Washington (USA), December 22, 2014 (SPS) - Western Sahara is the last colony in Africa, wrote the American daily Washington Post in an illustrated report of many pictures entitled “A line in the sand: Fighting 40 years of exile in the desert of Western Sahara.”
"A territory about the size of United Kingdom that stretches out along the Atlantic Ocean between Morocco and Mauritania, Western Sahara is technically the last African colony — it never gained its independence when Spain decamped in 1975,” said the daily in its report published recently.
The territory was invaded by Morocco, which divided it “in half by a 1,600-mile sand wall and surrounded by some 9 million land mines,” added the Washington Post.
The Moroccan government “has moved some 300,000 settlers into these territories, and this triggered a 16-year war between Rabat (the capital of Morocco) and the Polisario Front Sahrawi independence movement (also called SPLA, or Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army,” recalls the daily.
“The war, which forced more than 150,000 Sahrawis into exile across the border in Algerian refugee camps, formally ended in 1991, but the Polisario Front has threatened to resume fighting over the last decade. Next year will mark 40 years of forced exile for the Sahrawis,” said the report.
“In November 2014 photojournalist Tomaso Clavarino began documenting the Western Sahara military bases and cadets in the SPLA who are fighting for Sahrawi independence in what he describes as one of the ‘world’s least reported crises.’”
Clavarino, who had access to the military bases in Western Sahara, accompanied the counterterrorism patrols in the dessert and attended military exercises and parades. (SPS)
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