As I wrote a few days ago on the relation between the Arabic world and the Saharawis, I would like to write again some words about the relation between Algeria and the Sahara affair.

Nowaday Morocco repeated, without any slim respect to brotherhood or neighborhood, its old/new accusations to Algeria by saying that the conflict of Western Sahara is an Algerian - Moroccan conflict, and there is, nor a movement called Polisario neither a state called the SADR.

As many persons in the world following the affair in details , I want to express my full astonishment towards such stupidity, because Morocco, officially, has recognized the Polisario movement when his official representatives negociated around the same table, face to face, the arrangements of the peace process in 1997 in Houston with Polisario and not with Algeria or Cuba. And not in an obscure room, but with the presence of international observers under UN supervision .

If we want to turn back to the facts of history we will find that Algeria did no abnormal thing toward the Sahara affair and Polisario. Simlpy, Algeria, during about fourty years, was acting toward the affair as the UN act now; in accordance with the international law.

In 1966, before the Polisario and the SADR foundation , Algeria said before the UN assembly in its normal session hold in December of the same year "that Algeria is supporting any positive step towards the application of self-determination in Western Sahara." In the same year, the UN assembly, issued its famous resolution number 2229 on December 1966, which called clearly for the Self-determination of the Saharawi people."

In 1972, UN has issued another famous resolution concerning the Sahara affair under the number 2983, in wich it said" that all the world must help morally and materially the struggle done by peoples under colonialism particularly that one done by the people of Western Sahara " .

In 1975, UN' mission to Western Sahara said in its report ( october 1975) " that the Algerian government said that it has no claims in the territory of Western Sahara."

When Morocco invaded, brutally, Western Sahara in 1975, Algeria sent its troops to the borders with Western Sahara ( near Amgala), but not to fight against Morocco, only to supply the Saharawis with food and water and to protect their exodus to a save place after UN' refusing to send the blue helmets to the region.

During the war, after UN' recognition of Polisario as the only political representative to Western Sahara , Algeria started helping the Saharawis logistically and morally in accordance with UN resolution number 2983 ( 1972). And Morocco, if we want to tell the reality, did not find any Algerian soldier, nor alive neither died, in Western Sahara during two decades of war, except the raid of Amgala when the Moroccan royal forces have captured some Algerian para-militar during their work to evacuate the Saharawis refugees.

But why Morocco always says that Algeria is helping Polisario and forgots the help it receives from USA, France and the Arabic world.?

Polisario is now recognised internationally as a liberation movement leading a state during a conflict, and it has the full right to have its allies and friends in the world as all states do during peace and war. Why Morocco has its allies and denies to Polisario and the SADR to do so?

The Saharawis never hide their pride of Algerian's help to them, and Algerians are pride of it too, because it is legitime and not to be done secretly. But Morocco is ashame and could not declare the help it obtains from USA and France secretly . It refused to say any thing about it despite that Polisario has found many traces and trails on the battle field belonging to USA and France as logistics and arms material etc...

On the ground, all the world recognizes that there is not any Algerian's existence  in the liberated regions of Western Sahara or in the refugee camps. The international journalists, observers, delegations came from all the world sides to see the fact on the ground, and to distinguish between the fact of Polisario and the fiction of Morocco about the reality of the Algerian's existence in Western Sahara, but they recognized that they did not find any algerian's existence  in Western Sahara. They visited, too, the refugee camps to see if the camps are under Algerian control or under Polisarion one. They found that the camps are existing in a desert near the borders between the two countries, and no Algerian existence too there. They visited schools, hospitals and military centers to be sure if the Algerians professors and doctors are working there, but they did not find any one.! So, where is Algerian's existence with Polisario?  Morocco, as a Saharawi joke says, told once a foreign delegation that " Algerians are working realy with Polisario, but only under earth and during the night". This the only fiction Morocco has to display during its campaign to convince the world about the relation between Algeria and Western Sahara affair.

SID HAMDI YAHDIH, a Saharawi writer living in Spain.

29.09.04