Sahara has perhaps another 20%. If Morocco controlled the Sahara, it would have a virtual monopoly and could raise the price of phosphate almost as high as it wanted. Even without the Sahara, it has managed to quintuple prices since 1973, from $14 a ton to $68.

Hassan, who promised his people in August that he would have the land by year's end, knew that he would have to act quickly before Spain granted the Sahara independence. His answer: the unarmed brigades. While the Moroccan army would protect the marchers against Algerian intervention, the King said, it would do nothing against the Spaniards, who could shoot if they wanted to. "No infidel, however hardened," he told a nationwide TV audience, "could give the order to open fire on 350,000 unarmed civilians brandishing only the sacred book of Allah." He may well be right. Spain has no stomach for an Angola-style colonial war that could topple the Franco regime. Thus Hassan's weaponless army, if it does indeed march, might succeed where tanks and rockets would fail.

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