#sahrawis

I don't know how far my voice will reach, but reminder that Morocco is a colonial force in 2024 and that the Western Sahara is Africa's last colony. The Sahrawis have endured great pains and still they fight for their freedom, even when Morocco purchases weapons (including high end military drones) from none other than Israel the Sahrawi people keep fighting and surviving in occupied WS, the Algerian refugee camps they've been seeking shelter in for almost half a century and anywhere else in the diaspora.

Please, keep an eye out for the Palestinian people's siblings-in-struggle, the Sahrawis. Learn about them and their history and their present and the Polisario Front (can recommend books in Spanish like Breve Historia del Sáhara Occidental though there must be others in English as well + female Sahrawi activists like Sultana Khaya or Aminatou Haidar)

#LeMonde: “The defense of the Sahrawis denounces a "political trial" “

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Twenty-five activists have been condemned for the "murder" of eleven members of the Moroccan security forces in November 2010.

                                     <img width="768" data-lazyload="false" src="http://s2.lemde.fr/image/2017/07/21/768x0/5163628_6_f7b5_le-13-mars-2017-devant-la-cour-de-sale-pres_e609d7f55d0940f46ee27f7f33949c30.jpg" alt=" On March 13, 2017, in the court of…

Reuters, Nov. 3, 2016

TIFARITI, Western Sahara--At a rocky outpost in Western Sahara, a new generation of soldiers who have never known war are mobilizing as tensions resurface in one of Africa’s oldest disputes after a quarter century of uneasy peace.

Young Sahrawi troops man new desert posts for the Polisario Front, which for more than 40 years has sought independence for the vast desert region--first in a guerrilla war against Morocco and then politically since a ceasefire deal in 1991.

Now a standoff with Morocco, which controls the majority of Western Sahara, is renewing pressure for a diplomatic solution to ensure footsoldiers like Sidi Ahmed Brahim don’t return to fighting as the last generation of commanders once did.

Aged 25, Brahim is as old as the ceasefire and his patience with United Nations efforts to end the decades-long impasse and prevent new desert clashes is wearing thin.

“All my life I’ve been waiting for the U.N. to find a solution,” he said, sitting with a Kalashnikov rifle on his knee where his unit has set up. “Now Morocco is trying to test us.”

The standoff since August has brought Moroccan and Polisario forces within 200 meters (yards) of each other in a narrow strip of land near the Mauritanian border.

With U.N. peacekeepers separating the troops there, this may not escalate into open conflict. But diplomats are struggling to entrench peace in the territory on the western edge of the Sahel, a region which is already scarred by conflicts as governments from Mauritania and Mali to Niger and Chad fight affiliates of al Qaeda, often with western backing.

Rich in phosphate, Western Sahara has been contested since 1975 when Spanish colonial powers left. Morocco claimed the territory and fought the 16-year war with Polisario which established its self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Like his younger comrades, Brahim has never fought but his father was killed in a last battle with Morocco, not far from where he is stationed close to the village of Tifariti.

“The younger generation wants to find a solution, whatever the cost,” said Brahim, whose unit has set up anti-aircraft cannons and parked aging Russian tanks in the desert.

As he spoke, a United Nations observation helicopter made passes overhead, not far from where spotlights from a small U.N. peacekeeping base illuminate the desert at night.

Since the standoff, Polisario has mobilized troops near the Moroccan-built berm, a wall of earth and rocks protected by landmines. Zigzagging for almost 3,000 km (1,800 miles) through Western Sahara, it divides areas controlled by Morocco from those controlled by Polisario.

The latest trouble erupted at the berm’s far southern tip. U.N. troops had to step in after Moroccan gendarmerie crossed the wall into a buffer zone and Polisario responded. Their units remain facing each other at the village of Guerguerat.

For Polisario, Guerguerat is a Moroccan provocation and the worst violation of the ceasefire it signed on the understanding that a U.N.-organized referendum on self-determination for Western Sahara would be held.

That vote has never happened, with neither side agreeing on the terms, including who should vote and whether the question of independence or just autonomy should be on the ballot paper.

Morocco says its operation was merely to clear wreckage and surface a road to Mauritania to help counter smuggling. In Rabat, officials deny any ceasefire violation, seeing only a Polisario attempt to score political points.

For their part, Polisario commanders say they have mobilized troops purely defensively near the berm.

So far, U.N. proposals that both sides withdraw have got nowhere, and frustrations are growing.

Rabat is lobbying to rejoin the African Union, hoping to win support from the bloc for a plan put forward by King Mohammed which offers the region autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Rabat abandoned the AU three decades ago in protest when it recognized Polisario.

Much of the impasse reflects splits in the U.N. Security Council, which has been unable to force either side to accept proposals. France backs Morocco while the United States is more cautious but calls the king’s plan “credible and realistic”. Outside the five permanent members, Venezuela and Angola are more supportive of Polisario.

Mohamed Hadad, Polisario’s U.N. coordinator, said the ball was with the Council. “The Security Council must consider there is a challenge to peace, they must give attention to this conflict,” he said.

Western diplomats and a U.N. source said Morocco’s move in Guerguerat appeared to be a flexing of muscles to test the new Polisario leadership while it plays for time diplomatically.

“They wanted to demonstrate to us all that they can move beyond the berm, which is a dangerous initiative to take,” the U.N. source said. “In the absence of a negotiations process, we will see more and more of this.”

Many Sahrawis have been displaced during the long conflict and live in refugee camps across the border in southern Algeria; more are in southern provinces of Morocco.

For many in the Algerian camps, where younger Sahrawis have lived all their lives, the Moroccan move at Guerguerat and what they believe was a slow U.N. response has only deepened their impatience and increased pressure for a solution.

The U.N. says around 90,000 refugees--a figure contested by Rabat--live in tents and ramshackle buildings spread across the desert plain near the Algerian town of Tindouf, where residents rely on aid agencies for water, food and other supplies.

Emotions ran high at a recent debate at the Rabouni camp, where two older leaders faced young activists. “The U.N. did nothing. Sixteen years of war got results; 25 years of ceasefire gave us nothing,” said Hama El Mehdi, one of the activists.

As Green March turns 40, Moroccan king pledges more support to W. Saharans

Moroccans wave their national flag in the street of Laayoune, the capital of disputed territories of the Western Sahara, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015

As Moroccans celebrated the 40th anniversary festivities of Morocco’s Green March, a peaceful protest which successfully brought an end to Spanish colonial presence in 1975, a large demonstration also took place outside a U.N. office in the Western…

Habib Mohaed, DW, 7 Oct. 2015

Above all else, Ahmedsalem wants the world to know about the wall. It’s rarely in the news and little discussed outside of Africa. But it’s the longest continuous minefield on the planet, a militarized zone that runs for 2,700 kilometers. More importantly for Ahmedsalem, it’s a wall that divides his people, the Sahrawi.

When 34-year-old Ahmedsalem was growing up in the capital of Western Sahara--Laayoune--he says it felt like he was growing up under military occupation. As a Sahrawi, he was treated differently. He witnessed police brutality. Saw Moroccans let off easy for crimes against Sahrawis. When he protested the wall, he was beaten by police and held in jail.

Now, Ahmedsalem has the rare distinction of having lived on both sides of the wall after he willingly moved to the refugee camps on the border with Algeria. “I just couldn’t stand witnessing more atrocities. And even if I could go back, I wouldn’t. Unless it was with dignity in a free Western Sahara.”

Western Sahara is a divided territory with a complex, war-torn history. Spain ended more than 90 years of colonial rule of Western Sahara in 1975 after decades of a violent Sahrawi independence movement. When the Spanish left, Morocco sent 350,000 settlers and 20,000 troops into the territory, kicking off a war that lasted for 16 years. Sahrawis fought under the flag of the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria and Libya, while Morocco had backing from France and the United States. Tens of thousands died and more than 100,000 were displaced .

As Morocco settled the Atlantic side, they built a wall down the middle of the territory, to keep Sahrawis and the Polisario Front in the desert east. The wall was a series of sand berms fortified with thousands of Moroccan soldiers and millions of landmines, finished four years after a UN-sponsored ceasefire in 1991 .

Still, the question of governance in the territory remains unresolved to this day. Morocco claims the area as a territory and oversees resource extraction on their side of the wall, such as phosphate mining and fishing. The government backed by the Polisario Front--the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)--oversees the Eastern part of Western Sahara. A 2015 UN report said the two parties remain at an impasse.

Ahmedsalem grew up in Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara, with about 200,000 people. He studied to become an engineer assistant at the University of Iban Zuhar, in Agadir, a town in Southern Morocco. And he was later hired to work for a Moroccan metallurgical engineer in the military zone--closed to civilian access--of the wall. He said he was carefully scrutinized by Moroccan soldiers everywhere they went.

“It was shocking to think about why they guard that berm,” Ahmedsalem says, “and what that wall stands against.”

As a student back in 2003, Ahmedsalem protested against Sahrawi dissidents who had been jailed in Morocco. But the more he saw of “the wall of shame” and how Sahrawis were mistreated, the more his political activities grew.

It’s a tense state of affairs for Sahrawis in Morocco and Moroccan held areas of Western Sahara, especially for those seeking a political voice. In August of 2015, after a decade of legal struggles, Moroccan authorities finally allowed a Sahrawi rights group to actually register as an organization. Members of the group, including one man who is serving a life sentence, have been jailed in what Human Rights Watch calls “unfair trials”.

Ahmedsalem has stories of his own that reflect the same realities. As he tells it, he was arrested by police and beaten after taking part in a peaceful demonstration in Marrakesh. One of his fellow demonstrators was thrown from a building by police and his injuries resulted in him being paralyzed. When Ahmedsalem went to visit him in the hospital, he was arrested and held for eight hours.

Ahmedsalem decided he could no longer stay in Morocco or Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara. So he moved to Tindouf, a town that is mainly a massive, semi-permanent refugee camp in Southwest Algeria, near where Morocco and Western Sahara meet.

“I live like a refugee,” he says, “like my people.” According to UNHCR, 165,000 Sahrawis are currently living in the Tindouf camps.

The 34-year old became an Arabic teacher at Almahfoud Alibaiba’s school in the Boujdour refugee camps. Youth shape the majority of the Sahrawi population, particularly in the Camps near Tindouf. But they lack employment opportunities. There has been a sense of frustration amongst the young Sahrawis about the employment situation leading to the consideration of taking back arms.

He sees the solution from another angle and organizes protests as part of a youth group called Cries Against the Wall that peacefully protests every two months. Asked about taking up arms, he says he believes nonviolence is the best solution.

Like his fellow Sahrawi refugees in the camps, Ahmedsalem lives on humanitarian aid from the United Nations Refugee Agency. The alternative would be to move to the Eastern parts of Western Sahara. There, however, Sahrawis can’t get refugee status and receive no humanitarian aid.

Following the end of Spain’s colonial rule, the Western Sahara region was divided into the “Moroccan Southern territories”, occupied by Morocco and the “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic”, regained by the Sahrawi liberation movement, Polisario Front.

In recent years, refugees started reinhabiting those eastern parts of Western Sahara controlled by SADR--Sahrawis call them liberated territories. It’s mostly desert with acacia trees spread throughout its plains and stony hills. Much of the diet comes from camel milk and meat.

Amin Brahim is a 23 year-old who spent ten years in Spain before moving back to this part of Western Sahara in 2011. He joined his parents to take care of their 9 camels and 36 goats. It’s not an easy life.

Amin has busy schedule: On a normal day, the young shepherd travels from Smara--one of the five camps named after the Moroccan-occupied territories of Western Sahara--to Amhairiz. With an old jeep, he crosses hundreds of kilometers, searching for water. The family waits while he finds green spots for his cattle to graze. When returning home, Amin has to bring wood for the fire as well. “It’s an exhausting journey,” he says.

Historically a nomadic culture, Sahrawis on the Eastern side must stay well away from the 15 kilometer mined buffer zone of the wall. There are at least 1,500 survivors of landmine explosions, but the number of people who have died is unknown due to lack of resources, according to the Sahrawi Landmine Victims Association.

“I have dared to go there only once,” Amin says. “It was a nightmare.”

When Ahmedsalem meets his fellow Sahrawi refugees, most have never been to the Western side, have never seen the ocean. 26-year-old Ali Omar works as a taxi driver between six camps linked with a recently paved road. He lives with his parents in the Camps of Smara.

When asked about the Western side of the wall, he says he went near the wall with his parents in 2006.

By Carlotta Gall, NY Times, April 10, 2015

TUNIS--A Spanish judge has ruled that 11 Moroccan former officials should stand trial on charges of genocide in connection with killings and torture in the former Spanish protectorate of Western Sahara from 1976 to 1991.

Judge Pablo Ruz ruled Thursday that there was evidence of crimes that amounted to genocide against the Sahrawi people during the period when the territory was annexed and controlled by Morocco. He specifically called for seven of the former Moroccan military and political officials to be arrested and extradited to Spain.

The decision, in the tradition of previous rulings that cross international boundaries, is rooted in Spain’s universal justice law, which has allowed Spain’s high court to hear cases of human rights violations committed anywhere in the world. Legal reforms introduced in 2013 after protests from China reduced the scope of the law, but Judge Ruz ruled that charges of genocide could still be brought in this case because many of the victims were considered Spanish citizens from the period when Western Sahara was a Spanish protectorate.

Morocco invaded and forcibly annexed Western Sahara in 1976 and fought a long war against a pro-independence movement, the Polisario Front, forcing several hundred thousand Sahrawis to flee into exile.

Since 1991 the United Nations has tried repeatedly to resolve the conflict through a referendum on the territory’s status and through bilateral talks, but the efforts have been unsuccessful. Sahrawi activists have organized a campaign for self-determination around human rights, while Morocco has insisted on its sovereignty over the land.

The Spanish ruling cited evidence of a campaign of bombings, killings, disappearances and torture from the period of the war, saying it amounted to “a generalized and systematic assault against the Sahrawi civil population by the Moroccan military and police.”

Judge Ruz, who is scheduled to step down from his post soon, was ruling on an investigation initiated by a noted judge, Baltasar Garzón, after human rights groups claimed that 500 Sahrawis had disappeared since 1975.