Children of the Clouds

THE INTERNATIONAL community and media are constantly moving their attention from one refugee crisis to the next, but they have ignored the Saharawis who, more than 30 years after Morocco’s illegal occupation of their country, have been living in exile in a forgotten corner of the desert in south west Algeria, in one of the harshest environments on earth.

The Saharawis are known as the Children of the Clouds because as nomadic pastoralists they travelled long distances, with camels and goats, in search of water and pastures. The Saharawis are descendants of the Maqils who migrated from Yemen in the thirteenth century and the Sanhaja who were living in Western Sahara at the time. The Maqil also brought with them the Hassaniya Arabic dialect spoken by the Saharawis.

Spanish Sahara

Western Sahara came under Spanish rule in 1884. In 1965 the United Nations requested Spain to decolonise the territory and to organise a referendum on self-determination. The demand was repeated each year from 1967 to 1973, and the Polisario Front was formed with the purpose of obtaining independence from Spain. In 1975 Spain withdrew from the Western Sahara following a secret agreement with Morocco and Mauritania handing the territory over to them. Soon after, on November 6, 1975, the king of Morocco, Hassan II, ordered 350,000 civilians to invade Western Sahara, and when Morocco attacked the Saharawis with bombs, thousands of people were forced into exile in Algeria. The Polisario Front continued to fight for independence from Mauritania and Morocco, unilaterally renaming the country the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. In 1979 Mauritania withdrew from the territory and Morocco assumed full control. About 20 percent of Western Sahara was liberated by the Polisario Front during the war with Morocco. A 2,700 kilometre-long defensive wall was built and mines placed in the middle of the desert by the Moroccans to stop the attacks of the Polisario Front.

In 1991 Morocco and the Polisario Front accepted the United Nations mediated ceasefire and the promise of a referendum which has still to take place. Since then, a United Nations mission, MINURSO, with 240 observe rs has been based in the occupied territories. In May 2003 a new United Nations plan proposed by James Baker, a former US Secretary of State, was accepted by the Security Council and the Polisario Front, but Morocco has refused to accept this plan. Western Sahara has rich phosphate deposits and the fishing waters on the Atlantic coast are some of the most abundant in the world. In July 2005 the European Union signed a fishing agreement with Morocco allowing it to issue fishing licenses for four years to 119 European fishing vessels, mainly Spanish, in waters off the coast of Western Sahara, which it does not legally hold.

The Journey begins

In January of this year I decided to visit the refugee camps arriving at Tindouf military airport in southwest Algeria in the early hours of the morning. From there it was a cold 30 km drive to Rabouni, the administrative centre of the refugee camps and of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) government in exile.

On the first morning, at a short distance from the hostel in Rabouni, I met Moktazar Zalama tending his goats near a small oasis of muddy water. Moktazar is hoping to be reunited one day with his family in Western Sahara, “Here I am, watching the day go by, looking after the goats, waiting to return to my land”.

Prospects for work are limited, and the youth are particularly affected by the lack of opportunities. There are primary schools in each camp and the literacy rate among Saharawis is 95 percent, the highest in Africa. There are also two secondary boarding schools. Some students go on to study at universities in Algeria, Cuba, Italy and Spain, training as doctors, engineers and teachers, many of whom return to live in the camps.

The main camps

Over 200,000 people, officially recognised as refugees by the UNHCR, live in four main camps (wilayas), each named after a city in the Moroccan occupied Western Sahara: Al Aaiun, Ausserd, Smara and Dakhla. Dakhla is the smallest and furthest camp, an eight hour drive across the Hamada, a landscape of rocks and sand dunes, a dangerous journey to undertake without a knowledge of the environment; the wind is so powerful that all the paths in the sand leading to the camps simply disappear overnight.

During the long journey to Dakhla our guide and driver, Tawalo, told me how, when he was 18, he and two friends decided to join the war of liberation and made a pact, “The three of us promised one another that if one of us died the others would take care of their families. My two friends died and left children and families, and it is my duty to provide for them.”

In a haima (traditional tent of the desert) in Dakhla, I met Mariam holding a baby in her arms, her two other children were playing nearby. She studied nursing in Cuba and was now working in the communal hospital, “My family arrived in exile in 1977, and my grandparents died soon after, badly affected by the harsh conditions of life in the desert. I worry about my children becoming ill. The hospitals are equipped to deal with accidents and emergencies, but a more serious illness means on a long journey over hostile terrain either to the nearest city, Tindouf, or even as far as Algiers.”

Fatima

One image which remains in my mind is of a mother and her daughter, Fatima, walking in the sand under the sun. Fatima has an intellectual disability, but she can leave the security of the haima and walk around on her own as she is protected within the community. Her mother took me to meet her community, the women were laughing and working together dismantling and moving the haima to new clean surroundings nearby.

Women are the spirit of the family and community, handing down traditions through the generations, and at the same time the first to welcome social changes in the Saharawi society. When they were first exiled, the women took charge of the day to day running of the camps and created day care centres, schools and clinics and formed committees for health, education and childcare. They are also the ones who milk the goats and make yoghurt for the family; the camels are the men’s responsibility.

February 27 camp is surrounded by small rocky hills typical of the Hamada. This is the vocational training centre for women and their families, some of whom also live in the camp. After walking for hours under the sun I sat down to rest near a place with a few rocks surrounded by barbed wire, women were passing by with their heads covered. Later I learnt that this desolate place was a children’s cemetery. According to UNICEF, 35 percent of children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition and 13 percent under five are acutely malnourished. The Saharawis’ diet doesn’t include enough fruit and vegetables, and most women and children suffer from anaemia. They are dependent on humanitarian aid provided by the United Nations, the European Community and the Algerian government for their basic daily needs, but there have been cuts in food aid to the Saharawis by international donors which have resulted in food shortages.

The Wall of Shame

In the evening in Al Aaiun, children were running around screaming with excitement, and women were ululating with joy waiting in a row outside the haima for the caravan of the groom to arrive with presents. A wedding was taking place and the haima was at the centre of the celebrations. Some of the women were carrying a large disused water tank which they rested on the ground and then began ululating and beating it like a giant timbal. Wedding celebrations go on for three days, ending with the community helping the c ouple to raise their own haima.

Five miles from Rabouni is the rehabilitation centre for people wounded during the war and from landmines. Bachari Daf has been lying on a bed for 19 years with a broken spine, his only means of keeping in touch with the outside world is a television set which only works when electricity is available. He sees his family two or three times a year, and although he is saddened by the lack of communication with his family, at the centre he is at least protected from the extremes of temperature of a haima.

After visiting the centre I went to see the wall – longer than the Great Wall of China – which divides the country and seals in the territory that Morocco controls, nearly two-thirds of Western Sahara. From the distance it is no more than a pile of rocks and sand. It is impossible to get any closer due to the millions of landmines on the ground waiting to explode. Thousands of people have lost their feet and hands, thousands have died. The wall crosses the whole of Western Sahara, and 120,000 Moroccan soldiers guard it. I met Abdullah who was cutting dry branches for firewood and tending his herd of goats. He had lost his leg and left arm in a bombing by the Moroccan airforce. He told us, “Please tell the world how sad it is to live in the desert as a refugee far away from your homeland.”

The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic is currently recognised by several nations, mostly African and other third world governments. No European country has recognised it, including Spain, which had the moral duty to protect its independence.