ON a warm desert morning, north east of El Aaiún in occupied Western Sahara, Moroccan police interrupted Elghalia Boujamaa’s breakfast.
For several months before, reported Western Sahara Resource Watch, Elghalia’s family had been under pressure to abandon their home as it sat on the would-be path of French company Alstom’s electricity line.
On October 22, 2014, Elghalia and her family members were finally permanently removed from the house, after a severe beating.
In Western Sahara, energy infrastructure is mixed up with oppression, and not just French corporations, but also some companies headquartered in Scotland (Cairn Energy, based in Edinburgh, and Irvine-based Windhoist) have been implicated.
Western Sahara is Africa’s last colony. In 1975, Spain handed over power to Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for continued rights to Western Sahara’s rich fisheries, and a 35 per cent stake in the country’s phosphates mine.
Much of the indigenous Saharawi population fled on foot, or by car or camel, to the south-west corner of the neighbouring Algerian desert, where they established refugee camps.
These camps today also serve as the Saharawi state-in-exile, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Those Saharawis that did not escape live under a brutal Moroccan military occupation, and are today outnumbered in their country by Moroccan settler colonialists.
The Saharawis’ indigenous guerrilla front, the Polisario, fought Mauritanian and Moroccan troops in the open desert for the right to their homeland. Mauritania retreated in 1979 and subsequently officially recognized the SADR.
In 1991 the UN brokered a ceasefire between Polisario and Morocco on the back of a promise for a referendum on independence for the Saharawis ... but not before Morocco built the longest active military wall in the world across Western Sahara, with Saudi, French and US funding. The referendum has still not taken place.
The military wall separates Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, with all the country’s cities and Atlantic coast, from Polisario-controlled Western Sahara.
While Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara is, according to international civil liberties NGO Freedom House, one of the worst places in the world in terms of repression, it is also one of the least known of the world’s enduring conflicts. One reason for this is due to the media blockade enforced by Morocco.
This is made apparent in a recent documentary by US news team Democracy Now.
Their documentary, entitled Four Days in Western Sahara, is the first international news broadcast filmed from the territory in years.
It shows the obstacles journalists face in reporting on the ground in Western Sahara, as well as the chilling retributions suffered by Saharawis prepared to openly speak out about the dire human rights situation.
One person interviewed by the news team is Sultana Khaya, founder and president of the Saharawi League for Human Rights and Natural Resources. Her organisation is peacefully campaigning against the plunder of Western Sahara’s resources, whether they be agricultural produce, sand, phosphates, oil, or solar and wind energy. For her efforts, Khaya lost an eye during torture.
The exploitation of Western Sahara’s resources is undertaken against the wishes of the Saharawi population, and for the economic gain of Morocco. The profits for Morocco remove an incentive to engage with the UN peace process.
High-profile foreign investments serve to normalise the occupation. Job opportunities resulting from resource exploitation benefit Moroccan settlers. Indigenous Saharawis, who suffer tremendous discrimination in the job market, are generally excluded. And of course, the Saharawi refugee-citizens on the other side of the military wall do not benefit at all from these developments.
Energy companies continue to reinforce Morocco’s hold on Western Sahara. Renewable energy developments there arguably offer even more colonising potential than oil and other finite resources.
Energy produced in European-built wind and solar farms travels over the border via transmission cables. Gradually, Morocco makes itself more and more dependent on its colony for energy: by 2020, over 26 per cent of Morocco’s renewable energy production is expected to come from Western Sahara.
Few people in Britain have heard of the four-decade-long struggle of the Saharawis for self-determination.
Yet, via several British energy corporations, Britain reinforces their colonisation.
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