The Polisario official behind «RASD is not a state» stands by the statements he made in Paris in December 2021. Although Mustapha Ali Sidi El Bachir has since been isolated by the Polisario leadership and banned from traveling abroad, he still heads the «Ministry for the Occupied Territories and the Sahrawi Diaspora» without having revised his convictions. This is evidenced by his speech at a recent meeting held in the Tindouf camps to commemorate the 51st anniversary of the creation of the Polisario on May 10, 1973, under the theme «The independent Sahrawi state is the solution». Wearing a military uniform, El Bachir declared that «the republic does not exist». And he sharply accused the Polisario political organization of having «brought the Sahrawis to Lahmada» on Algerian territory in 1976. «I am not a minister of the occupied territories; I am only a refugee registered in the Mahbes district. Brahim Ghali is not a president. He is also a refugee registered in the Lagouira district. We have to be realistic and I will not lie to you, I am not a minister. Our foreign minister, Ould Salek, is in Algiers. Our prime minister, Bouchrya Beyoun, is not a head of government», he said in Paris in December 2021. Mustapha Ali Sidi El Bachir is originally from the Rguibates (East) tribe, from the Bouihates faction, which is the most numerous in the Tindouf camps, although the Algerian authorities have no confidence in its cadres. The reason for this is the return of Omar El Hadrami to Morocco in the early 1990s and the support of Mustapha Ould Sidi Mouloud for the Moroccan autonomy plan in 2010. The Sahrawi uprising of October 1988 was led by the Bouihates and the Oulad Dlim.
