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Article: Western Sahara.(COUNTRY PROFILE)
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- December 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE Government of Western Sahara operates not from its own capital city, L'ayoun, but from a small patch of desert over the border in Algeria. Here there is another L'ayoun, just as there is another Smara, Aoserd and Dakhla--the Saharawis, who have lived in refugee exile for the last three decades, named their own 'temporary' settlements after the major cities of their homeland.
The real L'ayoun the refugees dream of is a city under guard. It remains a dusty, modest place with no notable architectural features, despite significant investment by the occupying Moroccans over the past 30 years.
This was once the capital of Spanish Sahara. Spain took ...