Families Rent Asunder

In the early 1970’s, Cuba’s Fidel Castro looked across the Atlantic Ocean to North Africa to establish a Soviet-backed stronghold. He courted a disaffected group of rebels at war with Morocco, America’s oldest ally. Cuban military officials were sent to the Sahara desert to train the separatists in guerilla warfare. Castro’s ideological support with military and financial backing from Algeria and the former Soviet Union spawned a separatist group known as the POLISARIO Front, which still wreaks havoc in the region today. But weapons were not enough. Castro’s cruelest tactic was to take Sahrawi children from their families to brainwash them with atheist, Marxist, anti-American propaganda. Thousands of Sahrawi children have been abducted without their parents’ consent and sent to Cuba’s infamous Island of Youth. Raised without faith, values or the fellowship of their family, these young people toil every morning in sugarcane, tobacco and citrus fields and are then indoctrinated in classes in the evenings. They are not allowed contact with their families back in the refugee camps. Many are made to believe that they have been abandoned and would be considered as enemies and foreigners if they ever tried to return.

Oppressed People, Unsurpassed Hope

Castro and the rebel POLISARIO Front may have succeeded in bringing a military conflict to the Sahara, but they have not yet destroyed the hope of the captive Sahrawi people. Through three decades of suffering, Sahrawis have demonstrated that hope can defend against even the most brutal oppression and that faith can reach over highly fortified walls and across an ocean. One day, the outcry of concerned people of conscience will upend this corrupt group and the captive Sahrawis will be allowed to raise families, worship and live their lives freely. Over 7,000 Sahrawis have escaped from the refugee camps and returned to Morocco. Some were blessed to be reunited with long-lost families. Others were confronted with the harsh reality that their families were gone. But all, in some way or another, have spoken out for their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and countrymen who are still being held captive.

Stealing from the Poorest

Since the hostage Sahrawis are considered refugees, they are entitled to international assistance. Even this humanitarian mission has been subverted by the POLISARIO Front, which inflates the numbers of refugees in the camps to increase the aid received. While the Sahrawi people subsist on a bare minimum, corrupt POLISARIO leaders live in luxury bought by proceeds of humanitarian aid sold on the black market. In fact, several international organizations have stopped sending aid to the Sahrawi refugees until a system is put in place to make sure that the donations (including those of Evangelical groups and US government humanitarian aid via the United Nations) serve the people that need it.