Tindouf camps a tinderbox waiting to explode

Clashes broke out between rival armed gangs in the Polisario-controlled Tindouf camps, after three separatists handed over their arms and defected to Morocco, while Algeria has killed Sahrawi youth prospecting for gold. All of these happened in a single month, as the noose tightens around Algiers and the Polisario proxies to accept Morocco’s autonomy plan and find a lasting solution to the suffering imposed on the Sahrawis in the Tindouf camps.

The UN has kept urging Algeria to allow a head count of the population held in Tindouf camps in vain.

Algeria and the Polisario have been inflating the Tindouf camps’ population, which they have been using as political pawns to promote a separatist thesis that no global power supports.

With Morocco’s autonomy plan gaining traction among superpowers, the African Union and the UN member states, the Tindouf camps face the risk of implosion as Algeria and its Polisario proxies insist on the status quo.

The recent clashes, is the so-called “Laayoune camp”, between gangs in the camps and whose videos were widely shared show the scale of disenchantment in the camps, where the unemployed youth fall prey to terrorist recruiters and trafficking gangs, according to a group of Polisario-opponents supporting the autonomy plan known as FORSATIN.

The recent clashes add to the violence perpetrated by the Algerian forces which have been shooting dead anyone who leaves the camps.