In a Forgotten Corner

The world’s largest minefield marks the front line of a frozen conflict over the Sahara Desert. With Islamism and impatience rising in Western Sahara, old grievances may ignite a new insurgency.

Story and photography by Sean Williams.

RABOUNI, Western Sahara refugee camps, Algeria

There were three in the truck when it happened. Said Mohamedfathal Ali was riding shotgun with a fellow guerrilla. Both of them made it. The driver never stood a chance. It was late November 1982, and in Ali’s opinion at least, his fellow Sahrawis, the native inhabitants of Western Sahara, were winning the war for their homeland. Tales of great victories, inflicted on the many by the few, swept across the desert like its sands.

Ali and his fellow marine units played a big role in that. By night they’d wash up on the region’s Atlantic coast beside garrisons, towns or outposts, surveying the scene ahead of an attack. By morning, dozens or sometimes hundreds of Sahrawi guerrilla forces, the Polisario, would storm — in most instances successfully. One attack, he recalls, in the territory’s featureless south, sent some 3,000 Moroccans running. A thousand were killed, he says, his voice elevated. Two hundred were captured, and some ran across the border to Mauritania, the once-aggressor that had bowed out of the war three years previously...

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