Brahim Chagaf doesn’t know what it’s prefer to go home.
‘Once you’re young, you will have this dream of returning, to establish slightly business and have a house by the ocean,’ he tells Metro. ‘But after some time, that wears off. You begin to lose hope.’
The film director, 38, is one in every of the ‘forgotten people’ of Western Sahara, a tract of desert the scale of Britain widely described as Africa’s last colony.
For 50 years, the indigenous Sahrawi people have been forced to live under occupation or go into exile when Morocco invaded and annexed the region after Spain withdrew in 1976.
Today, 173,000 Sahrawi refugees live in five camps within the harshest a part of the desert, across the border in southwestern Algeria.
This decades-long displacement is one in every of the world’s most enduring yet ignored refugee crises.
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But now budget airlines, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Donald Trump are pushing it into the highlight.
Flights for ‘pennies’
Sprawling along a windswept peninsula where the Sahara meets the Atlantic, town of Dakhla is actually attractive.
It has sparkling white sands, dazzling blue waters and enticing accommodation options, from hostels to luxury resorts.
The Moroccan Tourist Board describes it as ‘the pearl of southern Morocco…a ‘small a part of paradise’.
But Dakhla will not be a part of Morocco under international law, regardless of what the federal government in Rabat claims.
To get to Dakhla, British travellers must first make their option to Madrid, but from there, return flights on Ryanair start from just €40 (£35). Transavia France also operates a route from Paris.
The Moroccan government has invested heavily in developing tourism in Western Sahara lately, and this has attracted the airlines.
Flights with Ryanair, Transavia and other travel sites market Dakhla as Morocco, and once you seek for a spot to remain in Western Sahara on three of the largest international booking sites, Expedia, Booking.com and Trivago, they do the identical.
Tom Ruck, 29, recently flew to Dakhla from Madrid with Ryanair as a ‘cheaper way of attending to Mauritania’ to ride the Iron Ore train.
It was ‘pennies’ for the fare, the British content creator tells Metro, and on arrival there ‘wasn’t any inkling that it was Western Sahara’.
Tom got a Moroccan stamp in his passport and saw Moroccan flags flying across town.
‘It was just as if it [Western Sahara] didn’t exist, really,’ he says.
Ryanair and Transavia didn’t reply to requests for comment, nor did Expedia and Trivago.
A Booking.com spokesperson said: ‘Our mission is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world and as such we consider it’s as much as travellers to decide on where they need and wish to go. It’s not our place to choose where someone can or cannot travel.’
Danielle Smith, director of London-based charity Sandblast, which supports Sahrawi refugees within the UK, says this labelling is each concerning and misleading.
‘From our perspective, these corporations are complicit in prolonging the suffering of the Sahrawi people by helping entrench the occupation,’ she adds.
Sarah Yerkes, senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an authority in North Africa, notes that Morocco has been ‘increasingly effective in its efforts to get other countries’ to seek advice from Western Sahara as Morocco.
She says this normalisation lays the groundwork for a proper change in international law.
The Moroccan government didn’t return a request for comment.
Seeking to history
Western Sahara was a Spanish colony, from 1884 to 1975. But when Francoist forces formally withdrew in 1976, Morocco occupied large parts in violation of international law and a choice from the International Court of Justice.
Occupying forces met resistance from the Sahrawis, who organised under the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and its military wing, the Polisario Front. War broke out, ending 15 years later with a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991.
Since then, reports from groups including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center have documented systematic human rights abuses, police brutality and restrictions on movement and freedom of speech targeting Sahrawis.
Metro has approached Hakim Hajoui, Morocco’s Ambassador to the UK, about these claims but has not received a response.
The UN has consistently pushed for an answer, including a referendum wherein the Sahrawis could make a choice from independence and integration with Morocco.
The Sahrawi right to self-determination is supported by greater than 100 UN resolutions, by the opinion of the International Court of Justice, and, thus far, by 4 rulings of the EU Court of Justice.
But they’ve never been in a position to vote for their very own future.
Brahim Chagaf feels it firsthand. ‘The hope wears off once you see how the international community is ignoring the laws that they themselves wrote,’ he says.
In 1975, fleeing war, greater than 100,000 indigenous Sahrawis crossed into Algeria.
Today, their descendants live in crowded camps within the Tindouf region, administered by the Polisario Front and completely reliant on humanitarian aid.
Residents of the camps face profound challenges, including access to food and water, and an extreme desert climate where summer temperatures can exceed 50°C and winters are desperately cold.
All five of the camps are named after cities within the occupied territories (Dakhla, Smara, and the capital, Laayoune), but most people who live there have never been to those places.
Many have never set foot where their parents or grandparents were born.
As an alternative, they’ve survived for half a century on a food aid programme that was never presupposed to last for greater than a couple of years.
They decide to live this fashion because in the event that they settled elsewhere, they might now not be considered refugees. It will mean they’ve accepted the situation, that they’ve given up.
Mahfud Bechri, member of the working group on Human Rights in Occupied Western Sahara, says that sweeping cuts to international aid made by the Trump administration have caused conditions to worsen.
‘We now have seen how anaemia and malnutrition have increased,’ he explains.
‘UN agencies and the humanitarian NGOs have issued urgent appeals calling for the necessity to mobilise resources and to answer this forgotten and protracted humanitarian crisis. Yet, the response will not be coming.’
Abidin Mohamed Hamudi, Sahrawi filmmaker and journalist, stays defiant.
‘Colonialism, occupation, and the oppression of peoples are crimes which have spanned centuries,’ he says.
‘Yet if history has taught us anything, it’s that the people ultimately triumph, justice prevails, and humanity endures.’
The ‘movie of the 12 months’
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey could also be one of the crucial anticipated movies of the 12 months, nevertheless it has no fans on the Western Sahara international film festival (FiSahara).
Organisers have called for a boycott of Nolan’s $250m adaptation over scenes shot within the territory, warning the move serves to whitewash the Moroccan occupation.
The British-American filmmaker’s tackle Homer’s epic, with an A-List solid led by Matt Damon, is on account of be released on 17 July.
The shoot within the Dakhla area lasted 4 days and while it was reportedly accomplished before FiSahara raised concerns, activists are urging people to steer clear of screenings all the identical.
‘We condemn Nolan for using his privilege to interact in extractive filmmaking in an occupied territory without the consent of its rightful owners, and for helping Morocco to perpetuate its illegal occupation,’ says Maria Carrion, director of the festival.
Nolan’s representatives didn’t return requests for comment.
Trump’s shifting allegiance
Weeks before leaving office in 2020, Donald Trump upended many years of US policy in North Africa by proclaiming US support for Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, as a part of a deal that saw the North African Kingdom recognising Israel.
Perhaps the President, long supportive of a wall on America’s southern border, was impressed with Morocco’s own wall cordoning a corner of the Sahara.
The Berm, because it is understood, is a huge sand barricade patrolled by greater than 100,000 Moroccan soldiers, designed to keep Sahrawis within the eastern a part of the desert – and away from the region’s natural resources.
Joe Biden’s administration selected to not implement his predecessor’s policy. However the U-turn paved the best way for other countries to follow suit, making it harder for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) to determine an independent state.
At one point, as many as 84 countries recognised the SADR administration within the territory of Western Sahara, in keeping with a 2024 report from Migration Policy.
But today, dozens, including the UK, have endorsed Morocco’s claim of sovereignty.
Now the United Nations appears to wish to integrate Western Sahara into Morocco, too.
When it last discussed the territory in October 2025, there was now not any mention of the long-promised referendum.
As an alternative, the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission was prolonged for one more 12 months as a part of a motion led by the US.
Brahim was ‘extremely anguished’ when he heard the news.
‘Sahrawis understand higher than anyone what this implies,’ he says.
‘The long-term strategy is largely to cast off the referendum that was promised, to create a situation of inevitability and fatigue’ regarding acceptance of the occupation.
Morocco claims Western Sahara on the grounds that a couple of Sahrawi tribes once pledged allegiance to the sultan of Morocco.
They are saying that calls for Western Saharan independence ignore centuries of historic ties between Morocco and the Sahara, and that the territory was illegally detached throughout the colonial era.
To that, Brahim has a matter: ‘Let’s suppose there are real, historic ties, and that Sahrawis were Moroccans. Then why is Morocco so afraid of a referendum? What does it must fear?’
He also points to a 1975 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice which acknowledged certain historical ties, but concluded that these didn’t amount to sovereignty.
Crucially, it affirmed the Sahrawi right to self-determination.
Presidents, airlines and movie crews may come and go, however the people of Western Sahara are still waiting to have their say.
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