Volume 31, Number 19 · December 6, 1984
King in a Corner
By Alistair Horne
Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War
by Tony Hodges
Lawrence Hill, 388 pp., $19.95; $14.95 (paper)
A reviewer's immediate reaction on receiving Western Sahara might be to wonder whether the subject really justifies a relatively thick book. As with the wayward nun who attempted to explain away her pregnancy to the Mother Superior by telling her that it had, after all, resulted from only a 'very small sin,' so the struggle by the Polisario Front for political autonomy could hardly be described as anything more than a very small war. Indeed, I had to search through Mr. Hodges's book as keenly as a French Jaguar pilot scanning for the Polisario in the vast tracts of the Sahara before I could even find out the total population of Western Sahara. According to the 1974 census, it appears to have been 95,019 (how do you count nineteen out of a largely nomadic people?), of which 20,126 were Europeans, but not taking into account the substantial numbers of Saharawis living outside the frontiers, as refugees or nomads.
Review, 3215 words
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