WESTERN SAHARA: THE CHILDREN OF THE CLOUDS
“They call themselves the children of the clouds because, since times past, they have been chasing clouds for their water. For more than thirty years now they have also been chasing justice which, in today’s world, seems more elusive than water in the desert”.
- Eduardo Galeano
In 1975, with Franco in his death-bed, Moroccan and Mauritian troops entered the Western Sahara to divide the former Spanish colony. Tens of thousands of Sahrawi fled to neighboring Algeria.
Almost fifty years later, three generations have already been born and live a destitute existence in the bleached refugee camps of Tindouf.
These camps are located in what has been called the "desert's desert" or the "devil's garden", a Sirocco-swept section of the Algerian Hamada where temperatures can easily exceed 50 degrees. Although the Sahrawi, a very resilient people, have been able to organize life in the camps and have limited access to education and health care, they are completely dependent on an international aid that is becoming less reliable each year.
Some Sahrawi still try to live a nomadic life in the "liberated territories", looking for pastures and following the rain with their camels and goats. The liberated territories comprise about one third of the Western Sahara and are controlled by the Sahrawi Polisario Front and its army. The rest of the Western Sahara, including its main cities and all its natural resources, is controlled by Morocco.
The Sahrawi keep waiting for a solution to their conflict which never comes. The UN-sanctioned referendum of independence is constantly denied by Morocco, while the over 150,000 refugees in the camps of Tindouf remain stuck in a limbo of perpetual provisionality.
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