The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam, and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival

Introduction

1 Introduction The “Ideal” Refugees the “uniqueness” and social superiority of Sahrawi refugees over “other refugees” have been systematically proclaimed by Western academics and representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) since the establishment of the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee camps in 1975 and 1976. Based on her 15-day visit to the camps in 1981, Harrell -Bond’s work on the Sahrawi (1981a/b, 1986, and 1999) has often been quoted and referenced in subsequent accounts of the camps. In Imposing Aid (1986), a seminal book that prompted a major shift in the way that refugees and refugee camps around the world are perceived and dealt with by aid providers and academics, she labels the Sahrawi camps a “success story” amid a failing humanitarian system that creates “dependency syndrome” among refugees (see also Voutira and Harrell-Bond 2000, 66). Further, under the heading “The ‘ideal’ refugee” in a 1999 chapter that relies on the same 1981 trip to the camps, Harrell-Bond writes: I proceeded to tell them [the Sudanese refugee committee] about the “good” Saharawi who lived under much worse conditions than they did, but who were reluctant to complain. (1999, 151; my emphasis) The notions of “successful” camps and of “ideal” and “good” refugees have continued to dominate mainstream accounts of the Sahrawi refugee context, with Brazier referring to the Sahrawi camps as “the best run refugee camps in the world” (1997, 14). Lippert (1987) and San-Martín (2005) also both cite a Red Cross field representative who described the Sahrawi 2 | the ideal refugees in the 1980s as “the most unusual refugees” by virtue of their uncorrupt social organization, solidarity and coordination among themselves. One major characteristic commonly invoked to substantiate claims that the Sahrawi are “the ‘ideal’ refugees” is their egalitarian approach to gender relations and the position of “Sahrawi women” in the camps. Hence, Harrell-Bond reports that Sahrawi refugees’ political representatives , the Polisario Front, built “a twentieth-century democratic nation, women’s equality being one of the strongest features of their social organization ” (1999, 156), and that “[w]omen’s equality was a most dominant theme of life in the Sahrawi camps” (quoted in Indra 1999a, 44). Equally, Oxfam’s desk officer in the mid-1980s wrote that [p]erhaps the most impressive thing about Sahrawi society is that it is the most fundamentally balanced society I have ever come across in terms of the relationships between men and women. (Mowles 1986, 9) This book examines the protracted Sahrawi refugee context (1975 to the present) through an analysis of the motivations behind and implications of such widespread representations of Sahrawi refugee women as “ideal,” “free,” “secular,” and “unique.” Specifically, I examine how and why Sahrawi refugee women are portrayed by their political representatives (the Polisario) and its associated National Union of Sahrawi Women (NUSW) to different audiences, how the identity of the audience relates to the nature of the representation unveiled, and what the implications are of these representations both for the terms of engagement between the Polisario and camp inhabitants with different audiences and for those living in the camps themselves. In essence, I argue that gendered images and concepts have been strategically mobilized by the Polisario to secure the humanitarian and political support of Western state and nonstate actors that ensure the continued survival of the camps and their inhabitants. Indeed—while refugees and their representatives are habitually under the critical gaze of foreign visitors and funders and aid is often “conditional” or “tied” to certain provisos (such as “democratization” or the usage of funds for speci- fied purposes)—the case under consideration demonstrates the extent to which such observations are multidirectional (cf. Foucault 1979, 203). Introduction | 3 Hence, I propose that the Polisario has recognized the extent to which being perceived to be “ideal” refugees, directly associated with being “democratic,” “secular,” and “promoting women’s equality” attracts the attention and support of Western academics, NGOs, and civil society and solidarity networks. They have in turn projected a specific image of the camps to ensure these actors’ continued support, just as other aid recipients have done elsewhere (cf. Conklin 1997; Bob 2005). In this respect, the Polisario transcends its enforced status as the “observed” (i.e., under international scrutiny) and rather simultaneously becomes an “observer of its own observers” (i.e., the West or the Middle East), and of its own “observed” (the inhabitants of the refugee camps...