After the March

Exhausted after a four-day foray into the salt flats of the Spanish Sahara (TIME, Nov. 17), Morocco's 350,000 "peace marchers" were loaded into trucks last week and driven back to tent camps at Tarfaya, 21 miles north of the Sahara border. The marchers, never told of the international uproar their crusade had caused, were bewildered by the abrupt about-face. But they obediently played out their roles in one of the greatest anticlimaxes in recent history.

Although the marchers had advanced only 7.4 miles into the Sahara --where their progress was blocked by Spanish minefields--King Hassan insisted that this token invasion had achieved its goal.

Combat Alert. And by week's end it seemed that it had. Madrid announced that it would complete a phased withdrawal of Spanish troops from the Sahara by Feb. 28, 1976 and share its administration of the territory until then with Morocco and Mauritania. The agreement also stipulates that the Sahara's 70,000 tribesmen be "consulted" about their future. But the accord in effect will allow Morocco and Mauritania to partition the territory between them.

One problem remains: Algeria, which threatened to go to war over Morocco's annexation attempt, still opposes any settlement that is not based on a United Nations referendum. Algerian army units have been placed on combat alert near the Sahara border, and the Polisario, an Algerian-backed Saharan liberation group, says its guerrillas are ready to move into any vacuum created by the withdrawal of Spanish forces.

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