The Polisario's Marxist past sinks into the desert sands

The appointment had been fixed: I was to see the prime minister at 10am on Friday. But the moment came and went with no hint on an interview.

The next day it became clear why - the PM had been turfed out. The Saharawis' 101-member parliament decided that he and his cabinet had failed to implement the programme on which they had been elected, and passed a motion of no confidence.

'Right now, I am in the midst of consultations to find a new prime minister,' said the Saharawis' president, Mohamed Abdelaziz.

It is a remarkable situation - the government of a people struggling to regain their homeland removed from office at a time when they may all have to return to guerrilla warfare to secure the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco.

Sitting in his office in a walled fort that could have been built for a Beau Geste reprise, Mr Abdelaziz thought it was 'without precedent in Africa or the Arab world'. At the very least, the Saharawis' first government crisis lends credibility to their claim to have left behind their revolutionary Marxist past.

Of this the leadership makes no bones. When the interpreter translated Mr Abdelaziz as saying 'The Polisario Front has historically been a socialist movement,' the president cut in to say, 'No, communist'.

But in 1991, at its 8th congress, the Polisario voted for free-market economics and multi-party politics. A liberal economy is not easy to implant in a society dependent on humanitarian aid organisations (though a bill is being discussed that would legalise the little shops that have sprung up in the refugee camps).

A working democracy, on the other hand, can already be glimpsed. When I caught up with the Saharawis' assembly (in nomad fashion, it moves from camp to camp) the MPs were behaving in a way that would do credit to their Westminster counterparts - listening silently and attentively to a minister defending his record before, as it turned out, sacking him.

'A key point is that the Polisario Front has never been a party. It is a front that takes in all sorts of trends and tendencies,' Mr Abdelaziz said.

'Will it become a party after independence like the liberation movements in so many other countries? I don't believe so. Will it split? I can't say.' He even argues that an independent Western Sahara could become a 'beacon for democracy' in a region where progress towards multi-party politics has been slowed by the spread of Islamic extremism.