I have no idea how Sons of the Clouds got in my queue, but I’m glad that it did. Sons of the Clouds is a documentary produced by Javier Bardem (yes, THAT Javier Bardem). Sons of the Clouds is a documentary about an unfortunate legacy of colonialism and United Nations ineffectualness. I did not know anything about the Saharawi people or their conflict with Morocco. When Spain left Western Sahara, Morocco claimed the land even though other people, the Sahrawi people, were already there. Morocco began to lose the war against the Sahrawi, who were backed by Algeria, so they agreed to settle except Morocco never actually met to discuss terms so the land is in a bureaucratic purgatory.
Morocco still occupies the most resource rich portion of the Sahrawi’s land and that territory is only second to North Korea in terms of being immune to outside influence in terms of press and human rights. Basically if you’re Sahrawi, you are closely scrutinized, abused and imprisoned if you express any pride in your heritage and brainwashed at school into believing that you are proud to be Moroccan.
Even though Morocco has been in violation of its agreement for decades, there are no consequences because Morocco was on the right side of the Cold War and has powerful allies, France and US, whereas Algeria allied with Communists. What makes the whole situation super awkward for Western nations? In a region where political instability leads to violent uprising, the Sahrawis largely adhere to a peaceful approach and UN involvement, which has not worked. They are concerned that the emerging young adult Sahrawis may take a page from their neighbors, abandon the nonviolent approach and become more violent, which would be a failure for the international community. The Sahrawis are also unique to the region because women occupy leadership roles and are well respected. Even though the Saharawis embody what the Western World claims to love, peaceful negotiations and equal rights, the Western World has done nothing to uphold those standards and instead maintains a legacy of past conflicts and standards that the Western World allegedly rejected according to Sons of the Clouds.
If you are interested in learning more about the Saharawis or just like to see Javier Bardem get his social political justice groove on, then you should definitely check out Sons of the Clouds. There are tons of subtitles and occasionally the documentary uses grade school graphics to explain historical concepts, but I did not mind either because I felt like I was in grade school since I was completely ignorant of the subject matter.