After 35 long years of isolation and living far from their homeland, thousands of Moroccan Sahrawis keep always the hope of being able to join one day the land of their ancestors. The Sahrawi populations submitted to despicably life conditions in Tindouf camps, in Algeria, “dream of one thing: join their homeland, Morocco”, writes the famous American investigative journalist, Richard Miniter.
The populations living in Lahmada camps “have good reasons to want to get themselves out of the precarious environment (…) which is under the control of the dictatorial system, recalling the East Germany at the time of the cold war”, underlines the journalist Miniter.
In an article published by the Forbes Magazine, Richard Miniter, writer of many best Sellers on terrorism, recalls the fact that thousands of Sahrawis have succeeded in escaping, despite of the risk of reprisal, from the Polisario armed militia.

The writer of the article, who has visited Tindouf camps in 2010, warns against the despair of a youth deprived of its basic rights and the rare opportunities of employment in the camps, noting that it concerns a source of fighters for the recruiters of Al-Qaïda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI). In a report on Tindouf camps published in the first edition of the French version of the US magazine Foreign Policy, Miniter has described an environment “at the mercy of anarchy in which the separatists’ leaders can not ensure a kind of order, a situation aggravated by lack of infrastructures and the absence of legitimate power”.
For the journalist Miniter, a simple visit in these camps is sufficient to demystify the real objectives of the Polisario separatists’ leaders, including their chief Mohamed Abdelaziz, consisting of « making the status quo situation last to the detriment of the populations in a stagnant situation in the camps”.
Algeria hosting the Polisario on its territory, he supports, « has also an interest to make this Sahara conflict lasts », in its search for « a kind of leadership in the Maghreb ». For Richard Miniter, “we can bit that money; politics and credulity are very much involved in the perpetuation of a useless conflict”.