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Summary
The documentary, "The Sahara's Forgotten War," sheds light on the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara, a territory largely occupied by Morocco since 1975 despite international recognition of the Sahara people's rights. The VICE News team navigates the complexities of a ceasefire that began in 1991, a divided land by a sand wall, and a population that still faces oppression, forgotten by the international community. Resistance persists with demonstrations, attempts of liberation, and life within refugee camps, highlighting the Saharawi's fight for independence against a backdrop of silenced voices and unfulfilled promises of a referendum.
Highlights
The Saharawi celebrate 38 years of the Declaration of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic amidst ongoing conflict. 🎉
Western Sahara is occupied by Morocco, against international law, and divided by a sand wall surrounded by landmines. 🚧
The ceasefire promised by the UN to hold a referendum for Saharawi independence remains unfulfilled after decades. ⏳
Saharawi refugees have lived in camps in Algeria for 40 years, unable to return home. 🏕️
The Polisario Front continues to resist Moroccan occupation, using guerrilla tactics in the uninhabitable desert. 🏜️
Continued human rights abuses are reported in Moroccan-occupied territories, with arrests and mistreatment of activists. 🚨
The international community, while recognizing Saharawi rights, often ignores the situation for economic interests with Morocco. 💼
Landmines continue to pose significant risks, resulting in injuries among Saharawi people. 🪖
VICE News exposes the suppressed situation in Western Sahara, emphasizing ongoing struggles for independence. 📰
Key Takeaways
The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic celebrated its 38th anniversary amid ongoing conflict. 🎉
Despite international recognition, Western Sahara remains under Moroccan occupation. 🚧
The promised UN referendum is still unmet, leaving Saharawi people in limbo. ⏳
Saharawi refugees reside in Algerian camps for decades, dreaming of returning home. 🏕️
Moroccan oppression continues, with activists facing severe punishment. 🚨
Lack of international intervention keeps Saharawi sufferings under the radar. 🌍
Overview
In the vast, arid stretches of Western Sahara, a forgotten conflict continues to unfold. VICE News takes us on a journey to expose the Saharawi people's struggle for self-determination. Despite international acknowledgment of their territorial rights, they remain under Moroccan control following an invasion in 1975. The narrative covers the enduring hope and resilience displayed by the Saharawi as they celebrate 38 years of the unrecognized Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. Amidst a backdrop of endless desert, a prolonged ceasefire exists, awaiting a promised referendum that has yet to be fulfilled.
The imposing sand wall, stretching thousands of kilometers and heavily mined, symbolizes the division of Western Sahara. A complex political stalemate leaves many Saharawi in refugee camps across the border in Algeria, resulting in over four decades of displacement. VICE highlights the ongoing plight of Saharawi activists who face brutal suppression under Moroccan rule. Their struggle for independence is met with harsh retaliation, making Western Sahara a virtual no-go zone for journalists and human rights observers. Yet, the story of their fight, captured by undercover filmmakers, shines a spotlight on these silenced voices.
While the international community formally recognizes the Saharawi's right to independence, economic ties with Morocco often overshadow their commitment to addressing the occupation. The Saharawi continue to hold on, with the resilience rooted in generations living through refugee statuses and under oppressive controls. This episode of VICE News poignantly captures a snapshot of their reality, spurring a call for global awareness and solidarity for a people resilient amid adversity and forgotten promises.
The Sahara's Forgotten War (Full Length) Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 [Music] [Music] [Music] spee
00:30 - 01:00 [Music] [Music] [Applause] today is a really big day for the saharawi it's the 38th anniversary of the Declaration of the saharawi Arab Democratic Republic and to celebrate there's going to be a parade here in the camp of Bor
01:00 - 01:30 [Applause] [Music] [Music] s
01:30 - 02:00 [Applause] SAR the saharawi are native to the Arid western part of the Sahara but despite the international court of justice recognizing their right to their land most of Western Sahara has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975 a 16-year war broke out between Morocco and The saharawi Liberation movement the psaria in 19 1991 the UN brokered
02:00 - 02:30 ceasefire promised a referendum in Western Sahara but 23 years later nothing has changed Western Sahara is now divided into two by a 2,700 km long sand wall surrounded by some 7 million landmines while more than 100,000 saharawi fled across the border to Algeria during the war where they have been waiting for four decades to return to their Homeland most saharawi still languish on the Rock and
02:30 - 03:00 Rule no [Laughter] I'm
03:00 - 03:30 [Music] [Applause] in October 2010 sidahmed helped mobilize the GM mizik protest camp near Lau the capital of occupied Western Sahara thousands of Sahara gathered to demonstrate against their unequal social and economic status and the brutal oppression of the human rights when Morocco cracked down on the protest Sid ahed managed to
03:30 - 04:00 escape he had to leave his family cross the desert then pay the Moroccan Army to let him pass through the sandwalk and finally risk his life in the minefields to find Refuge with the polisario in [Music] Algeria
04:00 - 04:30 in this situation of ceasefire has been going on since 1991 are young people getting tired of [Music] this we're on a way to see the polisario
04:30 - 05:00 Run refugee camps for the first time we were shown around by Ahmed salali a war veteran and commander of the polisario he drove us to one of the camps so that we could see for ourselves what life is like for the more than 100,000 saharawi [Music] refugees all the desert around here is just Barren lands are nadic people they
05:00 - 05:30 used to be able to travel and since the wall and the occupation they can't do that [Music] anymore
05:30 - 06:00 going to visit a family to see how they live
06:00 - 06:30 why are you giving up your life to fight the Moroccan government
06:30 - 07:00 for
07:00 - 07:30 all the five camps here around Hindu are named after cities in the occupied territories Samara Lun buar dla and most of the people who live here have never even been to these places have never even set foot where their parents and Grandparents were born and they've lived like refugees for 40 years on a food aid program that is supposed to last no longer than 3 years and they
07:30 - 08:00 choose to live like this because if they would settle down that would mean that they're no longer refugees and that they've given [Music] up Ahmed salm is going to take us to the liberated territories of Western Sahara it's a part of the desert that's even more arid than here so we're packing a ton of water and food and fuel also bringing fire soldiers for our
08:00 - 08:30 [Music] protection we sped off to the psaria controlled liberated territories a largely uninhabitable No Man's Land littered with landmines and Remnants from the 16-year war the psaro mainly use it as a military zone as there is only enough water and food to accommodate for the soldiers and a small population of Nomads who live there on our way we passed the Moroccan wall also known as the bur or the Wall of
08:30 - 09:00 Shame that separates the psaria controlled free zone from the Moroccan occupied territories behind me is the sand wall built by Morocco to block the occupied territories and it's surrounded by something like 7 million landmines so I've been told to stick to this track but some Sahara is just crossed us Into
09:00 - 09:30 the Danger Zone to have a demonstration so they're going to provoke the Moroccan soldiers who are peeking up right behind their post Morocco claims Western Sahara on the grounds that a few saharawi tribes once pledged their allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco although the international court of justice recognizes legal ties between Morocco and some saharawi tribes They concluded
09:30 - 10:00 that there was no tie of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and Morocco and that the people of Western Sahara have the right to self-determination the 1991 ceasefire was meant to pave the way for referendum in which the people of Western Sahara could choose between Independence or integration with Morocco the saharawi are still waiting Morocco hugely profits from the occupation which has made that the world world's biggest exporter of phosphates
10:00 - 10:30 and sardines all of which comes from the Western Sahara an area that potentially also has oil and [Applause] [Music] gas when the protesters dispersed we took a desert lunch break we've stopped for lunch and I didn't realize that they had brought a sheep in the back of the pickup so they killed it and now they're cooking it
10:30 - 11:00 then we continued our journey into the heart of the liberated territories where Ahmed salm has his Command [Music] Post
11:00 - 11:30 at the military base Ahmed salm took us to see an unusual addition to the landscape one of the many pieces of art that he has made and placed in the desert
11:30 - 12:00 then we headed to the command room from where the Battalion plans its strategies however it felt more like a museum than the headquarters of a military unit
12:00 - 12:30 so during the war you were in a surveillance Patrol can you tell me what you were [Music] doing so you basically crossed the wall activated the mines and put them in the
12:30 - 13:00 Moroccan Camp is that a soldier in the tree
13:00 - 13:30 [Music] I wasn't sure what we were about to see but it felt like it had all been put on Just for [Music] us then I realized that it was a psaria military exercise of how to take control of the Moroccan wall
13:30 - 14:00 the psaria told us that they invented desert Guerilla Warfare and that they used their tunnels as a method of surprise attack allowing them to Get Behind Enemy Lines unnoticed they may have a small army but they come out of nowhere like this guy will sit here on this tree all day and if he sees an an enemy soldier he'll
14:00 - 14:30 give a signal and suddenly out of nowhere all these soldiers appear from Secret tunnels completely pitch black in there oh God I'm going to get claustrophic so dusty in here the soldiers just told me that the most time they've spent in here is 2 months and I asked them so where do you go to the bathroom and they just said bring a plastic
14:30 - 15:00 bag are you prepared for a war
15:00 - 15:30 [Music] SED Salam and the poar front want to show us even more of their War preparations so they took us to this place somewhere in the middle of the desert
15:30 - 16:00 have they used them before in the war all the tanks and weapons that the poar have showed me so far seem to be pretty outdated like from the last war in the 70s and 80s I wonder how they would stand against a modern Army
16:00 - 16:30 before traveling to Western Sahara we were warned about the risk of terrorism in the region and now we were staying at the protocolo a Fortified Compound built by the polisario to accommodate Aid workers and journalists in 2011 it was the location where three Aid workers were kidnapped by jihadists so we've been told that if there's another attempt to kidnap people from protocolo they're going to press a
16:30 - 17:00 button an alarm will go off and that's our signal to close the first door and then these two and lock them properly I don't even know where the key is and then hide in our rooms it's good that they have more security but I found out that the room I'm sleeping in is where the three NGO workers were abducted from in [Music] 2011
17:00 - 17:30 to find out more about the threat of terrorism in the region we went to meet the Minister of Defense many saharawi we'd spoken to had hinted at Moroccan involvement with terrorist groups so we wanted to see if there was any truth behind this
17:30 - 18:00 in what ways are you fighting terrorism and what way is it existing
18:00 - 18:30 do you think that there's a tie between the smuggling of hash from Morocco and terrorist groups in this region like in Mali
18:30 - 19:00 [Music] [Music] for [Music] spee oh God did you say a peace
19:00 - 19:30 sign drug trafficking and even kidnapping have become real threats to Security in the region to tackle these challenges the pesario have introduced anti-terrorism units these special units are mainly stationed in the Border areas where most of the smuggling occurs the Minister of Defense also confirmed what many saharawi had told us that they are running out of patience
19:30 - 20:00 and are ready to return to [Applause] war later that evening we were invited to join one of the psaria anti-terrorism
20:00 - 20:30 units on their night Patrol this would involve going dangerously close to the smuggling routs of the Sahara putting our driver visibly on edge this is the most dangerous part of the drive because we're close to the weakest point of the Algerian border where Smugglers and Al Qaeda Affiliated groups have been able to cross there are no signs we're not even driving on a road it's just the middle of the desert there are no GPS's we don't have phone signal and it's crazy bumpy but luckily
20:30 - 21:00 we're with a postar anti-terrorism patrol they do this all the time so I'm sure we're fine we're driving around now waiting for one of the night patrols to find us they know that we're going to be out
21:00 - 21:30 here they just didn't know what time and because we're driving with our lights on they will know that it's us because Smugglers don't turn the lights on how do you see where you're driving if you're not using lights
21:30 - 22:00 [Music] [Music] for [Music]
22:00 - 22:30 [Music] they didn't catch any Smugglers that night but the minister of security told us that in the past year the psaria have
22:30 - 23:00 seized 1,600 kilos of hash from Smugglers who entered the liberated territories from Morocco and the Smugglers were carrying phones with Moroccan SIM cards
23:00 - 23:30 we wanted to see what life is like for the saharawi living under Moroccan rule in the occupied territories of Western Sahara it's a virtual no-go area for journalists as Morocco doesn't allow monitoring of Human Rights and have enforced the media blackout but we managed to send a vice filmmaker on the cover we got access to a group of young saharawi activists who defi the Moroccan annexation and the media censorship by producing producing an underground magazine that promotes the saharawi
23:30 - 24:00 [Music] cause
24:00 - 24:30 for after being in the occupied territories for just a few days our
24:30 - 25:00 filmmaker suspected he was being followed and it soon turned out that he was
25:00 - 25:30 Defender but the abusers experienced by saharawi and the occupied territories can be much worse than surveillance
25:30 - 26:00 saharawi protests are brutally punished even women are beaten by the Moroccan police and many saharawi activists are listed as missing persons or are detained in places like the infamous black prison without a proper trial these photos show the miserable and overcrowded conditions inside the prisons where the detainees suffer daily torture
26:00 - 26:30 fore
26:30 - 27:00 foree
27:00 - 27:30 [Music] foree spee for
27:30 - 28:00 foree foree [Music]
28:00 - 28:30 foree spee almost 40 years on from the occupation
28:30 - 29:00 hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers have moved to Western Sahara and their children were born there their presence complicates the prospect of a free western Sahara because the settlers feel that they too should be elgible to vote in the referendum on the Region's future
29:00 - 29:30 for
29:30 - 30:00 do you have any problems with landmines here
30:00 - 30:30 [Music] the landmines s their injuries are one of the most visible symptoms of the continued occupation of Western Sahara so we just got to the hospital for war in landmine victims and the compound is much bigger than I thought but with 7 million landmines surrounding them I guess this is
30:30 - 31:00 [Music] necessary
31:00 - 31:30 foree foreign spee
31:30 - 32:00 after years of waiting for a peaceful resolution that hasn't come there is a growing sense of resentment amongst sarawi that they have been forgotten by the International Community we then drove to the base of the UN mission for the referendum in Western Sahara known by the acronym minurso which was established after the ceasefire of 199 1 to observe the peace and organize a
32:00 - 32:30 referendum
32:30 - 33:00 for why does have to be
33:00 - 33:30 is the situation coming to a boiling point
33:30 - 34:00 what has been the mino's role in Western Sahara this is really a failure in the sense that since 199 91 United Nations spent more than a billion
34:00 - 34:30 dollars and we have not made a move of an inch to the goal which is the referendum in the same time they are no protection of Civilian they are violation of human right they are planing of the mineral resources of the territory the saharis are asking just for the right to determine their future to vote why this right is valid for timore for Kosovo for South Sudan for Namibia and elsewhere and Western
34:30 - 35:00 Sara is still an exception and no single country today is recognizing Moroccan sovereignty on W Sahara and United Nation still refusing to give the Mandate of monitoring of human rights to the minor it is the only peacekeeping operation established by United Nations since 1978 without a mandate of Human Rights is this situation pushing young Zahara towards extremism when uh there are no progress in the solution of the conflict when
35:00 - 35:30 there are no programs for education or for creating job uh they are frustration and you cannot uh uh determine it it till which limit that frustration will reach the people of Western Sahara feel betrayed which could push them to break the ceasefire but the polisario lacked the resources and international support
35:30 - 36:00 to mount a full-scale war against Morocco and not all saharawi support the polisario which has had the same leader since 1976 while countries across the world recognize Western Sahara's right to exist in theory in practice they continue to trade with Morocco for Western Sahara's natural resources the saharawi are still fighting for their independence but their plight is largely forgotten and
36:00 - 36:30 it's hard to see an end to their desert [Music] limbo [Music]