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The Kingdom of Morocco invaded Western Sahara in 1975.  Morocco has retained control of the majority of the territory, with the nationalist Sahrawi (the ethnic group of the Sahara, mostly those from Western Sahara) Polisario Front, controlling only 20-25% of the land.  The Polisario Front has declared the entire Western Sahara territory to be the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (RASD), which has been recognized by close to 80 other countries and granted membership to the African Union.  

In 1975, the Kingdom of Morocco invaded the Western Sahara territory, which had previously been a Spanish colony.  Morocco, led by King Hassan II, attacked just as the territory was expected to gain independence from Spain for the first time.  Morocco’s actions disobeyed a United Nations Security Council resolution stating that the people of Western Sahara had the right to self determination.  The nationalist Sahrawi (the ethnic group of the Sahara, mostly from Western Sahara) Polisario Front, which had been fighting the Spanish, then turned its attention towards Morocco and

Ever since gaining its independence from Spain in 1956, Morocco firmly held that the Spanish Sahara (now known as the Western Sahara) should be included within its borders. Morocco based this assertion on the fact that some of the nomadic populations in the region had apparently once owed allegiance to the Moroccan sultan, yet the strength of its commitment to securing control over Spanish Sahara may have increased after it became known in the early 1970s that the region contained substantial phosphate mines.