Sand War The Sand War or Sands War occurred along the Algerian - Moroccan border in October 1963 , and was a Moroccan attempt to claim the Tindouf and the Béchar areas that France had annexed to French Algeria a few decades earlier . Background . Three factors contributed to the outbreak of this conflict : the absence of a precise delineation of the border between Algeria and Morocco , the discovery of important mineral resources in the disputed area , and the Moroccan irredentism fueled by the Greater Morocco ideology of the Istiqlal Party and Allal al - Fassi . Before French colonization of the region in the nineteenth century , part of south and west Algeria were under Moroccan influence and no border was defined . In the Treaty of Lalla Maghnia ( March 18 , 1845 ) , which set the border between French Algeria and Morocco , it is stipulated that " a territory without water is uninhabitable and its boundaries are superfluous " the border is delineated over only 165 km . Beyond that there is only one border area , without limit , punctuated by tribal territories attached to Morocco or Algeria . After the colonization of Morocco in 1912 , the French administration set borders between the two territories , but these tracks were often misidentified ( Varnier line in 1912 , Trinquet line in 1938 ) , and varied from one map to another , since for the French administration these were not international borders and the area was virtually uninhabited . The discovery of large deposits of oil and minerals ( iron , manganese ) in the region led France to define more precisely the territories , and in 1952 the French decided to integrate Tindouf and Colomb - Bechar to the French departments of Algeria . The last bloody years of the FLN ' s rebellion had been fought essentially to prevent France from splitting the Sahara regions from the emerging Algerian state , and thus neither Ben Bella nor the rest of the wartime FLN were inclined to give them up to Morocco when independence was achieved . The Algerians therefore did not recognize Morocco ' s historical or political claims of Greater Morocco that includes Bechar and Tindouf Province . Instead , they perceived the Moroccan demands as an attempt to infringe the country ' s hard - won independence and pressure it when it was at its weakest . Algeria was still reeling from the enormous damage caused by the Algerian War , and the government scarcely held control over its entire territory : significantly , a Berber anti - FLN rebellion under the leadership of Hocine Aït Ahmed had recently flared up in the Kabyle mountains . Tension escalated as neither side wanted to back down . The war . Skirmishes along the border eventually escalated into a full - blown confrontation , with intense fighting around the oasis towns of Tindouf and Figuig . The Algerian army , recently formed from the guerrilla ranks of the FLN ' s Armée de Libération Nationale ( ALN ) was still geared towards asymmetric warfare , and had little heavy equipment . They were still battle - ready and had tens of thousands of experienced veterans , and strengthening the armed forces had been a top priority for the military - dominated post - war government . On the other hand , while the modern , western - equipped Moroccan army ( France was the bigger arms seller to Morocco at that time ) was superior on the battlefield , it did not manage to penetrate into Algeria . The Algerians had counted on hit - and - run attacks as their main strategy , but the Moroccans managed to counter this approach . The Moroccans built fortified Sand Walls . These Sand Walls had land mines and electronic warning systems , as well as strong defenses placed by the Moroccan troops . The tactic was later used in the Western Sahara War . The war reached a stalemate and after the intervention of the Organization of African Unity ( OAU ) and the Arab League , it was broken off after approximately three weeks . The OAU eventually managed to arrange a formal cease - fire on February 20 , 1964 . A peace agreement was then reached after Arab League mediation , and a demilitarized zone instituted but hostilities simmered . Results . The Sand War laid the foundations for a lasting and often intensely hostile rivalry between Morocco and Algeria , exacerbated by the differences in political outlook between the conservative Moroccan monarchy and the revolutionary , Arab nationalist Algerian military government . Final border demarcation in the Tindouf area was not reached until many years later , in a negotiation process stretching from 1969 to 1972 , with Algeria offering Morocco shares in the iron ore earnings from Tindouf for recognition of its borders . The governments of both Morocco and Algeria used the war to describe opposition movements as unpatriotic . The Moroccan UNFP and the Algerian - Berber FFS of Aït Ahmed both suffered as a result of this . In the case of UNFP , its leader , Mehdi Ben Barka , sided with Algeria , and was sentenced to death " in absentia " as a result . In Algeria , the armed rebellion of the FFS in Kabylie fizzled out , as commanders defected to join the national forces against Morocco . Many have argued that the Sand War and its bitter legacy was a factor in the attitude of Algeria towards the conflict in Spanish Sahara in the 1970s . In 1975 , Morocco took control of this territory , now known as Western Sahara , while Algeria began backing politically and militarily an independence - minded Sahrawi guerrilla organization , the Polisario Front .