Saharawi Dreams

September 2000 – 23’40

At the same time as the Indonesians invaded East Timor, the Moroccan Army evicted the indigenous people of Western Sahara from their desert homeland. A low-level conflict has been going on ever since. Fighting flared again recently, and unless agreement is reached soon, there is likely to be an all-out war by the end of the year.

In 1991, a United Nations mission was established to set up a referendum on self-determination. But now, almost a decade and $550 million later, the vote is as far away as ever. Mark Davis reports on the failure of international agencies to resolve a comparatively small dispute in one of the most desolate parts of the world.

REPORTER: MARK DAVIS

This is one of the harshest corners of the Sahara Desert. Nothing can live out here, and yet 25 years ago, an entire nation fled here, pursued by the Moroccan Army. Incredibly, they`re still out here, some 100,000 people, and these dunes and remote planes have hidden one of the most remarkable refugee stories in modern history, and one of the greatest failures in the history of te UN.

A lifetime ago, Lalha lived in a city that had water and gardens, farms, houses, business, jobs, life. When the Moroccan Army invaded her small country, she joined the human wave that was chased into this desert. It was a land grab of such blatant proportions that a strong international response was expected soon.

LALHA (translation): We left on foot and thought that we`d just go out of the city fora short time and come back. (Laughs) Everyone was thinking that. People left all their belongings, their houses open and even their clothes behind.

The only international response was to send food to the starving. In what is probably the world`s longest emergency relief program, Lalha has lived on rations for 25 years. Nothing can be grown here and the goats live mostly on the cardboard boxes the rations come in. Summer hasn`t even started and already, it`s 50 degrees.

LALHA: Just make a comparison between here and your own homeland. I don`t believe you would be able to stay here more than half a month under these harsh conditions. So you will be happy to go back home. Adults can deal with these conditions and the heat, but for the children, it`s unbearable. So that`s why we send them abroad to study and have better conditions.

Today, Lalha is preparing to suffer another small casualty of war. These are probably her last months with her twin daughters. The twins are being sent to live with a Spanish family for the summer - not just as a respite from the heat, but a preparation for a long and possibly permanent separation. The girls are both smart, and they`ll soon be sent overseas as part of a sponsored education program. They`ll be away for 12 years.

LALHA: They`ll see the sea, it will be cool and if they are sick, they will get treatment, so I`m pleased about that.

Lalha knows that if the girls come back at all, it will be as virtual strangers - aliens to this life. She never thought this day would come. Every year for the past nine years, she`s been told she`ll soon be taking her family home. It was that hope that has kept her in the camp, and it`s a hope that`s virtually gone.

LALHA: We cooperated in good faith. They came, they told us they were sorry for our situation and that they would change it. That`s why we agreed to the ceasefire. We put all our trust in the UN and the international community, who knew about the plight of the Saharawi people. We had a lot of hope.

In 1975, as Spain finally relinquished its colony of Western Sahara, the Moroccan Army launched a full-scale invasion, forcing the Saharawi people into the desert straddling Western Sahara and the north-west corner of Algeria. It was here they built their tent cities.

Dakhla - one of four camps spread over a few hundred kilometres of desert. All the camps are named after the cities from where the people fled, more like mirages than mirrors of their former selves. The real city of Dakhla is a coastal peninsula surrounded by water, but most of the water seen here arrives on the back of a truck.

This man is a fisherman, but he hasn`t even seen a fish for 25 years. Like all conversations here, he begins with te world`s most complex tea ceremony. Three tiny cups each; the first, he says, is made "bitter like life"; the second "sweet like love"; and the third is made mild in the wish for a gentle death. A ceremony which uses little water, but loads of time - the only commodity that`s in abundance.

Saharawis have not only stuck to their customs, they`ve stuck together to a remarkable degree. Although their years in exile turned into decades, very few of them have scattered around the globe as refugees, because until this year, they`ve always believed they`d be returning home.

LOCAL MAN (translation): Of course we think about how beautiful life used to be - we think about it all the time. No-one can forget their country - that`s why we struggle for it on a daily basis. All of us are prepared to die for it - women, old men, children and myself are prepared to die for the liberation of our country.

The talk of dying for his country is not just idle chat. There`s no question people here are preparing for war, and it`s a path they`ve taken before. Against overwhelming odds, the Saharawis fought a guerilla war in the desert for 16 years. Thousands of them died, but they kept a third of the country and eventually drove the Moroccan Army and Government to a deal.

In 1991, in a UN-brokered ceasefire, the Saharawis agreed to lay down their arms in exchange for a referendum on Western Saharan independence. It was the vote they`d been fighting for since 1975, and the referendum was promised within six months of the ceasefire - just as Lalha was about to give birth to the twins.

LALHA: Yes, the same year - we were jubilant. We thought now that the issue was in the hands of the UN, they will implement the plan. We thought that`s it. Everyone was packing and thinking about going home. We were asking each other which town we would go to.

When the UN peacekeepers moved in to arrange the vote, they came armed with a census taken just before the invasion that listed 74,000 Saharawis as eligible voters - now split between the occupied part of Western Sahara and the desert camps.

In an attempt to swamp the ballot, Morocco wanted another 170,000 people added to the list of Saharawi voters - an impossible number, more likely to be Moroccan than Saharawi, but it was a move which stopped the referendum in 1991, and in `94 and again in `96.

In 1997, all the parties agreed to comprehensively settle the identity question once and for all. An independent investigation would be made, one by one, into the individual background of every Saharawi voter in the camps and the occupied zone. The deal was forged by former US secretary of state James Baker. The massive investigation would take three years, and a deadline for the referendum was given for the year 2000.

Since the ceasefire was signed, US$500 million has been spent on the UN mission for a referendum in Western Sahara. The year 200 has arrived, but the polling booths haven`t .

LALHA: We have been patient and endured this life because we have been waiting for the referendum to happen time after time, but we are not prepared to accept this anymore. We were told to wait for the next year, the next month. We are going to wait for a few months, but if the referendum does not take place, there will be war - that`s it. Life in honour or death. We will go to war - we prefer death.

The political leader of the Dakhla camp is no stranger to war. Mahfoud Ali Beiba was one of the founders of the Saharawis` guerilla army, the Polisario Front. Mahfoud led the desert uprising against the Spanish colonial power in the early `70s, and then faced the long onslaught of the Moroccans. In his life as both a guerilla and a politician, there have been few periods as bleak as this. The ceasefire that he promoted is now broadly viewed by people in the camps as a UN trick to assist Morocco. There`s little he can say in defence of a policy that he`s pursued for nine years.

MAHFOUD ALI BEIBA, DAKHLA REFUGEE CAMP LEADER (translation): It`s true. Yes, we lost a major element of pressure. It was a tactical error, it`s true. We lost the leverage we had. We believed that the international community had given us a guarantee. It turned out they were just words. Just words.

If this year`s deadline for the referendum passes, there`ll be little more he can offer as a political leader.

MAHFOUD ALI BEIBA: Waiting for a referendum that never comes - that`s a serious problem. The Saharawis are getting more and more impatient. They feel tied down and they can`t see any prospect of a solution. As for the previous agreements, they haven`t been honoured. That`s also a reality. I think the next meeting is going to be vital. Either there`s some concrete result or the people will revert to a different kind of action.

For a people whose very existence is under threat, there is no grander occasion than a wedding. In such an isolated community, tightly linked by family and marriage, it`s been a bizarre but not overly difficult task proving their ethnicity to the electoral investigators. In the occupied zone, the investigators have struck out 130,000 Moroccans which the Government tried to pass off as native Saharawis. The electoral roll is now complete - there will be 86,000 voters. But in another world, there`s yet another hitch.

Mahfoud has been called to a meeting in London with the Moroccans and US representative James Baker. A delegation from each of the desert camps accompanies him. The Saharawi delegates have learned to be pessimistic about meetings such as these. But this time, the main obstacle of the past nine years has been overcome. The list of voters has now been independently verified.

At least two days of talks are expected, but in just three hours, this meeting will come to an end. Morocco announces it will lodge 130,000 individual appeals to the UN`s electoral list. In reality, this will kill the referendum or delay it for an eternity, and time is on Morocco`s side.

MAHFOUD ALI BEIBA: We have reaffirmed our co-operation to help overcome the obstacles hampering the organisation of the referendum.

For a soldier, Mahfoud has learned the words of diplomacy well. But today is a bitter blow. After a nine-year journey, he`ll return to the camps with nothing. For many of the people there, the only option will be war.

The military prospects of fighting a country of 27 million don`t appear to daunt the Saharawi Army commander. The major obstacle that lies ahead of him is a physical one. He`s facing not just a dense minefield, but one of the biggest walls ever constructed, heavily fortified since `91, while Morocco was technically preparing for a referendum.

The wall continues the entire length of the country, almost 2,500km long. It keeps the Saharawis in the part of the country the Moroccans regard as useless. On the other side lies the wealth of Western Sahara - the massive phosphate deposits, the rich fishing grounds and the more fertile land which is rapidly filling with Moroccan immigrants.

Penetrating this defence would undoubtedly take a massive toll in the Saharawis. But the wall has already taken a toll - for the traditional nomads of the Sahara, it`s been devastating. The wall has done what no army in history has ever achieved - stopped the migration of the Saharawi nomads. A few hundred of them still travel up and down the wall, on the verge of the fertile zone.

This couple live along a minefield and a frontline to remain close to their migratory lands. But there`s not enough land here it sustain many of their people.

NOMADIC WOMAN (translation): Our point of view is that the Moroccans have never before been in the Sahara. They have no ancestors there. Ask the Moroccans if they have ancestors buried in the Sahara. We have countless ancestors buried there.

NOMADIC MAN (translation): We were born and brought up in it. Morocco has its own land and has illegally invaded us, and we fled its invasion. They are the aggressor. We continue to seek our rights. There is the peace process. Peace is fine and we want it, but we don`t have much trust in the process. We can only depend on ourselves.

Depending on themselves, as the nomads have all their lives, has meant depending on an intimate knowledge of their land passed down from parent to child for centuries. But these children know nothing of the landscape beyond the wall - a broken chain for which this woman blames not the wall itself, but the Saharawi ceasefire.

NOMADIC WOMAN: We haven`t achieved anything positive from this peace. We would have been better if we continued the war. We could have achieved our independence by now.

With the failure of the referendum, the agreements with the UN and Morocco have turned from a lifeline into nothing more than a life support system. Maintaining hope is becoming an impossible task for Saharawi leaders.

LOCAL MAN: We respect what we are told. We support the agreements signed, but if the UN fails or doesn`t achieve our objectives, we`ll go to war. We are for the agreements and peaceful solution, but if the UN gives up because of Morocco, we`ll liberate our country ourselves.

LALHA: No people can accept to live like this. We have been patient a long time, since 1975 in conditions like this.

In the next 12 months, Lalha faces losing her children to another world or losing them to a war - a loss either way.

LALHA: They are not worth more than those who died before. I only want an honourable life for them. We want our dignity and freedom. We know that death is inevitable, wherever one is. It is better for them to die in their land and country.

If the battle starts, it will be here along the wall, and families like this one, already struggling to maintain the life of their ancestors, will be in the frontline.

NOMADIC MAN: We don`t worry about the children. We are prepared to give everything - sacrifice our children, ourselves, our belongings. We don`t care about anything. We are prepared to sacrifice ourselves. Until we get our land, we don`t care about anything. We get independence or we all die. That`s it.