Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh's The Ideal Refugees explores prevalent myths in the existing literature on Sahrawi refugees. Academics, nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers, as well as the Sahrawi political elite (Polisario and the representatives of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic [SADR]) tend to juxtapose the notion of a democratic, secular, and egalitarian Sahrawi society with that of an authoritarian, Shariʿa-based, and highly patriarchal Arab/Muslim Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Through extensive, multisited ethnography, the author debunks these myths in favor of a much more complex reality.
At the center of Fiddian-Qasmiyeh's analysis is Polisario/SADR's politics of survival and specifically its “repress-entation” of gender, as the author aptly calls the silencing of the so-called nonideal Sahrawi refugees, whether girls, boys, women, or men. Polisario/SADR mobilizes such misrepresentations of reality—and indeed the script alternates depending on the identity and values of the audience—to generate continuous support from international civil society groups and governments “in solidarity with” the Sahrawi. For example, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh carefully dissects the official gender spectacle staged for the Spanish NGOs, which are known as “Friends of the Sahrawi People.” The “ideal” Sahrawi refugee woman (SRW) is literally put on display at conferences, guided tours, and parades organized for international spectators visiting the camps for shorter periods of time. This particular script portrays SRW as active, free, and secular, living in the democratic, safe, and empowering context of the camps. Such a “positive” depiction is strategically positioned to contrast with the purported passive and oppressed Arab/Muslim woman living under the yoke of the Shariʿa. That the Polisario/SADR chose such a discourse is understandable given the international, and particularly Western (in this case Spanish), preoccupation with the situation of women in the Arab/Muslim MENA. With the rise of Islamophobia in the West since the 1990s, and particularly since 9/11, Polisario/SADR has pursued a gender policy of distancing itself from the “Shariʿa-infected” MENA while emphasizing commonalities with the Western way of life and its purported emphasis on democracy, secularism, and respect for women.
The trouble with this particular representation of Sahrawi gender, as the author successfully demonstrates, is that it homogenizes women through the creation of an “ideal” category while marginalizing those who do not fit into it, such as “nonideal” Sahrawi young and adult women. Furthermore, differences in age, class, gender, and wealth are, as is normally the case with international aid programs, completely ignored. The Sahrawi governing elites, but also Western solidarity networks, brush under the carpet issues such as poverty, gender-based violence within camps, and disenfranchisement of the younger male population.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh's research reveals a number of salient and all too often ignored issues. First, it shows that the relationship between Polisario/SADR and Western solidarity networks is not a relationship of equals, despite Polisario/SADR's attempts to portray Sahrawi women as sisters of Spanish women and to posit Muslim women in the region as the “official Other” of both Sahrawi and Spanish women. Second, it demonstrates how the politics of perpetuating the Orientalized “Other” is part and parcel of the aid industry and essential for the formation of Global North-South solidarity. Third, the author discusses the hypocrisy of the Western desire to “help” the less fortunate only if certain conditions are met. Examples of this include Western NGOs’ self-censorship or silence in regard to various types of violence that the Sahrawi regime and/or Sahrawi men have perpetrated against women, as well as the Spanish furor triggered by the “abduction” of three Sahrawi girls by their own parents. Both sides turn a blind eye to problematic issues such as gender-based violence. In fact, Polisario/SADR is even willing to betray the needs of its own citizens to secure continuing international political support and fuel the struggle against Morocco. The book, therefore, is a critique of Polisario/SADR's appropriation of gender for its own political ends; however, it can also be read as a critique of continuing Western attempts to manage and impose a specific (ill-informed) gender agenda and hierarchy of needs on MENA (Sahrawi) Muslims.
The Ideal Refugees exemplifies why gender continues to matter in international politics and in the image making of authoritarian regimes dependent upon financial and political aid. The book also exposes how regimes in the Global South mobilize gender for political ends, thereby manipulating women's lived experiences, while simultaneously exposing and exploiting the naiveté of Western audiences. The author makes it clear throughout the book that aid programs set up in Sahrawi camps oftentimes fail to address real issues (e.g., gender-based violence); in fact, some of these programs may even be detrimental to the local population (e.g., by treating male youth disenfranchisement as delinquency). Many of the author's conclusions have broad relevance, as other regimes in the region use similar methods toward a similar end: maintaining a positive image of themselves abroad as democratizing states to the detriment of their own populations, who, for the most part, are kept poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised.
Despite occasional repetition of facts and arguments that sometimes get in the way of the flow of an otherwise good narrative, this well-researched book, which draws on a wide range of primary material, is a must-read for academic, activist, and lay audiences concerned with women's rights in the Global South.
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