Polisario Front
In 1972, after hearing about the Sahrawi nationalist demonstrations during the mussem (an event that is both religious festivity and cattle show) of Tan-Tan, he travelled to the former Spanish protectorate, being the nexus between the Sahrawi groups in Western Sahara and Southern Morocco. In the foundation of the POLISARIO, he was designated as the head of the El Aaiún delegation. He also joined the first cell of special operations within the POLISARIO.
In 1974, he was elected as head of the Political Affairs Committee, during the II General Popular Congress of the POLISARIO. He also accompanied El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, then POLISARIO General Secretary, to the first interview with the Sahrawi National Union Party General Secretary Khelli Henna Ould Rachid in Mauritania.
On the night of February 27, 1976, he was one of the POLISARIO leaders present in Bir Lehlou during the proclamation of independence of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic by the Provisional Sahrawi National Council. Beiba briefly served as the provisional POLISARIO's Secretary-General, the movement's top post, starting on June 10, 1976, as he had constitutionally succeeded the organization's first leader, El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, who had been killed in combat in Mauritania the day before. After about two months, the III General Popular Congress (GPC) was convened, and in the elections Beiba was replaced by long-standing Sahrawi president Mohamed Abdelaziz, who was last re-elected in 2011.
Following his service as Secretary-General, Beiba held several high-ranking posts in the POLISARIO structure and as a minister of the exile government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), including as Prime Minister in 1982-85 and 1988-93. In 1995-99 he again served as Prime Minister but was forced out of office after the exile parliament, the Sahrawi National Council, brought his government down with a vote of no confidence. He was replaced by Bouchraya Hammoudi Bayoun, who appointed him to the post of minister for the occupied territories. From 2003, Beiba served as president and speaker of the SNC, and in this capacity he was also a member of POLISARIO's executive organ, the National Secretariat. Since 1997, he had been the head of the Sahrawi delegations on the successive negotiations with Morocco.
Read more about this topic: Mahfoud Ali Beiba
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—A. Alvarez (b. 1929)