Western Sahara

[davidbfpo]

The diplomatic and practical impasse remains over the future of Western Sahara since the first post. To be fair I'd nearly forgotten the dispute between the inhabitants, a good number of whom are in exile in Algeria - mainly in a mini-state - and Morocco.

Then I noted this snippet in an al-Wasat piece of the recent attacks in Niger, admittedly from the jihadists:

that the group of fighters involved jihadists from Sudan, Western Sahara, and Mali...

Link:http://thewasat.wordpress.com/2013/0...hifting-jihad/

Listening to an academic observer of the Sahel recently I recalled their reference to the ethnic affinity of the exiles in Algeria to the wider Tuareg community across the Sahel, with the declining appeal of the mini-state's Marxist-Leninist regime and numbers of the young turning to the jihadist cause. The implication being that the camps were a recruiting and recovery location for the fighters - whether jihadists or simply Tuaregs. One estimate for the camp's population is 200k.

The mini-state is formally the 'Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic' and the camps are around Tindouf and there has been a ceasefire since 1991. A very thin BBC profile:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14115273

One wonders how the Algerian state regards such activity, or does this provide a "safety valve"?

Added.

WaPo has a story on the wider Sahel as a recruiting ground, based on a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report 'Perilous Desert: Insecurity in the Sahara', with a chapter on the Western Sahara. For IT reasons WaPo would not load, so a spin-off Moroccan link:http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013...orists-expert/

Link to CEIP book, with scanty detail:http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/04...in-sahara/fzxv