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Interview with Tuya Sanjaadagva

Military observer from Mongolia

Tuya was about to complete her one-year assignment as a military
observer when we met her in Laayoune. She was kind enough to grant
us a short interview before she headed back home to Mongolia.

Q: Being a military observer, what all the tracks are sandy. For the last six
does this imply? months I was based in another location,
Smara, and there the tracks are very
The work consists of observing the rocky and bumpy. Every day we do a
army, soldiers, their movement. We are grand patrol consisting of two cars. The patrol called "the night observation
monitoring everything. We have diffe- first car is the patrol leader with a navi- posts", meaning that we stay one night
rent types of patrols, in the air and on gator, followed by a second car also with in the desert and observe any move-
the ground. Sometimes we do it by chop- an officer and a navigator. ments of soldiers, etc. Nowadays, it is
per [helicopter] and take photographs of calm almost everywhere. There is no mi-
equipment and soldiers, but mainly we We have different types of patrols -- litary danger, but we have to be careful
carry out patrols on the ground. long and short distance. The short ones about snakes and scorpions! I have seen
consist of a maximum of 6o km. A one- a lot of them in the desert and, at night,
I have spent one year in the desert. My day patrol is 500 km and lasts about if you don't look around it can be very
first assignment was in Assert, where eight hours. We also have a three-day dangerous.

18 International