Desert Divers Read Online Free PDF Page B

Europeans.
    The main enemy was the French, pressing from the south through Mauritania, from the east through Algeria and soon enough from the north through Morocco. That was whyVieuchange had to travel in disguise. He belonged to the enemy.
    Smara was not colonized until 1934 when the Spaniards, with the help of the French, occupied the town.
    Decolonization also came late. The Spaniards were not prepared to hand over power to the Polisario until the mid-1970s.
    But the King of Morocco had territorial ambitions. He dreamt of a Greater Morocco that would include parts of Algeria, Mali and Mauritania, and on down to the Senegal river. He maintained that Spanish West Sahara belonged to him for historic reasons.
    The matter was referred to the international court at the Hague, which replied that there were indeed legal ties between Morocco and West Sahara, but that these ties did not entail territorial supremacy. The principle of the right to self-determination through the free declaration of the will of the people should, the court decided, be applied without restriction.
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    What happened next was extremely peculiar. Only in Smara has anything like it ever happened to me.
    One evening, I am sitting in the corridor of the Hotel Erraha, talking to a Moroccan greengrocer. He is from Rabat and has been tempted to Smara with subsidies from the government. Here he has a cheap house, earns good money and likes it. And as evidence that there are no problems in the town, he alleges there are no soldiers there.
    ‘No soldiers, no problems.’
    He says this in the Hotel Erraha, which is full of soldiers on leave.
    They are sleeping in heaps on the floor of the corridor in front of us.
    They have come directly from the fighting at the Wall erected as a defence against the Polisario, sand running off their uniforms, wild-eyed, heads wrapped in cloths and rags. With its music, its lights and occasional women, Smara to them is a paradise compared with the dry dust, the eternal wind and the shadeless heat out there.
    Maybe they have no other problems, but they are undeniably soldiers.
    Through the hotel window, the greengrocer and I look out over the town. It consists mainly of military installations resembling cartons of eggs with their rows of yellowish-white cupolas. Behind the hotel, army vehicles are lined up in a gigantic military parking lot. In the street below we can see military police walking around in pairs, checking Saharan identity cards. Moroccan conscripts roam in groups along the street, hanging onto each other like teenage girls. A column of army trucks – with their engines running – is ready to depart to the front. The trucks are full of soldiers with closed, sullen, bitter faces.
    But the greengrocer maintains they don’t exist.
    ‘But hang on a minute,’ I say, in appeal. ‘You can’t even go and have a pee without falling over sleeping soldiers. It’s seething with them down there on the street …’
    I point out through the window. But that makes no impression on the greengrocer.
    ‘Further away maybe,’ he says. ‘But here in Smara there are no soldiers, no problems.’
    Is he saying what the police have told him to say without bothering to make it plausible? Does he wish, while protectinghimself, to tell me the exact opposite: ‘Many soldiers, many problems’?
    I don’t know. All I know is that our conversation ceased once it lost touch with reality.
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    On October 16, 1975, when the international court decision was delivered, the Moroccan invasion of West Sahara was already planned in detail. Hassan II was unable to back down. He did the same thing as the greengrocer.
    He made a great speech in Rabat, explaining that the international court had upheld Morocco’s demands.
    To objections that it had done no such thing, he simply declined to answer. Instead he announced a ‘peace march’ to ‘liberate’ West Sahara.
    At this threat, the Spaniards suddenly broke off all contact with the Saharans. A