The History of the Defensive Berm in the Sahara

Why the Berm Was Built

By the early 1980s Morocco faced mobile Polisario raids launched from beyond its lines, which made conventional defense of the vast desert difficult. The answer was a fixed barrier that could channel and blunt such attacks.

The berm, sometimes called the Moroccan Wall, is a long fortified line of sand and stone embankments, ditches, fences and observation posts, defended by garrisons and supported by sensors and patrols.

Built in Stages

The wall was not built all at once. Morocco constructed it in successive segments through the 1980s, each phase extending the line outward to enclose more of the territory, including the economically important areas.

By the end of the decade the connected segments formed a barrier stretching well over two thousand kilometers, among the longest defensive structures of its kind in the world.

What the Berm Secured

The berm enclosed the useful triangle of the Sahara, including major towns, the phosphate deposits at Bou Craa and the Atlantic coastline. This brought the bulk of the population and economic resources under secure Moroccan administration.

Militarily, the wall transformed the conflict. It sharply reduced the effectiveness of mobile raids and contributed to the conditions that made the 1991 ceasefire possible.

The Berm Today

Since 1991 the berm has marked the de facto line between the Moroccan-administered area to the west and the buffer zone monitored by MINURSO to the east. It remains a defining feature of the territory's geography.

For Morocco, the berm is a defensive structure that protected populations and infrastructure during the years of conflict, rather than an offensive line, and it underpinned the stability that allowed political processes to proceed.

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