2019-11-06 Wed

The Green March was a strategic mass demonstration that took place on 6th November 1975, coordinated by the Moroccan government, to force Spain to hand over the disputed, autonomous semi-metropolitan province of Spanish Sahara to Morocco.

Morocco, to the north of the Spanish Sahara, had long claimed that the territory was historically an integral part of Morocco. In order to prepare the terrain and to riposte to any potential counter-invasion from Algeria or in order to invade militarily the land and kill or deport the Sahrawi population, the Moroccan Army entered the northeast of the region on October 31, where it met with hard resistance from the Polisario, by then a two-year-old independence movement.

On 6 November 1975, approximately 350,000 unarmed Moroccans converged on the city of Tarfaya in southern Morocco and waited for a signal from King Hassan II to cross into the region of Sakiya Lhmra. They brandished Moroccan flags and Qur'an; banners calling for the "return of the Moroccan Sahara”.

Photographs of the King and the Qur'an were carried by the demonstrated. The color green for the march's name was intended as a symbol of Islam. As the marchers reached the border, the Spanish Armed Forces were ordered not to fire to avoid bloodshed. The Spanish troops also cleared some previously mined zones.

On the 41st Anniversary of the march, Moroccan Post issued a special commemorative stamp worth 9 Moroccan dirhams. The stamp depicts a scroll with an Arabic inscription in the center and the number 41. The name of the country in Arabic and Roman is at the top and bottom respectively and the denomination value is at the bottom left.

Image Courtesy: https://colnect.com

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