The absence of any prospects, and extreme poverty that wreck havoc in the camps turn these into a favourable terrain for extreme salafist organizations, such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Equilibri, which provides analyses of international affairs, said in a study posted on its website.

    The study says that the first contact of the Sahrawi youth of the camps with the fanatic ideology date back to the 80s, when they intermingled with the Islamist movement in the Algerian universities, the Italian observatory said.

    Equilibri notes that such contacts had then developed thanks to tangible links with certain armed groups. Polisario's weakness therefore helped such links get stronger and opened the way for young Sahrawis to be enrolled by an active cell of the Al Qaeda branch in the Maghreb.

    It deemed that the poor economic conditions in the Tindouf camps have pushed a number of Sahrawis to turn towards illegal activities, including illegal migration and smuggling.

    In fact, Colombian drug traffickers are working hard to cover Europe and the Gulf, and to spread their influence in the Sahara region, where they managed to have ties with several Sahrawis in the Tindouf camps, the observatory said.

    It warned that the revenues of these activities could be used by terrorist organizations.