A former Swiss diplomat adds a few lines, within a wider glance at Islam in Africa, notably Morocco, about the camps at Tindouf:
in May this year, his son, Mohammed VI, torpedoed an equitable UNSC solution which would have finally allowed MINURSO to do its work. This UN body is charged with the execution of a referendum on full sovereignty or autonomy within Morocco for the Sahrawis, whose phantom state, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, is a member of the African Union.

This particular example of royal Moroccan intransigence and high-handedness is a problem for Algeria, where many Sahrawi refugees have vegetated for 20 years under pitiful circumstances, mostly in the Southern province of Tinduf. Algeria is a country still numb from its own traumatic experience with an Arab Spring which turned into a ten-year civil war between secularists and the army on the one hand and the Islamists on the other.

Both this war and the continued Moroccan occupation of a big part of the Western Sahara have left a heavy legacy: a reservoir of embittered, often jobless young people who are easy prey for Islamic fanatics and terrorists, both homegrown and imported. When the two join forces, like in the case of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, they are ready and able to leave a trace of blood soaked terrorism and outright war, as in the case of northern Mali.
Link:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...ern-front.aspx