Visiting the disputed territory Western Sahara

Disputed regions have always been interesting to me based on their unique situations and political history that differentiate them from the rest of the areas around them. Western Sahara is one of the best examples of this in the world, so when I was visiting Morocco, I knew I had to visit the region which it refers to as its “Southern Provinces” or “Moroccan Sahara”. Laayoune was the city I chose to visit because it is the largest city in Western Sahara and serves as Morocco’s administrative center of the territory, in addition to being the claimed capital of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic by the Polisario Front, the other claimants of the region.

I wanted to observe if this region was different from the rest of the area controlled by Morocco, or if it was fully assimilated into the rest of the country. Going into the trip I was expecting there to be a big difference due to the political controversy, and there was a difference before I even arrived in Laayoune. On my bus ride to the city from Marrakech, we reached a road check point and a police officer got on to the bus soon after we crossed into the disputed territory. He walked through the bus but focused on me because I was visibly the only foreigner, he gestured for me to speak to him outside the bus on the side of the road while the rest of the bus watched and waited for me inside. He did not speak English, so we spoke through Google Translate, and he asked me questions such as my job and my reason for traveling to the area, in addition to taking a photo of my passport.

After that awkward welcome to the region, the bus arrived at Laayoune, and I walked across the street from the bus station to my budget hotel. For 15 dollars it was a pretty good room, even if the bathroom was so squeezed together that I could literally use the handheld shower head while sitting on the toilet. The employee of the hotel was the first of many friendly locals that I met on the trip. She printed out a map of the city and used a marker to show me how to get to places such as the grocery store and the park in the city center. After that, I just started walking around to see what the vibe was.

I walked until a man called me over to come sit down with him and enjoy some mint tea. I was hoping to find someone who would be comfortable talking to me about the politics of the region, and luckily for me, my new friend did just that. We discussed topics such as the Green March when many Moroccans arrived in the region, the subsidies and tax benefits that people who live in the region receive, and the role that Morocco’s rival neighbor Algeria plays in supporting the Polisario Front. The man was Moroccan, so he was biased, but he told me that he felt that few people actually cared about the political issues surrounding the region, and that Algeria was only supporting the Polisario Front because of their animosity towards Morocco. He also believed that the region could not support itself if it was independent. I found his perspective to be very interesting, even though I disagreed with it.

After I finished talking with him, I made my way to a small fossil museum that a very kind man named Mr. Taki ran out of his home. This gave me a less political perspective on the area, and more of a nomadic one. In addition to explaining the fossils, he told me about some local history related to the famous Taiwanese author Sanmao and about the time he showed his fossils to the actor Tom Hanks, who wanted to buy some that Mr. Taki would not sell. When I was walking back from there to my hotel, I had my first experience with people being very surprised to see visiting the region.

A group of teenagers who had just got out of school started making noise and gesturing for me to come over to them as if I was a celebrity or something. Later, after I went over to say hello to them, I took the cheapest taxi I have ever been in (70 cents to go 5 kilometers) where the driver was even more interested in why someone who looked like me was in the area. We talked through Google translate, and after I explained my curiosity about the region, he politely explained to me that the people of the region will have curiosity about me, because they do not typically see white people who go out of their way to go to Laayoune. He was right, all throughout the day people stared at me as I walked by, young kids crowded me with smiles on their faces, and people invited me to talk with them. My favorite was when a man was riding down the street on a motorcycle, and he stared at me as he rode past me, turning his head back to the point that he was looking backwards at me instead of forward towards the road.

At times the attention I was getting was a bit uncomfortable, but overall, I found the people I interacted with to be some of the kindest and most hospitable people I have ever met. One of the main reasons I visited the region was not only to see if it looked different, but also if it felt different. My conclusion as I sat in the airport ready to leave the region was that the city was well integrated into Morocco, but with less presence of tourism and with certain incentives provided to its residents to encourage them to live there. I did not see any non-Moroccan flags or manage to speak to anyone who identified with the Sahrawi independence movement, which I believe to be telling about the identity of the city. But I was sure to buy a “Moroccan Sahara” postcard from Mr. Taki’s shop at the airport which I will consider to be a nice souvenir if Western Sahara does ever achieve some level of independence.