Saharawi Republic Waits to Be Born

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 4, 1999 | by Catherine Edwards

One man walks with a cane. He was captured 21 years ago. He left behind two sons under the age of 2. Security is lax -- the Moroccans know that if they escape they'd only perish in the desert. "We want liberty first for us, then for the Saharawis," the captive explains. "We should not have to wait for Saharawi independence." The Saharawis have agreed to free them next March if the referendum takes place as planned this time. If not, the waiting will continue, and both sides will use prisoners as leverage in any final negotiations.

So they wait. The Saharawis have not been idle during the last 25 years. Until the 1991 cease-fire most of the men were fighting at the border in the Sahara between the Moroccan-occupied and Polisario-controlled regions, where many remain. Their absence is felt keenly in the camps. The Moroccan population of 26 million has many more soldiers to rotate in and out of the battlefield, not so with the men representing the 165,000 Saharawis back in the camps.

Because of the absence of the men, the Saharawi women have taken leadership roles in running the camps and have set up an electoral system in which administrators are voted in and out of office. The literacy rate is said to be 95 percent; since the seventies all children have been required to attend school. The women work in the hospitals, teach in schools -- work anywhere they are needed. They are in charge. "The camps are known to be the best-run in the world," says Bruce McColm, president of the Institute for Democratic Strategies, a pro-democracy organization based in Alexandria, Va. Every three years the Saharawi Republic Congress convenes locally elected officials from the camps. This year Saharawi President Mohammed Abdelaziz won reelection by secret ballot over two other candidates.

At the Congress, women in colorful malhfas and men wearing white or indigo-colored robes characteristic to this part of the desert fill the room. Committee chairmen report on proposed constitutional amendments -- including ways to ensure that human rights of Saharawis are respected, providing the means for impeaching elected officials for wrongdoing and plans for the eventual return of refugees. Ail proposals are read aloud and voted up or down by the Congress.

Meanwhile, the women plan to continue their role in leadership when and if the nation is universally recognized as independent. More than 20 years ago they founded the National Union of Saharawi Women and most recently have sent an envoy to the United States.

Melmnine Labsir was educated for 14 years in Algeria and graduated from a university in 1992. Now in Washington to represent the National Union, she is dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt. In broken English and through tears, she describes the husband and son she left behind to come and share her people's plight with American women. She volunteers her time for the cause: Her people survive on humanitarian aid so she receives no compensation, just room and board. She barely can remember fleeing from the Moroccan troops across the desert at age 7. She left, terrified, with her brothers and sister, but her father was caught in the fighting and later died in a Moroccan prison. Her older sister raised the younger children in the camps. Her mother still lives behind the berm in Moroccan-occupied territory. Last year, Melmnine met with her mother in the Canary islands for the first time in 23 years. At the mention of her aging mother, she puts her head in her hands and sobs.