"A nomadic society suddenly fleeing to makeshift camps in foreign lands, sons of warriors, men of letters, traders, blacksmiths, and slaves, forced to leave their women in charge of civic life as they headed off to war ? such was the legacy Spain left to inhabitants of its "Saharan province" when it retreated in 1975. In the absence of a political solution to the conflicts left by decolonization in the Western Sahara, the Sahraoui in the refugee camps are trapped on the Tindouf Hamada. During their more than 30 years of struggle, the refugee camp society has undergone several phases of profound change: a revolutionary phase initiated by the youth and largely implemented by women that assisted and supported the men's armed struggle during the war, which will be studied in the first part of this paper; then a post-revolutionary phase that gave rise to more and more apparent anomie will be addressed in the second part, which will be published in the next issue of Afrique contemporaine."