REPORTER AT LARGE Betrayed by Spain and oppressed by Morocco, the Saharawi people of Western Sahara 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. Algeria 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 Polisario Front, 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 Laayoune. 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 Spanish Sahara 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, Ali Salem 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 Agadir – and close to 400,000 across Western Sahara. Amnesty International, 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 Aminatou Haidar’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 - Owater from the Canary Islands. 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.