(This story was first published in the now defunct Inquire magazine. All photos and text copyright Nacho Hernandez. All rights reserved)
“They call themselves the children of the clouds because, since times past, they have been chasing clouds for their water. For more than thirty years now they have also been chasing justice which, in today’s world, seems more elusive than water in the desert”. - Eduardo Galeano
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| © Nacho Hernandez |
On two different occasions I travelled to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and to the section of the Western Sahara not occupied by Morocco. There, I had the opportunity to spend time with refugees, with members of the Polisario Front, with soldiers and with Bedouins living in the desert. I was particularly struck by the dignity of a people struggling to survive, and by the generosity of those who have almost nothing. The Sahrawi are a very welcoming and friendly people who have often been pushed to the losing end of history. This is their story.
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In the past, the nomadic tribes from the Western Sahara were referred to as "Awlad al-Muzna", the Children of the Clouds. Bedouins who for centuries roamed the desert with their herds of camels and goats, following the rain-laden clouds that for them could mean the difference between survival and death.
The Sahrawi, able to live in one of Earth's most hostile environments, had their way of life changed dramatically with the arrival of the colonial powers in the 19th century. By the early 20th century France and Spain had split the northwest of Africa and drawn artificial borders on the desert's sand. A people used to living without frontiers had to respect those imposed by the European countries. The Sahrawi were told that they were now Spanish. Their land had become the Spanish Sahara.
In 1975, with Spain’s Generalísimo Franco in his deathbed, King Hassan II of Morocco organized the multitudinous Green March to claim the Western Sahara. Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians advanced south towards the border. To increase the pressure on the Spanish government, they were instructed to camp a few hundred meters away from the Spanish landmine fields and artillery. A weak Spain, unable to sustain its colonial adventure, agreed in the Madrid Accords to forsake the Western Sahara and to its partition between Morocco and Mauritania. Their armies immediately stormed in to split the former Spanish colony. Morocco occupied the northern two thirds of the territory and Mauritania the southern one. Nationalistic ambition aside, both countries had their eyes on the prize: a territory the size of England with the largest deposits of phosphates in the world, very rich fisheries and, possibly, plenty of oil under its surface. The Sahrawi were now told that they were Moroccan. Or Mauritanian.
The fledgling Sahrawi resistance movement against the Spaniards, the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el Hamra y Río de Oro or Polisario Front, saw one colonial power replaced by another and turned its guns from the retreating Spanish troops to the advancing Moroccan and Mauritanian columns. As a government in exile, the Polisario Front founded the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in Bir Lehlou in February 1976.
It was the beginning of a fierce war that for sixteen years would tinge the sands of the Western Sahara with blood. After a series of military defeats that included humiliating raids by the Polisario against its capital Nouakchott, Mauritania signed a peace agreement and renounced all territorial claims in 1979. Morocco immediately seized all territories abandoned by the retreating Mauritanians. The Polisario Front, now backed by an Algeria playing its own chess game with Morocco for supremacy in Northern Africa, carried out a desert guerrilla war against Morocco which resulted in a number of military advances. Morocco reacted by erecting a fortified wall across the whole territory from north to south - at 1,700 miles the longest in the world -- effectively blocking Polisario raids and creating a stalemate in the war. In 1988 the Polisario and Morocco accepted a UN and Organization of African Unity proposal for a ceasefire, to be followed by a referendum on independence among the Sahrawi.
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| © Nacho Hernandez |
The ceasefire started in August 1991, only a few days after a fierce offensive by Moroccan troops in Tifariti. It was the end of the war but, for the Sahrawi, the aftermath would not be any better. The conflict had displaced half of their population to refugee camps near the Algerian border town of Tinduf or to exile in other countries. Two thirds of the Western Sahara's territory including its cities, its coast, all its natural resources and half of its population remained under Moroccan occupation. The rest, the barren "Liberated Territories" on the other side of the Moroccan Wall, are to this day controlled by the Polisario Front. Although the ceasefire is still in effect, the referendum on independence never took place, with Morocco perpetuating a status quo that plays in its favor. The UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice have sanctioned the right of the Sahrawi people to decide whether they want to become an independent country, but such referendum is constantly denied by Morocco. Talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front are still held sporadically, without any results. Today, the Western Sahara remains Africa’s last colony.
The Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria are still at the center of the conflict. More than 35 years after the arrival of the first refugees, two generations of Sahrawis have been born and live a wretched existence in the sun-bleached camps of Tinduf, which are named after the cities left behind by their parents: Laayoune, Awserd, Smara and Dakhla. The camps are located in what has been aptly called the “desert’s desert” or the "devil's garden", a scorched, Sirocco-swept section of the Algerian Hammada where temperatures can easily exceed 50 °C in the summer and fall below freezing point during the winter nights. Almost nothing grows there and, although the very resilient Sahrawis have been able to organize life in the camps and have access to education and health care, they are completely dependent on international aid that is becoming less reliable each year. According to the World Food Program malnutrition in the camps is rampant, with chronic malnutrition at 31.4 percent. Over 60 percent of children and 54 percent of women suffer from anemia. What is worse for the refugees, though, is the lack of a future, the constant wait for a solution to their plight, a solution that never comes. A provisional arrangement has become permanent and the 150,000 Sahrawis in the camps are stuck in limbo.
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| © Nacho Hernandez |
Those Sahrawis who didn’t flee to the refugee camps in Algeria or to exile in other countries live today in the Western Sahara under tight Moroccan control. They struggle in the face of a powerful Morocco that does not hesitate to use repression and violence to quash any efforts by the Sahrawi to reassert their own identity. This identity is also being diluted with the constant influx of Moroccan settlers who are lured with incentives offered by the Moroccan government to those willing to relocate to their so-called "Southern Provinces". Dramatically for the Sahrawi, this would tip the balance in favor of Morocco if the referendum ever happened. Morocco might allow the referendum to take place only if they were absolutely certain that they would win it. This would allow them to give a veneer of legitimacy to their annexation of the Western Sahara, while closing the dispute for good.
The war with Morocco also meant the final blow to a traditional nomadic way of life that had once been a sign of identity and the backbone of Sahrawi culture. The wall that divides the country also impedes the free movement of the Bedouins and their herds, as do the thousands of landmines and unexploded cluster bombs scattered around the Western Sahara, one of the territories with the highest concentration of unmapped bombs and mines in the world. The best pastures and wells also fall on the Moroccan-occupied side. While in the occupied Western Sahara the Sahrawi culture and identity are being watered down, the Liberated Territories are becoming the last redoubt of a nation without a country. The Polisario is trying to repopulate this barren section of the Western Sahara. They have symbolically maintained its capital in Bir Lehlou, a small village in the desert, and celebrate some of their meetings in Tifariti, a village charged with symbolism as the theater of some of the fiercest battles during the war. Some Sahrawi families are still trying to live as nomadic shepherds in this territory. This allows them to feed on healthier animals and fresher milk than what they have in the refugee camps. It also sends to the world and to Morocco the message that part of the Western Sahara is still inhabited and controlled by the Sahrawi, who intend to cling to their land.
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| © Nacho Hernandez |
The conflict in the Western Sahara is probably one of the most under-reported crises of our days. It has been addressed very superficially by the international media and public opinion during its 35-year history. Few voices are raised in defense of the Sahrawi. Few challenge the existence of a wall in the desert, a 1,700-mile scar in the face of the Western Sahara that separates a land from half of its people and divides thousands of families. Celebrities rarely include the Sahrawi refugee camps in their goodwill tours. Countries, institutions and individuals who rushed to support the independence of Timor Leste, Kosovo or South Sudan turn a blind eye towards the Western Sahara and let Morocco get away with its abuses and disregard of international resolutions, in a perfect show of realpolitik at its worst.
Those supporting Morocco will claim that the Western Sahara is too small to become an independent country, and that it would turn into a rogue state. Stressing recent Islamic terrorist activity in Northern Africa or the radical Islamization of Northern Mali, they insinuate a collaboration between Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Polisario, and insist that an independent Western Sahara would become a haven for Islamic terrorists within Europe's doors. This innuendo obviously benefits Morocco. The truth is that the Polisario as an organization has always rejected any form of terrorism and they have never appeared in the US State Department or EU's lists of terrorist organizations.
The Sahrawi, in general, practice a very moderate and tolerant form of Islam. The role of women for example is more important in Sahrawi society than in most Muslim countries. In reality, a disenchanted Sahrawi population in the Western Sahara and in the refugee camps, feeling that they have been totally forsaken by the countries who created this situation in the first place, is probably a much better breeding ground for the Islamist terrorists' cause than an independent country, owner of its own destiny, satisfied and in good terms with its neighbors. Moreover, if unresolved, this for now low-intensity conflict risks erupting into a full-fledged war again. The dissatisfaction among the Sahrawi population is growing both in the Western Sahara and in the Tinduf refugee camps, and many are increasing the pressure on their military to take up arms again. The current situation of "neither war nor peace" favors Morocco, and the Polisario might feel the need to change the status quo and shake things as their only way to keep their struggle alive.
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By the end of my trip around the Liberated Territories we stop at a Bedouin family's camp. A few modest jaimas planted in the middle of a martian landscape of breathtaking beauty. With desert hospitality they invite us to have dinner with them and to spend the night in one of their tents. Brahim, the patriarch, is a man of imposing dignity. With his grey beard he reminds me of a mature Sean Connery in his prime. He lives in the desert with his extended family, herding camels and goats. We nibble on goat butter with dates and later dine on couscous. After dinner, while preparing the customary Sahrawi tea, Brahim tells me his story. He was a soldier with the Polisario and fought the war against Morocco. He was captured and spent fourteen years in a Moroccan prison in terrible conditions. His house and possessions in Smara were occupied and seized by Moroccans. Without any animosity towards me, he asks why the Spaniards let the Western Sahara down, after first claiming that it was a Spanish province. I don't know how to respond.
In the clean desert night, if you are close enough to the Moroccan Wall, you might be able to see a tiny glimpse of the lights from Smara, the Sahrawi holy city, reflected in the sky in the distance. Brahim wonders if he will be able to go back one day, and says that he would join the army again in a heartbeat to fight for it. He lets out a sigh and serves the tea in the traditional desert way: "The first glass bitter like life; the second one, sweet like love; the third, gentle like death".
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| © Nacho Hernandez |
