Western Sahara: The World's Longest Minefield and Africa's Last Colony

Here. Look at this. Zoom in here on Google Maps. You'll see a military base in the middle of the desert. Then another and another. If you keep scrolling, it doesn't stop. To Morocco. Morocco that created the world's longest mine. The world's second largest wall after the Great Wall of China. It is a vast sand wall that runs 2,700 km across the desert. It is 17 times larger than the Berlin Wall and much, much deadlier. It's guarded by 130,000 soldiers, patrolled by Israeli drones, and surrounded by 9 million landmines, the densest minefield on

Earth. And you've probably never seen it. The Kingdom of Morocco wants it to stay that way. The Burm slices through Western Sahara, a place most maps can't even agree exists. Beneath its sands lie some of the world's richest deposits of phosphates, desperately needed to create fertilizer for the world's growing farms. Its fishing waters feed European markets. Its wind and sun power distant cities, all without the consent of the local people. 50 years ago, Spain promised the people here a vote to choose their future. Instead, this land was invaded.

The vote never happened. And Western Sahara remains the last colony in Africa. Here's why. So, who are the people boxed in by this wall? Well, to understand that we have to look back. These are the Swahari people, the indigenous people of Western Sahara. They are mostly Muslims and they speak the distinct Hassania dialect of Arabic, which is different than the Arabic spoken in Morocco. For thousands of years, they lived as nomads, hering camels and goats between oases. They were vital middlemen in the vast transsaharan trade network. Then in 1884, European

powers met in Berlin to decide how to carve up the African continent between their colonial empires. Spain with its Canary Islands just 100 km away claimed this area and named it Spanish Sahara. Spain under the longtime dictatorship of Francisco Franco crushed uprisings here in the 1930s and50s. But the resistance kept resurfacing. In the 1970s, Muhammad Baseri inspired by Gandhi founded the peaceful Haracat Tarer movement to protest for independence. In June of 1970, thousands gathered in the city of Elun at what became known as the Zimla Inifala. Spanish forces opened fire,

massacring the protesters. They arrested Baseri and he was never seen again. Right. So around this time the United Nations was pushing for something called decolonization which gave independence to dozens of countries in the middle of the 20th century. In 1963 they placed Spanish Sahara on the list of non-self-governing territories which was essentially a euphemism for colony. The UN General Assembly passed resolution after resolution affirming the inaliable right of the people of the Sahara to self-determination. For Franco, the Sahara was too rich to give

up. Spanish officials had seen that the amount of phosphates in the ground there could give the local population lives equal to that of some developed countries in Europe. And Spain wanted that wealth. Its vast beds of phosphate make it the world's second biggest producer of fertilizer. 3 years after the Zla massacre, a small band of Swahari insurgents attacked a Spanish outpost and they called themselves the friendly popular liberation sah alhhamraoro or simply the policario front. They were part of a wave of armed antic-colonial movements that

were sweeping the third world from Angola to Vietnam. The policario front quickly gained the overwhelming support of the Swahari people. This was their liberation movement. By 1974, Franco was sick. Spain was facing UN pressure and the Policario fronts guerrilla attacks were taking a toll and by the 70s Spanish Sahara stood out as one of the last places on the African continent still under European colonial rule. Spain finally gave in. They promised to organize an independence referendum for early 1975. Morocco, who gained independence from France in 1956 and Moritania,

who gained independence from France in 1960, objected. They believed that Western Sahara belonged to them and they asked the International Court of Justice to make a ruling. Moritania made their claim based on similar ethnicity, language, and culture. Morocco's claim, however, was different. When the French left Morocco in 1956, they left the Aloi dynasty in charge as the monarchs of the country. The deal was that the Aloi kings would maintain French influence over banking, the military and business interests in the country and the French would help the monarchy

put down any left-wing or democratic uprisings. Uprisings and unrest in newly independent Morocco were quite frequent due to the poverty France had left there and they had to be constantly crushed. Unlike its neighbor Algeria, Morocco had no oil to bankroll its economy. So, the monarchy embraced an idea, greater Morocco. This idea became popular in 1956 and was soon embraced by the monarchy. It claimed that Morocco's true pre-colonial territory included parts of Algeria, northern Mali, and all of Moritania and Western Sahara. The evidence for this claim is mostly

dubious. It was based on certain tribal leaders at certain times over the centuries pledging loyalty to some Moroccan sultans. But the evidence didn't matter. These territories had something Morocco needed. Resources. This myth of a lost great empire served two purposes. For ordinary Moroccans trapped in poverty, it gave them a kind of nationalist pride. For the Moroccan elites already drenched in wealth, it was a distraction to keep the anger on the streets pointed outward. In 1963, King Assan II invaded Algeria using this theory. It failed and relations with Algeria

never recovered. One by one, Morocco dropped its claims on its neighbors. All except one. Western Sahara. After Spain announced it would hold an independence referendum, the UN sent a mission to Spanish Sahara to ask them what they actually wanted. It found the majority of the population within Spanish Sahara was manifestly in favor of independence. On the 16th of October 1975, the International Court of Justice issued its opinion. They determined that the materials and information presented to it do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty

between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Moritanian entity. It concluded nothing Morocco presented overruled the right of the Swahari people to self-determination. So that should have been it. International law was pretty clear. The Swahari people were owed a vote on their independence. But then something strange happened. In the sandy wastes of Spanish Sahara, Morocco's King Hassan had sent 350,000 of his people to stake a claim to this phosphate rich desert. King Hassan II refused to accept the ICJ's conclusion. Within hours of the ICJ's verdict,

King Hassan announced he was organizing a green march for the 6th of November 1975. 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians would cross into Western Sahara to liberate the land. The march though was simply theater. A week earlier, Moroccan troops had crossed the border, occupying the posts that Spanish troops were abandoning and fighting the Policario resistance. Hassan's timing was incredibly convenient. The day after Hassan announced a march, Francisco Franco fell into a coma. Spain was paralyzed. Within days, Spain, Morocco, and Moritania had cut a deal,

the Madrid Agreement. They carved up Western Sahara. Morocco got the north and Moritania the south, and Spain got to withdraw with dignity and secured fishing rights and a share of future phosphate profits. This was an entirely illegal deal. No country in the world recognized it. Spain refused to hold a referendum. It illegally handed Western Sahara away to two other countries, abandoned its duty to deolonize the territory, and simply betrayed the Swahari people. By late 1975, Morocco and Moritania's invasions were in full swing. For control of 105,000 square miles of

the crulest desert on Earth, gorilla army is pitted against Morocco's modern armed forces. Moroccan troops seize the Bocraft phosphate mines and the largest city, Elon. According to testimony before a US congressional subcommittee, the refugees who were in Western Sahara at the end of January 1976 and the beginning of February through midFebruary of 1976 were bombed, strafed, and napanned. There was a decided attempt by the Moroccan invading forces to eliminate these people. The planes came to bombathas on a Sunday at 11:00 a.m. in February of 1976. Many people

were killed during the attack. Women who were pregnant had miscarriages. The limbs of children were blown off. Some were burned like ashes. The first day the planes came back three times to bomb us. They came back every day that week to bomb again and again. Half the Swahari population became refugees overnight as air strikes drove tens of thousands on a grueling desert march towards Algeria. Moroccan troops deliberately killed livestock, destroyed homes, and burned tents to make sure the refugees had nothing to return to. By the 27th of February 1976,

Spain had completely withdrawn. That same day, the Polario declared the Swahari Arab Democratic Republic. The Policario front branded itself as a democratic secular nationalist movement. They did genuinely build democratic systems in the camps in Algeria. They elevated women to leadership roles. Morocco wants to control and exploit our country and its wealth. But the Moroccans are convinced that as long as one Sahari is alive, they can't achieve this goal. They freed black slaves held by nomads and they promised to nationalize the phosphate mines when they got independence.

They wanted to modernize traditional Swahari society and overcome tribalism as a form of social organization. Tens of thousands of refugees were settled at camps near the Algerian town of Tinduf. Algeria provided shelter, food, and weapons, partly out of revolutionary solidarity. Algeria at the time was an international anti-colonial superstar that had won a popular revolution against the French. They were seen as champions of third world self-determination. And as one Moroccan official complained, Algeria had Laura. This contrasted with Morocco, whose conservative

monarchy was France's last client king in North Africa. But there was another more strategic reason behind Algeria support for the Policario front. They wanted to hurt their Moroccan rival. Libya under Gaddafi also armed the Policario. Despite them being a left-wing nationalist movement, the USSR refused to support or arm the Policario front, probably because they relied on Moroccan phosphate imports. The UN said that they deplored Morocco's invasion and asked for them to withdraw their troops. But France and the United States, who sit on the UN Security Council,

used their veto power to stop all efforts in the UN to order Morocco to stop. A 1978 US government report acknowledged that US military interest in Morocco is to maintain a friendly government's control of the southern shore of the Strait of Gibralar. Morocco has the world's largest phosphate reserves. Morocco's phosphate could be vital at the end of the century when most known US reserves may be depleted. The American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, knew of Hassan's plans to invade because the CIA had told him on the 3rd of October, 1975, and he

supposedly provided Hassan with a green light to attack. On November 10th, as Hassan was invading, Kissinger told President Ford, "If he doesn't get it, he is finished. We should now work to ensure he gets it. The hope is for a rigged UN vote." As the 1975 crisis was happening, the United States essentially told Spain they had to cut a deal with Morocco. And Kissinger told them that if they did, there will be a $ 1.5 billion arms package in it for them. You see, France and the United States were worried that without the monarchy, Morocco could become a popular republic. And they had a

fear that a successful Swahari revolution might be contagious and may prove dangerous to US economic interests in the Middle East. Morocco's monarchy was already on shaky grounds. Hassan had massacred over 300 protesters during strikes in 1965 and there were two coup attempts against him in the 1970s to form a democratic republic. Poverty was widespread and just four families controlled over a third of Morocco's economy. By liberating Spanish Sahara, Hassan was giving his people a nationalist cause, a distraction from poverty and corruption. He gave his restless and couprone army

a war to fight far away from Rabbat. Following the US and aparite South Africa's failed invasion of Angola in 1975, French intelligence with Henry Kissinger's blessing built a secret network called the Safari Club whose main task was to protect Western interests in Africa and supply weapons to rebel groups and dictators. It was made up of the US, Morocco, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran with some help from apartheid South Africa, Rhdesia, and Israel. This group helped arm Islamist Mujahedin in Afghanistan and airlifted Moroccan troops on US planes to crush revolts

against the US backed dictator of Zire in the late 1970s to protect European mining interests. Hassan had managed to make his rule vital to Western interest in the region and made the occupation of Western Sahara the pillar that propped up his monarchy. If Paris and Washington wanted Hassan secure, then Western Sahara had to be conquered. By the late 1970s, the policario front was rapidly securing recognition from African states and they had Moretania on the backfront. Even direct French NAPAM strikes on Swaharis couldn't save Moritania. By 1979, it surrendered, pulled out its troops,

and recognized Western Sahara. Like in most guerrilla wars, the Policario front didn't actually have to win a decisive military victory. They just had to exhaust Morocco. To keep Hassan from losing, the United States and France poured billions worth of weapons into Morocco, mostly financed by the Saudis. The Saudi king also did not want to see a monarchy lose to a popular revolution. Second only to Egypt, Morocco received more US aid during the Cold War than any other African country. Morocco was handed advanced weapons like Cobra gunships, F5 jets,

Mirage fighter aircraft, artillery, tanks, and a 200 million dollar surveillance system. Between 1975 and 1988, Morocco indiscriminately bombed Sarahi civilians with US-made cluster munitions. Bombs filled with tiny steel bomblelets that scatter on impact, shredding everything in range, which is why they are illegal under international law. The American militarization of the Moroccan regime bound its army to American weapon systems which guaranteed their dependence on the United States and ensured that the monarchy would be too heavily armed for the civilian population to ever

overthrow. Even with Saudi money, by 1977, Morocco was spending nearly a quarter of its income on the army. With the economy collapsing, the International Monetary Fund provided loans to rescue Morocco's highly authoritarian regime, which was actively engaged in state terror. In exchange for the loans, Morocco had to enact austerity and increase taxes that gutted average Moroccan living standards. The Swahari people were outnumbered. They were less than half a million against Morocco's 30 million people. The Policario front could field a few thousand fighters. King

Hassan had over 100,000 US and French trained soldiers on the bottomless purses of Washington, Paris, Riyad, and the IMF. But the Swaharis knew the desert. They had lived there for generations. They were able to attack anywhere and then disappear back into the sandunes. Their mobility was their greatest weapon and so Morocco had to destroy it. Gorillas have regained control of 9/10 of the western Sahara even though they are outnumbered 10 to1 by the Moroccan armed forces. Today Morocco occupies only this small portion of the contested territory. To keep from losing it,

the Moroccan army built a fortified defense wall around the entire area. In the 1980s, with American, French, and Israeli expertise, Morocco began to build something unprecedented, a giant wall of sand, connecting it to military outposts, stretching 2,700 km across the desert, guarded by over a 100,000 soldiers, backed by radar, trenches, barbed wire, and 9 million landmines. They called it the Burm. It cost millions of dollars a day to maintain. But it strangled the Policario. The Burm split western Sahara into three worlds. The Moroccan

occupied zone, the thin strip of desert held by the Policario, called the free zone, and the refugee camps in Tindu Algeria. In the free zone, around 40,000 people live traditional nomadic lives. Nearly 200,000 people live in the refugee camps, and the remaining 250ish,000 Swahari live under Moroccan occupation. The Burm isolates Swaharis. Those living in the camps in Algeria can't see their families on the other side of the wall. Nomads and their herds have to dodge mines, and it isn't uncommon to see Swahari missing limbs, as the landmines have claimed thousands

of victims. With the wall complete, Morocco conquered most of Western Sahara. But they could never defeat the Polario without directly invading Algeria. So, the war settled into a stalemate. In September of 1991, the UN and the African Union brokered a ceasefire and a simple deal. The 16-year long war would end, and within a year, the UN would organize a referendum to let the Sari people choose independence, integration into Morocco or something else. To make it happen, the UN created a special mission, Minorso, to organize a referendum. 30 years later,

the referendum still hasn't been held. As the voter registry was being made, Morocco flooded the territory with settlers and demanded that they be allowed to vote. This was in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which bans an occupying power from transferring its own population into occupied territory. Settlers soon outnumbered the native population 3 to one. By the early 2000s, the peace process had gone nowhere. In 2003, former US Secretary of State James Baker proposed a compromise. Western Sahara would enjoy four years of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty after

which a referendum would be held. Even Moroccan settlers could vote. Policario accepted. Morocco refused. You see, when King Assan died in 1999, his son Muhammad V 6th inherited his throne, a $30 billion fortune, and a poor, corrupt, and authoritarian state. Morocco ranked near the bottom of the UN development index. Illiteracy stood at 50%. And even today, 70% of Moroccans under 30 want to leave the country. Which leaves an obvious question. Why would people in Western Sahara sitting on some of the richest resources in North Africa want to join a state that even

Moroccans were trying to flee? After several protests where settlers joined in with the native Sari people against the Moroccan monarchy, Morocco began to worry that they couldn't trust their own settlers to vote against independence. In 2007, Morocco announced that they would never accept any referendum that included an option for independence. Instead, they proposed an autonomy plan that kept Western Sahara under permanent Moroccan sovereignty. And so, the ceasefire allowed Morocco to entrench its occupation while the US and France protected it from

any international pressure. The Swahari people never accepted the occupation of their homeland. Resistance towards Spain and then towards Morocco was constant. In 2010, a small group of Swahari families angry at discrimination in jobs and housing pitched their tents outside the city of Elun. Those tents were a symbol of Swari nomadic identity. Dozens soon turned into thousands. Within weeks, the camp swell to 20,000 people. It became known as the Gadim Isach Dignity Camp. The encampment demanded a fair share of Western Sahara's resources. Moroccan forces encircled the camp. They cut off food and water. They expelled foreign

journalists. And then on the 27th of October, they murdered a 14-year-old boy. And then on the 8th of November, 2010, they stormed the encampment. firing live ammunition, torching tents and killing protesters. Swahari journalists who covered the event were arrested, tried in military courts, tortured into confessions, and then sentenced to life in prison. Today, in the occupied zone, supporting independence is a crime. Surveillance is constant. Forced disappearances are routine, and mass graves of Saharis have been discovered near military bases and phosphate mines. Reporters

Without Borders calls Western Sahara a desert for journalists. Steven Zunes, who writes consistently about Western Sahara, calls it the worst police state I've ever seen. What you saw today is nothing compared to what we've witnessed over and over since 1975. But the news never gets out. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented Moroccan security forces using torture, beatings, detention without trial, and murder against the Swahari people. Manurso, the UN peacekeeping mission in the region, is the only UN mission in the world without a mandate to monitor

human rights. This is a situation maintained by France who uses their veto power on the UN Security Council to block any changes to Manuro's mandate. So torture, detention, and disappearances go unrecorded. In Western Sahara, Morocco has enforced a policy of Moroccanization. Settlement programs have brought hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers south with the promise of higher salaries, subsidized food, housing, energy, guaranteed jobs, and tax breaks. Swaharis are now a minority in their own homeland. Moroccan Arabic and French are the official languages in Western

Sahara rather than Hassania, which is the dialect of Arabic spoken by the Swahari. And a lack of education choices forces Swahari to go north to get a decent education. One Swahari noted that every day would become similar to Palestinians. Another said, I don't have a future. As long as there is occupation, my fate will be the same as that of my grandfather and my uncle to disappear. Settlers receive secure jobs while the Swahari face systemic poverty and police repression.

260,000 Swaharis have been displaced in the last three decades with more than 20,000 arbitrary detentions, over 1,000 disappearances, and hundreds of deaths in custody and over 120 documented murders. As one young Swahari put it, "All my dreams have been destroyed. Morocco killed them. I can only think of my friends who are imprisoned or killed. After university, I have two choices. To migrate abroad or to flee to the camps, they will never give me a job here. At first glance, this all looks like empty desert. But if you look at satellite images,

you can see green houses rising out of the desert. Ports packed with fishing ships, massive solar and wind farms, and the world's largest conveyor belt stretching for kilometers across the desert to connect this massive phosphate mine to ports to export. This land is rich. Morocco extracts phosphates, fish, tomato, solar, and wind energy. Even Western Sahara's sand is sold off to replenish tourist beaches in the Canary Islands. All of it is taken without the consent of the Swahari people and with little benefit to them. Let's start with the phosphates. Western Sahara sits on some of the richest deposits of phosphates in

the world. A massive treasure for the tiny Swahari population. A treasure that's only set to increase as growing populations in Asia and Africa will demand more and more fertilizer. The Bow Crown Mine alone holds an estimated 500 million tons of phosphate, which today is mined and shipped off to buyers from India to New Zealand. In 2002, Morocco exported 1.23 million tons of Swahari phosphates valued at $655 million. The profits don't stay here. They flow towards the king, Moroccan elites, and French companies in the north. Morocco now controls 72% of global phosphate reserves. China

in second place controls just 6%. International law is fairly clear on this. In 2002, the UN ruled that exploiting resources here without the consent of the local population was illegal. Courts in Europe and Africa have said the same thing, but Morocco and its partners ignore these rulings, and the European Union is perhaps the worst offender. The waters off Western Sahara are some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. The European Union has consistently signed deals with Morocco that treat those waters as Moroccan. And so Swahari fish is sold on the

cheap to the EU market, even when the EU's own courts say that these deals are illegal. In 2022, nearly 34ers of Morocco's coastal catch came from Swahari waters. In 2024, 129,000 tons of fish products from Western Sahara entered the European Union, valued at 54 million. The European Union continues to fund settler housing, ports, and fish freezing halls in occupied territory. Bros of Moroccanowned green houses filled with tomatoes, melons, and blueberries, all grown with water pumped from scarce underground aquifers, taking desperately needed water from Sari herders.

The profits are extracted by Moroccan elites and French companies. Workers are imported from Morocco and supermarkets like Karafhur lie to their customers as they falsely label these goods as Moroccan. Because of their trade deals, Morocco can sell these goods with lower tariffs in the European Union, which undercut European farmers because the green houses here grow crops with less worker regulations, less chemical regulations, and less environmental regulations. And of course, without the consent of the local population. In 2024, Morocco overtook Spain as the EU's second

largest tomato supplier. Morocco has no oil. It has always been dependent on Algeria and Spain for energy imports. It dreams of energy independence through renewables. By 2030, half of Morocco's wind and 30% of its solar power will come from occupied Western Sahara. These projects built by foreign giants like Seammens and Enji are advertised as green development but remove all mention of western Sahara from their marketing. If you look closer, these projects rarely help the local Sahari population. Instead, they power the phosphate mines and they send electricity

north to Morocco and Europe. These energy exports make Morocco, Europe, and West Africa dependent on energy generated in occupied Western Sahara. A leaked document showed that Morocco thought implicating Russia in the Sahara could guarantee a freeze on the Sahara file within the UN. So far, no oil or gas have been discovered in Western Sahara, although two illegal oil exploration licenses have been sold to foreign companies, both Israeli. Meanwhile, majority Swahari areas remain in darkness, plagued by blackouts and dry taps. But as one Swahari noted, you can guarantee

settlers still have their showers. The monarchy hands out contracts to exploit Western Sahara to generals and security forces. Top generals earn millions per year from fishing contracts that employ mostly settlers. This ensures their loyalty to the king and makes it so they will do anything in their power to maintain the occupation. The Swahari living in the camps are entirely cut off from those in the occupied territories. Many refugees have been stranded there for over 40 years. a little bunny. In the camps, 50% of the population is under 15. The camps sit on Arab

desert where temperatures can reach 50° C in the summer and drop below freezing during the night. According to UNICEF, 55% of children under the age of five suffer from anemia. Children in the camps in Algeria dream of canned sardines while Morocco sells millions of tons of fish caught in Swahari waters to Europeans. For decades, the Swahari were left to rot as the UN, US, and France maintained a ceasefire that benefited Morocco. In November of 2020, Swahari protesters blocked a road here. This was a road Morocco had built illegally in a buffer zone. This

road allowed Morocco to export to West Africa. Military presence here was banned under the ceasefire. Despite that, Moroccan troops entered the buffer zone and opened fire on the protesters. After 29 years, the Polario front declared the truce over. Guerilla attacks resumed along the Burm and Morocco answered with air and drone strikes, resulting in scores of Sari civilian deaths. To this day, no new ceasefire has been implemented. A month after these clashes broke out, in December of 2020, under Donald Trump, the United States became the first country in the

world to recognize Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara. In return for Morocco's normalization of relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, Morocco now pays Israel tens of millions of dollars for attack and surveillance drones tested on Palestinians. Israeli Pegasus spywear turns Swahari and even Moroccan phones into surveillance tools. Israeli drones now patrol the burm, killing not just Swaharis, but Moritanians who wander too close. In 2023, Israel became the second country to recognize Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara. One by one, European states

fell in line. In March of 2020, Spain openly sided with Morocco and endorsed its 2007 autonomy plan. The Netherlands followed, then Britain, and in 2024, Emanuel McCron declared that Western Sahara's present and future lie within Moroccan sovereignty. For half a century, the United Nations has managed a stalemate that only benefits Morocco. The solution on paper is fairly simple. A free and open referendum supervised by the UN where the Swahari people can choose independence, integration with Morocco, or something else. International law on this is extremely clear.

Western Sahara remains a non-self-governing territory, Africa's last colony. Until a referendum is held, Morocco's attempts to conquer and settle Western Sahara violate the Geneva Conventions. But Western Sahara stands out as an example of what happens when international law is on your side. But you don't choose the path of total war. The world just ignores you. The real lesson of the Burm is that might makes right. Especially when the global superpowers are on your side. No people should be stripped of their land, their resources, and their right to decide their

future. The Swaharis built a government. They cooperated with the UN. They waited peacefully for decades. That makes Western Zahara more than just a question of one people's fate. It is a test of the international order that claims to rest on law, equal rights, and self-determination. The United States and the United Nations essentially wrote the rules. The Sahari followed them and they were betrayed. So what is left of the international order? If those the law is meant to protect are abandoned. If Africa's last colony cannot be freed, then the Burm is more than just a

barrier. It is a tombstone for international law. When law becomes mere suggestion, what's left is raw power, the kind that answers to no one. If you want to see where that leads, just look at Uday Hussein, eldest son of Saddam Hussein. He began his public career when Saddam appointed him as head of Iraq's Olympic Committee and Football Association. Under his rule, Iraqi athletes that lost were tortured. U spent decades living a life of luxury with pet lions and goldplated assault rifles while committing torture and murder with a smile. I can't even

mention most of what he did on YouTube, but you can go learn the entire insane story in Mad Kings, a gripping true crime meets geopolitics series from real life lore about the most unhinged rulers of the modern era. Episode 1 is the horrifying story of Ud Hussein. The editing is top-notch, the stories are fascinating, and it's the perfect lens for understanding how when institutions are weak, one man's whim can become law. and sometimes that man is absolutely demented. My analytics tell me that my viewers also love modern conflicts, a series that investigates serious subjects that

will be censored anywhere else. Pair that with War Room and you've got a crash course in how power actually behaves. All of this lives on Nebula, the largest creatorowned streaming platform. No mid rolls, no algorithmic nonsense, just a viewerfunded space where ambitious, highquality projects get made because you actually want to watch them. Adriven sites could never financially support something like Matt Kings or Modern Conflicts or even my own demonetized videos. But Nebula makes that work possible. My videos are there adree early and alongside over

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