Hello, Salaam Alaykum, and Azoul!
I am in a taxi in the middle of the desert
- and not just any desert, but the greatest desert on Earth:
the legendary Sahara,
where the golden sands stretch endlessly across a million horizons.
And we're here to see a conveyor belt!
This is Laayoune, the biggest city in...
ah, yes - this is where it gets complicated.
Okay, we're gonna need to talk about maps.
Here is a map of Morocco
and here is a map of Morocco.
And the problem with that is that I'm currently
here
So we are inside what the United Nations calls Western Sahara,
but what Morocco calls Moroccan Sahara,
what Sahrawi nationalists call the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic,
and what I call
a difficult topic for what was only supposed to be a silly little video about a conveyor belt.
It's a dispute that led to a 16-year war for sovereignty over the area in the 70s and 80s.
A ceasefire was finally agreed in 1991,
with Morocco controlling about three-quarters of the land, and the Sahrawis controlling the remaining quarter.
To this day, the international community generally considers it disputed territory,
but a lot of people on both sides still feel very strongly that the whole thing belongs to them.
As we'll find out when they discover the comments section.
Whatever you want to call this place,
and whoever you think it belongs to,
This is an area larger than the UK with a population smaller than Luxembourg,
and nearly half the population lives here in Laayoune,
so when you hop in a taxi and ask for "the world's longest conveyor belt, please!",
you're not out of town for long before you feel like you're alone in the world
and your only company is the vast expanse of the Sahara
...and one extremely confused taxi driver.
So, how exactly did anyone manage to start a fight in a place as empty as this?
*colon noise*
Colonialists arrived here in the late 1800s,
and yes, I know with my accent I sound like I was one of them,
but please don't think I have anything in common with those guys -
They were ignorant European men who came to Africa and acted like they knew everything.
Whereas, I'm...
Anyway,
in 1885 they divided up most of the continent,
and this bit became Spanish Sahara, which it remained right up to the 1970s.
Morocco, which had already regained independence from France in the 1950s,
felt quite strongly that Spanish Sahara was historically the southern part of Morocco
and they made this point to Spain on several occasions,
using guns.
What complicated things was that Mauritania, to the South, felt quite strongly
that Spanish Sahara was historically the northern part of Mauritania,
While the Sahrawis felt quite strongly
that it belonged to them and wasn't historically part of anything.
In 1975, under increasing pressure from all three sides and the UN to decolonize the area, Spain said:
"We're handing it over, eh, Morocco and Mauritania, you can share it between you and, eh, play nicely, okay?"
"By the way, we're keeping a 35% share of the Bou Craa phosphate company."
Remember that name for later.
"Right, have we forgotten anything?"
"Oh, yes. This is administrative power. You don't actually get sovereignty."
"Eh, right. Ta-ra, then."
It's fair to say that the idea didn't really work out.
The treaty fell apart almost immediately, and with each side blaming everyone else,
a three-way war broke out between Morocco, Mauritania and the Sahrawis,
although this became a two-way war in 1979 when Mauritania withdrew.
It's worth reading more about it, and listening to accounts from both sides, if you want to understand what was going on,
because the dynamics are far too complex for me to explain here,
partly because I'm just some random outsider who's done a few hours research,
and partly because
we were supposed to be going to see a conveyor belt!
Right!
Back to the taxi, and we're about to find out that the desert isn't quite as empty as I thought.
After 20 minutes of driving across the desert
(sometimes quite literally)
we arrive on the coast, at the port town of El Massa.
The main business here is fishing,
but the most lucrative one is phosphates,
and we are heading to the big phosphate plant just down the road.
Now, for those of you who aren't already experts in the world of phosphate production,
you may not know that Morocco controls something like 70% of the planet's phosphate reserves.
Every year, 3 million tons of the stuff comes through here to be exported around the world
for use in fertilizers, that grow the food, that's imported by the supermarkets
that sell it to you.
But first it has to get here,
And it does that not by lorry, not by boat, not even by train,
but this!
The longest conveyor belt on Earth.
I mean look at it!
Drink it in!
This is almost certainly the greatest conveyor belt you're ever going to see.
Although, admittedly, it's a bit of a shame it isn't running today.
From here, the belt stretches all the way to the horizon,
and if you think that's impressive, you may not be ready for what I'm about to tell you:
Which is that the system carries on for 98 kilometres!
And, crossing over to Pedantry Corner for a moment,
I say "system" because it's technically a continuous system of belts rather than one, continuous piece of material.
The route is marked by a long, white streak on the landscape
which is caused by the desert winds blowing phosphate dust away from the belt,
and because of this, I've seen various sources claiming that it's one of the few man-made things that you can see from space,
and if any of you are watching this video from space,
please do comment and let us know if that's true.
So that's all very impressive,
but what's it got to do with anything?
Well, the belt was built in the early 1970s by the biggest mining company
in what was then still Spanish Sahara,
And that company was called
(some of you are there already)
the Bou Craa Phosphate Company.
The same company, the same phosphate mine, and the same conveyor belt
that was written into an international treaty
and was, if not the main reason, one of the reasons why that treaty failed.
The story of the conflict here is one that seems to have been forgotten by the international media,
and a lot of issues remain unresolved, to say the least,
but for the sake of this record-breaking conveyor belt,
the price of the food on your table,
and, um..
what's the other thing the international media sometimes forgets?
Oh, yeah, the people here!
Let's at least hope for lasting peace.
If you'd like to see the world's longest conveyor belt system, and you don't have access to a spacecraft,
Laayoune has flights and long-distance buses from Marrakech and Casablanca
with no extra entry requirements.
Visiting the Sahrawi zone, however, is not possible
as the border is guarded by Moroccan military, landmines, and a wall,
but you may find some Sahrawis still living here.
As a general rule, it's best to respect the situation when talking to people on either side.
Anyway, thanks for watching!
Please drop a like on the video if you weren't hugely offended by it, so we can try and balance out the people who were,
and I will see you soon.