Polisario dodges US call to dismantle Tindouf camps

The Polisario’s «foreign minister» avoided answering a question about the U.S. request to the Algerian authorities to dismantle the Tindouf camps.

«The issue of Sahrawi refugees in the Tindouf camps is governed by international humanitarian law. That law is well defined and clearly established. The Sahrawis have the right to choose freely where they want to go and under what conditions,» Mohamed Yeslem Beissat said in an interview with the daily El Español.

As a reminder, the second-highest-ranking official in U.S. diplomacy, Christopher Landau, asked the Algerian president last April to move ahead with dismantling the camps. Abdelmadjid Tebboune responded by proposing the transfer of the Sahrawi population to areas east of the Sand Wall, which the Polisario considers «liberated territories».

The Tindouf camps are an exception: they are administered neither by the United Nations nor by its specialized agencies. They are under the authority of the Algerian army and the Polisario’s armed militias. Both parties continue to ignore the repeated calls made by the UN Security Council, in its resolutions, for a census of the populations living in these camps.