For Moroccans, Tindouf, which we once considered an integral part of our country before France got rid of its Algerian department, has now become synonymous with the Polisario. Its name is closely linked to the camps where our compatriots are held captive in the city in as much as, in the past, its judges and postal officials reported to the Moroccan administration.
Upon learning of Tebboune’s visit to Tindouf, my compatriots immediately thought of the camps located in the region, which undoubtedly belong to the wilaya of the same name, the extent of which territory in terms of surface area is unknown to me. It is assumed that the territory granted to the Polisario Republic, in which today no one in Africa believes, except of course South Africa, is quite vast, encompassing several wilayas, military regions, and even ministries, including a Ministry of Mujahideen, which claims to have one and a half million resistance fighters “in other places.”
Tindouf, which had remained Moroccan until the independence of Algeria, which betrayed Morocco which had believed in the sincerity of its leaders who pledged to renegotiate French borders with Morocco upon their independence, would retain its Moroccan traditions in religious and culinary matters and others. Some notable figures in Tindouf, a city off-limits to foreign visitors without authorization, in their dealings with Moroccans, off the record, did not conceal their Moroccan roots and ancestral ties to the Kingdom of Morocco. The goal of dictator Boumediene, in creating the Polisario and establishing a “backup” republic in Tindouf, was not only to gain access to the Atlantic Ocean through a puppet entity but also to erase any reference to the Cherifian Kingdom from the memories of the region’s inhabitants and to instill an eternal animosity in their hearts.
In evoking South Africa, a staunch supporter of Algeria, I recalled the recent visit of the South African ambassador to Rabat to Berkane, who (on the sidelines of his participation in a football match football, which pitted Berkane against Sekhukhu United, visited some memorable places, notably a residence where Nelson Mandela had stayed long before the independence of Algeria) inquired about the military training of a group of his compatriots before joining the maquis (French resistance). In this same region, he had rubbed shoulders with Algerian resistance fighters, then in exile in Morocco, who were overseeing military operations inside Algeria from our country and arming the guerrillas. All of this was quickly buried by our Algerian friends of yesterday, who today deploy three-fifths of their army on the Moroccan borders, “fearing Moroccan aggression with the complicity of Israel.”
If there are dangers and threats to be feared, they undoubtedly come from the shortages of lentils, potatoes, and oil! Rather, Morocco is so preoccupied with its development and launch of its ambitious social programs that it has no interest in frequent, misplaced, and utopian alerts, including the unilateral exploitation of the iron mines of Gara Djebilet in the Tindouf region, an area subject to a border agreement between Morocco and Algeria signed in 1972 — exploitation which would also justify the border treaty.
Algeria continues to violate its international commitments. However, this international agreement is not lapsed by obsolescence because, in that case, the border agreement itself would be null and void. While the Kingdom of Morocco gains new support every day for its position on its territorial integrity, a nonagenarian Algerian, president of the Senate, plans to mobilize “the popular masses” from all continents in favor of a cause that, to my knowledge, does not concern the Algerian people as much as it does lentils.
* Taieb Dekkar is a journalist and writer