On the Web United Nations U.S. State Dept. NATO World Health Org. Summer temperatures run to 120 degrees, baking the stones. Sandstorms lash the terrain, the fine particles working their way into eyes, noses, throats and lungs.
Flies hover hungrily over each living being, thirsty for sweat and blood.
This town, if it could be called that, is a dusty shambles of white concrete and mud brick. As they stand vigilant against the troops of regional rival Morocco, somewhere across the featureless frontier, it is a place to be endured, not enjoyed. It was on this barren landscape that Algeria allowed 80,000 uprooted tribesmen to settle in 1975. They were the Sahrawis, refugees from nearby Western Sahara, running before Moroccan troops sent to occupy that former Spanish colony. Since then, a generation of Sahrawis has grown up near here in a desert prison, dependent almost entirely on charity to survive.