“Gar Firdaus, bar-rue zamin ast, hami asto, hamin ast” (if there is a paradise on Earth, it is here, it is here) declared Persian poet Firdaus (AD 940-1020) that was repeated by Mogul emperor Jahangir upon seeing Kashmir.

I wonder what Firdaus would have said if he had seen a barren land with unending sand dunes, with no trees except a few shrubs, hardly any oases, no river, no rains and no visible water, being perhaps one of the most inhospitable lands in the world. That is SADR (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) or formerly Spanish Sahara or Western Sahara in Africa, stretching from Algerian and Mauritanian borders to the shores of Atlantic Ocean.

In the African continent, political maps were drawn more or less in straight lines, not using natural or geographical markings. The imperialist colonisers just divided the land fixing borders among themselves.

The European colonists, notably the Spanish and the French, considered this area as unpopulated. They did not recognise that people were already living there for centuries. To their understanding they were not to be taken note of. Their main dealings were with Morocco.

The national liberation fighters of SADR led by Polisario Front (set up in 1973) are, till date, fighting to win back their land which is largely occupied by Morocco, a country bordering SADR in the North. The people of SADR, nearly a million strong are without an independent country. Though their land is spread over an area of 284000 sq. km, less than 0.02% of the area is arable.                                                                                                                                                                                    

Most of the Polisario Front fighters, their families and children live in camps in and around Tindouf which is in Algeria. Some parts of SADR, roughly 25% of the territory, have been recovered by the Polisario fighters but most still remains under Moroccan occupation. The Front runs a government which is structured with a President and a Council of Ministers under a Prime Minister which runs the administration. There are schools, hospitals and some efforts at cultivation are also underway.

SADR was not always a desert. The land used to be under the Atlantic Ocean. When the ocean waters receded, some water remained underground while the surface dried up. There are reservoirs of water underground which if extracted, could make the desert land green again. The underground water is slightly brackish but it can be processed and its salt removed.

I had seen such a reservoir, which was estimated to be 2300 sq km in area and the water depth varied between 30 and 200 feet in places from where water was being pumped out and used in agriculture. There are huge quantities of mineral deposits in SADR including iron ore, titanium, vanadium, phosphate and some possible deposits of oil. Abundant sea fish off the coast in the Atlantic is yet another natural resource of SADR.

I was in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, in November 1988 to cover the first meeting of the Palestine National Council (Parliament) where Yasser Arafat declared the setting up of Palestine State. Since I was in Algiers, I thought it would be a great idea to visit SADR and I took an Algerian flight to Tindouf. From Tindouf, I and a couple of African journalists were driven in a jeep to a commune of Polisario inside SADR which is also the seat of SADR government.

I cannot but mention here an interesting incident on the way. One of the African journalists had to clear his bowels urgently. We stopped the jeep and he went behind a sand dune. After a few minutes, he returned to the jeep and one of his colleagues asked, how did he manage to clean up? His answer was simple: since there is no water, the hot sand was good enough to clean with.

The commune was a city of tents with a few buildings that housed the common kitchen, a hospital and some other amenities. There were no beds but only mattresses to sleep upon. In the desert, the temperature can vary from as high as 57o C during the day to almost freezing at night. The desert wind was constant and carried copious quantities of desert sand. Most parts of the SADR area were also strewn with gravel.

It is in one of the tents that I met the SADR Prime Minister Mohamed Lamine Ahmed, a young man of barely 30 years of age. Over endless glasses of syrupy mint tea given to us as a hospitality measure, he narrated the background to the independence struggle of the Saharawi people, against the Spanish forces first and then against the Moroccans. He added that at one point of time Morocco was dreaming of greater Morocco claiming even Mauritania and Mali, besides Western Sahara. I would better avoid that story here as it is a quite a long story of occupation and deliberate cheating.

In another tent city, I met Fatimetou Al-Laly, director of the unusually named “27 February School for women”. One to three-year courses was being provided there for women to learn nursing, teaching, tailoring, carpet-weaving and some other useful trades. A guntotting Fatimetou in battle fatigues looked quite forbidding and seemed to wield quite a bit of authority but she had a very soft and lilting voice.

Another place I visited was the Shahidi Hassain Tamak farm comprising 12 hectares of desert land. It is watered by the underground water source and had a quite a bit of greenery including fruit trees besides some vegetables like beets, onions, figs, dates, beans and sunflowers. The farm had a desalinisation plant that removes salt from the underground water and produces both drinking water and water for farming. Haji Ibrahim, an old cultivator was in charge of the farm and some 25 people worked under him.

The UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO and several other aid agencies are helping these people to survive providing tents, beds, medicine and many other items needed for survival. Even drinking water is supplied by UNHCR but the need was obviously more than what is supplied. The administration of the tents and the liberated areas is completely run by the SADR government. There are some UN peacekeeping forces in the occupied areas of SADR but they are mostly based in the areas not controlled by Polisario.

I also went to see the school which was coeducational and being run by three young girl teachers who studied in Algiers. I also saw an experimental farm where water is kept under a big cistern with a glass top. The intense heat of the Sun creates water vapour which upon touching the slanted glass cover, condenses and trickles down to be collected through pipes as desalinated water. I saw papaya trees and some vegetables being grown in the experimental farm.

After seeing this unique township of tents, and a people fighting for their liberation, it was time to return. It was getting dark and being near the equator, the sun quickly goes below the horizon and there is hardly any residual light left. After a few minutes, it became quite dark but our driver however, unerringly drove through the sand dunes and desert land where there was no road. It seemed as if he was navigating by the stars! Reaching Tindouf, I got a seat in an Algerian plane and reached Algiers soon. A return flight to Delhi waited for me in the morning.