Mohamed Abdelaziz

Who is Mohamed Abdelaziz?

Mohamed Abdelaziz was a Sahrawi political leader who served as Secretary-General of the Polisario Front and President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) from 1976 until his death in 2016, making him the movement's longest-serving leader. He took over leadership of the Polisario Front shortly after the death of its founder, El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, and guided the movement through the prolonged war with Morocco that followed Spain's withdrawal from Western Sahara, through the 1991 United Nations-brokered ceasefire, and through the decades of stalled diplomatic negotiations and unfulfilled referendum plans that followed. Operating largely from the Sahrawi refugee camps near Tindouf, in southwestern Algeria, he represented the SADR and the Sahrawi cause at the Organisation of African Unity and later the African Union, of which SADR became a founding member state, and at the United Nations. He died in Algeria in 2016 while still in office, having led the movement for exactly four decades.

Sources: BBC News, obituary, "Western Sahara's Mohamed Abdelaziz dies" (2016) · African Union, official records on SADR membership · Hodges, Tony, "Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War" (Lawrence Hill Books, 1983)