Books & Bookselling, 5 January 2007
HarperCollins publishers have been forced to cancel publication of Nigel de la Mere’s MI6 memoir Secrets in the Blood, following pressure from SIS lawyers. ‘By the time we’d cut out everything we were told might breach the Official Secrets Act,’ said spokesperson Nicky Talbot-Gray, ‘there wasn’t much left to publish.’
Intelligence Today, 20 January 2007
MI6 staffer Clive Silk has swapped the high-pressure environment of MI6’s Strategic Projects Office for the quieter life of SIS archive, where he will take the role of Digital Librarian. Silk had previously boasted involvement in a number of innovative MI6 operations and had been identified in government circles as a high-flyer. ‘The importance of the Service archive cannot be overstated,’ Silk said, ‘and it’s a place I’ve always wanted to spend part of my career.’
A Note on the Western Sahara
When Natalya Kocharian arrives at the compound for the first time she asks Claude Zender where they are and he describes the Western Sahara in the term allocated to it by the United Nations: a Non-Self Governing Territory. Nothing could be more expressive of the fate of its indigenous people than this ambiguous and irresolute designation.
The Western Sahara, which lies between Morocco to the north, Mauritania to the south, Algeria to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, is one of the most inhospitable and sparsely populated regions in the world, with no natural sources of fresh water and temperatures regularly exceeding 50° Celsius. The indigenous population of Sahrawi nomads are descended from Arabic and Berber tribes, who subsisted on camel herding and other trading activities associated with the ancient caravan routes that criss-cross the region. In the 1600s the coastal territories fell under the control of Spanish slave traders; during the following centuries it became a centre for commercial fishing. In 1884 the Spanish formally declared it a colony, named the Spanish Sahara.
In 1975, as the slow and painful unravelling of European colonial empires entered its endgame, conflicting claims on the territory came to a head. The Algerian-backed Polisario (the Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro) had spent the previous two years fighting the Spanish occupation, and their cause was bolstered by a ruling from the International Court of Justice that supported their right to self-determination. King Hassan II of Morocco responded by organising an extraordinary mass demonstration known as the Green March: on 6 November, some 350,000 unarmed Moroccans marched south into the Spanish Sahara, escorted by 20,000 soldiers. Eight days later, Spain, Morocco and Mauritania signed the Madrid Accords, carving up the territory between the two African nations. The Polisario were not party to the negotiation.
During the sixteen-year war that followed, the Polisario defeated the Mauritanians to the south, advancing at one stage as far as the capital Nouakchott, and fought a successful guerrilla campaign against the Moroccan army. The Moroccan response was to construct a 2,600-kilometre wall of sand and rock, two to three metres high and studded with bunkers, forts, radar stations and airfields. Completed in 1987, the Wall splits the territory from north to south and confines the Sahrawi population to a strip along the Algerian border, now called the Free Zone. In 2004, the Wall was manned by an estimated 160,000 Moroccan soldiers. Needless to say, the fisheries and newly developed phosphate mines all lie to the west of the fortification, under Moroccan control, while the area to the east has the dubious distinction of being the longest continuous minefield in the world. The war has driven tens of thousands of refugees across the border into Algeria, and the Free Zone itself now has a population of barely 30,000.
In 1991 the Polisario and the Moroccans agreed to a ceasefire, to be supervised by a UN force with the acronym MINURSO. A referendum was planned. And since then? Not much. . . The Moroccan government incentivises its citizens to migrate south, hoping to ensure that, should the referendum ever take place, the result will go their way. In 2003, US Secretary of State James Baker attempted to resurrect the process, but without success. Fighting breaks out sporadically, international support for one side or the other is offered or withdrawn, there are protests and speeches and demonstrations. Meanwhile, the Algerian refugee camps grow larger and are now home to as many as 165,000 people.
The plight of the Western Sahara is in large part caused by greed: the phosphate mines and fisheries are valuable, and surveys have indicated there are exploitable oil reserves, too. But perhaps the laws of commerce will also impose a solution. Reports uncovered by Wikileaks in 2011 suggest the Moroccans subsidise the region to the tune of $800 million per annum, one of the largest per capita aid programmes in history. In the capital city Laayoune, for example, water is supplied by desalinisation plants and sold at less than 1 per cent of the cost of production. Without these subsidies, the region is probably not economically viable.
After so many decades mired in the backwaters of international diplomacy, it must be time to end this grim stalemate. It is a powerful testament to humanity’s resilience and resourcefulness that there is an indigenous population in the Western Sahara at all, and no one’s interests are served by prolonging the cruel, stubborn and profligate occupation of their lands. The Moroccans should bow respectfully and withdraw, leaving this barren and beautiful place to those who for centuries have made it their home.
The above is a summary of the situation in the Western Sahara, which provides the backdrop to Little Sister. However, the events and characters depicted in this book are entirely fictional, and no resemblance to any real events or characters is intended or implied.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Philippa Harrison, Henrietta Heald and Tom Penn, who toiled through an early and disgracefully long draft of Little Sister, and gave me the advice and encouragement I needed to continue.
The following people read later drafts: Sophie Carlisle, Louise Colonna, Toby Farrell, Simon Gillis, Stephen Graham, Margaret Halton, Antony Harwood, Charlotte Hobson, Will Hobson, Adam Kean, Maddy O’Bryen, Stefanie O’Bryen, Jemima Reynolds, Rupert Rumney, Miranda Swan and Wynn Wheldon. Many thanks to you all for your helpful and gracefully worded comments, generous good humour and occasional yawns.
Thanks to all my children, Nell, Maddy and Louis, for not teasing me too much about the fact that I was devoting my life to this long and distracting task.
My wife Emma falls into all three of the above categories, and many more besides. Her patience, unwavering faith and astute editorial advice have underpinned the writing of this book from start to finish, and I dedicate Little Sister to her.
About the Author
Giles O’Bryen is married with three children and lives in London.
Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel) Page 44
