| Popis: |
Moroccan Western Sahara, to use the UN’s terms, is a territory claimed by the Polisario Front movement, but administered and controlled since 1976 by the Moroccan authorities as “Southern Provinces of the kingdom”. Maps and personal observations based on fieldwork underscore the challenge of localizing the Moroccan Western Sahara border in the North, due to the erasing of the UN’s line by the Moroccan authorities. They have espoused a policy of developing the contested area, focused during the last ten years on promoting tourism and culture, which has contributed to depoliticizing the Sahrawi issue. On the ground, the real border has been moved (from an E-W line, it now runs roughly NE-SW along the Algerian and Mauritanian territories), and transformed into a permeable barrier of sand, the so-called ‘Berm’, which can be bypassed. Delimiting a Sahrawi territory is not obvious, in part because of the indefinite Sahrawi collective identity. However this identity is increasingly cristallised by the arrival of Moroccan migrant labourers coming from the North, in opposition to whom it is formulated. |
