Algeria « Prospect Magazine

Mariem Hassan: the voice of Western Sahara

Stefan Simanowitz

Mariem Hassan performs in Wiltshire

Mariem Hassan’s voice soared through the warm afternoon air in the Wiltshire countryside at last month’s WOMAD festival. She started with a “mawal”—a graceful song sung without accompaniment before moving on to the mesmeric desert blues for which she is famed. She sings of love, of heartache but most of all she sings about the suffering and hopes of her people in their struggle for independence in Africa’s last colony. “To be Saharawi is to be political,”she said, her eyes sparkling. Known as “the voice of Western Sahara,” Hassan is the embodiment of the axiom that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She has lived through war, cancer and over three decades of exile but her spirit remains strong.

Born in Smara, a desert city built of red Saharan sand and decorative basalt stone, she spent the first 15 years of her life living under Spanish colonial rule. She began songwriting at a young age despite having no musical instruments other than a drum. In the early 1970s as the Western Saharan liberation movement, the Polisario Front, grew her music became more politicised as she sang about the Saharawi’s desire for independence. “One time I had to climb through a window at a meeting where I was singing to escape arrest by the Spanish police,” she recalls.

In February 1976 the Spanish finally withdrew from Western Sahara, but instead of allowing the creation of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) they sold the territory to the Moroccans and Mauriatians. A 15-year war ensued between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the Mauritanians withdrawing in 1979. The fighting was brutal, with the Moroccans using their well-equipped army and air force to full effect, while the Saharawis conducted an effective counter insurgency. Mariem, along with tens of thousands of other Saharawis, was forced to flee on foot across the desert to the safety of refugee camps in Algeria. Thirty-four years later 165,000 of them are still living in these camps.

Why I quit my job to campaign for the Western Sahara

Stefan Simanowitz

Western Sahara: in need of a voice

“Where have you flown in from?” the immigration official asks as I reach passport control. “Tindouf” I reply. His eyebrows arch. “It’s in Algeria” I explain, “In the Sahara desert”. I am dusty and somewhat dazed but with a rare clarity of purpose.

The next day at work I take my boss aside and hand her my letter of resignation. Whilst staying in refugee camp in Dakhla, I realised that the Saharawi people need their story told and that the lack of international awareness of their struggle makes their desperate situation feel even more hopeless than it already is. And so I have resolved to give up my “day job” and work with the Free Western Sahara Campaign in order to help move the story of the Sahara Film Festival and the Saharawi refugees off the culture pages of our newspapers and on to the international pages where it belongs. Thanks to this blog, and to my recent articles in New Internationalist and the Independent, now been syndicated, membership of the campaign is growing.

Next year, we hope to arrange direct flights to Tindouf from London and LA filled with actors, film-makers and musicians as well as ordinary people wanting to be part of the festival and show their solidarity with the Saharawi. In this way the festival will become even more of an international event, putting pressure on political decision-makers at the highest level and reminding the world of an otherwise forgotten conflict.

The campaign will be officially launched in the Houses of Parliament at midday on 12th June, and will be preceded by a delegation to No.10 Downing Street.