Tindouf Province

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Tindouf, also written Tinduf, (Arabic: تندوف) is a wilaya in the west of Algeria, population 30,000 (not including approximately 160,000 Sahrawi refugees). Its capital town is Tindouf. Oum El Assel is another locality in this province. It houses army and airforce bases for the Algerian military, and is strategically important due to its proximity to the Moroccan border.

1 Sahrawi refugee camps
2 Moroccan territorial claims
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Sahrawi refugee camps

The refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, are wholly reliant on foreign and Algerian aid. Food, clothing and water are brought in by car and plane. Since the nineties a rudimentary monetary economy has evolved in the camps, after Spain started paying pensions to former recruited Sahrawi soldiers in its colonial army, and with money and merchandise brought in by Sahrawis working or studying abroad. A minor but significant addition comes from those pursuing traditional nomadic camel-herding in the Polisario Front-controlled parts of Western Sahara and in Mauritania. However, the development of a market economy - a stated goal of the Polisario - is hampered by the realities of refugee life. ^[1]

In the region there are four large refugee camps for Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara: El Aaiun, Awserd, Smara, and Dakhla (not to be confused with the occupied cities after which they are named), with a total population of approximately 165,000. There are also some smaller camps, such as the "February 27", serving as a boarding school for women. The headquarters of Polisario Front, with the government in exile of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), are headquartered in Rabouni, a camp dedicated to administration. The refugee camps are part of the Sahrawi republic's system of government. Algeria does not intervene in their organization, treating the area as effectively under Sahrawi self-rule.

The Polisario has attempted to modernize the camps' society, placing emphasis especially on education, the eradication of tribalism and the emancipation of women. The role of women in camps was enhanced by their shouldering of the main responsibility for the refugee camps and government bureaucracy during the war years, as virtually the entire male population was enrolled in the Polisario army.

Education was also assisted by refugee life. While teaching materials are still scarce, the "urbanization" of the refugee camps and the abundance of free time for camp dwellers (after the situation normalized circa 1977) greatly increased the effectiveness of literacy classes. Today, nearly 90% of refugee Sahrawis are able to read and write, the number having been less than 10% in 1975, and several thousands have received university educations in foreign countries as part of aid packages (mainly Algeria, Cuba, and Spain).

[edit] Conditions of life

The Tindouf area is located on the hammada, a vast desert plain of the Sahara Desert. Summer temperatures in this part of the hammada, historically known as "The Devil's Garden", are often above 50°C and frequent sand storms disrupt normal life. There is little or no vegetation, and firewood has to be gathered by car tens of kilometers away. Only a few of the camps have access to water, and the drinking sources are neither clean nor sufficient for the entire refugee population. Basic life cannot be sustained in this environment, and the camps are completely dependent on foreign aid. Food, drinking water and materials for tents and clothing are brought in by car by international aid agencies such as the UNHCR, ECHO and WFP, and the Algerian Red Crescent. However, there are radios, television, and several hundreds of satellite dishes have popped up in recent years. Social services such as schooling and basic hospital care are organized by the refugees themselves.

The refugee population is plagued by the lack of vegetables, nutritious food and medicines. According to the United Nations and the World Food Program, 40% of the children suffer from lack of iron, and 10% of the children below five years of age suffer from acute lack of nutrition. 32% are suffering from chronic lack of nutrition. 47% of the women suffer from lack of iron. Despite these figures, the health conditions are better than expected in most refugee camps, especially considering the harsh climate and the many years of exile.

[edit] Organization

The camps are considered very well organized by international refugee experts. They are divided into sub-units electing their own officials to run the camps, and to represent the neighbourhoods in political decision-making. The largest unit is called a "wilaya" (like the Algerian region), and is comprised of one single camp (Wilaya El-Aaiun, for example). Then comes larger sections of the camps called "daira", meaning "circle", in their turn divided into several "hay" or quarter (sometimes called "barrio", a Spanish word). Local committees distribute basic goods, water and food, while "daira" authorities made up by the representatives of the "hays" organize schools, cultural activities and medical services. This results in a form of basic democracy on the level of camp administration, which is considered to have improved the efficiency of aid distribution.

During the war years (1975-1991) Sahrawi women ran most of the camps' administration, with the men fighting at the front. This together with literacy- and professional education classes produced major advances in the role of women in Sahrawi society, although the return of large numbers of Sahrawi men since the cease fire has again hindered this development. Women still run a majority of the camps' administration, and the Sahrawi women's union UNMS is very active in promoting their role.

Six years of schooling are guaranteed and obligatory for all children. After that, many go to Algerian schools, and some pass on to universities in Algeria, Cuba, Spain or other countries that provide scholarships for Sahrawi students. Camp-wide literacy programs and education efforts directed specifically towards women have improved the literacy rates tremendously. Some 90% of the refugees are now considered literate, compared with below 10% in 1975, and the regional average of about 50%.

Both men and women perform military service in the armed forces of the Polisario.

[edit] Work and economy

While there are several international organizations (ECHO, Oxfam, UNHCR etc) working in the camps, the Polisario has insisted on using mainly local staff for construction, teaching etc, thereby trying to activate the refugee population, to avoid a sense of stagnation and hopelessness after 30 years in exile. However, jobs remain scarce and those Sahrawis educated at universities abroad can rarely if ever find opportunities to use their skills. Some Sahrawis work in nearby Tindouf city.

A simple monetary economy developed in the camps during the 1990s, after Spain decided to pay pensions to Sahrawis who had been forcibly drafted as soldiers in the Tropas Nomadas during the colonial time. Money also came from Sahrawis working in Algeria or abroad, and from refugees who pursue a traditional bedouin lifestyle, herding cattle in Algeria, Mauritania and the Polisario-held areas of Western Sahara. The private economy however remains extremely limited, and the camps continue to survive mainly on foreign and Algerian aid.

[edit] Family separation and human rights

Since Polisario and Morocco are still at war, visits between the camps and the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara are impossible. Thousands of families have been separated for up to 30 years, a painful situation for the population in both Western Sahara and the refugee camps.

Recently, the UNHCR managed a ^[2] family visits exchange program] for five-day visits for a limited number of people, going from the camps to the Moroccan-held territories and vice versa. It is not clear if or when the program will be resumed. The United Nations has also established telephone services between the camps and Moroccan-held Western Sahara, and is planning to start a mail service. These activities are aimed at reuniting families that have been separated for 30 years by the Sahrawi-Moroccan war.

While the Polisario complains of repression of Sahrawi human rights activists in the Moroccan-held parts of Western Sahara, the government of Morocco counters by stating that the camps are the scenes of massive human rights abuse against the refugee population by the Polisario. This has, however, not been confirmed by human rights and aid organizations that visit the camps. Foreign visiting delegations are extremely frequent and are allowed to move around at will, which undermines the Moroccan description of the camps as "concentration camps".

Polisario has acknowledged isolated reports of mistreatment in the seventies and eighties, but deny the accusations of on-going abuse. Reports of beatings and torture of Moroccan prisoners of war who were formerly held in the camps were backed by some human rights organizations, which seems to have contributed to the release of the last of these POW:s by the summer of 2005. There are complaints of limitations on movement between the camps, but camp authorities maintain that this is simply a question of registering movements for aid allocation purposes. Visiting human rights organizations have concluded that the conditions are troublesome with regard to basic subsistence, but that the human rights situation is satisfactory.^[3].

[edit] Moroccan territorial claims

From independence in 1956, the Kingdom of Morocco claimed the Tindouf area and western Algeria as part of Greater Morocco. These claims are based on the perception of pre-colonial Moroccan control of the area, and promises made by parts of the Algerian underground during that country's war for independence. After Algeria's independence in 1962, Morocco's claim to Tindouf was not accepted, and the Moroccan government found no international backing for its position. This led to the 1963 Sand war, fought along the Moroccan-Algerian border in the Tindouf region.

In a process begun in 1969 and finalized during the OAU summit in Rabat in 1972, Morocco recognized the border with Algeria, in exchange for joint exploitation of the iron ore in Tindouf. However, parts of Moroccan society and some nationalist political parties still refer to the Tindouf area as historically Moroccan territory. Algeria has made no claims on the Moroccan side of the border.