This morning I got the chance to meet Bashir Mustafa Sayed, the younger brother of the most celebrated martyr, national hero and first President of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, el Wali. Yet Bashir is also an important political figure in his own right. He is an historical leader of the Polisario - some say that during the late seventies and the early eighties he was the strongest figure in the organisation - and is today a central actor in the running of the camps. He came across as open, kind, intelligent and charismatic, which explains his popularity – in the last congress he was the first to be elected onto the National Secretariat.
Bashir Mustafa Sayed
Following the 1970 Zemla massacre, in which Saharawi protesters demonstrating peacefully against colonial rule were beaten, imprisoned and disappeared by Spanish authorities, Bashir and his brother El Wali were involved in planning and leading the second large-scale Saharawi nationalist demonstration in 1972. Following this, he travelled to Mauritania, where many nomadic Saharawis lived, in order to recruit members for their new organisation - the Polisario.
After asking what I was studying, he began to tell me about the role of women during these early stages of resistance. “In our struggle, in any event of some relevance, women were there supporting, and sometimes doing more than what men could do, and I remember, I recall, that women did more than men did, because they took advantage of their impunity in one sense, in a positive sense… police or security persons couldn’t touch the women, so women could carry things and could send or move, cover things.” He tells me about their other roles, as information gatherers, preparing food and finding medicine, demonstrating, and he mentions one particular incident in which he found himself on the run from colonial authorities; “I spent 26 days under the bed of a family and the woman was the one who facilitated that, convincing her husband to give me that possibility. She was so caring. Women really were in the heart of the struggle, since the beginning.”
I could have listened to Bashir for hours, and was eager to ask him more questions about what must be a fascinating life story, but time was pressing on and we had to leave to go to a conference going on in the nearby 27th February camp (named after the day when the Polisario declared the Saharawi Arabic Democratic Republic in 1976), where Bashir was on the panel of speakers. It was being held by the National Union of Saharawi Women (UNMS), on “Communication for Liberation and Development”. They mostly discussed new forms of technology through which women could transmit their messages and stories, and the relationship of women to public organisations such as TV and radio. Yet, with the presence of an Algerian imam (an Islamic prayer leader) on the panel, an interesting discussion of Islam and its role in Saharawi society arose.
Fatma el Mehdi, the current President of the National Union of Saharawi Women, has the microphone
Bashir pointed out that Islam is currently being threatened by the West, which claims that the religion is contrary to development, and physically attacks it through aggressions such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. The West is mistaken, argued Bashir, as the values of Islam are based around respect, peace and the search and thirst for knowledge. Those countries in which Islam wears its political suit and organisations such as Al Qaeda which choose the route of violence, are contradicting the principles of Islam. The Sahara is very far away from these ideologies (Saharawi society is Islamic, but the religion tends to be practiced in a relaxed and open way), but nevertheless we must be aware and protect our young people from external influences, warned Bashir. He went on to explain how some of these rich, violent “Islamic” groups have founded organisations in Southern Algeria, Mauritania and Senegal in order to influence young people and have succeeded. The Algerian imam added; just as a bird in the nest senses the rain and covers her eggs, women must sense problems in, and seek to protect, their society from dangerous outside influences.
This discussion is interesting taking into account that a lot of Moroccan propaganda about the Saharawis centres around the idea that their camps are “terrorist training grounds”. This is absolutely untrue, and the debate today showed that the Polisario has every intention of ensuring that it stays that way.
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For 30 years the Saharawi people of Western Sahara have lived in refugee camps in some of the harshest conditions on earth, while their country remains under occupation by Morocco. |
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