Project Detail: A War Against Oblivion

Contest:

Reportage and Documentary 2022



Brand:

LuganoPhotoDays



Author:

David Verberckt

 

Project Info

A War Against Oblivion

About the long struggle by the Saharawi for self-determination, after a long holding cease-fire since 1991, armed hostilities between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan Armed Forces have resumed in October 2020. A restart of hostilities of this long forgotten frozen conflict as a cry for a long overdue solution since decolonisation of the territory of the Western Sahara

On 14 November 2020, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) president Brahim Ghali announced that he signed a decree bringing the 29 year old ceasefire to an end, citing an incident 2 days earlier in which Moroccan armed forces forcibly entered a crossing within the buffer zone that was being blocked by Sahrawi protesters, acts which the SADR considered a declaration of war. Since then the Polisario Front, the armed branch of the SADR, has been launching attacks against Moroccan positions along the 2,700 km sand wall that divides the territories controlled by Morocco since the 1991 ceasefire and the remaining 20% of the territory controlled by the SADR. Being outnumbered the Polisario Front uses highly mobile units to attack and adopts guerilla techniques while Morocco has numerous troops engraved in bunkers along the sand berm forming the frontline. The Moroccan army has also started tu use attack drones further complicating the Polisario's mobility capacity in this huge desert battlefield.

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