Facts about what Morocco did really in Western Sahara during the period of occupation.
My friend in UK sent me a letter - accompanied with copy of about twenty pages - in which he resumed to me a book he found in the United Kingdom about Western Sahara. The mentioned book is titled: A colonial affair. In the book, as my friend told me, the writer brought many "facts" about what Morocco did in Western Sahara during about three decads of occupation economically and politically. The writer, as it is clear from his book, took his information from the Moroccan propaganda and newspapers without going to the region, or if he did, he went only to the occupied territory accompanied with agents of the Moroccan "DST" (The word (DST) is well known in Western Sahara especially in the occupied territoy). The writer of the book is called Akbarali Thobhani, and, in accordance with his information, he visited Morocco and well hosted by the Moroccans who know very well how to receive a person who can praise their occupation to the territory. I am sure that he spent a long time in Morocco without visiting the terrotory or meeting the Sahrawi citizen who suffer under the occupation.
The writer said in his book that Morocco changed the face of the territory during thirty years of existance (occupation) - the real name of Moroccan existance in Sahara.
We dont know exactly what Morocco did in Western Sahara during the ocuppation?
What we know very well is that Morocco exploited very well the mines of the territory and distroyed the life in the Sahrawis homeland. No buldings, no agriculture, no fishing and, besides, sent hundreds of the women and children to jail. This is really what Morocco did in Western Sahara.
If the writer had visited the territory he surely observed the bleak face of it. It is a panorama of sadness and unhappyness. It is still a desert despite that it is one of the richest country in the world. Sahara is ranked number three in the world list in phosphate, and ranked number eight in fish, but the Sahrawis are still poor . If the Sahrawis profit of its resources, during the last three decads, they would be a rich people, maybe like Kuwait or like any other small people having a rich country. The situation of the Sahrawis now is like the situation of the Kurdish or Palestine people. Morocco wants them to leave their territory to live in Algeria or Mauritania as what Israel exactly does with the Arabic people of Palestine. Why did a writer like our friend falsify the real facts.
Maybe the writer observed the development in building in the territory. Maybe he did so but what he does not know is that the development had been done by the Sahrawis themeselves not by Moroccans. I defy him if he can mention a name of a bulding firm working in Western Sahara ?
Since the ocuppation untill now the Moroccans had destroyed the economic of the territory by 60 per cent. They exploited the phosphat by 57 per cent. The quantity of exploiting the fishing is unknown.
They obliged the Sahrawis to leave their homeland to abroad by 70 per cent . The majority of them living know outside the Sahara in bad conditions. The writer does not know that 41% of the children in the ocuppied territory never go to school and are still ignorant. How horrible situation.!
The writer of the book does not know that 61% of the Sahrawis in the ocuppied territory are jobless and homeless despite that Western Sahara is one of the richest countries in the world. The writer can revise the statistics issued in the reports of human rights organisations and the secret news papers of the Sahrawis in the ocuppied Sahara. He will know that all what he wrote in his book are lies.
>> About the mentioned book see : Book Review by Toby Shelley in Middle East International issue 705, 25 July 2003: A colonial affair, Western Sahara Since 1975 Under Moroccan Administration: Social, economic and political transformation, Akbarali Thobhani, Edwin Mellen Press, London 2002 .