The Age of Walls by Tim Marshall

Author:Tim Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

CHAPTER 6

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Africa

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The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.

—Kwame Nkrumah

A Sahrawi girl with Sahrawi flag in front of the Moroccan Wall, separating Western Sahara between territory controlled by Morocco and that held by the Polisario Front.

At the top of Africa is a wall of sand, of shame, and of silence. The Moroccan Wall runs for seventeen hundred miles through Western Sahara and into parts of Morocco. The whole construction separates what Morocco terms its Southern Provinces along the Atlantic coast from the Free Zone in the desert interior—an area the Sahrawi people call the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The barrier is built of sand piled almost seven feet high, with a backing trench and millions of land mines stretching several miles into the desert on each side. It is thought to be the longest continuous minefield in the world. Every three miles or so is a Moroccan army outpost with up to forty troops, some of whom patrol the spaces between the bases, while two and a half miles back from each major post are rapid-reaction mobile units, and behind those, artillery bases. The length of the wall is also dotted with radar masts that can “see” up to fifty miles into the Free Zone. All of this is intended to keep fighters from the Sahrawi military force, called the Polisario Front (PF), well away from the wall and the areas Morocco considers its territory.

It is a harsh place. By day the heat can reach 122°F, and at night the temperature can drop to almost freezing. Frequently the sand-laden sirocco wind blows through the arid land, turning the air a mustard color and restricting visibility. To an outsider it is a hostile, forbidding region, but to the Sahrawi people, it’s home.

A Western Saharan independence movement existed prior to Spain’s withdrawal from the region in 1975. As the Spanish left, 350,000 Moroccans took part in the “Green March”—they walked into the region and claimed it as Moroccan territory. Spain subsequently transferred control to Morocco and Mauritania; the government in Rabat effectively annexed the territory and sent in twenty thousand troops, who were immediately confronted by the PF. The fighting lasted sixteen years and took the lives of tens of thousands of people. Despite their superior numbers and modern military equipment, the Moroccan army could not subdue the PF and their guerrilla tactics. In 1980, Morocco began building what became known as the Wall of Shame, finishing it in 1987.

Now there is silence. Western Sahara is not so much a forgotten conflict as a conflict few people have ever heard of. The Sahrawi people who live on each side of the wall speak the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic, feel culturally different from Moroccans, and are traditionally a nomadic people, although now they are mostly urban and tens of thousands live in refugee camps. Moroccan immigration has completely changed the composition of the Western Saharan population as the government has encouraged people to settle there by offering tax breaks, subsidies, and one-off payments.

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