Front POLISARIO, the Western Saharan independence movement, has held its annual celebrations of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The SADR was announced on February 27, 1976, and so this is its 33rd anniversary; that most dangerous year. The celebrations seem to have been unremarkable, or in fact indistinguishable from earlier years -- a military parade in the "liberated territories", combined with some political and social stunts to make the yearly journalists' trek pay in pictures and headlines. But three things caught my eye:
1. Troop levels: "Bashir Mustapha Saeed, the deputy leader of the exiled Saharawi government, based in neighboring Algeria, said the Polisario Front had 12,000 to 18,000 regular troops and could mobilize many more reservists if needed." -- It is very rare to hear POLISARIO announce troop numbers for their armed wing, the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army. 12,000 to 18,000 seems too high to be credible, with most observers putting the figure closer to 6-7,000 active troops, but that figure is also guesswork. El Bashir's number was probably accurate during the 80s, but since the cease-fire in 1991, training has slipped, and is no longer universal in the camps. At the same time, POLISARIO claims to have stepped up preparations for war again, and training apparently continues to churn out hundreds of new fighters every year -- 500 graduated during the celebrations alone, some of them seen here.
2. El Bashir Mustafa El Seyyid ran the event. This is not significant in itself, if it were not for the fact that there's a line of argument in Morocco that this man -- El Ouali's brother, and a chef historique -- is in fact held as prisoner by the leadership of Mohammed Abdelaziz. Allegedly he wants to make up with Morocco, and is therefore held under strict surveillance by POLISARIO authorities. This may or may not be true, but there's very little or no evidence to back it up; even so, it's slowly becoming an established fact that "everybody knows". TelQuel, the Moroccan magazine, presented its interview with El Bashir in 2008 as a groundbreaking event with a virtual prisoner. In fact, and whatever the level of marginalization he may be suffering, he has been highly involved in politics in the movement both before and after that interview. He was among the top vote winners at the POLISARIO's congress in 2007, and now schmoozes with journalists on the Feb. 27 celebrations. I can't claim to know anything of POLISARIO's inner workings, but that's hardly behavior befitting a dissident in house arrest.
3. Repopulation of the "liberated territories": This strategy, begun discreetly a couple of years ago, is now fully public. POLISARIO wants to establish a permanent civilian settlement at Tifariti (pictured right) in its section of Western Sahara, to bolster its infrastructure there and make the semi-permanent division of the territory more of a political and psychological embarrassment for Morocco. (Until now, there have only been military camps and nomadic movement in the areas held by POLISARIO, while Morocco's part has all the settled population.) It's actually quite clever, since it pokes a hole in Morocco's propaganda to its population about these areas being a UN-patrolled "buffer zone", rather than territory legally -- if not in any way physically -- on par with Smara and El Aaiún. On the other hand, it totally undermines the sabre-rattling that POLISARIO habitually engages in. If you think war is the least bit likely, you don't spend your precious resources building civilian housing on the front line.
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