Talk:Western Sahara conflict

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Rename

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

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I propose to rename the article Western Sahara conflict into Polisario Front dispute for independence, since many confuse the 1975-1991 war with the 1973-present conflict of Polisario Front for independence. Please vote Oppose or Support.Greyshark09 (talk) 19:14, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Oppose : Western Sahara conflict was a #REDIRECT to Western Sahara War and it has to stay as it was. The Jan. 1st 2012 editing is a WP:COPYVIO and a WP:POVFORK of the current Western Sahara War article. --Omar-toons (talk) 02:31, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Omar, if you wish to delete the article, you need to issue an Afd for deletion/quick deletion. The current article exists for about 3 months already, you cannot erase it just like that. There is nothing in this article which is a "copy-paste" - it includes a wide range of events from 1973 until today, not just the Western Sahara war. You can see separate definition of "Western Sahara War" and "Polisario dispute" in this link [1] , [[2]] (talk.Greyshark09) 04:45, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Too easy to say that when you are the one who made this WP:COPYVIO/WP:POVFORK.

Sorry, but many links on WP articles are based on this #REDIRECT and you can not decide by yourself that the WS conflict and WS war are two distinct conflicts (which is a WP:OR).

Omar-toons (talk) 00:46, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Omar, a series of events since 1991 (the cease fire), were defined as part of the Polisario front conflict or the Western Sahara conflict, not part of the Western Sahara War, which had already ended in 1991. Anyway, you need to make an Afd if you think of deletion. Thank you.Greyshark09 (talk) 05:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Back and forth

What's going on, apart from constant reverting and edit warring? If someone doesn't think this article should exist, can't they take it to AfD and sort the matter out there? Mato (talk) 00:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I support this idea, and if Omar-toons thinks we should delete it - lets make an Afd and have a vote, i have no problem to close the rename proposal in favor of Afd.Greyshark09 (talk) 05:50, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Algeria is not a part of the conflict

There is no military implication of Algeria. I deleted it. Algeria is having the same position as many countries who support the right for self determination (middle east forum). -Dzlinker (talk) 22:01, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

directly involved in 1976.

Regards,

--Omar-Toons (talk) 01:13, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

That your government's official position, Dzlinker, but the reality on the ground is much different. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8108:2C40:12E4:FC15:2AB1:FB70:224D (talk) 10:17, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

POV template added...

... because of the adding of this photo montage, which consists of a collage of different propaganda/non-sourced pictures --Omar-Toons (talk) 08:29, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Propaganda Talking about police brutality and then having a picture of police brutality is no propaganda—that's ridiculous. If the image should be deleted, propose it for FFD. I've already explained this to you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:28, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

thanks to avoid removing the Refnec until a reference is provided. --Omar-Toons (talk) 14:55, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Usually the problem with such images is that most of them are fabricated; however, in addition in this case i don't see how the bruises and wounds help us understand what is really going in regard to the human rights (the image of a prison, the Moroccan berm or a famous imprisoned Sahrawi politician/activist would help much more); finally putting such images on the main page is disturbing and bullying against Morocco (not that they are innocent, but such images can be found in practically any country in the world)Greyshark09 (talk) 15:21, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

References? What kind of references could you want for an image caption? If the image has verification, then we don't need to provide a citation for every instance of its use on Wikipedia. I don't understand why we wouldn't use it, either, since there is text about human rights abuses. The idea that showing an image of victims of police brutality is somehow bullying Morocco is frankly laughable. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:18, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Template removed, along with image. The entire article is terribly biased (see my major overhaul note), and the image is unsourced and unverifiable, so I've removed it for the time being. Personally, while I think a better image could be used (as Greyshark09 suggests), as per WP:IDON'TLIKEIT if someone sources, and thereby verifies, the image, I would have no problem with the image being re-added, and would not remove it a second time without community consensus. Zaldax (talk) 14:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Major Overhaul Required: COMPLETED as of July 27th, 2012

So I've been reading this, and there is just SO much bias here. On BOTH sides. Between unsourced statements ("")and images to blatantly biased language this article is clearly in need of a major overhaul, which is what I'm doing now.

Here are some examples to show just how bad it's gotten:

Biased language:

"The Algerian media pay just as much attention to the conflict as the media of Morocco, and typically defend the positions of the Algerian state while attacking Morocco's positions." (Do I need to explain this one?)

"The Independence Intifada was a Saharawi Polisario activist coinage for a series of disturbances, demonstrations and riots that broke out in May 2005 in the Moroccan-held parts of Western Sahara. This event has also been called "The El-Aaiun Intifada" . International coverage of the disturbances has been limited because restrictions placed by the Moroccan authorities on international journalists, and Moroccan official sources have downplayed the events." (This one manages to get both in a single paragraph!)

"The Wall is often related as an apartheid wall,^[48] depreiving the Sahrawis of their sovereign rights and a humanitarian disaster." (See, the first half of this sentence is okay, since it is sourced. However, the second half just ruins it -- not only is it biased, but it's unsourced as well.)

Unsourced Image: The "Moroccan Police Brutality with Sahrawis" picture is unsourced and unverifiable. Has it been used by a credible news agency? Where was it obtained. This is not meant to make light of the subject, or debate whether such police brutality does or does not occur. I am simply saying that we have no way of knowing if the picture actually depicts what it claims to. As such, I have removed the photograph from the article for the time being -- while personally I don't see a reason for that specific image to be included (a different one might be better suited to depicting the subject), if another editor re-adds it with a credible source I will not remove it again, but leave it open to community discussion.

Unsourced Statements: There's quite a few of these throughout the article. I've added "" wherever I thought there was a chance of saving a sentence, but there's a good number I've either missed or that are, in my opinion, beyond hope of redemption. Those must be...deleted.

I haven't actually looked into any of the sources yet, so I'm not sure how reputable all of them are. I'll assume that they are for now, but if someone wants to make sure it would be a good idea.

In addition, I highly support the creation of a Western Sahara Peace Process article. There's a lot of information to add, and it would benefit from its own devoted article.

However, I also strongly hold that this should remain its own article. There is an article about the Western Sahara War, an article about the conflict as a whole (Western Sahara Conflict, and there should also be an article about the peace process (Western Sahara Peace Process). All three are notable topics in their own right.

Anyway, so that's my thoughts. I'm off to fix what I can, but seriously folks; Neutrality does not mean representing each bias in equal amounts. Being unbiased means just that; having no bias. End of story. And on that cheerful, ever so kind note, I'm off. Zaldax (talk) 14:24, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Zaldax

UPDATE: I've finished revising this article: I think I managed to eliminate many of the major issues. Deleted a lot of duplicate internal links, cleaned up the bias, fixed a lot of the grammatical (again, I suspect translational) errors, and did some other minor housekeeping here and there. There's still a lot that needs to be done, but I think that this is a big improvement. Zaldax (talk) 18:08, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge on the grounds of no consensus.

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This article could merged with the Western Saharan War, both articles are too short and shallow by themselves. Charles Essie (talk) 19:31, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose: I hope people sometime could understand whats WS war (1975-1991) and whats WS conflict (1970?-present).--HCPUNXKID (talk) 17:50, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Support: Both articles have sth like 90% of the information in common, that's imho a reason to merge them. Also, they used to be a single article (the article "Western Sahara conflict" was first a redirection to "Western Sahara war" [3] until a user decided to create a duplicate page in 2012, which doesn't make sens imho) --Omar-toons (talk) 15:16, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose - per HCPUNXKID.Greyshark09 (talk) 16:55, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Support: I would consider the War to be the first part of the longer-running Conflict, and I would say that during 1975-1991 there was no separation. Articles about each, particularly the historical sections, would be so similar as to be redundant. --RaphaelBriand (talk) 15:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but the Western Sahara War is not the first part of the conflict, as it started on late 1975, and the conflict came from 1970 (if not earlier). Do not forget the Zemla Intifada (1970), the combats between the Polisario Front and the Spanish Army (1973-1975), the FLU bombing campaign in El Aaiun (1974-1975), etc...--HCPUNXKID (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment Also, in the case of merging it (wich I still totally opposse) why merge this article with the Western Sahara War and not with the Gdeim Izik one? Doing differently seems so inconsistent to me... --HCPUNXKID (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

• It seems as though this article and the conflict have virtually the same information, and thus should be merged. It is greatly inefficient to have the two pages.´´´´ (this comment was left by IP user:173.70.127.52).GreyShark (dibra) 21:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC))
• Comment - this is almost two years since Charles Essie proposed the merge, and so far there have been 3 users supporting and 2 opposing. The 4th supporting vote is an IP user, which has a much lesser weight, so usually we wouldn't count it. Since i've expressed my opinion here, i guess somebody else should close it.GreyShark (dibra) 21:11, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
• There is overlap between the two articles, but this is mostly through summary sections (with correctly used "main" templates). The Western Sahara conflict acts as a framework from which other related articles are then linked. Merging all of these pages into the Western Sahara conflict would make the page very unwieldy, even though its current size of 39k would allow a merge of the Western Sahara War alone. Given that the case isn't obvious, and that there isn't consensus, I'll close on the grounds of no consensus after >3.5years. Klbrain (talk) 09:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What a mess!

This article is a mess, if its an article about the whole conflict (1970-present), why copies the casualties, strengh, etc... from the Western Sahara War (1975-1991)? Unfortunately, there were casualties between 1970 and 1975, and there had been casualties from 1991 till today consequence of the conflict. The absence of that numbers show clearly that some users had simply duplicated the WS war article content here. Not to talk about other absurdities, like putting the "killed in action" tag on Hassan II, Ould Daddah or Boumedienne... (Do the one who do that know anything about this conflict?!? I seriously doubt it...) --HCPUNXKID (talk) 19:20, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

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August 2018

With regard to this revert:

• The so-called Algerian media mentioned in the article is not Algerian at all: 1) The website "Algeria Times" was set-up in 2009 in France by two Algerians (a journalist and a webmaster). In 2010, the journalist and co-founder announced that the webmaster had sold the site to Moroccan parties established in the US who have a relationship with the Moroccan intelligence services, and that all Algerians who work there had been fired (making the website 100% Moroccan, used for a propaganda campaign against the Polisario and Algeria). 2) All the photos published by the website[4] and presented as secret have been taken from a blog[5] published in 2012 about the Polisario conducting military exercises (in front of onlookers) and experimenting with tunnels similar to those used by the Lebanese Hezbollah during the July 2006 war.
• The accusations made by Moroccan officials that the Polisario Front is a terrorist organization tied to Al-Qaeda are baseless and unsubstantiated.
• As for the latest allegations, Morocco is yet to provide a shred of evidence to support them. The real motives for the decision to sever ties with Iran are open for debate.

References

M.Bittontalk) 01:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

you've brought an algerian source that claims that algeriatimes is not an algerian news website, sorry don't think there is anyone who trusts "echourouk"L. if you think algeriatimes is not algerian, it is your own problem. --History21st (talk) 02:30, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Americas Role

What role has the United States of America played in the ongoing conflict between Morocco and Western Sahara ? Morocco and the United States have a long and diplomatic historyMorocco%E2%80%93United_States_relations. Does the United States currently recognize Western Sahara as an independent state? Does the UN ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samnoling (talk • contribs) 04:44, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

December 2022

With regard to this revert: 1) baseless claims don't belong anywhere in the article, let alone in the infobox (meant for key facts). 2) Spain is placed first because the conflict between Spain and the Sahrawi started during the time when Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara. The involvement of Morocco and Mauritania came later. M.Bitton (talk) 13:34, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Plunder of natural resources

Hi can someone add chapter about fruits and vegetables plunder commited by marocco in Dakhla areas please there are still a lot of tomatoes 'maroc'. from Dakhla in our European supermarkets.

Moreover can someone deals with plunder about phosphate

Cheers 2A0D:E487:155F:F673:F601:3D6:D16D:F4B1 (talk) 14:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)