Tiharyin

Tiharyin
After the desasterous floods of Merzouga, let’s not forget:

I have to write this down… a story of a lost village.
Tiharyin, the name of a village in the south east of Morocco, about 160 Kilometers from the town Errachidia , is not a Moroccan village anymore. It has been invaded and vandalized by the Algerian army in Fall 1976. during the rule of Boumedian and Hassan II. This village is not on any Moroccan map. It is not on Michelin either.
The displacement of hundreds of families stayed a secret among the caids and secret agents of Rabat .
The government has, of course, built houses of some sort for these families in the area near the sand dunes of Merzouga
These people were farmers and had lived in an Eden-like oasis in the sahara. To bring them to two room adobe houses was a real shame. This was a hard displacement.
Now Tiharyin is occupied y the Algerians and it is used as a military base. People who tried to “sneek in” to get things back from their village have been jailed by Moroccans and Algerians. Traumatized by displacement and unfair treatment of the Moroccan government, many people were advised to thank God they were still living. .Hadj Ouatou said “if there is a god any where, he would not let this happen to us, we do not our have homes any more”. He was silenced by the Moroccan Gendarmerie. Others were silenced too, that was a time when Western Sahara issue was on every table and people did not talk about anything.
How many people in morocco know there was a village invaded and taken over by the Algerian army in 1976?
How many of us think this is old information. We should have gotten over it. uhu / no , we can’t get over it because ten of the families who flew and lived every where in rooms and garages of neighboring towns though they were well off when they found they could farm again in Talghumt. Now there is no water and they had to move again.
Children of the families who worked in tourism business as camel men of drivers or dish washers are now forgetting they are Berbers. Their children in Rissani and Erfoud do not know there was something called Tiharyin an area and a village. these are the same people who are forced to forget their culture: food patterns, diets, waters, herbs…etc. they are living in places where they can not chose to eat there foods. Their children get diabetes, hear strokes, anemia,…
This is not about people finding a place to live, it is about how displacement of villagers and nomads and their fixation is a blatant genocide.