Western Sahara: A former Founding member of Polisario Frente embraces Moroccan Settlement Plan

By on April 23, 2010

TindoufAhmeddou Ould Souilem – a former Minister-Counsellor to Mohammed Abdelaziz and Founding member of the Polisario Frente –   has described the refugees’ life conditions in the camps of Tindouf in Algeria as unbearable.

The former Polisario leader calls also that ¨the time has come for the unnecessary conflict in the Western Sahara to end; for Algeria to cease its destructive meddling in our affairs; and for Polisario’s current leadership to wake up from its 30-year nap and to look after our people responsibly.

Ould Souilem  wrote  in an article published in the Global Post tribune Thursday the 23rd that before  his own return home to Morocco, he began his mental and intellectual return years before his physical action to escape from Tindouf .

He Bears witness that: ¨ For more than 30 years, tens of thousands of Sahrawis in the Tindouf camps have been separated from their families in Morocco and deprived of basic human rights and freedoms.
Ould Souilem added that The Polisario refuses to allow the accountability provided by a census in the camps; refugees’ movement outside the camps is strictly limited; ¨they have been prevented from integrating into the society around them, which means, obviously, they can’t vote, or even find work to improve their own lives. Sahrawis in Morocco, on the other hand, live in a healthy economy with a broad range of services and protections¨, he said.

In fact, this is not the first time that Ahmeddou Ould Souilem made such statements. Last year, he has sent just after his return to Morocco an unequivocal message to the world: the Polisario Frente, one of the only guerrilla movements still existing in the world, ersatz of the cold war, is going to its end.

Ould Souilem is also an uncontested chief of a major Sahraoui tribe and enjoys an important status within the social bodies of the Saharan Society. Taking into consideration the position of his late father Souilem Ould Abdallah who died in 1999 and who was member of the Sahrawi Jamaa (community), and chief of the powerful tribe of Ouled Dlim.
It is to add also that some Media sources in Madrid and Rabat talk about Ould Souilem as the future ambassador of Morocco in Madrid

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