Nearly three decades of bitter winters and searing summers have passed since these Arab nomads ended their wanderings, and pitched their tents in a no-man's corner of Algerian desert. Just a few miles away lies the Western Sahara -- a sandy slice of Africa claimed both by Morocco, and by the Saharan refugees living here.

But as they battle poverty and malnutrition, the Saharawis have also founded primary schools and women's groups in the shadow of international indifference. Once largely illiterate, the refugees now publish a local newspaper, and send their offspring to schools overseas.

Indeed, the Saharawi claim, their refugee camps scattered around the Algerian town of Tindouf have spawned a model society -- complete with a flag, an elected government, and a constitution that upholds religious tolerance and democracy in a region where both are rarities.

"We currently live under special conditions -- a struggle for liberation and self-determination," said Mohamed Abdelaziz, head of the Polisario Front, the Saharawi rebel movement which also runs the refugee camps. "But we have a project to build a democratic state, based on a multiparty system and a respect for basic freedoms. And we are now establishing a foundation for this."

But whether the Polisario will ever transform its virtual country into a real one is anybody's guess.

The status of Western Sahara has been under dispute since 1975, when Spain handed its former colony to Morocco and Mauritania -- ignoring a United Nations demand that native Saharawis hold a referendum on their future.

Four years later, the Polisario drove the Mauritanians out. But Morocco stayed put, annexing much of the Western Sahara, and building a mined, 1,200-mile wall in the desert to seal its claim.

Although Rabat and the Polisario traded guns for diplomacy in 1991, the two sides remain deadlocked on how to resolve the status of Western Sahara. But in April, Spain's new prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, injected a dose of optimism about ending the years-long standoff.

"We think it's possible to harmonize the rights of every party," Zapatero told reporters in Paris. With renewed effort, he suggested, a U.N.-sponsored agreement could be reached within six months.

Each scrap of hope is seized and filed away by refugees here.

"Finding a political solution is a daily concern in these camps," says Bucharaya Beyun, who runs the largest Saharawi refugee camp of Smara, a tangle of mud-brick huts and canvas tents sheltering some 45,000 Bedouins. "After that, we're concerned about education, health care, waste disposal -- just like any other community."

Outside Beyun's adobe office, a hot spring sun shines down. At a primary school nearby, fourth-grade Spanish language teacher Brahim Malad Mohamed runs his class though their numbers.

"Repeat the word," he coaxes the nine-year-olds, sitting in battered wooden desks.

"Uno!" They roar back.

A few scenic posters of oceans and castles, from lands these children have never seen, are tacked to the classroom's peeling walls. The school library amounts to two bookshelves, mostly filled with Spanish language encyclopedias. A bare patch of sand, devoid of swings and slides, serves as the school's makeshift playground.

But unlike other parts of Africa, primary education is universal here. Saharawi children often leave the camps for further schooling, under programs sponsored by foreign charities, or by a handful of sympathetic governments. Some, like Khadija Hamdi, return with university degrees.

Today, Hamdi is a member of the Saharawi's powerful women's union, and counts among the 25 percent of women sitting on the Polisario parliament.

"We may not be a sophisticated society, but we are open to democracy, education and women's rights," Hamdi said, as she welcomed a visitor to her office with cups of tea. "Traditionally, men and women have played equal roles in Bedouin society. We ran these camps when the men were away at war."

With the men back at camp, women still run community councils. They have so far failed to dominate top positions in the Saharan government. Still, their political clout remains a rarity in the Arab world they are also a part of -- as does their ability to divorce and remarry without social censure.

The Saharawis are Muslims, but not a mosque juts out from the dusty camps, and the refugees welcome Christian aid workers.

"Religion is something very individual for us," said Mohamed Yeslam Beissat, the Polisario's ambassador to Algeria. "It's a strict relationship between the person and God. Maybe because of our old nomadic lifestyle, in the desert."

Not everyone is cheering the refugee's cause. Several human rights groups have accused the Polisario of mistreating its Moroccan prisoners of war -- charges the rebel group denies.

Other critics, such as French historian Bernard Lugan, dismiss the Polisario's democratic trappings as a sham, and its claims to the Western Sahara as unfounded.

"Historically, Western Sahara is Moroccan," said Lugan, in a telephone interview from his home in Lyon. "The Polisario are nothing. They represent only one or two tribes among many in Western Sahara."

And despite several U.N. rulings backing Saharawi claims, the Polisario's self-styled government is only recognized by 75 countries, mostly African or developing nations.

By contrast, much of the Arab world, along with countries like France, have sided with Morocco.

"Who is supporting the Saharawis? Nobody," said one foreign official, who closely follows the Saharan standoff. "Who is with Morocco? I think everybody."

Besides growing a few vegetables, and keeping livestock, the Saharawis have few opportunities to supplement monthly aid supplies of tea, pasta and sugar. Water is trucked into some camps once a day. Much of it is not fit for drinking. There is no hope of finding employment in this desert community, hundreds of miles from any major metropolis.

As time passes, international assistance dwindles. The Sahrawis are yesterday's tragedy.

"When refugees are in a place for a long time, the international community usually gets donor's fatigue," explained Elzaki Eissa, the local field officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "So usually they will get less funds, less donations. Even from the UNHCR."

In their threadbare camps, some Saharawis admit they too are losing hope.

"We have been here close to 30 years, and no war, no peace," said 32-year-old Selma Boulahi. "We are waiting for something. Or for nothing."

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