Marrakech – The 50th anniversary of the Glorious Green March falls on Moroccan citizens this year with a distinctly different flavor. As Morocco commemorates half a century since this watershed moment in its territorial integrity quest, the United Nations Security Council has delivered what many consider the decisive turning point in the Western Sahara dispute.

The October 31 adoption of Resolution 2797 has dramatically shifted the international approach to the decades-long conflict, explicitly endorsing Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the basis for a permanent solution.

Surprisingly, this resolution came on Halloween – one cannot help but draw the parallel to a political horror show for Algeria and its fabricated Polisario Front, whose hollow ideological foundation now faces international rejection.

For Algeria, it is as if a curtain has finally been pulled back, revealing a stage that was always empty. Resolution 2797 is not simply a diplomatic defeat for the Algerian establishment; it is the unraveling of a national myth.

Half a century of political theater, arms financing, intelligence operations, and ideological propaganda has yielded nothing but depleted coffers, international estrangement, and an impoverished foreign policy sustained by resentment rather than vision, and – most importantly – wasted resources that could have benefited the Algerian people.

True, the discussion today must center on the road ahead rather than dwell on what is gone – “lli fat mat” (“what is past has died”), as the Moroccan saying goes. But history never vanishes; it remains like the foundation of a house – unseen, yet it carries every wall we stand on. In that sense, history is never “dead”; it is the architecture of the present, the groundwork upon which every political horizon is built.

Masterfully orchestrated by the late King Hassan II on November 6, 1975, the Green March remains one of the most significant events in Morocco’s contemporary history. This peaceful epic mobilized 350,000 Moroccan volunteers who, armed only with the Holy Quran and prayers on their lips, crossed into the southern provinces to reclaim territories under Spanish colonization.

The march itself followed the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion delivered on October 16, 1975, which confirmed the existence of legal ties of allegiance (bay‘a) between the Sultans of Morocco and the Sahrawi tribes. On the same day, King Hassan II announced the Green March in his famous Marrakech national address.

What began as a bold liberation movement has evolved over five decades into a comprehensive development strategy under King Mohammed VI’s vision. Today, the southern provinces stand as living testimony to a profound transformation, positioning themselves as strategic economic hubs with vast investments and global connectivity toward Africa, the Atlantic, and beyond.

The unity existed before the cut

The historical context behind this territorial dispute reveals the systematic dismemberment Morocco suffered during the colonial era. Before colonization, Morocco constituted the economic and commercial heart of the entire Western Sahara.

As historian Bernard Lugan notes, Morocco was the driving commercial force throughout the western Saharan region, extending its influence beyond Tagant while controlling the desert routes and major urban and caravan centers. The longitudinal axis starting from Agadir-Sijilmassa-Touat and crossing Western Sahara to reach the Senegal and Niger river valleys was under Moroccan control.

Through dynasties