Birbla

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  • Hacker News
  • It is interesting that Western Sahara never developed piracy enterprises similar to Somalia. Is it some combination of:

      * stronger government control from Morocco than Somalia has had internally
  * little indigenous sea-faring populations outside of controllable cities
  * sea lanes with less hospitable currents
  * something else?
    by adolph
  • Piracy used to be common in North Africa, but more along the Mediterranean Coast where there is far more shipping. The Red Sea is also a choke point.
    by nephihaha
  • One theory is that the shipping lanes there are not forced to go near the coast.

    Another is that Somalis are extra prone to piracy.

    by BurningFrog
  • I think you have it, especially with the first, but also I couldn't find very much coastline for Polisario-controlled territory here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara#/media/File:Wes...

    And of course there's the background indirect issue where the world's largest navy is stationed half on the same ocean.

    by arjie
  • It is missing the wonderful and still unexplored archeology:

    https://www.livescience.com/64677-stone-structures-discovere...

    by 1970-01-01
  • I drove through, and the map on vehicle showed it as a separate country. Many, many people warned me the military in Morocco would be pissed and likely not let me in.

    They seriously do not want people talking about it being a separate country, or occupied or anything like that.

    I cut that corner off the map before I went into Morocco, and at more than one checkpoint they looked at it super carefully.

    by testing22321
  • One of the lesser known criticisms of the recent "Odyssey' film is that parts were shot in the Western Sahara. I believe Emily Wilson herself was critical of this.
    by nephihaha
  • I've never quite understood the nature of this criticism. At best I'd describe it as deeply intellectualized tribalism. But I think I'm being a little too kind.
    by eej71
  • There is a lot of simplistic, one-sided information in this thread. Truth is it's a complicated matter to decide how long and how strongly one has to hold a piece of territory before it is considered legitimately theirs. And what about language or cultural differences? Does that change things?

    Should the Canaries be Spanish or African? Catalunya? Basque country? Should Gibraltar be British? Sicily Italian? The list goes on and on. In all these cases you will find people who will hold opposing opinions on this.

    Moroccans firmly believe Western Sahara to be historically Moroccan. They also believe that Ceuta and Melilla are Moroccan, despite the fact they've been in Iberian hands for 500 years. They are called the colonized cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the TV and Radio.

    The Moroccans I spoke to believe the government looked the other way to show displeasure at Spain because a Spanish minister visited Algeria to buy gas and oil. Obviously with the Iran war, Algeria's revenues and importance has grown.

    Morocco and Algeria both view a side gaining influence as a zero-sum: if it's good for Morocco it is bad for Algerian interests and vice versa.

    Meanwhile if all the north African countries united and built international infrastructure and cooperated like the UAE did, the entire southern Mediterranean coastal region would have been much better off.

    One thing is clear: This cold war is a total waste of potential and a socioeconomic poison.

    by gozucito
  • I visited the Saharawi refugees camps around 15 years ago or so in the south-west corner of Algeria.

    They have been living in a limbo for 50 years at this point, but they still feel like they will be able to go back to their land therefore they don't really settle there (they are also in the middle of a desert). Some people gave up on the idea to return to their land (but still feel temporary), others were really frustrated with the fact nothing moved and you could see this frustration at the annual demo in front of the "Muro de la Verguenza", which is the "wall" erected by the Moroccans with landmines and strongholds along the front line.

    by thinkindie
  • Skeletons on the Zahara is a fantastic book related to this part of the world -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletons_on_the_Zahara
    by thestu
  • Possibly related and explains Western support for Morocco.

    https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/byrfqojbz...

    by petre
  • Not sure if this is some kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or if OP just also did the NYT crossword this morning.
    by rockostrich
  • Same, but it was a video diving deep into the recent news about the surge of refugees into Spain -- very enlightening.

    Found it. It's Cody Dahler who is a cheeky commenter on "current events" -- he's worth watching. Couldn't find it on YT so FB it is:

    https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18E6NXM2NH/

    by pstuart
  • I play GeoGrid quite regularly and Western Sahara works well to score rare low-point answers. So I was a bit surprised to see it here as well.
    by heffer
  • Baader-Meinhof? how so? (and yes, I know they were the first generation of the Red Army Faction)
    by wolfi1
  • It also showed up in the discourse thanks to Christopher Nolan controversially filming parts of The Odyssey there.
    by dhosek
  • Because Ceuta has been all over the news, Morocco's other weird border is getting attention.
    by jubilanti
  • Dakhla is actually pretty tourist-friendly, and spending time there will quickly do away with the notion that nobody lives in Western Sahara. It's well-known for kiteboarding and windsurfing, since it's got pretty consistent wind and surf and a hot-comfortably dry climate. Pretty heavy police presence and you're supporting Moroccan arguable-occupation by heading there, though, so it's a tradeoff.
    by Arubis
  • Silly anchoring is forbidden, could be a great sailing destination.
    by Stevvo
  • Dakhla and environs is also known for hundreds of elderly French, Italians, and Germans who spend winters down there in their camping cars. This was already a very developed scene when I first visited Western Sahara in 2007.
    by TFNA
  • > arguable-occupation

    very much occupation https://www.freewesternsahara.org/history-of-conflict-press

    by janpeuker
  • A series of enormous sand walls separate the morocco-occupied region from the sahrawi controlled region. These are one of the largest minefields in the world.

    It's impressive to look at satellite images of this. Just a huge sand wall, with hundreds and hundreds of military outposts.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Western_Sahara_wall

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Western_sahara_walls_moro...

    by tiagod
  • In spite of the craziness of the Berm, the funny thing is that the vast majority of foreign travelers passing through have never heard of it. It is out of sight of the Moroccan highway, and obviously something locals won't be talking about.
    by TFNA
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_March exactly the same thing as what they tried to pull off in Ceuta last week, and with the support of the US. Since the occupation began, Morocco settled hundreds of thousands of its own people. Not surprising that another settler colonial state, Israel, is Morocco's ally.
    by kombine
  • All the North African states are settler colonies. The Arab states expelled their Jews , who predated Arabs and Islam across North Africa
    by applicative