Wahda camps eradicated
Le Matin, the Moroccan pro-government newspaper, reports that the last parts of the el-Wahda camps in El Aaiún have been destroyed. The el-Wahda, or Unity, camps, were erected in haste in 1991 and the years thereafter, to temporarily house several tens of thousands of Moroccans Sahrawis who were bussed in to stuff voter rolls in the Minurso referendum on Western Sahara's future. Conditions were tough from the outset, and none the happier because people had been brought there on orders of the goverment, uprooted from traditional homes in southern Morocco.
[picture: no more]
As the years dragged on, voter identification efforts eventually excluded most of them from referendum eligibility on the grounds that they had no historical ties to the territory, but for Morocco, everything had been staked on their participation. This had two effects: the Kingdom backtracked on its promise to allow a vote on the territory's future, no longer feeling assured of victory through settlement, and the Wahda camp inhabitants were left to rot in their anything but temporary mud brick slums. Over the years, this did much to aggravate Sahrawi resentments towards the monarchy, but also to cement Sahrawi identity, by forcibly bringing so many together in similar (and similarly cramped and destitute) conditions, and in close contact with both nationalists inside the territory and with the brutal and hostile policing practices common to les provinces du Sud. In effect, what happened was that the monarchy created a second Tindouf, on Moroccan-controlled soil, and got much the same effect, in the form of an explosion of Sahrawi national consciousness. Sahrawis in the Wahda and other camp complexes who had originally had little sympathy for Polisario, began drifting towards pro-independence sentiments, as evidenced by the participation of many in nationalist demonstrations in 1999, 2000 and 2005. Indeed, how anyone could have expected anything else than nationalist rage to grow out of these slums is a mystery only explainable by the enormous capacity for patriotic self-delusion of the Moroccan regime elite whenever the Sahara enters into discussion.It is therefore both symbolically and perhaps politically significant if these slums have now, as the normally not-too-trustworthy Matin reports, been replaced with more decent living quarters. The paper states that some 11,000 sheds have been destroyed and new housing provided to approximately 40,000 of the camp's inhabitants, as part of a major infrastructure and housing program across Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, which has several such camps.
As parts of a hearts-and-minds strategy in the Sahara, this is solidly sound politics, and something Morocco must regret not having started much earlier. On the other hand, by any other count, it is yet another morbidly wasteful expense on the Sahara conflict (money pours in here for blitz building, but 35 million other citizens are not getting housing...), and it is a case of patching up self-inflicted wounds. The damage in Sahrawi sentiment and popular psychology already done, buying back lost sympathy hardly constitutes net gain -- yet gain it is. But whatever the case, if true, this should mean a little less suffering for a group of people unfairly hostage to a conflict outside of their control, and it is something Sahrawis and Moroccans alike should be able to applaud -- for once, in agreement.
