REPORTER AT LARGE Betrayed by and oppressed by , the Saharawi people of compare themselves to the Palestinians or the black majority in apartheid South Africa. And they want the world to know their story Inside Afric a’ s last colony ByXanRice

Figures in a landscape: King Mohammed VI of Morocco was visiting provinces.OnmapstheareaappearsasWestern Saharawi landmine a hammam when a genie appeared. Sahara. The UN calls it a “non-self-governing victims in the desert “I can offer you one wish,” the genie said. territory”.ItisAfrica’slastcolony,whereanear- near Smara camp, “I’d really like to see my late father, Hassan forgotten liberation war lies dormant. II,” Mohammed replied. The wall is sometimes referred to as Hassan’s “That’s a difficult request, bringing a Wall, after King Hassan II of Morocco, who an - person back from the dead,” the genie said. nexed most of what was then called Spanish “Have you got another wish?” Sahara when Spain pulled out in 1976. About “Well, I’d like Western Sahara to become half of the indigenous population, the Saha- part of Morocco,” said Mohammed. rawis, who had been promised a vote on self- “Hang on while I’ll look for your father,” determination by Spain, fled across the desert said the genie. to refugee camps in an inhospitable corner of Saharawi joke Algeria in order to escape Moroccan rule. They were assisted by the , a In the far western expanse of the Sahara is the poorly armed but fiercely determined national - world’s longest continuous wall. It starts in ist movement. Unable to prevent attacks on his Morocco and slithers down through the desert troops by Polisario guerrillas, King Hassan or - for2,400kilometrestotheAtlanticOcean.More dered a series of joined defensive walls to be than130,000soldierslineitsperimeter.Madeof built around the main cities and installations in sand and stone, it stands one and a half metres Western Sahara. Bulldozers bullied the barrier

S wideandbetweentwoandthreemetrestall,and into place, eventually enclosing about four- I B R

O has command posts every two miles. Motion fifths of the territory. Forced ever deeper into C / E

P sensors, barbed wire and several million land - the Sahara, the Polisario was left with a ribbon R O

H minesprovideanextralayerofdefence.Formost of desert that it called the Liberated Zone. T N

O of its course, it cuts across a sparsely populated The wall should have come down. In 1991, M I S

© region that Morocco regards as its southern Morocco and the Polisario agreed to end their t

28 | NEW STATESMAN | 13 SEPTEMBER 2010 13 SEPTEMBER 2010 | NEW STATESMAN | 29 REPORTER AT LARGE REPORTER AT LARGE 16-year war. The UN was to oversee a refer - of its citizens to move in. According to King VI, patience snapped. First Saharawi students “Yes.” t endum on independence for Western Sahara Hassan, this was only fair; he told his people in Morocco launched small protests for better “Follow me.” within nine months. Morocco first blocked the that Morocco had exercised authority over conditions, and then demonstrations spread to His apartment was nearby. Dahane hurried vote and then abandoned the poll altogether Western Sahara before Spanish colonisation in . After a fortnight, the police moved inside and walked over to the window, pulling when it realised the result would not go its way. 1884 and that most Saharawis favoured inte - in, beating and detaining hundreds. thecurtainbackslightlytolookdownthestreet. Eighteen years and nearly $1bn in UN expendi - gration. It was a lie. In 1975 the UN, which for The “first intifada” had begun. The taboo of Just a few days earlier, one of his colleagues in ture later, the Polisario camps – and more than more than a decade had been pushing Spain to publicdissenthadbeen brokenforthefirsttime the Association of Saharawi Victims of Human 100,000 refugees – are still there. So is the wall, hold a referendum on self-determination, sent since the occupation started. Six years later, Rights Abuses had been arrested for meeting though few outside the Maghreb know that it afact-findingmissiontoWesternSahara.Itcon - when it became obvious that Mohammed had a delegation from the European Parliament, exists. I didn’t until one day I saw it represented cluded that the Frente Popular de Liberación no intention of allowing the Saharawis a vote – which, having been blocked by Morocco from as a thick black line on a map of Africa I bought de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro, or Polisario autonomy is the best they can expect, he says – visiting Western Sahara since 2005, had been a few years ago. I was intrigued, and resolved Front, formed two years earlier, represented the second intifada erupted. Haidar, who by allowed in to Laayoune for a half-day visit. to see the wall and hear the stories of the Sa - the most significant expression of Saharawi now had a young son and daughter, joined one Dahane had opened a cybercafé at a prime lo - harawis living on both sides. opinion, and that “the majority of the popula - of the demonstrations to show solidarity. A po - cation to serve as a kind of Saharawi cultural As I drove through the flat desert plains in tion within the was manifestly liceman attacked her with a truncheon. Blood centre. But the police kept raiding it, customers the Liberated Zone, the wall appeared to me as in favour of independence”. streaming from her face, and with three broken stoppedcoming,andhewasforcedshutitdown. a caramel stripe on the horizon. Two Moroccan Morocco, meanwhile, had taken its case to ribs and a broken collarbone, she was rushed to Other activists had told me similar stories of soldiers on lookout ducked out of sight when the International Court of Justice. But, in a 14-2 hospital, where she was arrested. harassment of anyone considered to have ideas they saw the Polisario Land Cruiser approach - ruling, the court found that the evidence did As Haidar was telling me her story, of independence, no matter how young. While ing. “Rabbits! Cowards!” The man cursing “not support Morocco’s claim to have exercised Tamek, a stocky 36-year-old with a goatee, giving me a lift home late one night, Haidar was a 39-year-old Saharawi journalist and in - territorial sovereignty over Western Sahara” dressed in the traditional blue draa robe, arrived pointed out a school that even had a permanent dependence activist, Malainin Lakhal. He had before Spain arrived. A claim by Mauritania, at the apartment. Tamek has been to prison police presence to suppress any dissent. If peo - unbrushed hair, a goatee and silver-rimmed made on similar grounds, was also rejected. several times and is famed for his hunger ple like her and Dahane were the second gener - glasses. “The wall of shame,” he spat out. He Bizarrely, King Hassan interpreted the court’s strikes, which, on one occasion, took him to ation of Saharawis to strive for independence, knew all about the wall – he had crossed it one decision as a victory, and the next day an - the verge of death. A Moroccan magazine once there was now a third taking it on, spray-paint - moonless night nine years earlier. Back then, he nounced plans for the Green March. Spain, in put his face on the cover under the headline ing walls with the flag of the Saharawi Arab was running to escape the Moroccan secret po - political disarray with General Franco on his “Public enemy number one”. Democratic Republic (SADR) – the state de - lice, leaving behind his relatives, his future wife deathbed, capitulated to Moroccan pressure; Shot glasses of tea and plates of dates were clared by the Polisario in 1976 – challenging and the intifada brewing in the “occupied terri - within a month a deal was struck to allow the passed around, and Tamek nodded as Haidar teachers, shouting pro-independence slogans. tories”. Which was where my journey began. king and the Mauritanian government to divide continued her story. She went on hunger strike “We have a guarantee in our children,” said the colony between themselves. for 52 days in Laayoune’s notorious Cárcel Ne - Mohamed Fadel Gaoudi, a former political n a cold and rainy night in January Today, there are about 200,000 people in gra (“black prison), losing 17 kilogrammes. Fol - prisoner who later invited me to his apartment last year, I boarded a bus in the Laayoune – nearly a tenfold increase since 1975 lowing pressure from the European Union and for dinner with several others. “Kids of ten or 12 Moroccan seaside town of – and close to 400,000 across Western Sahara. , she was released after now participate in demonstrations, which we and headed down the coast. At Most are Moroccans. Many of the Saharawi seven months. “This time in jail was worse,” never did. They say that there is no alternative dawn, we reached Tarfaya, a small The female face of fight: protesters in Madrid call for ’s right to ret urn to Laayoune, 2009 activists I spoke to described this influx using she said. “Before, I had no children. It was just to self-determination.” settlement 60 miles across the the Middle East lexicon of “creating facts on the formyself.Ihadnofeelingofmotherhood.Now A note of dark humour drifted into the con - wOater from the . Mist rolled in number of police vehicles, mostly new sedans to Western Sahara. At 3.30am on the morning ground”. But a genial Moroccan who owned a the suffering was double.” versation. The Green March was the “Black off the Atlantic. A few men ambled in the sand- and minivans, painted white or dark blue, with before the UN missionlanded,plain-clothespo - car hire firm and who, after some persuading, March”, the UN the “United Nothing”: its mis - dusted streets, ghostly in their thick, hooded metal grilles over the windows and headlights. licemen swooped on her parents’ house. drove me to see the port one day, saw himself o escape the creeping paranoia of sion in Western Sahara has an annual budget djellabas. It was here, in late 1975, that 350,000 The city had eyes, as Aminatou Haidar, a Still in pyjamas, she was bundled her into filling an employment gap. “The problem with Laayoune – a stranger at a café had of $50m, but no mandate to monitor human Moroccans gathered under the orders of King petite woman in her early forties with brown- a van and blindfolded. As many as 70 other the Saharawis is that they are lazy,” he said. casually mentioned that he knew rights. But when, at midnight, Haidar joined Hassan before setting off on the “Green March” tinted spectacles, knew only too well. The “Sa - young Saharawis were seized at the same time. “They are like the Saudis who get poor people where I was staying a few hours af - us, the mood lifted. I asked her if she had been into Western Sahara, in a show of intent during harawi Gandhi” to her supporters – and a dan - They were taken to a secret prison in Laayoune, from Asia to do all their work for them. They ter I arrived – I hired a car and driver tempted by offers of asylum in Europe. “I prefer the last days of Spanish rule. In the afternoon, I gerous traitor, according to Morocco – Haidar where she was strapped to a plank, face down, just want money from the government, and to take me to Smara. The third- to live in my home country, in effect in prison, caught another bus, following the marchers’ has come to symbolise the non-violent strug - with her hands and feet tied. Officers kicked then to sit at home.” Tbiggest city in Western Sahara and the only one but with dignity and determination. As long as route south through scrubland, crossing an in - gle for Saharawi rights. One evening she picked and slapped her, threatened her with rape and Staying at home was the only option for of any size not on the coast, Smara was also the Saharawis have not decided [their future] for visible frontier. On the outskirts of Laayoune, me up in her old black Renault sedan and drove gave her electric shocks. “We tried to move our Haidar after her release, because Morocco had closest I was likely to come to the wall, about 30 themselves, we will not stop,” she said. the territory’s capital, a policeman boarded the meto afriend’s apartment, ashersisundercon - blindfolds a bit to allow us to see out the bot - refused her a passport and banned her from go - miles away. Beyond the police post on the edge The next time I spoke to Haidar was by tele - bus,checkingtheidentitycardsofallpassengers. stant surveillance. Once the translator arrived, tom. But the police would shine lights in our ing to university. After numerous appeals, she of Laayoune, we were in the open desert. After phone many months later. She was on hunger Ihandedovermypassport,hopinghewouldnot she told me her story. eyes; if we reacted they knew that they had to was finally allowed to study philosophy in Ra - two hours we reached Smara, where we were strike at an airport in , Spain, having deduce my profession. Journalists are not wel - Born in Laayoune, she was nine when Mo - tighten the blindfold.” bat – the location and course were of Morocco’s stopped and questioned at two further check - been expelled from Laayoune for refusing to come in Western Sahara; to question Morocco’s roccan troops entered Western Sahara; rela - Her “disappearance” lasted three years and choosing. If the intention was to get Haidar to points. The main street had a few cafés. Virtu - state “Moroccan” as her nationality on the ar - “territorial integrity” is to break the law. tives on both sides of her family fled to Algeria. seven months. She had been blindfolded most understand King Hassan’s point of view, it ally all the customers were soldiers. There were rival form as she returned from United States, A military base guarded the entrance to the Within months, hundreds of Saharawis with of the time. Years later she wrote in an online failed. She began to document human rights several billboards of King Mohammed, and nu - where she had been awarded the latest of sev - city, whose desert-pink buildings rose up be - Polisario sympathies who stayed behind had testimony: “19 June 1991 is the day of my libera - abuses against the increasingly frustrated Sa - merous riot vans parked on the roadside. eral human rights prizes. and yond a wide green river. I checked in at a cheap been sent to clandestine prisons in Morocco. tion.Thefirstdayofsummerandamusicfestival harawis. The promised referendum had raised A policeman refused to give us permission were in jail again in Morocco hotel. My room looked out on to a bank of radar An uncle of Haidar’s was one of the Disap - elsewhere. I am liberated, I was only a shadow hopes for many that they would at last be re - to enter a poor and densely packed neighbour - and facing a military tribunal, having been ar - S

dishes and seven military jeeps in a sandy lot. peared. “My mother would often cry about her of myself. A phantom, one of the living dead, a E united with relatives on the other side of the hood. “This is not a tourist town, it is a military rested with other Saharawi agitators after visit - G A

It was evening, and soldiers in peak caps and brother,” she said. “My uncle had six daugh - young girl out of a nameless hell.” M wall. But dubious attempts by King Hassan to area,” he said. ing the Polisario refugee camps in Algeria. I Y T

faded uniforms were cycling home. Moroccan ters, and the strain on them was terrible. This By then Western Sahara had changed. Mo - T classify more than 120,000 people living in Back in Laayoune, I called Brahim Dahane, If Western Sahara has a tourist draw, it is E G /

flags flew on every block. The city had an or - made me understand that something was hor - rocco had spent many millions of dollars on in - P Morocco as eligible Saharawi voters – and his another activist and formerly one of the Disap - Dakhla, which sits on a finger of land pointing F A derly, if sterile, feel, different from the frenetic riblywrong.”Inlate1987,whilestudyingforher frastructure projects – though just a fraction of / decision to launch appeals after almost all were peared. He told me to meet him outside a travel into the sea two-thirds of the way down the O N A atmosphere of cities such as Fez and Marrakesh. baccalaureate, Haidar was secretly involved in its earnings from selling the territory’s phos - I rejected by the UN referendum team – had agency on a busy corner. When I reached there, coast.In1976,aspartoftheagreementwithMo - R O S

There was another feeling, too. In the traffic organising a pro-independence demonstration phate and fishing rights – while using subsidies R stalledtheprocess.In1999,theyearHassandied I heard a voice behind me. rocco and Spain, Mauritania took over the city, E I V A

and parked on the roadside was an inordinate to coincide with a rare visit by a UN delegation and promises of jobs to entice tens of thousands J and his son assumed the throne as Mohammed “It’s you?” but after three years of Polisario attacks it t

30 | NEW STATESMAN | 13 SEPTEMBER 2010 13 SEPTEMBER 2010 | NEW STATESMAN | 31 REPORTER AT LARGE withdrew and renounced its territorial claim. again. His father sent him a message: “What - model, as much out of necessity as ideology. t Morocco moved in, and by September 1985 it ever you decide, be a man about it.” With the Everybody lived in the same-style tents and ate had extended the wall from the north to protect note was a commando knife. Approaching the the same food. Livestock was owned commu - the city. I caught the bus there one morning. A wall late at night, Lakhal could see an army post, nally. Tribal identities – the Saharawis are not a few camper vans passed us on the road. but scrambled across undetected. homogeneous group – were intentionally ob - I was in Dakhla to meet a Saharawi civil ser - I had taken a more comfortable route from scured. There was no money in circulation. Be - vant whom, for his own safety, I’ll call Mustafa. Western Sahara, flying north from Dakhla to cause virtually all the men were fighting on the I wanted to find out what life was like for some - , east to Algiers, and finally south to front line, women ran the camps and played a body not actively involved in the struggle. We , where Lakhal was waiting for me in leading role in society – rare in a Muslim coun - met on a side street near a busy plaza perfumed the chilly early hours. We drove past the Alger - try. Education, both for children and for adults, with the smell of flame-grilled camel sand - ian military post on the edge of town, into the received priority. When the Spanish left West - wiches and drove to his apartment. We made darkness of the desert and the Saharawi state- ern Sahara the Saharawi literacy rate was under small talk for a while, until his room-mate in-exile, with its own elected government, jus - 10 per cent; in the camps it has risen to an esti - Abdallahi emerged from a bedroom with his tice system, number plates (“SH”) and second mated 90 per cent. girlfriend, who said hello and left. Abdallahi language, Spanish having outstripped the There were abuses, particularly against polit - was Saharawi; she was Moroccan. Mustafa had French used in the rest of the Maghreb. In addi - ical dissenters who disagreed with the Polisario waited for her to leave before speaking freely. tion to the Liberated Zone, which runs along leadership,butfewoutsidevisitorstothecamps “Thereareinformerseverywhere,guards,shop - the eastern flank of Western Sahara, the Polis - left unimpressed. keepers . . .” he said. ario administers four large refugee camps scat - By the time Beisat finished school the conflict Mustafa had written a novel, which, if pub - tered over 100 square miles in Algeria. The was nearly over. He studied in Algiers before lished, would be the first English-language camps are named after cities in the occupied returning to the camps to work in the informa - novel written by a Saharawi, he said. I read the territories – Laayoune, Smara, Dakhla and tion ministry, the president’s office and then first few pages on his laptop; it was good, but it Awserd. We were heading for a fifth, much the referendum committee. That the vote has will never see print here. “Living in the occu - smaller, camp named Fevrero 27, after the day never happened is the fault not only of Morocco, pied territories, when you are deprived of us - the SADR was founded by the Polisario. Beisat said, but also the western powers. The ing the language that you want to give an opin - and 80 countries, most of them ion – not even a terrorist opinion – and to think in the developing world, have recognised the ADVERT freely,to writefreely,youfeel like youare living “This is a simple problem SADR, though 25 of them have since frozen or TO COME in internal exile,” he said. A few nights later we that could be sorted out severed relations under pressure from . sat watching television: al-Jazeera was report - By contrast, no country has formally accepted ing on the conflict in Palestine. “At least Israel with five hours of voting” Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. allows Palestinians to publish their own books Yet, despite the clear injustice and illegality of in Israel,” Mustafa said. “It is better to be a My host family, a refugee couple with three the occupation, Washington has refused to put Palestinian in Israel than a Saharawi here.” young children, lived in a small house on a pressure on Rabat to allow self-determination, hillock. In the evenings I’d sit outside as the because Morocco is an important ally in Islamic o one side of a quadrangle lined dropping sun turned into a gold coin that gave North Africa. France, which has large economic with captured Moroccan tanks, ar - the western sky an aura of yellow, then orange, interests in Morocco, has proved even more moured personnel carriers and and finally, once it had slipped below the hori - one-sided, and the Spanish government fails to cannon stood a set of heavy metal zon, ivory white. The only sound was that of speak out for a people it betrayed. doors. Pulling them open, the cu - goats bleating in their pens. “This problem in Western Sahara is not a rator of the Polisario military mu - One night Lakhal and I headed out in the Democratic Republic of Congo problem, with sTeum in south-western Algeria flipped a light darkness to the house of Mohammed Yeslem tribes and minerals,” Beisat said. “It is not a switch to reveal a scale model of Western Sa - Beisat, the SADR’s minister of African affairs. Palestinian problem of religion. It is a simple, hara, with a string of red lights tracing the path Just over 40, he is one of the youngest of the top crystal-clear decolonisation problem that of the wall. Malainin Lakhal, the secretary gen - Polisario officials. Over a dinner of camel meat could be sorted out with five hours of voting. eral of the Saharawi Journalists’ and Writers’ and couscous, Beisat told the story of how, at This feeling of humiliation creates a beast in - Unionwhowasmyguideinthecamps,pointed the age of seven, he came to the camps from side you.” to the southern section of the wall, bordering Western Sahara. He and his brother had spent Mauritania. This was the least well-defended their holiday in the desert with relatives while ne morning Lakhal and I drove section and it was there that he had crossed their parents stayed in Laayoune. Amid the east to Smara camp, where old from the occupied territories in early 2000. panic when Moroccan troops moved in, the artillery shells painted red and “It was a very difficult decision,” he told me. young boys were swept up in the exodus to Al - white served as traffic cones at the “I had always been against people leaving geria. They never saw their parents again. “It entrance. The refugees’ tents have the occupied territories to join the Polisario. was a huge trauma. You are no longer the same been long been replaced by mud- I would say: ‘They don’t need you. They have person after that,” he said. Obrick houses with roofs of corrugated iron held fighters. We need you here.’” Even for a people used to living in the desert, down with rocks, and today the camps resem - He had been an independence activist since the area around Tindouf is harsh; there are ble desert towns rather than refugee settle - the early Nineties, working alongside Amina - fierce sandstorms and little vegetation. Sum - ments. The more than 100,000 camp residents tou Haidar at times, and had already been jailed mertime temperatures are as high as 50°C and are still reliant on food aid, but there is now a several times. Now the police were on his trail, winter nights are harsh and cold. Food and wa - small cash economy. Mobile phones and inter - forcing him to sleep in a different house every ter have to be trucked in by the Algerian gov - net links allow people to communicate with night. Besides his guilt at abandoning the cause ernment, whose support has allowed Morocco relatives in Western Sahara whom some have within the occupied territories, there were per - to claim to this day that the Polisario exists not seen for more than three decades – because sonal relationships to consider. He had a steady merely as a proxy for Algiers. of the wall. girlfriend, and his father was getting old; Lakhal The Saharawi camps were clean and organ - For young children, the camps are not bad knew that if he left he might never see him ised. The Polisario Front had adopted a socialist places to grow up, compared to other refugee t

32 | NEW STATESMAN | 13 SEPTEMBER 2010 REPORTER AT LARGE sites. Schooling, which is free and compul - mess was a poster of abuses in the occupied ter - for culture. She led us to a long dining room t sory, remains at a good standard, and thousands ritories, including a 2005 picture of Aminatou with pale blue walls, blue couches and a table of children are hosted abroad each summer by Haidar with her face bloodied. covered by a blue plastic tablecloth decorated Spanish families. The challenge comes after As Lakhal prepared tea, he spoke about the with flowers. school. Though males are still required to do shortcomings of the Polisario’s attempt to per - Two Spanish women, old friends of the basic military training “as freedom fighters, suade the international community to take its Polisario, soon joined us, along with the Polis - not soldiers”, most are no longer retained in side. “The mistake is ours. Why is our repre - ario representative in Galicia. the army. But given that government jobs are sentation in the UK just one or two people? We Abdelaziz strode in a little while later, bare - scarce and low-paid, most young people must have one person in Australia; it’s a continent, foot, a solidly built man in a flowing blue robe. find other ways of earning a living and passing not a country. Two people in New York and the He introduced himself to each of us boister - the time. Since the war ended in 1991, many UN and one in Washington. No one in China ously. One of the Spanish women was called thousands of Saharawi refugees have moved to and one in Russia. But with us, you are talking America. “So, America, do you speak Eng - Mauritania, northern Algeria or Spain – a pro- mostly about nomads. We have centuries with lish?” he asked. cess that the Polisario does not encourage but is our own system, an oral culture. The power of “No.” unable to prevent. One of Lakhal’s colleagues, the world is still not understood here.” He laughed loudly, and so did she. I asked a twentysomething journalist who worked for He told me a story about travelling to South about the possibility of a new war. The last the official Polisario magazine, told me that Africa in 2006 to act as in interpreter for Polisario Congress, in December 2007, had his mother, sister and brother all now lived in Haidar, who had just been granted a Moroccan covered that topic, the president said. The deci - Spain. The brother travelled there on an official passport, allowing her to travel abroad for the sion to resume war was made; it is only the Polisario work trip and never returned. first time. South Africa recognises the Saha- timing that needs to be decided. “Of course we “The young people will soon start to say that rawi Arab Democratic Republic, and so Lakhal don’t want war.” the Polisario can go to hell if nothing happens,” could use his SADR passport. The journey re - Yet Abdelaziz was not despondent. “Mo - Lakhal told me. “The leaders know what war is. quired him to pass through Frankfurt, where rocco is not sitting comfortably,” he said. “It is Normallyitshouldbringasolution.Butwehave police detained him. “They looked at my pass - still living the same military situation as in had no solution for almost 20 years. The society port and said: ‘This is not a country.’ They took 1991. With this long wall, all these soldiers are isboiling.Theboysbornin1976arenowfathers. paid double salaries. That’s very expensive for a They don’t want to stay here. Can they suffo - country like Morocco.” cate their anger?” The decision to resume He said he saw hope in Barack Obama and war is made; only the a new US foreign policy, and in the economic fterLakhalcrossedthewallhedid downturn, too, which could only make things 14 months’ military training in timing needs to be decided more difficult for Morocco. “Maybe it will take the Liberated Zone near a town a long time, but in the end the Saharawi people namedTifariti.AsIwantedtosee me to the police station. I asked if they had a will prevail, as [the people did] in South Africa, the wall, he agreed to take me world map, which they did, so I showed them Namibia and East Timor.” there. We left early in the morn - Western Sahara on the map. But they said: Food was being brought out; salad, camel, iAng and soon we were driving across flat desert “What is this SADR on the passport?’ So I chips, chicken, bread, a kind of desert mush - gravel.Afterabout30miles,webreachedanun - asked them to go on to the African Union web - room, fruit. Abdelaziz kept putting more food seen frontier, leaving Algeria for the Polisario- site so they could see we are a recognised coun - on his guests’ plates. “Eat, America,” he im - controlled section of Western Sahara. try. They were so surprised.” plored the Spanish woman. Soon we saw the first nomads’ tents. During I asked Lakhal about his wife, Mariam, who After dinner I walked back to my host fam - the winter months, hundreds of refugees leave works as a civil servant in Laayoune, and whom ily’s house. I thought about Abdelaziz’s cheer - the camps for the open desert, taking herds of he married in Mauritania in 2007. He said he fulness and measured words. The refugees camels and goats with them. Around mid- missed her and hoped he would see her again in have been robbed of their independence for morning, at a place the Polisario calls the a few months, perhaps in Algiers. 19 years since the 1991 ceasefire, but, because “Rincón”, where the wall makes a 90-degree The following afternoon we drove to a Polis - there is no fighting, the outside world seems turn west, I saw it for the first time – and Lakhal ario military post, which consisted of a few not to care. There seemed to be no glimmer of a cursed. Rubbish strewn by soldiers piled up simple barrack huts and a neat parade ground. satisfactory resolution at the time of my visit, against the barbed wire in front of us. The wall A steady drip of soldiers filed into the reception and there has been none since. Yet many people was less imposing than I’d imagined – quite lit - room, wearing new uniforms and boots. Fi - in the Polisario camps believed that, in their erally a barrier of sand – but the landmines and nally the commander arrived. Trained in Cuba, president’swords,intheendtheSaharawipeo - the sheer number of Moroccan troops ensured Habuha Braica was the Polisario’s top artillery ple will prevail, as happened in South Africa, that it was perfectly effective. man, Lakhal said. Braica took us outside to view Namibia and East Timor. We parked a short distance away. Our driver, the four howitzer cannon that stood in a row Perhaps the refugees’ faith had something a thin, mischievous man nicknamed “El Ma - next to two flatbed trucks used to move them to do with the paradox of the wall. They live in cho”, whose job during the war was operating around. There had been no fighting for more exile but at least they have a kind of freedom. a Katyusha rocket launcher, gathered sticks and than 17 years, yet Braica said that his men re - On the other side of the wall, in Western Sa - made a fire. Lakhal cooked brunch: camel heart, mained on constant alert. hara, their relatives remain prisoners in their kidney, liver and hump – a small, fatty piece of own homeland. Today, Aminatou Haidar, who meat. It was late afternoon when we reached n my last night in the camps, waseventuallyallowedbackhomeafter32days Tifariti, a tiny town with a few administrative Lakhal and I walked to the modest on hunger strike in Lanzarote, is still under offices and some bombed-out buildings. The residence of Mohammed Abdel- constant surveillance in Laayoune. And Brahim landscape had changed; there were now craggy aziz, secretary general of the Dahane and Ali Salem Tamek have been in jail hills sprinkled with large boulders. At the top Polisario and president of the for many months. l of one of the hills was the army command post, SADR since 1976. We knocked Xan Rice is a contributing writer for the New painted rust red; nearby was the wreckage of Oon the gate, which was opened by Abdelaziz’s Statesman. Read more by him at: a downed Moroccan fighter jet. In the army wife, Khadija Hamdi, who is also the minister newstatesman.com/writers/xan_rice

34 | NEW STATESMAN | 13 SEPTEMBER 2010