There are basic things that every "son of the rifle" must know before learning to fight. They must be able to navigate the desert simply by distinguishing the color of the sand and the position of the stars. They must be able to camouflage their vehicle and sleep underneath it during the hottest hours of the day, advance without lights in the darkness, and cook breifiza, the typical food of the Sahrawi soldier made from camel meat and dried fat, and bread baked in a natural sand oven, so that Moroccan drones cannot see the fire or smoke. They must know where hidden mines are and how to deactivate them, they must endure long marches with water in their canteen without drinking it. They must read the terrain to know where there might be a water well and they must know and distinguish the desert winds, like the harmattan.
The Martyr Luali Mustafa Sayed Military School Academy for young cadets of the Polisario Front has updated the old desert warfare manuals. Since its early years, they have been striking a state like Morocco, with far more resources, from a long distance, and then swiftly retreating. Each year, around 500 cadets enter this Polisario academy to become guerrilla fighters. Classes are held in the desert, and the aspirants must complete the assigned missions even if it takes several days. The latest course was presided over by Lahbib Mohamed Abdelaziz, son of the guerrilla's founder who was killed by a Moroccan drone the day before yesterday. In other words, Morocco eliminated the person in charge of training the next generation of Sahrawi fighters.
The strategy of the army of the former Spanish colony, similar to that of the SAS in the desert war against Marshal Rommel's troops in Egypt and Libya, is based on hit-and-run tactics. For this, they use the legendary Toyota pickup trucks, which in military jargon is often referred to as a "Toyota war" or "pickup truck war" in armed conflicts where the main weapon is not a tank or an airplane but a light all-terrain vehicle - the Land Cruiser or Hilux model - fitted with a heavy machine gun, a recoilless rifle, or a rocket launcher.
In certain terrains, extreme mobility surpasses firepower. A tank can be destroyed by a pickup truck with an anti-tank missile mounted on top that appears out of nowhere on a dune, fires, and disappears before the tank can turn its turret.
In military history, the Sahrawi forces are considered as pioneers in a warfare mode that combines guerrilla tactics with heavy weaponry, long before Hezbollah and before the term "hybrid warfare" became popular. Now, the Polisario must once again update themselves: a moving pickup truck in the desert is exactly the type of target for which the Bayraktar drone, now in the hands of Morocco, was designed. They must now wait for cloudy or stormy days to act.
What kind of weaponry does the Polisario Front possess? In the 80s, the armored equipment supplied by Libya and Algeria made it the most powerful militia on the continent. Today, all those vehicles can be considered scrap metal or museum pieces. We are talking about old T-55 tanks provided by Muammar Gaddafi or Soviet-origin BMP infantry fighting vehicles, many of them are still in service with cannibalized parts from other models, just like the Grad rocket launchers delivered by Algeria in 1980.
"The Sahrawi people feel that every day we resemble the Palestinians more and more," says Mohamed Sidati, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Polisario, referring to the proliferation of drones in the hands of Morocco, which has turned an already unequal war into an asymmetric one.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Polisario is the most difficult to quantify militarily: enduring over 50 years against a state with enormous resources, Western support, and technological superiority. The youth born in refugee camps have once again taken up the old Kalashnikovs that once served their parents and grandparents. This generational continuity in itself is a political victory that no drone can destroy. "The Moroccans had ignored the famous saying of Frederick the Great: 'He who defends everything, defends nothing'," wrote William H. Lewis, American military analyst, about the Moroccan failure against the Polisario guerrilla in the 70s and 80s.
The greatest achievement of the Polisario was forcing Mauritania to withdraw from the Sahara in 1979, culminating in the bold attack on Nouakchott in 1976, when 200 guerrillas traveled 1,000 kilometers through the desert to strike the enemy capital. Military experts still study that campaign today as a reference case in hybrid warfare.