In the past year, they have exchanged letters with relatives in the Western Sahara for the first time. The Moroccans claim the refugees are forced to stay in Algeria against their will. Life here is very hard, but I prefer this to living under Moroccan rule. The women carry water, which is rationed, in jerry cans from a tank in tlie centre of Liguera camp. Daniel MoraCastro, a water expert from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, says it is poison.
Wind blows sand and animal and human faeces into the water holes.
That means they are not drinking water but shit soup. The Polisario took us to a village of whitewashed domes surrounded by high walls where they keep 500 of their 2,000 Moroccan prisoners of war. The prisoners do forced labour in the searing daylight and sleep inside the cramped little domes at night. They eat the same food and drink the same water as the refugees and suffer from the same diseases. From time to time, the Red Cross delivers letters from home, telling of the death of loved ones, or that a wife has given up waiting for her imprisoned husband and remarried.