![Salek Labieb Basher, 23, Friend of the Camel, pictured in the desert near Tifariti, in Polisario controlled Western Sahara. I was born in Smara in the occupied territory. In school, we would fight with the Moroccan boys all the time. I had some Moroccan friends, but they were boys who believed in a free Sahara. I heard on the radio one day that Moroccan soldiers had caught a lot of camels from across the wall and had taken them to Smara. Many of us went to see them and I felt bad when I saw women crying because the Moroccans were not giving them water or food and everyday one was dying. The camel is very important in our culture and is a friend of the Saharawi since long ago. The Moroccans did this to hurt the Saharawi people. After three months the camels were like skeletons, so me and three friends decided to liberate them to stop this tragedy. We watched the routine of the Moroccans for one week, then one night jumped over the wall into the yard where the camels were being held. We caught the guard, but he did not have the keys, so we had to lift the gate ourselves. We then led the biggest camel out and the rest of the camels followed, there were maybe one hundred and fifty. We were seen by two Moroccan men and became worried that soldiers would soon be coming after us, so we split up into four groups and agreed to meet the next day. We wanted to send the camels back to the liberated territory, so I took my group to a valley where the wall and the mines are washed away by the rains and sent the camels down into the valley, so they could cross. I left them at 4am and returned to meet my friends. We stayed under the trees all the next day because we could hear a helicopter and vehicles. At night, we meet bedouin who told us the Moroccans were searching for the people who freed the camels. It was then that we decided we must cross the wall to and go to the Polisario because if we were caught the Moroccans would put us in jail [for a long time].](https://premioluisvaltuena.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-McConnell-beca-sahara-11.jpg)
![Munaia Nami, 16, in Dakhla refugee camp, Algeria. I lived in Auserd [refugee camp] for ten years, then moved to Dakhla [refugee camp]to join my aunt and grandfather. It's a difficult life in the camps, we are away from our homeland. I didn't have normal conditions for my childhood, although I liked it because I had many friends. Weddings are the best thing about the camps. There is music and people get together and have fun, it lasts forty-eight hours, some even take place in the dunes. Weddings are important for women because it is one of the few opportunities we have for enjoying ourselves, men can go to many places and have chances to see each other all the time. We put on make-up and wear new clothes and dance. If the wedding is for someone we don't know, then we just watch. I am going to get married next year, I met my fiancé last year at a wedding, he was in Cuba for nine years. I hope it is a big wedding and all my friends will show off. I will get the best musicians, this is the most important part. Likewise, I will send out invitations, but on the day when people hear the guitar they will come from all Dakhla. I want to have children, but I hope they can grow up in Western Sahara. I don't want them to go through what I did. I would love to live in Spain, I've been there five times. It's a better life and I could get a job. I gave up school when I was thirteen to help take care of my grandfather, after that I became used to being at home. If God wills it, then we will get independence. We want the peace process to give us a solution, it would if the world became interested. I think war will give us independence, if we don't fight then we will just be a part of Morocco.](https://premioluisvaltuena.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-McConnell-beca-sahara-28.jpg)
![Brahim Mohamed Baih, 62, Polisario soldier, pictured praying in the desert in Polisario controlled Western Sahara near the Algerian border (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic). I was born in Tiris, which in now in the liberated territory of Western Sahara, in 1947. It is desert and a bedouin area with many camels. We traveled a lot to Zouerate in Mauritania when I was young. I was there in 1975 when Mauritania invaded Western Sahara. The Saharawi tried to move to the camps, but they [Mauritanians] blocked the routes. I was arrested, they treated us badly. When Mauritania withdrew in 1979 Saharawis were then able to go to the refugee camps in Algeria. I was released and went also. It was an huge injustice, Mauritania had no right to be with Morocco, they had no reason to fight, no claim to the land. I fought in the war from '79, I had only the thought of freedom in my mind. In 1987, we captured eighty-seven Moroccan soldiers during an operation in Oumigata. We had a strong belief to win or die, our soldiers were strong; if not why do they build this wall? To protect themselves, without it, they had no rest, we attacked them always. You fight to free your land and then sign a ceasefire and stop the fight. It was not a good idea. The United Nations are unjust, they know Morocco are unfair. Why don't they put pressure on them to solve this problem? I'm sure the UN will never solve this, it is better to free your land or to die. I am still a soldier and I work now in the liberated territory, I watch the wall and see the Moroccan soldiers moving and watching us. When I see them I wish I could carry out an operation to destroy them, but politics is politics. I still return to Mauritania sometimes, they are friends of the Saharawi now and are on our side.](https://premioluisvaltuena.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-McConnell-beca-sahara-19.jpg)
![Mariam Zaide Amar, 24, deminer, pictured in Mehaires, in Polisario controlled Western Sahara (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic). I was born in the refugee camps in 1985. It was good, my family were there, of course the weather was harsh. I always wanted to be older, to grow up. I spent four years studying in Algeria. I heard an advertisement on Saharawi National Radio that Landmine Action needed women for demining. After hearing it a lot of times, I asked my family could I do it, they said I could. I thought it would be a great way to help my people and to clean the land of all the bombs. I went for the interview and there were a lot of girls. When they told me I had got the job, I felt very lucky. We wear special clothes and use metal detectors. When I find a mine I mark it and then put TNT around it and attached the detonator, then move back 300 m with a cable and blow it up. When I hear of people getting killed by mines, I feel sick. We are working in Mehaires now in the liberated territory, there is a lot of ordnance here, at the moment we are clearing cluster munitions, but there are also grenades, missiles, anti-tank mines and anti-personal mines. It will take two years to clear what we have found but the bedoiun are always telling us about other mines, so our work is extended. It will take a very long time to clear all the land, maybe thirty years. The problem is, we cannot work nearer than five kilometers to the wall. There are many mines there and under the ceasefire agreement we cannot go in that area. The Moroccans mined that whole area, and they still put mines there today. They are like terrorists, they are killing civilians not soldiers. I hope the whole [peace] process will give a solution to Western Sahara because I would hate for war to start again. After all this waiting the UN must find a solution, I believe it will come soon.](https://premioluisvaltuena.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-McConnell-beca-sahara-32.jpg)
![Abdullah Kheylanie, 30, driver of a water truck, pictured on the road outside Smara refugee camp, Algeria. The job is very difficult, driving and delivering water. There is a well near Smara and we pump the water into the truck. It is salty, so you cannot drink it, but there is a machine that makes the water less salty. Early in the morning, I get the water from the well and then deliver it to the families in Smara. Each family has a water tank near their home, some have two. The Dira [section of camp] organises it, one tank usually lasts a family eight days. The water is free, the Polisario pay me for this job, it is a very good job to have in the camps. There are three trucks in Smara, and we work every day, I don't know when the well will run dry. Life here is very hard. I don't know much about the UN and politics, but I know that which is taken by force and only be taken back by force. We should return to war.](https://premioluisvaltuena.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-McConnell-beca-sahara-33.jpg)
![Mohamed Lamin Slot, 26, ambulance driver, pictured in the desert near Rabouni refugee camp, Algeria. I was born in El Aaiun camp in 1983. I grew up here, we got accustomed to it. I studied in Algeria for six years. I started working as an ambulance driver in 2005, it is a great job and I like it. There is a lot of tiredness, but I like to help people. It took one year to train in first aid, it was very difficult at first, you remember many bad things like blood and injuries, but now it's normal for me. We never rest there are always emergencies, maybe there are eight or nine cases per day. I work from Saturday to Friday and work the whole week even sleeping in the hospital, then I have the following week off. I get almost no sleep during that week. The hardest thing is when people die on the way to the hospital, you wish you could have got them there, but you couldn't. Over time, I know the best routes between the camps, it is sometimes difficult at night. I once got lost in the sand storm with a patient, we were very afraid. I was carrying an old man to Auserd [refugee camp], the storm came after sunset, so we could not see anything, I was careful and found the tracks, eventually, and we got there in the end. To drive here you must know the tracks, it takes practice, different tracks go to different camps, so you have to know the right one. There is one road built by the Algerians, but it only goes from Rabouni to Twenty Seven [of February refugee camp] and Smara [refugee camp], it is a big help for us. Dakhla [refugee camp] is the worst place to have an emergency, it is very far, there is a road, but it doesn't reach it. There is one ambulance per camp with two drivers. It's not enough.](https://premioluisvaltuena.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-McConnell-beca-sahara-40.jpg)
Presentation
The territory of Western Sahara is Africa’s last open file at the United Nations Decolonisation Committee. 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the Moroccan invasion, which forced former colonial power Spain to withdraw without holding a UN-sanctioned referendum on the future of the state. With Franco on his deathbed, Spain had little desire for confrontation and so divided the land between Morocco and Mauritania, ignoring the pleas of the indigenous Saharawi people and a ruling by the International Court of Justice which found neither country had any sovereignty over the territory.
A Saharawi rebel group, the Polisario Front, which had formed a few years earlier to fight the Spanish occupation, declared the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) on 27 February 1976 and began an all-out guerrilla war against the new occupiers. With heavy backing from Algeria, the Polisario had many early successes and forced the withdrawal of Mauritania in 1979. Morocco then took control of the entire country, and the war continued into the 1980s. Thousands of Saharawis fled the invasion and set up refugee camps across the border in neighboring Algeria, where they remain to this day, their numbers have grown to some 170,000.
Polisario’s gains were hampered in the mid-eighties with the building of a heavily mined 1600-kilometer sand wall by Morocco, dividing Western Sahara in two and keeping the Polisario mostly confined to the inland desert. A ceasefire was signed in 1991 with the agreement that a referendum on self-determination would be held the following year. But, nineteen years later that referendum has yet to take place and for the Saharawi people, a sense of injustice, hopelessness, and anger grows ever stronger. This is a landless people, who cannot be photographed in their own territory and must not be forgotten.
Biography
Andrew McConnell was born in Ireland and began his career as a press photographer working for a daily newspaper in Belfast during the closing stages of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the transition to peace.
Today his works focus on themes of displacement, post-conflict issues, and the environment. He has worked in-depth on issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis, e-waste in Ghana, the surfers of the Gaza Strip, and the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for which he won the Luis Valutena Humanitarian Photography Award.
In 2009, he completed a series on the forgotten Sahrawi people of Western Sahara, for which he was awarded 1st place in the portrait story category of the World Press Photo awards. A follow-up project on the issue of urban refugees was carried out in 8 cities worldwide and resulted in exhibitions in London and New York.
Among numerous honors, McConnell has won two 1st place prizes at the World Press Photo Awards, 4 National Press Photographers Association awards, including the prestigious Best of Show, 2 Sony World Photography Awards, 1st place at the Pictures of the Year International, and 1st place in the Istanbul Photo Awards.
He is represented by one of the world's leading photographic agencies: Panos Pictures.
