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Morocco and the Polisario have been ghting for control of Western Sahara for yearsa ght largely ignored by the West. But its time the United States paid close attentionthis could be the newest stronghold for al Qaeda.
by S.E. Cupp

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walked the desert coastline barefooted, with a vigilance that was well founded. There were, after all, rumored to be land mines somewhere under this lunarlike landscape. I was in a disputed African territory where warring factions supposedly made travel here more than just dangerousit was the stuff of frightening post-9/11 security briengs. Violent Islamic nationalists in an unholy land dispute with AK-47-wielding terrorists buried deep in desert outposts, and I was apparently caught somewhere between them. But as I made my way across the bleach-white beach, it wasnt land mines or terrorists I was worried about. It was the sand crabs. This is Western Sahara, a 266,000 square-kilometer disputed territory on Africas Atlantic coast, south of Morocco proper and north of Mauritaniaand it is very hard to know fully. It has no ofcial name on most maps. Very few Americans have been here, both because its not easy to get to and its supposedly quite dangerous, depending on whom you ask. Some will tell you about gunre and land mines on the regions tattered edges, while otherslike mewill tell you about the militant sand crabs of coastal Dakhla. But there is more to Western Sahara than any one person can possibly explain, and thats because explaining Western Sahara usually means taking a side. There are no easy answers, and information is heavily ltered and thus unreliable. But what was once perhaps a local conict, neatly contained to the connes of the inhospitable North African desert, is potentially now a major global game-changer thanks to growing political implications which may be more signicant than anyone knows. Settling the decades-long dispute here is crucial to the stability and development of a progressive Morocco, a nation of mostly Maliki Sunni Muslims, and a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, a young king and a commitment to democracy. And then there are the Sahrawis, some of whom consider themselves Moroccans, some of whom consider themselves country-less. Finally, there is the Polisario, a socialist rebel movement

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that has long wanted the territory for itself, claiming the support of thousands of Sahrawis in their heavily guarded camps. But there may also be another concern, one that has been only cautiously explored by those inside and outside Western Sahara and that is not even acknowledged by the West: al Qaeda. More on that later.

TUG-OF-WAR
Western Sahara remains an enigma, decades after the conict began. Spain colonized the territory through the late 1800s. Their eventual departure coincided with the 1975 Green March, when 350,000 Moroccans crossed back into the territory to reclaim their home. This sparked a violent, decadeslong guerrilla war with the Polisario Front, an armed rebel front begun by Moroccan students in opposition to Spanish occupation. Morocco built a 1,600-mile wall of sand, stone and barbed wire to keep out the rebels, and the Polisario set up camps along the borders in Algeria, where they remain today. A 1991 U.N. ceasere ended hostilities on the ground, but the land remains in dispute and negotiations have stalled. Morocco possesses the territory now, with the exception of a small area near the Algerian border known as the Free Zone, heavily patrolled by the Polisario with limited access granted to outsiders. The Polisario wants independence and claims that the 155,000 people in the refugee camps at Tindouf want that too. But the United Nations claims only 85,000 to 90,000 are actually there, and Morocco insists there are even fewer. Morocco, meanwhile, wants Western Sahara to be autonomouswith its own electionsbut also to remain under Moroccan sovereignty, insisting that a stable Western Sahara is necessary for a stable Morocco and Northwest Africa, a region known as the Maghreb. Opponents of an independent Western Sahara frequently (and with cause) cite the failed states of Somalia and Bosnia, and the frightening problems that have sprung from them, as reason enough to maintain some measure of sovereignty

A Sahrawi girl balances on a wall at the Polisario-controlled February 27 refugee camp in the Tindouf Province of Algeria. (AP/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

over an autonomous Western Sahara. And what Sahrawis themselves want depends, again, on who you ask.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE POLISARIO?

To understand the ght over control of Western Sahara one must understand the Polisario, which is no easy task. Like most rebel fronts, reliable information is hard to come by, and the issue provokes strong emotions from people involvedpeople such as Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation and chairman of the U.S.-Western Sahara Foundation and an American activist who supports the Polisarios efforts for an independent Western Sahara. Every person I have met who supported the Moroccan [autonomy] position was either unwilling to listen to or research the other side of the issue and therefore ignorant of the issue, or [was] getting some unseemly favor from Morocco, she says. The roster of other backers of Western Sahara independence and, by proxy, the Polisario proves just how complex and nuanced the issue is. American positions, where they exist at all, are almost impossible to explain along party lines, political dogma or religious vantage point. Sens. Ted Kennedy,

D-Mass., Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Reps. Donald Payne, D-N.J., and Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., all back the Polisarios push for an independent Western Sahara. Many U.S. evangelical Christian groups send aid and relief funding to the Polisario camps in response to allegations by various human rights agencies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of Moroccan brutality against Sahrawissomething that is hard to nd in evidence but that independence proponents like Scholte rmly believe. Other experts insist the Polisario is less militant now and keen on a peaceful resolution to the conict. Jacob Mundy is the Western Sahara expert for the Middle East Reporting and Information Project. [The] Polisario is very aware of the fact that renewed armed hostilities with Morocco would gain more attention from the international community, Mundy says. But they have opted to respect the 1991 ceasere in an attempt to demonstrate their goodwill toward the U.N. peace process. But, like the indefatigable sand crabs of Dakhla, the truth is infuriatingly difcult to pin down. Much of the debate is subjective and semantic. For one, opponents of the Polisario say, Morocco

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Left: Some 2,500 Polisario troops parade to commemorate the anniversary of the declaration of the Sahrawi Republic by the Polisario Front. Hundreds of Polisario Front troops have paraded in the desert with tanks, artillery guns and automatic ries to step up their call for independence for Western Sahara. (AP/
Alfred de Montesquiou)

Right: A womens division of the Polisario Front independence rebel soldiers march during a military parade in the El Ayoun refugee camp in southeastern Algeria. (AP/Denis Doyle)

didnt seize Western SaharaSpain simply gave it back. For another, if the Polisario began as an opposition group to Spanish occupation of Morocco, why is it now an opposition group to Moroccan occupation of Morocco? Just how many Sahrawis support the Polisario is also hard to answer. Joseph K. Grieboski, president and founder of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, with whom I visited Western Sahara, put it this way: In the Soviet Union, supposedly everyone was a member of the Communist Party. Well, in Western Sahara, supposedly everyone is a member of the Polisario. Its simply not the case. While I was there, I met dozens of Sahrawis who were either Polisario defectors, refugees or staunch opponents to Polisario control of the region. Another unsettling nuance in the Western Sahara narrative is one of population science, or lack thereof. We dont know just how many people live in the Polisario camps at Tindouf because the Polisario has not allowed a census, something on which Morocco has insisted if it is to recognize a Sahrawi vote on independence. Then theres the issue of public relations. The Polisario has representatives all over the world,

including one in Washington, D.C. Mouloud Saidwho spread word of Moroccan oppression and forced exile but limits access to the camps. Said is credited with brilliantly recruiting U.S. evangelical groups to the Polisario cause in the 1990s by positioning the conict over land ownership as a human rights issue. Opponents of the Polisario say the foreign aid that is sent never reaches the camps but is sold in Mauritania. But, as was its design, securing evangelical support also helped get the attention of some of the Republican leadership. However, one Republican evangelicalPresident George W. Bushdidnt buy in. Bush was a staunch ally of Morocco, because Morocco shared his worldview on counterterror: Defeat terrorism abroad by creating jobs, building infrastructure, increasing freedoms and promoting democracy. In 2004, Bush pushed free trade agreements with only two Muslim countries: Bahrain and Morocco. But in spite of Bush, the Polisarios PR campaign was largely successful. As Grieboski said, While the average American knows nothing about Western Sahara or the Polisario, the Polisario and Algeria have spent signicant amounts of money making sure that members

of Congress and inuential American organizations know about them. He should know. Grieboski is a former Polisario supporter who ardently fought for Western Sahara independence until he actually went there and saw that what the Polisario was reporting simply wasnt true. I know plenty of people like me who were astonished to see that what they had been told for so long by the Polisario had been a lie. Its not just Grieboski and other watchdog groups that decided they had it wrong on the Polisario. There have been dozens of high-prole defections, including the Polisarios former head of security services, a number of Polisario founders, some of the groups foreign representatives, a current Moroccan MP and prominent Polisario military commanders. And what they, and thousands of refugees, have to say about the real Polisario is chilling. Allegations of torture within the camps are not hard to nd. I met with several refugees who told of beatings, imprisonment, starvation, disappearances, corruption and forced indoctrination. Many claimed they were sent to Cuba, a sympathetic regime to the Polisario, for education and training, or worse, that their children were kidnapped and sent to Cuba.

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Obama in support of autonomy in April. Unconrmed reports surfaced in July that Obama has decided to back an independent Polisario state, though the administration says it has yet to take a position. If true, the alliance the United States has enjoyed with Morocco for centuries could be over.

RUMORS OF AL QAEDA
If youve not heard of Western Sahara or the Polisario, dont feel bad. As Grieboski says, most of what Americans know of Morocco they learned from Humphrey Bogart. However, all of that could changeand soon. For the past decade, the United States and the international intelligence community have been monitoring al Qaeda activity in Maghreb. Theres a small network there, which calls itself the Salast Group for Preaching and Combat. They are, like most of al Qaeda, Wahabi Sunnis. Their primary objective is to overthrow the Algerian government. The group is linked to some horric terrorist acts, including the 2003 kidnapping of 32 European tourists and the killing of dozens of Algerian police ofcers over the past eight years. In January 2008, the annual Dakar Rally off-road race was canceled due to their threats. Linking Salast al Qaeda to the Polisario, which isnt organized around Islam or any other theology, has been difcult. And Morocco has tried. Theyve alleged both ofcially and in the press that the two groups were working in tandem, but their calls are routinely dismissed as biased fear mongering. A source in the Moroccan government told me theres never been strong enough evidence to convince anyone outside Morocco, and much of the West seems either unconvinced or merely uninterested. Calls to the State Department and the United Nations on the issue went totally ignored. In fact, many experts nd the suggestion of al Qaeda in the Polisario preposterous. It is very unlikely that any radical Islamist group would attempt to recruit from the Polisario, Mundy claims. Nor is there any evidence of it outside of the very imaginative Moroccan press. The ideology of Polisario is leftof-center Nationalist; think [Hugo]

Sahrawi troops stand in front of a battery of rocket launchers in an undisclosed location in the southern Algerian desert. The Polisario Front has an array of heavy weaponry mostly seized from Morrocco dispersed in the barren rocky desert. (Reuters/Desmond Boylan)

Some said that their family members were kidnapped and taken to Tindouf, Algeria, to help lure entire tribes of Sahrawis into Polisario-controlled areas. In May 2005, the Moroccan American Center for Policy hosted a group of former Sahrawi refugees in Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. government ofcials and human rights organizations. The group included Naha Al Salek Sidi, a handicapped mother of two who was allegedly used by the Polisario to get medical supplies from aid groupssupplies that were eventually sold on both the black and open markets in Mauritania. There was also a former Polisario police ofcer who was imprisoned for opposing the regime and a mother of ve who claimed the Polisario kept her two youngest children from her. Mouloud Said, Washingtons Polisario ambassador, said of the Sahrawi delegation, These people are brought by the Moroccan public relations companies here, so they have to mislead. But the Polisario is often criticized for the same reason. Outsiders suggest that travel to the camps is highly regulated and managedthat visitors see only what the Polisario wants them to. Grieboski, for one, has not been allowed to visit the camps, despite repeated attempts. In Moroccan Western Sahara, on the other hand, travel is uninhibited. Because of these impossible-toreconcile contradictions in the Western

Sahara story, the United States position has largely been one of diplomatic oversight. Morocco is a valuable ally, but Algeria has oil. Choosing a side would be very difcult for the United States, and many experts on the issue think the United States should remain unopinionated. Mundy says, The United States should not support any particular nal status, whether independence or autonomy for Western Sahara. Attempts to impose a solution from the outside will only exacerbate the conict. And Intissar Fakir, assistant editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin, says the United States should help bring both parties to the negotiating table, see how far each can be pushed and what kind of concessions they are willing to make, and nally persuade both to engage in condence-building measures. Others would prefer America to take a stronger stance. Scholte says, The United States should be rm in support of self-determination and support the resolution of this issue through a free, fair and transparent referendum, which includes independence as an option. Grieboski believes the United States should support Moroccan autonomy for Western Sahara and theres some evidence that his position is growing more and more popular. A bipartisan group of at least 235 members of Congress sent a letter to President

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Chavez, not bin Laden. Fakir likewise calls the possibility highly unlikely. And Scholte puts it this way: These terrorist groups would not have the ability to get anywhere with the Polisarioits leaders are committed to non-violence, rule of law [and] international legality. It just goes against their nature to even think about this kind of thing. Well, not if you believe Abdullah Hamadi, a man I met in the small city of Dakhla, who told mein no uncertain terms and in considerable detailthat al Qaeda is indeed inside the Polisario. And in alarming numbers. He knows because he has met them. And hes met them because he was a member of the Polisarios foreign relations ministry for years. I met Hamadi (whose name has been changed) through a group of Polisario refugees. Thirty-eight and slender, he was a member of the Polisario for decades but will not say when he left or how. His uncle is still a minister of defense. He says he rst noticed al Qaeda operatives in the camps in 1999. In the beginning, they didnt tell us they were recruiting for al Qaeda, Hamadi said. They just tried to indoctrinate the young people in the camps, telling them that the war between the Polisario and Morocco was really a war created by the West against Muslims. They didnt say jihad, because Moroccan Muslims dont know jihad. This is meaningless to them. They just told the young people that they needed to be armed for when the Christians come to attack them. And armed they are. Hamadi tells me that in the Polisario camps guns are everywhere, dealt openly and easy to get. You can buy an AK-47 in the street for practically nothing, he says. Eventually, according to Hamadi, members revealed that they were part of the Salast Group for Preaching and Combat, the same al Qaeda sect already known to be in the area, and they began to recruit potential princes or Amirs. The al Qaeda Amirs go into the camps and pick out the strongest tribes, Hamadi says. They slowly get someone from the tribe to trust them, and eventually that person is named an Amir himself. Suddenly, he is working for al Qaeda and reporting to bin Laden.

Municipal workers use a crane to remove a car damaged by a truck bombing in the Algerian town of Reghaia. The bombing was one of two simultaneous attacks on police stations by the Salast Group for Preaching and Combat. (Reuters/Loua Larbi)

Hamadi says al Qaeda has recruited 80 princes so far, and each of those recruits dozens more. All the Amirs recruit their own followers from within their camps. They get entire families. Eventually, he says, the Polisario recruits leave their camps with al Qaeda Amirs. What they do next, Hamadi does not know. But does the international intelligence community? Its unclear just how seriously the United States, Britain and other allies in the War on Terror are looking at Western Sahara as a potential breeding ground for terrorism, rather than merely a disputed territory in between owners. Hamadi fears we will all learn that answer the hard way. Is the Polisario a courageous group of freedom ghters? Or is it an oppressive, socialist regime responsible for kidnapping and torturing thousands while the world wasnt looking? Does Morocco genuinely want peace for the Sahrawis or does it merely want the Polisario gone and control of the regions resources? Are the camps in Algeria a new breeding ground for al Qaeda or barren,

tented cities in desperate need of international aid? Do Morocco, President Bush and 235 members of Congress have it right? Or do the human rights groups, evangelicals and, possibly, Barack Obama? Obama has spoken at length about the signicance of Africas problems. Hes also made much of the role he will play in ending the war in Afghanistan and aiding Middle East peace. Will he ever visit Western Sahara? (Will he ever visit Morocco, for that matter?) As if there werent enough reasons to solve Western SaharaMoroccan and Maghreb stability among themthe possibility of a new al Qaeda recruitment facility could be another, if Hamadis account is right. But even the mere suggestion that terrorists have inltrated the Polisario camps adds a whole new sense of urgency to the issue. Save for the ubiquitous sand crabs of Dakhla, is anyone listening?

S.E. Cupp is author of Why Youre Wrong About the Right, with Brett Joshpe. She lives in New York City.

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