Armed Forces (SPLA)
The Polisario Front has no navy or air force. The Sahrawi People's Liberation Army, (SPLA, often abbreviated in Spanish as ELPS - Ejercito de Liberación Popular Saharaui), is the Polisario's army. Its commander-in-chief is the Secretary General, but it is also integrated into the SADR system through the institution of a SADR Minister of Defence. The SPLA's armed units are considered to have a manpower of possibly 6-7,000 active soldiers today, but during the war years its strength appears to have been significantly higher: up to 20,000 men. It has a potential manpower of many times that number, since both male and female refugees in the Tindouf camps undergo military training at age 18. Women formed auxiliary units protecting the camps during war years.
Read more about this topic: Polisario Front
Famous quotes containing the words armed and/or forces:
“On the whole our armed services have been doing pretty well in the way of keeping us defended, but I hope our State Department will remember that it is really the department of achieving peace ...”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“If in the opinion of the Tsars authors were to be the servants of the state, in the opinion of the radical critics writers were to be the servants of the masses. The two lines of thought were bound to meet and join forces when at last, in our times, a new kind of regime the synthesis of a Hegelian triad, combined the idea of the masses with the idea of the state.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)