Autonomy proposal 'most likely solution' to Sahara issue, Welch

The resigning US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, said the autonomy initiative proposed by Morocco for its southern provinces is the "most likely solution" to settle the Sahara dispute, describing the proposal as "serious". "There is a proposal on the table from Morocco that we consider as a serious respond," Welch said in a meeting with the press in Washington, adding that "we, in the US, believe this is the most likely solution."

"The autonomy under Moroccan Sovereignty (...) will address the interest of the Saharan people," he stressed.

Touching on the situation in the Maghreb, Welch affirmed that "the issue we have to work on in the coming months and years is to improve the relations among the Maghreb countries."

The Maghreb includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
"It is hard to vision productive future in the region unless there is an improvement in the relation between Morocco and Algeria,” he said, noting that "we will hand off a positive file about the Maghreb to the new administration.”

The improvement of relations between the Maghreb states is dictated by security reasons, Welch stressed, warning that "what is happening in Mauritania and the continuing violence in Algeria is a great risk and could affect the area."

Hassani Poetry

Hassani poetry is considered to be an integral part of popular poetry. Its differentia specifica lies in the fact that it is fraught with poetic meters that are measured by vowel articulation, ones which differ from each other in the way their syntactical constituents are made: ‘nasb’ (putting a noun in the accusative; or a verb in the subjunctive; ‘ghafd’ (putting a word in the genitive, for example); ‘raf’a’ (the pronunciation of a final word with a u) and ‘sukun’ (the vowellessness of a medial consonant). Some of these poetic meters, be it noted, are obsolete now.

The great professor and poet Badi Ould Mohammed Salem defined Hassani poetry thus: “it is a select type of talk taken from the common tongue and the local idiom. It is governed by certain rules that are in fact akin to the five rules of the Shari’ a (Islamic law); namely, the mandatory, the recommended, the permissible, the reprehensible and the forbidden.On the other hand, it is a form of prose that serves as the subject matter for the poet, who shapes up and weaves, so to say, and then thins it out in some corner. In some other corner, s/he would split it, and defame it so much so that s/he would cull from it a full-blown body that admits of no addition or diminution, one which takes up its position among all other creatures, having as it does beauty as well as ugliness and being as it is both long and short.

Like any other type of poetry, be it in dialectal or standard Arabic, Hassani poetry has its specific importance. And despite the fact that its writers take pride in its ability to go beyond the confines of standard poetry, vernacular Hassani poetry is fraught with terms in common use in standard Arabic, nay, with thoroughly meaningful sentences, in addition to lexical borrowings from other foreign languages, not to mention the fact that it draws on the Islamic religion, Quranic suras, prophetic sayings as well as on Arabic poetry that spans all ages.
Several people excelled in the writing of Hassani poetry. There is in fact a specific category of people who, in addition to the poets themselves, are adept at reciting this kind of poetry. These consist mainly of a group of singers who are in Hassani parlance called ‘Ikaoun,’ who, along with a number of eminent poets, engage in the criticism of poetry in order to sift good from mediocre Hassani poetry. One could in fact find some poets who learn by heart some poetry other than their own.

One of the difficulties that Hassani poetry suffers from is that it is scarcely recorded, which tosses it into confusion, distortion and loss. Such a situation, be it noted, obtains up to the present.

Sahara Religious Zawiyas

The province of Smara is located at 11 degrees longitude and 26 degrees latitude. It is also at 110 meters above sea level. The province borders the province of Tan Tan and Assa Zag to the north, Boujdour and the Mauritanian border to the south, the province of El-Aaiun to the west and the Mauritanian border to the east. The province is crossed by two main roads, the first links it to El-Aaiun to the west and the second to Tan Tan and through the last to northern provinces of the Kingdom, through Guelmim, the door of the desert.
The province is distinguished by its rich historical and archaeological heritage, represented by numerous historic buildings and sites. Some of them date back to prehistoric times and other dates of the twentieth century. The strong presence of Sufi communities in the history of this province draws particular attention. This makes of it a region with great Zawyia concentration, especially on the line that goes from wadi Sakia El Hamra, wadi Draa to Ouyoune Aghman region. These Zawyia belong to the same Tarika Derkaouia community. Sheikh Sidi Ahmed Rguibi Zawyia
Sidi Ahmed Rguibi Zawyia nicknamed “Moul Elhabchi », is located at 120 km from the city of Smara, on the road linking wadi Sakia El Hamra, El Batnia, Aaklat Asdam, wadi Anabat, Aaridat Umm Bedouz, El Kaa, Kaat Echbabine, Fadrat Attamat, Aljanoubi Ahab and Ahab Achamali, then Attamat which leads to wadi Al Habchi.