The recovery of camel husbandry among refugees was triggered by different but interacting economic, political, ecological, cultural and social drivers. The form this took was strongly informed by the past and also strongly influenced by the nature of these drivers and of the changing context. With the material and political change stemming from the ceasefire agreement of 1991 and, given the lack of alternative livelihood pathways in the desert environment, many refugees pursued camel husbandry as a path towards food security and livelihood diversification. The ceasefire agreement granted refugees access to part of their former nomadic territory (the liberated territories) and its grazing resources. Military operations ceased and Polisario soldiers were demobilized, which meant that many men with experience in camel husbandry returned to the camps and attempted to continue their activities. Sahrawi nomads also moved back to the liberated territories with camel herds that could be sold or loaned to refugees. Now firmly under the military control of the Polisario, safety and security in the camps and the liberated territories allowed refugees to invest and travel without threat to their persons and belongings and to renew mobility by means of jeeps, which allowed them to travel to markets (e.g. Tindouf) and to their former nomadic territories. Livestock and equipment purchases were facilitated by access to cash through, among other sources, Spanish civil pensions, donations and remittances. This also stimulated the development of productive activities and trade, leading to the growth of an informal economy in the camps, as well as widespread extra-camp trade and other economic and social interactions. Refugees emigrated (e.g. to Spain) and sent remittances or repatriated earnings while establishing transnational networks through diaspora. Camel and small livestock husbandry emerged as one of the very few means to sustainably exploit the resources of the Western Sahara, facilitated by the favourable rains of the past 10 to 15 years. Camel husbandry provides refugees with their traditional staple foods - fresh milk and, to a lesser extent, meat, in a context where, as in the past, agriculture is barely possible and hunting and gathering resources are very limited. Livestock husbandry traditionally provided resources for barter and now provides access to cash. Below, this process is addressed in more detail, starting with the means by which refugees gained access to camels in the camps.
Access to capital and the development of an informal economy in refugee camps
Soon after Polisario soldiers were demobilized and joined refugees in the camps, they began to engage in all sorts of informal private commercial and productive activity, boosting economic life. Up to that moment, mainly women undertook the limited economic activities in the camps as they attempted to supplement consumption; former soldiers slowly refocused household activities towards production for trade and commerce. A similar transformation occurred in relation to livestock: traditionally, women managed small livestock production for own consumption and they re-initiated this during the war, whereas camel husbandry and commercial livestock production can be traced in most instances to demobilized fighters (Mundy [2007]).
A large number of refugees gained access to cash through Spanish pensions, remittances, funds obtained through the programme Vacaciones en Paz (Holidays in Peace), formal and informal microcredit including loans from NGOs and other refugees, and trade (de Juan Canales [2010]; Herz [2013]). In 1988, the Spanish Government authorized pension payments to about 5,000 Sahrawi who had worked for the colonial Government of the Spanish Sahara (e.g. as public workers and troops). These pensions (400 to 500 € per month) were paid retroactively as a lump sum, so many refugees received a substantial amount, which permitted them to invest in livestock and four-wheel drive vehicles as well as provide loans or credit to others, etc. Thus, cash began to circulate in the camps and incipient commercial activity arose with Tindouf and towns in Mauritania. Since the mid-1990s, a relatively steady number of Sahrawi refugees have emigrated to work in Spain (with smaller numbers going to other countries) to support their families in the camps, and emigration was often bankrolled by Spanish pensions. Remittances (e.g. from Spain, the Canary Islands, Algeria and Mauritania) also provided ready cash. A more limited flow of remittances and other forms of assistance enters refugee camps from Sahrawi living in that part of Western Sahara that is under Moroccan administration.
Another important source of cash comes from Spanish families who host between 7,000 to 10,000 Sahrawi children per summer in Spain through a programme known as Vacaciones en Paz (Crivello et al. [2005], [2006]; de Juan Canales [2009]). When returning to the camps, children bring gifts for themselves (e.g. clothes, toys) and their families (e.g. solar panels, appliances and money, on average 300 € per year) provided by the host families or local solidarity associations (Morando [2006]; Crivello et al. [2006]). Some host families collect money to send to the children’s families in the camps, thus greatly contributing to refugees’ income and to the emergence of a cash economy (Crivello et al. [2006]). It is estimated that this injects between 500,000 € and 1,000,000 € into the camps each year (Mundy [2007]).
Since the 1990s, refugees have also benefitted from small grants and microcredit programmes offered by NGOs to initiate small enterprises (Elizondo et al. [2008]), which has boosted productive activities and self-reliance among refugees (Cavaglieri [2005]). In some cases, microcredit has directly funded camel purchases to initiate milk production (López Belloso and Mendia Azkue [2009]). Besides formal microcredit, funds are provided informally by Sahrawi refugees through credit, loans and delayed payments in market transactions, particularly to relatives and acquaintances, increasing the number of refugees with access to cash. Cash empowered refugees through forms of redistribution, as is also found with other refugee populations (Koser and Al-Ali [2001]; Horst [2006b]). On a smaller scale, refugees with no access to cash may sell part of the aid that they receive to purchase other food (e.g. fresh camel meat and milk) or non-food products (e.g. coal) (Corbet [2008]), thus allowing them to participate in the camps’ market economy.
The cash entering the camps permitted petty commerce, commodity production and a market economy to develop in the camps (Shelley [2010]; Herz [2013]) involving an ever-increasing number of refugees. Together, the potential to engage in long-term investment and commercial activities, and the proliferation of informal markets both within the camps and further afield, not only provided certain pre-conditions for the resurgence of camel husbandry but as well ensured that the social and technical relations entailed in newfound pastoralism would be substantially different from the nomadic past.
The requirements of camel husbandry recovery
Sahrawi refugees have attempted to recover livestock ever since they first settled in refugee camps. It has been shown in other contexts that one strategy used to restock is to diversify economically, as income gained in other sectors can be channeled into pastoralism (Horowitz and Little [1987]). Among the Sahrawi, the recovery began with small livestock (goats and sheep) and it was only after the mid-1990s that this evolved into camel husbandry. Today, a large majority of refugee households maintain small livestock in pens around the camps (Herz [2013]); compared with camels, small livestock are more economically accessible, have higher reproduction rates and fewer nutritional requirements, are more easily sold and have a more convenient size for own consumption; hence, pastoralists commonly begin with small livestock and only upscale to camel husbandry if and when conditions permit (Dahl [1979]; Mace and Houston [1989]). During the war, refugees generally lacked means to access camels (raids were banned and refugees had insufficient capital to purchase camels) and also lacked pastures in areas surrounding the camps. Accumulating the cash to purchase a camel (about 400 to 600 €) is not easy, and camel husbandry in the camps is even more onerous since further initial investments are required for pens, water tanks and fodder, while high risks of loss are entailed due to unfavourable husbandry conditions (Broglia and Volpato [2008]). The material requirements of camel husbandry included access to camels, to fodder and pastures, to associated social networks (e.g. for labour, herd management, product distribution, etc.) and also access to the requisite camel-related knowledge.
While the recovery of camel husbandry is still rather limited in terms of the numbers of refugees and camels involved, it is highly relevant both materially and culturally. While most refugee households own some goats and sheep, very few (1% to 5%) own camels, totaling only a few thousand camels per camp. For almost all such refugees, camel husbandry is a productive activity that complements food aid and meets social and cultural expectations related to both camels and their products. Camel husbandry continues to be constrained by refugees’ lack of capital and by the unfavourable environmental conditions of the camps.
Diversity of access to camels
With the ceasefire agreement of 1991, access to the liberated territories and the demobilization of soldiers, on the one hand, and the increased inflow of cash into the camps, on the other, began to stimulate the recovery of camel husbandry, which was further sustained by the potential to market meat and milk in the camps. Camel purchases arose, in order of importance, in the liberated territories, Mauritania, Mali, Algeria and Niger, and were sometimes embedded in elaborate trade involving the Sahrawi diaspora. A number of cases demonstrate both the fact that the strategies refugees use to access camels may be quite complex, involving a ‘chain’ of activities and investments, as well as the diverse motives for accessing camels. Camels are gifted and inherited, as is the case with a 15-year-old boy who received a gift of two she-camels from his father. They are also purchased from savings - a 50-year-old refugee living in the Aaiun camp initiated a commercial camel herd by purchasing camels in Mauritania with cash obtained from his Spanish pension. Some are obtained through barter: one refugee emigrated to Spain, bought two cars and then exchanged them in the camps for eight camels, which are pastured in the liberated territories using a hired shepherd and which provide milk and other use values for his family when the rains come and they move to the liberated territories to live seasonally as nomads. One refugee migrated to Spain where he worked for a year in construction and, with the money he saved, bought a second-hand truck. He travelled with the truck via boat to Nouadhibou (Mauritania), and then overland to Azawad (in northern Mali), where he exchanged the truck for about 40 camels. He then travelled back to the camps and hired shepherds to bring the camels to him. Once there, the camels were sold to local butchers for a net profit. A woman who obtained remittances from her brother working in Spain bought a milk-producing camel to provide fresh milk for her widowed father. A couple with three children bought two she-camels with money that two of the children received from their hosts in Spain. Collective agency (requiring shared aims and coordination of interdependent plans of action; Bandura [2006]) may also be involved in camel purchases usually, but not always, among kin; in at least one case, four neighbouring (non-kin) households in the camp of Aaiun purchased a milk-producing camel, sharing the costs as well as the milk produced.
Other refugees obtained camels through non-monetary social relations (e.g. from nomadic or refugee kin or acquaintances with herds) as gifts (in which camel ownership is transferred) or, more often, loans (in which ownership is not transferred and camels are used for milk production). Reciprocity involving camels and camel products was very important to the maintenance of social cohesion among Sahrawi nomads and occurred mainly through kinship in accordance with tribal organization. Contemporary redistributive mechanisms serve functions that are similar to those strategies (e.g. mniha - the act of lending milk-producing camels and their calves to fellow tribesmen, an institution embedded in nomadic Sahrawi society) that redistributed camel surpluses through a wider population, permitting destitute nomads to reconstitute herds or survive drought or raids. Similar institutions are present in different pastoral populations throughout the world (Faye [2009]) and, in many cases, their demise has increased pastoralist vulnerability to droughts and other stresses (McCabe [1990]) or, conversely, they have become increasingly important to the survival and functioning of these communities (Ziker [2006]).
Once Sahrawi refugees have managed to renew access to camels, these traditional institutions have been revitalized and adapted: camels and camel milk began to be redistributed through gifts and loans, permitting access to a larger refugee population. One refugee camel owner, for example, gave three 2-year-old camels as gifts, one to a family of acquaintances, another to a young man who was helping him in construction work and a third to a cousin who gave the name of the camel owner to her newborn child. These camels may be then kept for milk production or, especially if young, slaughtered to provide meat for a wedding or baptism. However, the number of refugees receiving camels as gifts is rather limited. Loans (and delayed credit) are more widespread. Mniha plays an important role in the re-emergence of camel husbandry among refugees, where refugee and nomadic relatives from the liberated territories, Mauritania, and even from the Moroccan-controlled territories loan the camels, or camels may be loaned within the camps, as when a ‘milk project’ owner (see below) loaned a she-camel to the widow of one of his former workers.
Typology of camel husbandry in the refugee camps
We have addressed how refugees managed, through economic and social means, to access camels, arguing that this access was made possible by the inflow of cash into the camps and the re-activation of social networks. Renewed access to camels, however, did not give rise to the re-emergence of traditional extensive camel husbandry among refugees, but rather led to different forms of settled or partially settled husbandry. Refugee camel pastoralists are socially differentiated, which is reflected in herd size, social-economic relations and camel management practices. Broadly, three main forms of camel husbandry can be distinguished in the camps: (1) those who produce milk for own consumption (from two to a handful of she-camels); (2) small-scale commercial milk producers (from 10 to 30 camels), who sell milk after providing for own consumption and gifts; and (3) large-scale commercially oriented meat and milk producers (30 to 100 camels). In all cases, milk and meat are sold exclusively within the camps.
Refugees in the first category keep their camels under no-grazing conditions in a pen close to the household or on the camp’s periphery (Figure 3). Camels are fed food scraps, hay and fodder and are watered from wells or potable water pipes. Refugees are strongly motivated to maintain camels for milk production (Figure 4) both because it is an essential staple and marker of cultural identity and because of beliefs that camel milk has health-giving and nutritional properties, especially for the ill and the elderly. These refugees consume or give away all milk produced. Milk is gifted to relatives or neighbours or given in exchange for labour (such as for camel milking). For example, soon after receiving his Spanish pension, one 60-year-old refugee and former nomad and his family moved to the periphery of the Smara camp, built a livestock pen and bought two she-camels with their calves. Although he lost his camels after a year, he re-invested and is now very proud of his four she-camels and three calves, which provide milk for his and one of his married son’s family.
Owners of medium-sized herds maintain most camels in free-grazing conditions in the liberated territories or in the Hamada of Tindouf, while some are kept in the camp to produce milk for own consumption, distribution and, at times, for sale. For example, one herder kept five milk-producing camels in the camp where besides providing for own consumption, a small fraction of the surplus milk produced was given away, while most was sold to cover the costs of fodder and water. This group includes many demobilized soldiers who maintain a ‘traditional’ approach to camel husbandry: they sell relatively small quantities of milk (e.g. 10 to 20 L per day), keeping some for themselves and for relatives and neighbours, while periodically distributing milk for free on a larger scale (some give all the milk produced on Fridays). The herd that is maintained in free-grazing conditions is usually loosely guarded if grazed around the camps or tended by nomadic relatives if grazed in the liberated territories. Such herds are used to support nomadic relatives, obtain cash from the sale of males and as a form of savings.
The third group consists of those who manage private enterprises of variable size (up to 100 camels) primarily devoted to sales of fresh camel milk (up to hundreds of litres per day) and/or meat in the camps. Their organization is more formal compared with smaller-scale producers and is based on the use of wage labour, with small quantities of milk destined for own consumption and gifted to the workforce. Milking is done by hand; milk is unpasteurized and is packaged in plastic bottles. It is taken to the camps by jeep and sold directly to refugees in local markets or indirectly via shops selling prepared food or groceries in the camps. Productive and non-productive she-camels are managed separately; milk-producing camels are kept on the periphery of the camps and fed mainly cut fodder, whereas the rest are kept under free-grazing conditions in the liberated territories or northern Mauritania. These enterprises are sometimes called ‘milk production cooperatives’ since some are the result of the joint investment of various refugees who then share the earnings. Milk projects have increased in number over the past decade due to increased camel milk demand. The profits obtained have generated substantial personal wealth for some. The main constraint to initiating a milk project is the lack of financial resources required to invest in a large milk herd; the funds used to date were obtained through remittances, Spanish pensions and/or earnings from other commercial activities.
Access to the liberated territories
The Sahrawi's traditional pastoral territory was almost inaccessible to pastoralists while engulfed in war from 1975 to 1991 but, since then, the ‘liberated’ areas have been key to the re-emergence of camel husbandry and camel-related practices among refugees as they provide grazing resources for refugees’ and nomads’ herds, as well as a place for nomads to live and refugees to move in seasonal or ‘holiday’ nomadism. Refugees’ use of the liberated territories and northern Mauritania (where the Sahrawi have free informal access) for pasturing herds is informed by an economic rationale related to the emergent markets for livestock and livestock products in the refugee camps, as camel herds spend fallow or fattening periods in free-grazing conditions in these regions. This is especially the case for refugees with larger herds: in milk enterprises, fallow she-camels are grazed in the liberated territories as long as forage plants are available (after rains) to ‘keep them healthy with good forage’ and save the cost of feeding them in the camps on cut fodder. In meat enterprises, especially after rains, refugee herders use the liberated territories to fatten camels and small livestock before selling or slaughtering them in the camps.
Besides enjoying milk and meat in the camps, some refugees move seasonally with their livestock to the liberated territories where they consume these products. Some move to fatten livestock, purchasing small livestock and camels before heading for the badiya. One family bought about 300 goats and sheep and 40 camels which were sold upon return to the camps; in at least two cases, this system was embedded in the camel trade destined to supply meat to the camps - camels are bought in Mauritania or Mali, brought to the liberated territories where she-camels provide milk for seasonal nomadic refugees, males are fattened and, at the end of the period, sold to butchers in the camps.
Besides this economic rationale, seasonal nomadism is informed by many refugees’ desire to enjoy a nomadic life in the badiya (Volpato and Rossi [2014]). Each autumn and/or winter, depending on the location of rains, thousands of refugees move to the badiya (especially its northern area) together with their livestock, tents, food stocks and various tools and other personal items, ‘to graze camel herds and get away from the camps’ (Mundy [2007], p. 295). Dedenis ([2005], pp. 86–87) and Caratini ([2007a], pp. 192–193) report that trips to the badiya may take the form of a ‘holiday’ (i.e. periods based on consumption rather than production), where refugees plan get-togethers with their nomadic relatives or celebrate important events (e.g. childbirths, weddings). Such seasonal nomadic strategies are encountered among other pastoral populations. In Ethiopia, for example, the refugee camps in neighbouring Somaliland were incorporated into seasonal nomadic movements so that nomads could rely on the camps’ food networks during the dry season when pasture was difficult to find and milk was scarce, and refugees in turn enjoyed livestock products during the rainy season (Ryle [1992]). Boulay ([2004]) also described the phenomenon among former nomadic inhabitants of Nouakchott and other Mauritanian cities of a ‘return to the badiya’ after the rainy season for a milk and meat ‘cure’.
Access to knowledge
The knowledge a population holds about a mode of subsistence or productive activity is developed and transmitted across generations of engagement with a local environment and is commonly termed ‘traditional’, ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge (Ellen et al. [2013]; Vandebroek et al. [2011]). As with other pastoral populations across the world, including the neighbouring Tuareg (Antoine-Moussiaux et al. [2007]), over the centuries, Sahrawi pastoralists have accumulated, shared and transmitted knowledge of camel husbandry in the desert environment of Western Sahara, including ethnobotanical knowledge about camel forage (Volpato and Puri [2014]), ethnoveterinary knowledge required to diagnose and treat camel diseases (Volpato et al. [2013a]) and ethnoecological knowledge about weather and rainfall patterns, soils, the location of wells and water points, distances and trajectories for transiting the desert and many other types of knowledge. With forced displacement, herd loss and sedentarization in refugee camps, knowledge transmission was disrupted. Younger people’s disengagement with camels and the desert environment led to a lack of both the need and opportunities to learn. Decades of restrictions on access to nomadic territories meant there were no encounters with the learning environments in which camel and desert-related knowledge was transmitted, and knowledge acquisition and transmission became dormant (Volpato and Puri [2014]). A shift in values associated with formal education, emigration and exposure to mass media and to development schemes further alienated younger refugees from camel husbandry and the associated knowledge and cultural heritage, which some have even come to regard in negative terms.
With the resurgence of camel husbandry, which also involves young refugees who have no previous experience, many have struggled to revitalize the associated knowledge. The sources of this knowledge, principally older refugees and those who remained nomads, are involved in both vertical and horizontal knowledge transmission paths (Volpato and Puri [2014]). Recipients are not only those refugees who re-engage in camel husbandry but also political organizations and NGOs that support refugees. For the first two decades after exile, the SADR government and international organizations focused on guaranteeing the supply of basic items required for refugees’ survival, and the conservation of traditional Sahrawi knowledge was not an issue of public concern. However, with the recovery of part of the Sahrawi’s nomadic territory, the growing reconstitution of herds and flocks, and a string of years with favourable climatic conditions, camel-associated knowledge regained importance in the public sphere. Caratini ([2000], p. 445), for example, says that ‘the Polisario Front have reconstituted a camel stock […] and it realized that the loss of know-how in regard to livestock husbandry (based on the knowledge of the desert and of livestock needs) might represent a handicap both in the eventuality of a resumption of the war and given the perspective of peace.’ In light of this, after the ceasefire agreement was signed, the Polisario involved its soldiers in a ‘learning pastoral life’ exercise involving nomadic shepherds (Caratini [2000]). The Polisario’s revalorization of camel-related knowledge also entails the promotion of camel husbandry among younger generations and refugees as a symbol of cultural identity. For example, since 1992, the Festival de la Cultura y de las Artes Populares (Festival of Culture and Popular Arts) is held annually in Dakhla refugee camp, in which ‘members of the older generations are actively engaged in teaching the youth a culture and traditional lifestyle that young people cannot find in school books’ (SPS [2005]). Besides being crucial to camel husbandry, the recovery of camel-associated knowledge and values is functional to Polisario and Sahrawi refugees' assertions of political independence and rights to their territory as discussed below.