The Sahrawi, or Saharawi are the people living in the western part of the Sahara desert which includes Western Sahara, southern Morocco , much of Mauritania and the extreme southwest of Algeria. As with most peoples living in the Sahara, the Sahrawi culture is a mix of Berber, Black African and Arab elements.
It shows mainly Berber people core characteristics with Arab cultural elements.The privileged position of women in Sahrawi tribes is a Berber tradition that predates the arrival of Islam and Arabs, as well as characteristics common to ethnic groups of the Sahel. Sahrawis are composed of many tribes and are largely speakers of the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic, and some of them still speak Berber in Morocco.
Since its annexation by Morocco in 1975, Western Sahara has been the subject of a long-running territorial dispute. For the Saharawi people, the wait for a homeland has now spanned more than 40 years. Among the young, tensions are once again rising
Today, this community is divided into three parts: 170,000 live in refugee camps within Algerian territory, around 200,000 in what is today the southern part of Morocco, even though the Saharawi still refer to it as the Occupied Zone , and around 30,000 in the Free Zone, a buffer between the first two.
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