Le Monde Diplomatique: Permanent Resistance in Western Sahara
Morocco won control of half of the former Spanish Sahara 33 years ago, and later annexed the rest. Several generations of Saharawis have continued a struggle to be independent, and free of the Moroccan colonial powers. It has cost them everything, but they are not prepared to give up or give in.
Hassan was walking through town one afternoon, killing time, when he bumped into a friend near the football stadium, who said "I've got some spray paint." They agreed to meet later that night, by the bakery.
They met at 12, and walked a short way into a residential quarter. At one end of a long, narrow street, they started spraying in black and red paint. "Down with colonial occupation" and "Viva Polisario", they wrote, in letters 70cm high. They worked quickly but carefully; they wanted their work to be legible, not artistic. They covered 100 metres of the street with slogans, and by ten past twelve they had finished. On a high, they celebrated with a coffee in the nearby Café Alaska.
That was in May 2007. In October Hassan found himself in a cell in the police station, naked, watching another man being raped with a bottle, by police. He was told that if he didn't confess, the same would be done to him. He confessed to a crime he says he knew nothing about, the torching of a police car. Later, when he was presented to the chief of police, he refused to repeat his confession, and was taken back to the cells. This time, he was given the faroj or "roast chicken" (a form of torture well-known in the region, he says). He was put in a foetal position with his feet bound and his arms bound around his legs. Then a pole was pushed through behind his knees, and lifted so that he swung from it, upside down, like a chicken on a spit. For three days he was tortured, beaten and insulted, though his interrogators took care not to scar him. He was shown photos of the graffiti and made to write out the same slogans on paper, so that his writing could be compared.
Brought to trial, he entered the courtroom making the victory sign and shouting "No place for colonial justice!" He threatened to go on hunger strike. The judge replied: "You can suffocate yourself if you want; it won't do you any good." He was found guilty on the charge of torching the police car and sentenced to 10 months, which he completed in August.
"I'm sure, after your departure, I'll be arrested again," he says, and smiles. There is a twinkle in his eye.
'I want to struggle from here'
Hassan Eddah, 22, is a Saharawi, from the country once known as Spanish Sahara, now known as Western Sahara to those who recognise it; to the rest, it is the southern province of Morocco. It is a vast stretch of desert, with a few towns, a rich seam of phosphate, some of the richest fishing waters in the world and, possibly, off-shore oil. The Saharawis are the native nomadic tribes of Arab and Berber origin; though they are nomadsno longer, for they have nowhere to go.
There are perhaps 400,000 (no one has properly counted). Some live in Laayoune, the small, squat, modern city that is the Western Saharan capital, and a few other towns in Moroccan-controlled territory. Many, though, are stuck in refugee camps across the border in Algeria, where the leadership of the Saharawi liberation movement, Polisario, is based. Hassan has four older brothers in the camps; the youngest left to join Polisario in 1995, and Hassan has not seen any of them since. I ask if he will join them. "I want to struggle from here," he says. "I don't want to leave this land to the colonists."
His struggle is a simple one. He is not a revolutionary; his weapons are spray paint and the Polisario flag. "I'm just a simple militant," he says. "I call for self-determination. "
What are his personal hopes for the future? As a young man, what are his ambitions? "The only thing I see is our flag on this land."
Al-Aqsa and phosphates
This land is Africa's last colony. Just south of Morocco, on Africa's north west coast, it was a colony of Spain until 1975, when domestic difficulties and international pressure forced Spain to withdraw. Independence seemed likely for the Saharawis, supported by a decision of the United Nations International Court of Justice, which ruled they had the right to self-determination.
Instead, Morocco invaded – an unprecedented invasion. Morocco's King Hassan II called on his people to mobilise, and 350,000 civilians marched south to claim the Sahara as theirs. There are photos of this march all along the corridors of our hotel in Laayoune: glorious images of a massive popular movement; a vast parade of poor rural people, swathed in desert robes, carrying the red flag of Morocco, marching, camping, riding in packed trucks. This was the Green March, so called because it was carried out in the name of Islam (though the Saharawis, too, are Muslim). Its significance is captured in a popular painting in the lobby of our hotel. At the centre is the king: commanding and handsome in a European suit, he points towards the mass of marchers, bearing red flags. In one corner, an icon of the al-Aqsa Mosque symbolises Islam; and in the opposite is an image of the phosphate factory.
The Green March has become the defining expression of Moroccan sovereignty. It was mostly a public relations exercise. The marchers barely entered Western Sahara, came nowhere near any of the towns, camped for three days, and went home. They walked into empty desert, and returned. Yet Spain bowed to Moroccan pressure, and signed an agreement with Morocco and with Mauritania (the country to the south), dividing Western Sahara between them. Both countries sent their armies in. Perhaps 100,000 Saharawis fled east, into Algeria, and their liberation movement, the Polisario Front, declared a government in exile.
Mauritania eventually withdrew, but Morocco cemented its control over the Sahara by building a wall, a 1,600km long berm of sand, securing the territory against Polisario incursions; 100,000 Moroccan soldiers are stationed along the berm today.
The Saharawis that remained in the Moroccan-controlled territory were herded off the land, into the towns. There was severe political repression, and hundreds disappeared, arrested and detained in secret prisons. In the most extreme cases, people say, the Moroccan army threw people from helicopters or buried them alive, as was done at that time by state security services in Latin America. The families of the disappeared were told nothing about where and how they were.
'They treated us like animals'
Aminatou Haidar was 20 when she was arrested, in 1987. She had been involved in planning a demonstration to call for self-determination and human rights. At half past three in the morning, the police took her from her parents' home. She was interrogated and tortured for three weeks, she says. She was beaten, bound, placed in stress positions and given electric shocks. When she lost consciousness, they woke her with cold water. Then, she was transferred to another prison, where she spent the next three and a half years in a cell three metres square, with nine other women. They were blindfolded constantly and not allowed to talk. "We were totally isolated from the outside world. Our families assumed we were dead. There wasno legal process at all. They treated us like animals, in cages." But the women gave her strength. Some of them had children, and their fortitude impressed her. She was young, and she had expected to be arrested. "My uncle and my cousin had been disappeared. So I was psychologically prepared. But the second time was harder."
A ceasefire between Morocco and Polisario in 1991 led to the release of disappeared, and Aminatou Haidar returned to her family and her studies. She also returned to her activism, becoming a leading member of the Collective of Saharawi Human Rights Defenders (Codesa). In 2005 she was arrested again. This time, she was put through what she says was a sham legal process, charged with forming a criminal gang, convicted and imprisoned. "I had children by then. I was always worrying about them: are they eating, are they sleeping, are they well? Even though I spent just seven months detained, and despite the fact that I had visits from my family, it was harder."
Conditions were so bad that she and her fellow political prisoners went on hunger strike, demanding better treatment. Some of her colleagues were not allowed family visits, and Aminatou Haidar decided to forsake her own family visits in sympathy. "My children pleaded with me to stop. But we had taken a collective decision, and I couldn't." The strike lasted 51 days. They won some of their demands, and Aminatou Haidar was released after seven months.
She tells me this story in the early hours, in the Laayoune house of a colleague in Codesa. There is no secrecy about the meeting, everybody knows they are being followed. But because it is Ramadan, the Muslim fast, people prefer to meet late and talk into the night. As we talk, a colleague laboriously prepares a very sweet green tea, which simmers on a charcoal burner sitting on the carpet, and is then poured into small glasses, emptied back into the pot and poured again, over and over until it acquires a small froth. "We are orthodox," he jokes. "You have to respect the rules." Till 3 am, Aminatou Haidar and her colleagues tell us their stories, and of their concerns for human rights in the region. Though Saharawi self-determination is their goal, they talk much of organising civil society in Western Sahara, and of alliances with human rights organisations in Morocco, to push for democracy and greater freedom of expression and organisation. And then they go home to eat with their families, before the fast begins at sunrise.
The next morning, Aminatou Haidar takes us for a drive. The white Peugeot 205 that always follows us is behind, as usual, but when she stops to show us the prison wher e she was held upon her arrest in 2005 (now disused), we acquire a second escort, a police car. Two men squat on a corner across the street, watching. Haidar points them out, smiling. She walks down the street for a photograph, and a third escort arrives: a police van appears on a parallel road and, very slowly, turns on to our road and crawls past us.
If there has been one beneficial consequence of her imprisonment, it is that she has become a figurehead for the Western Saharan human rights movement. In November she will fly to Washington to receive the prestigious Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award. And she, along with other human rights defenders here, is supported by Front Line, the Irish-based charity that works to protect such defenders internationally. This status gives her a certain level of protection, and a confidence that the authorities will be careful not to overstep the mark. Even so she is routinely harassed. When she drove with her family to the Moroccan seaside resort of Agadir for holidays last summer, they were stopped at checkpoints 13 times.
Story time
We sit on cushions on the carpeted floor of a living room, and an elderly woman describes being abducted, when she was 24, leaving her five-month old daughter behind. Her daughter died. The woman was imprisoned for – was it 16 years? A young man of 18 shows the swelling on his thigh where, he says, he was beaten by the police yesterday, for being a Saharawi nationalist. We leave our hotel, and the white Peugeot 205 is parked further up the road. Someone describes harassment and beatings and torture. In the kitchen the women prepare the meal to break the fast. We eat dates and drink fresh orange juice, and laugh about something inconsequential. We eat soup and unleavened bread, and swap mobile phone photos of our children. A young man plays some Saharawi music on his mobile phone, a tinny, repetitive chant: he could be arrested and beaten if a policeman heard it on the street. Another young man describes the "roast chicken". A woman describes sharing a cell with eight others for five years, without exercise or washing facilities. The only time they could talk was when the guard on their cell door took a break because the smell from the cell was so nauseating. They tell us these stories, carefully and politely, and then invite us to eat with them. We sit cross-legged on the floor, eat with our hands, or go for cigarette breaks on the roof, and the conversation turns to laughter.
'This is our land'
We drive east through the desert. There are two checkpoints on the road out of Laayoune. Polite, but slow; we are forced to wait at the side of the road. At one, the officer knows our translator's name, even though they have never met. We drive for two hours across flat, dusty, grey-brown scrub. A water truck sucks rainwater from a large puddle, to sell it in the town. Some goats stretch to nibble at bushes and acacia trees. Camels loll across the road. More checkpoints, more questions. The entrance to Smara, a tiny town half way to the Moroccan berm, home to a UN camp ("no pain, no gain" says a sign in the compound); a small, squalid shanty town; a dilapidated main street with an internet café and tired shops; and a straggling suburb of half-built houses. (The fashion here is to build one storey at a time, and move into the completed section while saving to build higher.)
There is a meeting of the Saharawi Committee for Human Rights, in Smara. A long introduction. A detailed story of a disappearance. Photos of young men beaten last week, and the men showing what remains of their scars and bruises. An elaborate lunch, prepared for us (it is daytime, so they will not break fast). I ask Lakhtour Nafaa, 18, who has told me how he was arrested, beaten and threatened with a bottle rape, if he will see independence in his lifetime.
"Only God knows," he says. Would he like to join Polisario? "No. I will stay here till independence. " Why? "Because this is our land."
One evening, the photographer thinks that his laptop has been opened while we were out during the day. We assume our rooms are being searched. Our security companions are present whenever we step outside the hotel. On our final morning, one of the team notices some fresh biro'ed graffiti on his bag. "Accomplish unfortunately, " it says, an awkward translation from the French: accompli, malheureusement. In the lobby, we speculate on its meaning: a warning, a sign of frustration, a wry acknowledgement? Hassan II looks on from the painting. His son, King Mohamed VI, looks down from a framed portrait. Outside, our security tail is waiting. Whose land is it? What has been accomplished? The Saharawi people wait for answers.
Africa's last colonySince 1975, three quarters of the Western Sahara territory has been illegally occupied by Morocco. The original population lives divided between those suffering human rights abuses under the Moroccan occupation and those living in exile in Algerian refugee camps. For more than 40 years, the Saharawi await the fulfilment of their legitimate right to self-determination.
Since 1975, three quarters of the Western Sahara territory has been illegally occupied by Morocco. The original population lives divided between those suffering human rights abuses under the Moroccan occupation and those living in exile in Algerian refugee camps. For more than 40 years, the Saharawi await the fulfilment of their legitimate right to self-determination.
