A story not prescribed

Crimes against humanity committed by the Polisario against its own people. In order to make this task less arduous for readers who are less familiar with issues related to the final stage of the former Spanish colony and largely unaware of many of the thorny situations that arose there and marked the course of the dispute, it is essential to provide a historical overview of these events, which, although little known, are no less important in the evolution of the Sahara question.

In the last years of Spanish administration in Western Sahara, mainly from 1973 onwards, there were substantial changes in the surveillance posts within the territory, in terms of their security and protection systems, mainly depending on the size of the native population —both floating and static— a circumstance that determined the size of the Territorial Police garrison or the base of the Nomadic Troop Group, the units that carried out this security work. These Nomadic Troop groups were organised into patrols.

The capture of the patrols named ‘Pedro’ and 'Domingo' and the various attacks by the Polisario on the inland posts closest to the Mauritanian border, which in turn served as the best target for a subsequent retreat and refuge in their ‘sanctuary’ in the Mauritanian zone, prompted the General Government's General Staff to propose to the Governor that the military bases at these posts be evacuated, a proposal that was carried out across the board.

It was then that a disagreement arose within the leadership of the General Government when Luis Rodríguez de Viguri, Secretary General of the territory, learned of this decision, arguing that such an evacuation would leave these posts at the mercy of the first to arrive and, in any case, would be interpreted as a relinquishment of sovereignty. He was then authorised to cover them with native personnel from the Territorial Police.

In the summer of 1975, a team of government officials made an extensive tour of the territory, starting from Laayoune and heading south, checking the posts that were covered by security forces, in all cases by the Territorial Police, as listed below:

A Spanish officer was assigned to the post at Bojador, while in Guelta Zemmur, only a Territorial Police post was established, as well as another for Nomadic Troops under the command of a Spanish non-commissioned officer. Similarly, in Gleibat el Fulase, a native second lieutenant was appointed, and in Auserd, a European officer was appointed, as in Güera. A native non-commissioned officer was assigned to Agüenit. Finally, a native non-commissioned officer was proposed for Tichla and only the Territorial Police, present in all cases as mentioned above, for Bir Nzaran.

Furthermore, in line with the above, the posts that were attacked by the Polisario —some on several occasions— were already without garrison or police protection. These attacks took place gradually, the first being on 20 May 1973 in Janquet Quesat, in what is considered the first armed action of the Polisario Front, continuing until the end of 1975 with various attacks on Ait Ben Tili, Mahbes, La Güeray Tah, causing dozens of deaths and injuries, both native and Spanish.

As a result of the withdrawal of the military forces that had their bases in the inland posts, which were left unguarded and in some cases only protected by Territorial Police forces, which were also attacked by Polisario guerrillas, the Sahrawi civilian population, settled around these posts as a point of support for their nomadic activity, found themselves abandoned to the mercy of Polisario raids during this last year of Spanish colonial rule.

All this was done for the purpose of looting and capture, forcing them in their raids to move to the Tindouf camps, with the calculated aim of swelling the population that could support the claims to establish a government in exile, as was later demonstrated by the self-proclamation of the so-called Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
This was achieved by capturing the vast majority of the population in the aforementioned areas near the inland posts, thus separating them from the rest of their families who were able to avoid the hostile incursion because they were on the coastal strip or in the capitals where they had remained until the Spanish withdrawal, with the aim of developing under the subsequent Moroccan government.

In those last years of Spanish presence in the Sahara, the Polisario attacked and looted defenceless posts, assaulted and captured surveillance patrols, and committed acts of sabotage and terrorism, such as those committed against Fosbucraa, which they considered to be acts of armed struggle under the ideological umbrella of the national liberation movements of the time. However, the undeniable serious crimes of human rights violations committed against a large part of the civilian population, who were forcibly deported and transferred to camps in Algeria under the pretexts mentioned above, cannot be ignored.

In this sense, these acts of human rights violations by the Polisario against the Sahrawi people in its early days as a supposed republic were carried out by those responsible through the following classification, from a conceptual point of view, defined in three sections: territory, conflict and dispute.

The territory, taking advantage of a wide strip of land from the north-east to the south-east, in the area near the border with Mauritania, as the existing posts there had been left unprotected by the military, with only a few detachments of Sahrawi territorial police remaining.

The conflict began with attacks on these posts by Polisario guerrillas and their rearmament at their bases by the Algerian and Libyan governments, as well as the weapons and equipment captured from the Spanish detachments by the native units.

The dispute began in 1975 with the absence of freedoms in these towns, starting with the forced deportation of their inhabitants who, among other reasons, were unaware of their rights due to their intrinsic and noble nomadic background and lack of information about the political and administrative situation in which they found themselves.

With this mass exile to the camps, the population was recruited ‘manus militari’ into the armed groups of the Polisario. The senior leaders of this militia, who used tactics similar to their ideological contemporaries in other countries where such movements were in vogue, were mainly Bachir Mustafa Siyed and the late Mahafud uld Ali Beiba.

Bachir, brother of El Uali Mustafa Siyed, the first president of the self-proclaimed RASD who died on 9 June 1976 during an attack by the Polisario militia in Mauritania, was recently in the Canary Islands, attending events in Lanzarote and Gran Canaria to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the creation of the Polisario Front. As is well known, Bachir Mustafa is facing a lawsuit admitted for processing in the National Court for serious human rights violations against Sahrawi dissidents in the Tindouf camps, for which he has yet to be held accountable.

In short, we could consider these crimes as the first serious violation of human rights in the context of this conflict committed by the Polisario Front and unknown to the general public, which is why we believe it is essential to bring them to light and shed light on them. This is especially true given the current distortion of reality on this issue due to persistent disinformation at all levels through a false narrative rooted in the collective imagination, where some are repeatedly presented as victims and others as perpetrators.

These crimes, whose most obvious legacy is the current camps in Tindouf, cannot be understood without considering the magnitude and size of the population in these camps at that historical moment, when the aforementioned transgressions were committed. These crimes are comparable to the ‘razzias’ that once took place in other parts of Africa, but with an even more serious component, because any act classified as ‘deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty’ would currently be considered a ‘crime against humanity’ according to the International Criminal Court, and which have the special characteristic of being imprescriptible, that is, they can — and must — be prosecuted permanently. Unfortunately, this has not been the case here, but even though the events took place before the Rome Statute came into force, the imprescriptibility of crimes against humanity is based on the principle that serious violations of human rights must be investigated at any time.

The cases we denounce are proven by the families of the tribes who, for the most part, were taken from the southern Sahara, such as the Ulad Delim, Ulad Bousbaa, Ulad Musa, the confederation of Tecnas tribes, Arosien, Ulad Tidrarin, Izarguien, etc. They continue to show their rejection of the ostracism to which they are subjected due to the dictatorial attitude of those who rule the Polisario. But we hope that with this article they will have a small voice to cling to, and that their historical claims will reach and be heard beyond the desert. At least that will happen here in the islands, where only one side was heard and understood, the side that perpetrated the terrible acts that we denounce here.

Miguel A. Ortiz Asín/Ignacio Ortíz Palacio/ La Provincia-Diario de Las Palmas