The issue of the Sahara reached a controversy over human rights violations. However, Sahrawi dissident Mustapha Salma wanted to bring down Polisario's abilities to absorb the opinion of the other, and returned to the Tindouf camps although he knew that he would end up arrested at the very least. He was not an adventurer and did not launch a series of protests over his prevention from seeing his parents, but he turned his case into a test reflecting the reality of what went on during the pending negotiations round. Apparently, Polisario, which rejected the self-governance option as a reference for the negotiations, was not about to accept it from its former chief of police who defied it by proclaiming it from inside the Tindouf camps. This may be the first time that a Polisario member disagrees with it over one of the options on the table to end the Sahara conflict, as its dissidents usually cut their ties with life inside the camps as soon as they joined Morocco. The Sahrawi dissident was only simulating himself and his experience, as divergence emerged in the way Morocco handled the presence of activists called the "domestic Polisario," who visited and exited the Tinfoud camps without this raising any problems. Indeed, Rabat learned from the incident of activist Aminatou Haidar and became more capable of accommodating views supporting the front, which it describes as being isolated and having limited impact. This development, however, was not about to surface outside the context of the tax related to the respect of human rights which no longer frighten anyone. The calls to respect human rights prevailed to expand the prerogatives of the MINURSO mission in the Sahara, while the Security Council resolutions settled the issue based on the fact that these prerogatives were defined by international decisions and that the wager was on the resumption of the negotiations and not on the opening of new windows that could drown the file in mazes. Nonetheless, Polisario never thought that this would backfire with a Sahrawi dissident urging it to respect his right to express an opinion that is different from its own. What mostly upset it at this level was that this opinion it had to hear inside the closed negotiations rooms from the Moroccan side was now rising from inside the fenced camps. Between following the negotiations train which is standing still or letting it pass like any other lost opportunity, Polisario is now busy defusing internal fires triggered by those who are closing their ears to avoid hearing another opinion. It may be more important than any view, the extent of its support of the will to head toward the resolution of a long-lasting problem. In this context, whether Polisario listens to or rejects the voices proposing self-governance, the latter position does not annul the fact that it is proposed on the table of the political solution. In this context, had the Security Council wanted to be stricter than necessary, it could have referred to any settlement with the words that best suit it. The true supporters of peace want a settlement that achieves the goals, regardless of its formulation. And while the difficult life inside the Tindouf camps is among the factors which intensified mass exodus, this does not mean that it would be impossible for the situation to remain the same. What is certain at this level is that had these internally displaced people who are estimated by the thousands been able to bluntly express their viewpoints inside the camps, many things would have changed. What difference is there between one man saying he is returning to the camps to defend the self-governance option, and the exodus of thousands of Polisario members toward Morocco, the one who launched the self-governance initiative, throughout the past years? The issue is subjected to political estimations rather than symbolic implications, and what happened outside the context of the political stalemate surrounding the file, is that the population is the one now moving on the chessboard. This only means tedium from the fact that the file remained pending for over three decades, during which all the concerned sides spoke directly or indirectly. In the meantime, regional and international partners, mediators and the promoters of different efforts became involved while the result remained the same in the presence of a predicament which exits one bottleneck only to enter another crisis. The time has come to listen to the other voice of the concerned population, especially among those who opened their eyes during the first days of the eruption of a conflict which has been ongoing for too long.
