The roots precede armed conflict: tribal and nomadic societies, trans-Saharan trade, religious and political ties with Morocco’s sultans, then Spanish settlement from 1884. The allegiance ties invoked by Rabat will be examined by the ICJ in 1975. They do not automatically equate to the borders of a contemporary state.
Moroccan independence in 1956 opens a policy of recovering territories under European rule. Tarfaya is returned in 1958 and Ifni in 1969; their trajectories do not settle that of Spanish Sahara, listed by the UN as a Non-Self-Governing Territory in 1963. Resolution 2229 of 1966 calls for a UN-supervised referendum there. This establishes the intersection between Morocco’s territorial-integrity claim and the UN self-determination process.