Located at the edges of the Arab World and the African Continent, straddling the 20th and 21st centuries and the colonial and “post”-colonial worlds, the Sahrawi struggle for national independence has been entangled in shifting regional and international configurations, in which its prolonged struggle for self-determination remains unfulfilled. Based on anthropological research and fieldwork in the Sahrawi refugee camps, and in Spain among Sahrawi refugee-migrants, the paper examines Sahrawi nationalism within its historical, regional and global contexts, focusing on a number of foci, mainly: a) Spanish colonialism and the Moroccan occupation that followed; b) the role of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and its Program of National Action, albeit on “borrowed territory” in Algeria; c) the uneasy or neglected status of the Sahrawi national struggle in the Arab world which contrasts with the support it receives from a number of African and Latin American countries. Sahrawis officially recognize their “Arabness” and their belonging to the larger Arab-Islamic world. However, they are also embittered by both the neglect and what they perceive as a betrayal of their cause by their “brethrens”. With few exceptions most Arab governments have sided with the Moroccan position in its claims of sovereignty over the Territory. Similarly, Arab progressive organizations and nationalist forces either condemn the Sahrawi struggle as “separatist” threatening aspirations for Arab unity, or, have long abandoned the anti-colonial slogans and idioms as belonging to a bygone era. In this context, the paper looks analytically at the emphasis Sahrawis place on their “distinctive “culture” and the “reinvention of Sahrawi traditions”. It posits that not all claims to a unitary identity are by definition reactionary or carry a conservative agenda. Appealing to a homogeneous Sahrawi identity was necessary in an era when the United Nations recognized national rights only if claims to self-determination are aligned with a “people” under colonization. The paper concurrently discusses how the Sarhawis, including the “nation-state” has been constituted by extraterritorial assemblages (Sassen) and repositioning their cause in the “post-colonial” world, which like the Palestinians, had left them lagging behind, including a glance at the Sahrawi Intifada and its adoption of a global language that invokes human rights and civil peaceful protest.