Polisario's recruitment of child soldiers in Cuba, investigated

Children shouldn’t be soldiers. That’s the message a team of researchers from the International Research Center for Preventing Child Soldiers, based in Dakhla, is bringing to Colombia. 

Working alongside local and international groups, they’re tackling child soldiery on two fronts: stopping recruitment and helping those already forced to fight to rebuild their lives. 

The team heard firsthand the horrific stories of those who escaped armed groups. 

In Morocco, the decades-long Sahara conflict raised concerns about child soldiers since the Polisario kidnapped children from the Southern regions and sent them to Cuba for military training. 

“I remember my childhood was very sad and bitter,”Saadani Ma’a Al-Aynayn‘s voice trembled with pain as she recalled her stolen childhood by the Polisario. 

Deceived by promises of a quick return to her family and home, she and countless other Sahrawi children were forcibly sent to Cuba by the Polisario Front. 

For fifteen years, silence. Not a single call, message, or glimpse of her family. This is the brutal reality for many Sahrawi children, victims of a systematic abduction.

This is just one instance of the numerous human rights abuses that plague the separatist movement’s history.

The Polisario Front, a self-proclaimed defender of freedom, has been employing tactics far from noble; tactics that spare no woman or child. 

The movement’s history book is filled with children as young as nine who were ripped away from their families and shipped off to a heavily guarded “Youth Island” in Cuba. 

Schools, built not for education, but for indoctrination, churn out young soldiers. Daryl Alarcon, a witness to this tragedy, said, “The abducted children range in age from 9 to 15 years old and are taken to ‘Youth Island,’ referring to Cuba, which was under full military guard with no possibility of escape. Schools were built there to provide children with military training exclusively.”  

These children are further isolated, with Alarcon adding, “So far, about 10 children have been killed on the island, and I don’t know if their families are even aware of that.”

Children were used as pawns, forced into manual labor by day and political indoctrination by night. Their cries for home were met with inhumane conditions, a stark contrast to the promises made by the Polisario.  

“Sahrawi trainees were sent as specialists to the desert to form a front line against Morocco, as they abducted children to Cuba… and they were placed in schools specifically built for them… In the morning, children would go to the fields, and in the evening, they would go to schools for primarily political education. In the beginning, we faced problems… some children would constantly scream and ask for their fathers… it was inhumane conditions,” Vivez said. 

These kidnappings allegedly served a chilling purpose: to bolster the Polisario’s population and pressure the Moroccan government. Women reportedly became targets for forced pregnancies, a tactic to increase the Polisario’s demographic influence.

The plight of Sahrawi women in the Tindouf camps remains dire. They endure a range of violations, including forced procreation and violence, at the hands of the Polisario, while Algeria seemingly turns a blind eye.

The Polisario has stripped Sahrawi women of their right to family planning, a fundamental choice, by enforcing a policy of forced procreation in the camps, said the NGO accredited to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The Polisario further exploits women by forcing them to hand over their children to its leaders from  under the false promise of education. These children are then forcibly deported to Eastern European countries for years, severing family ties with no chance for mothers to object.

In the Tindouf camps, the Polisario throws women into illegal detention, subjecting them to torture and denying them basic legal rights, medical care, and lawyers. Algeria, the host country, remains silent.

Lemaadla Mohamed Salem Kouri, a Sahrawi woman who fled the horrors of the Tindouf camps, spoke out against the “egregious human rights violations” perpetrated against Sahrawis of all ages.  

Kouri listed a chilling catalogue of abuses: abductions, disappearances, torture, executions, child soldiery, rape, and slavery. 

Kouri further condemned the “culture of impunity” that allows the Polisario leadership and Algerian officials to continue their systematic repression without consequence.  

The lack of any legal recourse for victims was another point of outrage for Kouri who decried the “lawless state” within the camps, where those who suffer abuses have no means to seek justice.

A mountain of evidence exposes the Polisario Front’s human rights record in the Tindouf camps. The African Organization for Human Rights Monitoring (Africa Watch) recently delivered a damning report to the US State Department outlining systematic human rights abuses and political repression. 

The Polisario, backed by Algerian security forces, stands accused of committing “serious human rights violations against the population.”  

The Tindouf camps, the report warns, are a breeding ground for abuses, with continuing incidents of abduction and extrajudicial killings, and the existence of secret torture and detention centers.  

Those who dare to criticize the Polisario’s leadership or advocate for international agreements face a brutal reality: torture and even death.  This culture of fear thrives amidst deteriorating social and economic conditions for the roughly 90,000 Sahrawi refugees trapped in the camps.

Perhaps most alarming is the Polisario’s consistent obstruction of international efforts to assess the situation. The group has repeatedly blocked the UN from conducting a census in the region, raising concerns about potential food insecurity and a desire to manipulate refugee numbers.

“Only 20% of the camp’s population is actually Sahrawi, with the remaining 80% hailing from other Saharan African countries,” says Hamada El Bihi, a former Polisario member who spent 40 years in the camps, stripped of his right to vote.

The Polisario  deliberately inflates the Sahrawi numbers to manipulate international aid.

This manipulation extends to embezzlement.  International aid intended for refugees is reportedly siphoned off by the Polisario to bolster their military.  

The practice, he claims, has been ongoing for years, only recently gaining international attention.

El Bihi’s account adds weight to a 2015 report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). The report exposed the Polisario’s diversion of €105 million in EU humanitarian aid, originally meant for the Tindouf camps between 1994 and 2004.

To this day, the Tindouf camps remain a tinderbox of violence and human rights abuses. As recently as March 2024, the African Network for Development, Governance and Human Rights (RADHEG) accused the Polisario armed militias and the Algerian army of a brutal campaign of repression. 

Sahrawi human rights advocates and social media activists who dare to speak out face the worst of these abuses, including extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rape, child soldier recruitment, and the shocking reality of slavery.