A Nation Lost In The Desert

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U.N. coordinator Khadad, whose five children were born in the camps, says if Annan's suggested new referendum date of December 1999 is not met, "I'll have to look for a new job." Behind his remark is the fact that some Saharawis wonder if they might have been better off rejecting a cease-fire. No one knows how many losses both sides suffered in the long years of war--reports use that terrible word "significant." One Saharawi elder, asked about his own family, says, "Ten dead."

The Saharawis hold about 1,900 Moroccan prisoners at camps in their borrowed Algerian space. They are odd prisons; the jailers don't carry keys or guns, the inmates could easily escape--but for the fact that they would die in the desert. Ali Najab, an American-trained pilot in the Moroccan Air Force, has been stuck in one of these camps for 20 years. One of 14 pilots among 450 Moroccans in the prison, Captain Najab says he was caught by the Polisario after his F5 fighter went down over Western Sahara. Now 58 and suffering from diabetes, Najab says of his jailers, "There is more that unites than separates us, including religion and language and history." Of his hopes of ever being freed and the U.N.'s role he says, "There seems to be more process than peace." He talks of the adult daughter he has not seen since she was three, gives the visitor a note to post to her.

The Saharawis say they also like the Moroccans--if not their ruler--underscoring the waste that renewed fighting would bring. While they are outnumbered and outgunned, the Saharawis' top soldier--they don't wear insignias of rank--Brahim Bedallah says he can muster a volunteer army of about 20,000 fighters. "And we know the terrain. Today the Moroccans have about 100,000 soldiers in Western Sahara because they are paid to be there, in fact paid double. It costs Morocco about $2 million a day."

Apart from the six defensive desert walls the Moroccans began building in 1980, and which now extend some 2,000 km, Western Sahara is infested with mines, perhaps as many as 5 million. Saharawi men learn to disarm them using only their hands. Brahim Mokhtar, the Polisario's London representative, explains how "You sit and slide your fingers through the sand, find a mine, feel for trick wires, very carefully unscrew the detonator. I only had to do 10." Not so Daha Bulaje, who now works with a team sent by Norway to teach the refugees the dangers of mines for the time when they return. Bulaje, who removed "many thousands," is missing most of one hand from an explosion.

Much of the Polisario's armory came from guerrillas slipping through de-mined breaches in the Moroccan defenses and capturing everything from small arms to tanks and armored personnel carriers. In a "museum" near the camps they display weapons made in Britain, the U.S., France, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Belgium and Spain. The desert doesn't allow evidence to rust.

Captured weapons aside, it's hard to trace the Polisario's military backing. Algeria, as well as being host, is one provider. The Saharawis admit that Libya was briefly a supplier at the start of the war, but not since, and say they rejected offers from North Korea and former communist countries of Europe. Mustafa Mohamed-Ali, the wali, or governor, of one of the refugee areas, says, "We're probably the only liberation movement never to have received a bullet from the Soviet Union." But the Polisario did once have a "politburo," and did send thousands of its young to study in Cuba. Today, Cuban and Cuban-trained Saharawi doctors run the camp hospitals. The wali says the Saharawis have no political debts, and adds, "The best way to turn someone off communism is to send them to live in a communist country."

The Saharawis today have a 101-member parliament-in-exile, 10 coming from the tribal elders, the rest elected. They have ministries like any other government. Their President is Mohamed Abdelaziz, who has been secretary-general of the Polisario since it began in 1976. Like wali Mohamed-Ali, he also lives in a tent, also chain-smokes Marlboros, also has respect among the Saharawis for his exploits in battle. He says that while the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic is recognized by about 70 countries, as diverse as Mexico, India and Nigeria, it has no formal recognition from European Union states, a fact he blames largely on French foreign policy toward North Africa. He says an independent Western Sahara will be "a multi-party, free-market democracy." His U.N. representative Khadad suggests "American-style green cards" to allow Moroccans to go on living and working there.

Spain is mute about its former colony, in part because it still holds two enclaves on Morocco's north coast, along with a contract to fish Moroccan waters. The government silence is not shared by most Spaniards, who send Land Rovers, buses, trucks, medicines and food to the refugees. This summer, a record 7,000 Saharawi children will vacation with Spanish families.

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