Special Reports: Morocco

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July 7, 2009: US Obama Administration Seeks Moroccan Support on Arab-Israel Dispute, But Then Reverses US Support for MWS Position

June 15, 2009: Moroccan Election Highlights Watershed Change in Saharan Dispute; Provides New Model for Elections Worldwide

November 7, 2007: Morocco Upgrades Defenses, But F-16 Deal Cannot Be Taken For Granted

October 24, 2007: Governance Emphasis in Morocco Moves to the Parliament

October 6, 2007: Essential Reading: Morocco and the Sahara: Social Bonds and Geopolitical Issues

October 2, 2007: Moroccan Foreign Minister Tells UN That Saharan Dispute at Turning Point

September 10, 2007: Moroccan Elections Delivery Major Message on Stability, Direction, and Give Strength on Saharan Process

September 10, 2007: Principal Union Backer of Australia's Likely Next Government Seen as Funding POLISARIO Slave Labor

August 28, 2007: Morocco Taking Elections in Stride While Addressing an Internationally-Contrived Campaign to Challenge its Sovereignty

May 29, 2007: Strategic Biographies: King Mohammed VI, King of Morocco; Mohamed Benaїssa, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Morocco; Abderrahman Sbaї, Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of the Administration of National Defense, Morocco

April 18, 2007: The Jihad in the “Land of the Berbers” Revives; Algiers and Rabat Play Catch-Up

October 24, 2006: Annan Tries Last Push for UN-Oriented Settlement of Western Sahara Issue Despite Realities on the Ground

September 5, 2006: Morocco Sustains Crackdowns on Jihadist Groups, But Broader Links Remain

November 12, 2003: POLISARIO Repatriation of Moroccan Prisoners Does Not Address Underlying Concerns in Rabat

August 4, 2003: King of Morocco Bans Islamic Parties

August 2, 2002: UN Renews Referendum Mandate for Western Sahara

January 17, 2001: Morocco's King Mohammed Visits Libya

September 20, 1999: King Mohammed VI Takes Firm Grasp of Moroccan Leadership


July 7, 2009

US Obama Administration Seeks Moroccan Support on Arab-Israel Dispute, But Then Reverses US Support for MWS Position

Analysis. Staff Report. The Administration US Pres. Barack Obama in late June 2009 quietly and profoundly changed the long-standing US policy regarding the resolution of the Moroccan Western Sahara (MWS) crisis. Under the new policy, the US no longer supports and endorses the Moroccan autonomy plan as the key to resolving the MWS dispute, and instead insists on the broader interpretation of the mandate of the UN-led negotiations which considers the establishment of an independence POLISARIO state in MWS a viable option.

In essence, the policy disregards the progress made in recent years, and the legal and physical realities which had already determined that the Algerian-sponsored promotion of a POLISARIO state in MWS was neither viable, nor legal. Indeed, the Algerian-initiated proposal — designed to create a proxy Algerian state on the Atlantic, carved out of part of what has, for centuries, been Moroccan territory — has been rejected totally by the Arab world, and, after initially being embraced by some sub-Saharan African states, has increasingly been rejected by African states, who have pointedly withdrawn their support for the POLISARIO concept of a state in WMS.

The new US policy was authoritatively articulated in Pres. Obama’s June 2009 letter to King Mohammed VI. The letter was mainly devoted to requesting Morocco’s help with furthering of the Arab-Israeli Peace Process. However, despite courting Moroccan support for a US Arab-Israeli peace initiative, toward the end of the letter, Obama stated the new US policy regarding MWS.

Obama insisted that the UN-led negotiations were the sole venue for negotiating and resolving the MWS conflict. “I share your commitment to the UN-led negotiations as the appropriate forum to achieve a mutually agreed solution,” Obama wrote to the King. Obama stressed the suffering endured by the Sahrawi people as a result of the lingering conflict. He assured the King of the White House willingness to engage with Morocco in an effort to resolve the conflict and alleviate the suffering. “My government will work with yours and others in the region to achieve an outcome that meets the people’s need for transparent governance, confidence in the rule of law, and equal administration of justice,” Obama wrote.

What was significant, as a recent report by a team of International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) observers noted in WMS, was that there was no “suffering” by Sahrawi people in MWS, and no conflict underway there. Moreover, during the recent Moroccan elections held throughout the Kingdom, including WMS, there was not even a hint of POLISARIO involvement or influence.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 15, 2009: Moroccan Election Highlights Watershed Change in Saharan Dispute; Provides New Model for Elections Worldwide.

Obama’s stressing of the US unqualified endorsement of the UN approach to conflict resolution in MWS constituted the abandonment of the US support for Morocco’s autonomy plan. Instead, the US now supports the position which the United Nations envoy for Western Sahara, Christopher Ross, rammed through during his late-June 2009 week-long tour to the Maghreb and Europe. The real objective of the visit was to break the deadlock over Western Sahara by eliciting more Moroccan unilateral concessions. Cognizant that the UN talks process in Manhasset, New York, are deadlocked because of the POLISARIO’s intransigence, Ross proposed to mediate “an informal meeting” between Morocco and the POLISARIO so that the POLISARIO’s preconditions could now be conveniently overlooked. 

Rabat assured Ross that Morocco had already agreed to participate “positively” in such an informal meeting for as long as the meeting complied with the latest UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. In April 2009, the UNSC urged Morocco and the POLISARIO to achieve a “lasting and mutually acceptable political solution” through direct negotiations without preconditions. Nevertheless, Ross accepted the POLISARIO’s long-standing demands and interpretation of no-preconditions. Upon his return to New York, he reported to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that he — Ross — concurred with the Sahrawis’ insistence on the need to create, in advance, an atmosphere conducive to negotiations. The first requirement of the POLISARIO was the UN’s imposition of “respect for human rights” in MWS because “it [the POLISARIO] can not continue negotiations” in the face of “the violation of human rights in the cities of Western Sahara occupied by Morocco”.

What is not stated in that claim — and neither is it checked or understood by externally-prepared analysis in the international media — is that there is no evidence on the ground in WMS of any human rights violations, although there has been documented evidence presented of the continued use of slave labor by POLISARIO at its base in Tindouf, in Algerian Sahara. By definition, then, the new US position endorsed a movement which had continued to rely on slave labor.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, September 10, 2007: Principal Union Backer of Australia's Likely Next Government Seen as Funding POLISARIO Slave Labor.

It was ironic, then, in seeking the approval of the Muslim world for US policy that Pres. Obama, in his Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, noted: “The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco.” He then elicited the support of Morocco, which is one of the few Muslim states to be in a position to truly mediate between Israel and the Arab world, in the “new” Obama Middle East peace process.

Significantly, the statement of US policy in Obama’s letter constituted a sharp deviation from the US long-standing staunch support for the Moroccan autonomy initiative. The US endorsement of ultimate Moroccan sovereignty over, and autonomy in, MWS was repeatedly stated by numerous senior officials including Bush and Rice.

This policy was articulated most authoritatively by US Pres. George W. Bush in his June 2008 letter to King Mohammed VI. Pres. Bush wrote that it was the policy of the US that “substantial autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is the only possible solution to the dispute over the Sahara and an independent state on that territory is not a realistic option”. Pres. Bush further termed the Moroccan autonomy plan as “serious” and “credible”, and expressed the US hope that POLISARIO would adopt it.

Obama’s unilateral change of US policy is all the more inexplicable given the overwhelming evidence of the complete integration of MWS into Morocco. The latest manifestation was in the municipal elections held throughout Morocco on June 12, 2009. Gregory Copley, who spearheaded the election observer mission from the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), noted:

“The elections were remarkable for their transparency, thoroughness of preparation, civic involvement, and fairness," Copley told reporters in Rabat on June 13, 2009, after statistics and results were gathered, and after it was clear that no legal or other challenges were likely to be mounted against the conduct of the elections or counting of votes.

“More than that, however, was the reality that the election marked the real end of any meaningful debate over the sovereignty of Sahara. Algeria had created and supported the POLISARIO movement to expressly challenge the legitimacy of the return of the former Spanish Western Sahara to the Kingdom of Morocco and had claimed for several decades to have a right to speak for the people of the territory. Legal challenges to the return of this historical part of Morocco to the Kingdom after the withdrawal of Spanish colonial occupation had long been satisfied in Morocco’s favor. Now, the citizens of this increasingly prosperous, stable, and peaceful region have resoundingly and independently reasserted their Moroccan identity," Copley said.

The election, however, was more than merely a referendum on the issue of the sovereignty of the Saharan region. It was so professionally conducted as to provide a model for future elections at all levels around the world. “This election certainly met, and exceeded, the levels of transparency, fairness, and all valid rigors which are considered significant by major democratic societies around the world,“ Copley said. “Morocco, which has become essentially a southern extension of Europe, has demonstrated that it is, in political terms, sophisticated, secular, and stable. This is a major progression for a society which has now conducted 72 elections since independence from French colonial occupation in 1956, and reflects the stable political continuity of a state which has been in existence for many centuries.”


June 15, 2009

Moroccan Election Highlights Watershed Change in Saharan Dispute; Provides New Model for Elections Worldwide

Gregory Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs/GIS, led a delegation to study the Moroccan local elections which took place on June 12, 2009, because of the unique rôle which the elections were to have in the transformation of both Moroccan society and the long-standing international issue of the sovereignty of the Sahara region of Morocco. ISSA engaged the American Center for Democracy (ACD) to assist in providing experienced coverage of polling stations across Morocco, and particularly in the Sahara region.

“The elections were remarkable for their transparency, thoroughness of preparation, civic involvement, and fairness," Copley told reporters in Rabat on June 13, 2009, after statistics and results were gathered, and after it was clear that no legal or other challenges were likely to be mounted against the conduct of the elections or counting of votes.

“More than that, however, was the reality that the election marked the real end of any meaningful debate over the sovereignty of Sahara. Algeria had created and supported the POLISARIO movement to expressly challenge the legitimacy of the return of the former Spanish Western Sahara to the Kingdom of Morocco and had claimed for several decades to have a right to speak for the people of the territory. Legal challenges to the return of this historical part of Morocco to the Kingdom after the withdrawal of Spanish colonial occupation had long been satisfied in Morocco’s favor. Now, the citizens of this increasingly prosperous, stable, and peaceful region have resoundingly and independently reasserted their Moroccan identity," Copley said.

The election, however, was more than merely a referendum on the issue of the sovereignty of the Saharan region. It was so professionally conducted as to provide a model for future elections at all levels around the world. “This election certainly met, and exceeded, the levels of transparency, fairness, and all valid rigors which are considered significant by major democratic societies around the world,“ Copley said. “Morocco, which has become essentially a southern extension of Europe, has demonstrated that it is, in political terms, sophisticated, secular, and stable. This is a major progression for a society which has now conducted 72 elections since independence from French colonial occupation in 1956, and reflects the stable political continuity of a state which has been in existence for many centuries.”

See also:

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 28, 2007: Morocco Taking Elections in Stride While Addressing an Internationally-Contrived Campaign to Challenge its Sovereignty.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, October 6, 2007: Changing the Dynamic in Conflict Resolution: a Look at Morocco and the Sahara.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, December 19, 2007: POLISARIO Congress Reflects the Major Threat to Maghreb Stability as Algeria Enters a Power Struggle, With Itself and the West.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 10, 2009: Local Government Elections in Morocco Hold Implications for Maghreb, Africa.

 

International Strategic Studies Association Report on the June 12, 2009

Local Elections in the Kingdom of Morocco

Issued in Rabat, Morocco: June 14, 2009

The International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) has been conducting research on modern governance and regionalization in countries with diverse population, and, as a result, was pleased to be able to comprehensively study the Moroccan local elections of June 12, 2009. ISSA engaged the services of the American Center for Democracy (ACD) to assist in ensuring that there was sufficient manpower to cover the geographically and socially diverse extent of the 27,795 electoral seats in 1,503 communes (local councils).

The June 12, 2009, local government polls in Morocco were the 72nd elections conducted in the country since independence in 1956. As a result, Morocco has had long experience in conducting elections, but has, particularly under the reign of King Mohammed VI, taken the improvement of election processes to be a vital component of national transformation. This made the study of the local elections of significant strategic importance, given that the local elections would validate or discredit Morocco’s process of regionalization and devolution of power to local levels.

Before discussing the results, it is important to note that all ISSA and ACD researchers, who had unfettered access to polling stations chosen at random throughout the country, found the elections to be among the best-organized and most transparent possible. There was considerable evidence of an open and community-driven process in which the following highlights should be noted:

1.      Voter lists had been reviewed and scrutinized to ensure that all eligible voters were recognized and verified. This was exemplified, additionally, by the fact that ISSA/ACD researchers did not see a single challenge to the electoral lists based on exclusion; nor did we witness any instance of persons attempting to double-vote. This demonstrated a painstaking attention to ensuring that the underlying fairness of the election was beyond dispute.

2.      The organization of actual polling day activities was meticulous in detail, ensuring that polling facilities were readily accessible to voters. Security was consistent but light; there was no sense of a coercive official presence, but there was sufficient evidence to voters that polling stations would be secure. Within the polling areas, local volunteers ensured that there was a significant sense that this was a process governed at grass roots. Moreover, the fact that, without exception, these volunteer polling station officials followed exactly the same procedures for dealing with voters, highlighted the reality that training and documentation for election procedures would be consistent nationally.

3.      The arrangement of polling station procedures was undertaken to ensure maximum confidentiality and transparency of process. Voter identification was able to be undertaken with efficiency because of the fact that, for the first time, voters had national identification (ID) certificates — which verified that they were, indeed, bona fide citizens — as well as valid and current voter registration cards. This combination of voter documents ensured that election officials could readily verify and check off voter participation. Significantly, all voters’ qualifications were checked by two separate officials working from identical local voter registration lists. Names were called to a panel of monitors from the political parties present in every polling room, and these — and the entire process — was also under the scrutiny of at least two local elder citizens.

4.      The fact that meticulous attention to counting and voting procedures was applied was indicated by the fact that some 11 percent of the votes were disqualified because of inappropriate ballot preparation by those voters. Out of a total of 7,005,050 votes cast, 6,171,930 were valid. Each ballot paper was prepared in the secrecy of a closed booth, and deposited without scrutiny in locked and physically transparent ballot boxes.

5.      ISSA/ACD researchers were able, on a random basis, to monitor the counting of votes at a local level after polling stations closed. Again, under the monitoring of a range of officials from different parties and volunteer management, there was little opportunity for, and no evidence of, attempts to interfere with or distort the counting process.

6.      Logistical arrangements for the conduct of the elections by the Ministry of Interior reflected a painstaking demonstration of the Government’s clear desire to be seen to avoid interference with, or influence over, the processes. At the same time, however, the Ministry of Interior ensured that there was at no time any lack of appropriate numbers of ballot papers, ballot boxes, secure voting booths, and processing officials and voter lists. Catering arrangements were such that there was no need for officials to interrupt the voting process, which lasted from 08.00 hours until 19.00 hours on June 12, 2009, in order to take meals. Within this framework, quite apart from the extensive preparations by a large number of public officials, the devotion to preparation and conduct of the polling day activities by volunteers was remarkable for the seriousness with which the process was addressed.

7.      To reiterate, the attention to the preparation of new voter lists for this election, the broad delivery into the populace of secure national ID cards, and the delivery to voters of voter registration cards, coupled with the on-site polling station scrutiny and the physical marking of each voter’s hand with indelible dye after voting, ensured that voting fraud was difficult, if not, in practice, impossible. This reflected a new level of preparation and security from even the impressively-organized parliamentary election in Morocco in September 2007. Moreover, the lack of any protests based on allegations of voter, or official, fraud post-election was indicative of the transparency with which the process was viewed by citizens and political parties alike, confirming the legitimacy of the elections. The entire process reflected a new high-point for the conduct of elections worldwide, and should be seen as a template for other nations.

Within the framework of the ISSA project, the ACD Director, Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld, noted: “On June 12, 2009, members of the American Center for Democracy observed municipal elections throughout Morocco, visiting polling sites in urban and rural areas. We observed, without any obstacles, all the sites [where] we chose and interviewed officials, party delegates, and voters. We witnessed a consistently high level of professionalism, a great sense of responsibility, and a good knowledge of voting procedures on the part of the officials in the voting stations. Without exception, the elections met all the recognized requirements of a democratic election, and members of the ACD did not observe nor learn of any irregularities or violations. The ACD was particularly impressed by the participation and engagement of women, both as voters and as electoral officials.”

As a result of a review of the pre-election preparations and the conduct of the elections, ISSA considers the domestic reform process in Morocco — particularly the latest phase which started with His Majesty the King’s address in Agadir in December 2006 outlining proposals to substantially improve practices and regulations of local government — to be of strategic significance. The December 2006 Agadir speech was followed by the King’s initiative of November 6, 2008, which began the process of deepening regionalization in Morocco. ISSA believes that this multi-dimensional process has significant lessons for other countries with diverse populations and cultural minorities.

ISSA has for some years carefully studied the evolution of Moroccan political processes. For example, an ISSA report analyzed King Mohammed VI’s speech of November 6, 2008, and highlighted his decision that Morocco unilaterally implement the “sophisticated process of regionalization” by introducing a new system of local governance. In this speech, His Majesty announced the launch of a process of profound domestic reforms in Morocco, both structurally (redistricting) and governance-wise (regionalization).

It was with the June 12, 2009, local elections, then, that the people were elected who would be implementing the King’s vision of reform. This made the local elections of significance nationally, and were, then, equally important in positioning Morocco’s viability strategically.

Within this framework of reform and restructuring, it was important to note that 61 percent of the elected officials entered public service for the first time; 18 percent of these elected officials were under 35 years of age, and 59 percent of them had higher than secondary education levels. As well, 3,406 (12.3 percent) of the elected councilors were women (compared with 0.4 percent in the local election of 2003). In the 2003 communal elections, there were only 127 women elected. A total of 20,458 women candidates sought office. Of those elected, 50 percent of these were under 35 years of age; and 75 percent of these women had higher than secondary education levels. These figures introduced a new generation of life into the Moroccan political process.

As was the case with the Parliamentary elections of September 7, 2007 — which ISSA also analyzed in several reports — Moroccan elections constitute excellent and accurate reflection of the dynamics in Moroccan society because they are inherently free, fair, and transparent. However, this process was taken to new levels of accountability with the June 12, 2009, elections, and this was reflected by the markedly higher voter turnout than the 2007 parliamentary elections, and this higher turnout reflected growing voter confidence. Voter turnout in the June 12, 2009, elections was 52.4 percent as opposed to 37 percent voter turnout for the September 2007 Parliamentary elections. There was a 54 percent voter turnout in the 2003 local elections. Significantly, the two major trends noted in the June 12, 2009, elections were, firstly, the moves to ensure that at all levels the process would be beyond dispute as free and fair, and, secondly, the growth of grass-roots voter and political participation. This was also measured by the development of new political parties, the involvement of younger voters, and the surge of engagement by women in the political process, both as voters and as candidates. While the voter turnout was 52.4 percent nationally, the voter turnout for women was, in fact, higher than the male turnout.

Of particular importance was the election process and voter turnout in the four provinces of the Moroccan Western Sahara (MWS) region of Morocco, given that this region — in which the United Nations has taken a particular interest — has been under international scrutiny, with a wide range of claims by external groups. Without addressing that debate in this report, it was important to note that ISSA’s careful monitoring of polling through urban and rural areas of Sahara showed:

(i)                 A higher level of voter turnout than the national average;

(ii)               A high proportion of women voters;

(iii)             A complete absence of any presence by foreign-sponsored groups, or any indication of any influence over voters by foreign sponsored groups;

(iv)             The Algerian-supported and externally-based POLISARIO movement2 did not contest the elections, and, in discussions which ISSA had with voters at various polling stations, it was expressed that POLISARIO was, in fact, not seen as relevant or a consideration in the political process;

From the standpoint of ISSA’s interest in the conduct of the election, the results were strategically important for the transformative nature of what the elections themselves represented, rather than for who, or which parties, were elected. It was the election itself which showed the remarkable devolution of power and responsibility from the leadership of a unitary state down to regional and local levels. In so doing, there was a clear empowerment of the population at local and regional levels, and this was absolutely grasped by the population. In the specific case of the extensive Sahara territory, the considerably higher level of voter turnout than the national average showed that the Saharan population had committed itself completely to the Moroccan polity and had overwhelmingly rejected the option offered by POLISARIO of secession or identification in any way with the Algerian-sponsored POLISARIO movement. It was equally significant that the September 2007 Parliamentary elections also showed a dramatically higher level of voter turnout in Moroccan Sahara than the national average.

As a result, ISSA endorses the words of Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa who said, when summarizing the election results on June 13, 2009, that the high turnout in the southern province, the Sahara, in the local elections showed the inhabitants’ commitment to the democratic process in their country.

If a referendum on the wishes of the Saharan population was needed as to where its affiliations lay, then the June 12, 2009, local elections demonstrated that Saharans were enthusiastically committed to their participation in the Kingdom of Morocco.

ISSA noted the complete absence of any security concerns in the urban and rural areas visited, and noted, in contrast, the high levels of infrastructural investment throughout the territory, and the rising productivity of local economic activities, from phosphate and high-value sands mining and exports, to fisheries output and export.

The claim on June 12, 2009, by the representative of POLISARIO in Algeria, Brahim Ghali, that the elections in Sahara represented a “serious provocation”, constituting a “threat” to “regional

stability” cannot be accepted as anything other than self-serving, and as evidence that POLISARIO — and therefore Algerian attempts to deny the 1975 re-accession of Sahara to Morocco following the end of Spanish colonial occupation — was now no longer a realistic factor in the future of Sahara. In essence, the June 12, 2009, election was, as far as ISSA is concerned, a pivotal point in the international debate over Sahara.

Significantly, although clearly the election was transformative in the whole context of the Sahara issue, the extensive United Nations presence in Sahara was not noted by ISSA to be monitoring or in any way taking an interest in the security or conduct of the election process. This positive reality, too, reflected the security of the situation on the ground in Sahara; there was no need for international protection of voters. Our team moved freely within the Sahara region without interference, and spoke freely with people there. This lies in stark contrast to the repeated claims of POLISARIO that a security concern existed in the towns and cities of Sahara. The open and vibrant celebrations which began in such Saharan towns as Laâyoune and Dhakla following the closing of the polling stations — before any results of the voting were known — reflected genuine local pride in the fact that the very fact of the election as a major event in the lives of the population. They also reflected the fact that there was no curfew or constraint on population movement or safety at night, as claimed by POLISARIO.

POLISARIO leader Mohamed Abdelaziz called, a week before the election, on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to “intervene urgently” to prevent the spread of local elections in Moroccan Western Sahara. This, and the silence of the UN on the election, was seen as validation of the fact that local elections could not be seen as provocative of challenges to the regional or Saharan security situation, and neither could they be seen as anything other than a rejection by Saharan voters of external influences. It was clear that Saharan voters viewed the elections as more than merely the act of choosing representatives; they were viewed as an achievement of fundamental human rights and a mastery of their own destiny.

Part of ISSA’s interest in closely watching the election process in Sahara was to be able to verify or refute political claims made by external groups which had expressed an interest in the region. Quite significantly, the demonstrable integration of Sahara’s population and structures with those of the rest of the Kingdom has also ensured a positive and growing increase in public safety and the rule of law, which has been measured by the reality that the proliferation of narco-trafficking and illegal migration on much Africa’s West and Sahel coastline has been stemmed in the region of Moroccan Sahara. This not only enabled the successful and peaceful conduct of free and fair elections in Sahara on June 12, 2009, but was also reflected in the high voter turnout.

In summary, the Moroccan local elections of June 12, 2009, were among the most free and fair elections globally in recent years. They were also of strategic importance because they reflected a standard and a methodology which should serve as a model for elections elsewhere. Moreover, they were of strategic importance in that they represented a process by which a nation could re-invigorate its economic and social dynamic through the devolution of democratic processes to every level and geographic aspect of society. As well, the Moroccan local elections of June 12, 2009, represent a watershed in the dispute over the legitimacy of Sahara’s reintegration into Morocco. In substantive terms, that dispute is now over, even though the political pressures, sponsored from abroad, may continue. It is important for the international community, however, to recognize that the substance of the issue has been firmly decided.

Signed: Gregory R. Copley, President, the International Strategic Studies Association.

Rabat, June 14, 2009


Footnotes:

1. POLISARIO: Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y de Rio de Oro.


November 7, 2007

Morocco Upgrades Defenses, But F-16 Deal Cannot Be Taken For Granted

Analysis. From GIS Station Rabat. The Moroccan Government, particularly since the elections of September 7, 2007, and the creation of the Government of Prime Minister Abbas el-Fassi, has begun working to transform the Kingdom’s capability to capitalize on the momentum to resolve the Saharan dispute, which is essentially a surrogate conflict with Algeria. Algeria, meanwhile, has been engaged in a massive build-up of offensive weapons systems.

Now, Morocco has committed not only to streamlining and accelerating its diplomatic capabilities to help resolve the Saharan dispute, it has also begun modernizing its Armed Forces, attempting to gain a qualitative advantage over the numerically superior Algerian forces. Morocco confirmed an order, during the visit by French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy, on October 22-24, 2007, for an advanced FREMM multi-mission frigate valued at some 550-million euros, among other major trade deals in the transportation sector.

The Moroccan Navy is reportedly also interested in acquiring Dutch Sigma-class corvettes, to replace some of their ageing fast-attack craft, and upgrading the Navy’s capabilities, particularly in the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission, to counter Algeria’s two advanced conventional Kilo-class submarines. However, it was known before the visit by Pres. Sarkozy that the French plan to sell 18 to 24 AMD Rafale fighters to the Royal Moroccan Air Force for around $2.3-billion had been derailed by a US offer to sell more F-16 fighters for less money. The question of whether, however, the US will actually deliver a package which the Moroccans can afford and use is still not clear, but Washington did provide a major financial aid package — worth $698-million — to Morocco in September 2007.

Moroccan sources were optimistic that the F-16 deal could be done with the US, but, despite US-inspired media reporting, the deal was far from done, and there were major concerns in Rabat, reportedly, about what the F-16 will ultimately look like (as to its capabilities), and whether any restrictions would be placed on its use where Morocco might need them. Sources pointed to a blog site, www.med-atlantic.blogspot.com, which carried the following report:

Morocco’s F-16 Deal: It’s Not Done Until It’s Done

US officials have conveniently leaked the “fact” that the Royal Moroccan Air Force has agreed to buy 36 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D fighter aircraft for something less than US$2-billion, thus driving out the competition from France, which had hoped to sell some 24 AMD Rafale fighters — a much more advanced combat aircraft than the F-16 — for around US2.3-billion. But the deal is far from wrapped up. Sure, the F-16 deal is attractive: more numbers of a still-pretty-good second/third generation fighter for a much cheaper price. But real questions persist for Morocco.

Firstly, will the F-16s, even if the RMAF gets truly advanced versions, be able to match neighboring Algeria’s 28 new Su-30 air superiority fighters which were ordered in 2006? On a one-on-one air combat engagement, almost certainly not, unless the RMAF has some really significant additional sensors and command and control capabilities from the US, to go along with the aircraft. Frankly, Algeria also has a lot more than just the new Su-30s, but that would be Morocco’s primary threat, along with the 24 Mikoyan MiG-29A and 8 MiG-29UB Fulcrum air superiority fighters already in service and demonstrably capable of defeating F-16s in air combat maneuvering.

Secondly, quite apart from operational capability, will the US even allow Morocco to use the new fighters where and when they will be needed? What we are seeing now is the standard US negotiating tactic. First, get an agreement to buy, locking out the foreign competition, and then start hedging the sale with conditions on deployment, and on just what onboard systems will be sold to make the aircraft truly effective.

As well, the negotiations are just beginning on exactly what “Block” of F-16 the US will allow for sale to the RMAF. At worst, given Morocco’s position as a major non-NATO US ally, it should be at least the Block 52, similar to that being negotiated for Pakistan, but in reality, to match the Su-30s of Algeria, it would need to be at least Block 60 (à la the United Arab Emirates).

Certainly, the price is important for Morocco, even if Saudi Arabia helps out somewhat with the budget, as promised. But Morocco needs to be able to present a credible deterrence against Algerian use of force to support and sustain its surrogate force — POLISARIO — which is trying to break Morocco’s Saharan territory away from the Kingdom. Right now, Morocco is maneuvering brilliantly to make its case in the international community regarding the historical validity of Morocco as the legitimate owner of what was, for a time, the colonial territory of “Spanish Sahara”. The African states which Algeria had wooed into recognizing POLISARIO as the claimant to the area have now begun walking away from that position ... in large numbers. And no Arab League states ever supported Algeria on that.

Algeria, however, is determined to gain access through a surrogate POLISARIO state to the Atlantic. And expansionist Algeria has fought with Morocco before over border issues. And lost. Its massive new arms build-up, including the Su-30s and much more, are designed to ensure that Morocco’s adroit political maneuvering will not be a match for brute force in the future.

Morocco is, arguably, far more strategically important to the US than Algeria, and yet the US State Department seems bent, always, on treating Morocco with less support than its record as an unimpeachable ally should warrant. So there is an attempt to circumscribe the use of the F-16s, and to limit their capabilities.

Morocco needs to keep the door open to a possible acquisition of Rafales. They could indeed match the Su-30s, and ensure that the close Moroccan relationship with France — enhanced since the election to the French Presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy — is strengthened and France’s also-important relationship with Algeria is circumscribed.

Indeed, Washington, for its part, needs to start taking into account the reality of history on Moroccan Sahara and also the growing democratic governance of Morocco, and start seeing Algeria’s constant attempts to expand for what they are.


October 24, 2007

Governance Emphasis in Morocco Moves to the Parliament

Analysis. From GIS Station Rabat. The formation on October 15, 2007, of the new Moroccan Cabinet of Prime Minister Abbas el-Fassi following the September 7, 2007, elections highlights the growing importance of the Majlis al-Nuwab/Assemblée des Répresentants (Assembly of Representatives) — and therefore the deepening entrenchment of democratic processes — in Moroccan governance.

This has reflected a commitment by King Mohammed VI to ensure that Morocco would be able to completely integrate its economy and security structures in with those of the West — the European Union and the US — as Morocco moved to broaden the Mediterranean trading and security basin to cover the Maghreb.

See:

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 28, 2007: Morocco Taking Elections in Stride While Addressing an Internationally-Contrived Campaign to Challenge its Sovereignty.

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, September 10, 2007: Moroccan Elections Delivery Major Message on Stability, Direction, and Give Strength on Saharan Process.

Significantly, the new Government will need to continue to work to achieve a consensus on policy. It is a minority government. The coalition holds just 163 of the Parliament's 325 seats. This means that to survive — let alone pass a budget and major legislation — it requires the support a group of parliamentarians not affiliated with the opposition. This group comes from the numerous mini-parties and independent parliamentarians who are essentially Royalist and centrist, but who are at the same time committed to furthering the localized/indigenous interests of the groups/locals who elected them.

In the current Assembly, this group is organized and run by Fouad Ali El-Himma (see background details, below). As Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee (which also handles defense and other key issues) in the new Parliament, he emerges as one of the strongest Members of the Assembly.

More importantly, the support by El-Himma and his bloc for the Government is likely, but not automatic. Therefore, Prime Minister Abbas El-Fassi will have to negotiate constantly with Parliament, thus increasing the rôle and influence of the Assembly, and strengthening Moroccan democracy.

The new Cabinet, confirmed on October 15, 2007, is as follows (* denotes new appointees):

Prime Minister: el-Fassi, Abbas

*Minister of Agriculture & Fisheries: Akhenouch, Aziz

*Minister of Communication & Government Spokesman: Naciri, Khalid

*Minister of Culture: Jabrane, Touriya, Ms

Minister of Economy & Finance: Mezouar, Salaheddine

*Minister of Employment & Vocational Training: Aghmani, Jamal

*Minister of Energy, Mines, Water & Environment: Benkhadra, Amina, Ms

Minister of Equipment & Transport: Ghellab, Karim

Minister of Foreign Affairs & Cooperation: Fassi-Fihri, Taïeb

*Minister of Foreign Trade: Maâzouz, Abdellatif

Minister of Habous & Islamic Affairs: Taoufiq, Ahmed

Minister of Health: Baddou, Yasmina, Ms

Minister of Housing, Town Planning & Development: Hejira, Ahmed Taoufiq*Minister of Industry, Trade & New Technologies: Chami, Ahmed

Minister of Interior: Benmoussa, Chakib

Minister of Justice: Radi, Adbelwahed

*Minister of National Education, Higher Education, Staff Training & Scientific Research: Akhchichine, Ahmed

Minister for Relations with Parliament: Alami, Mohamed Saâd

*Minister of Social Development, Family & Solidarity: Skalli, Nouzha, Ms

Minister of State (w/o portfolio): el-Yazghi, Mohamed

Minister of Tourism & Craft Industry: Boussaid, Mohamed

*Minister of Youth & Sports: el-Moutawakil, Nawal, Ms

Secretary General of the Government: Rabiah Abdessadek

Delegate Ministers

Delegate Minister to the Prime Minister for National Defense: Sbaï, Abderrahmane

*Delegate Minister to the Prime Minister for Economic & General Affairs: Baraka, Nizar

*Delegate Minister to the Prime Minister for Public Sectors Modernization: Abbou, Mohamed

*Delegate Minister to the Prime Minister for Moroccan Expatriates: Ameur, Mohamed

Secretaries of State

*Secretary of State to the Minister of Energy, Mining, Water and Environment, for Water & Environment: Zahoud, Abdelkébir

*Secretary of State to the Minister for Foreign Affairs & Cooperation: Lakhrif, Ahmed

*Secretary of State to the Minister for Foreign Affairs & Cooperation: Akherbach, Latifa, Ms

Secretary of State to the Minister of Housing, Town Planning & Development, for Territorial Development: al-Mesbahi, Abdeslam *Secretary of State to the Minister of Interior: Hassar, Saâd

*Secretary of State to the Minister of National Education, Higher Education, Staff Training, & Scientific Research, for Primary & Secondary Education: Labida. Latifa, Ms

Secretary of State to the Minister of Tourism & Craft Industry, for Craft Industry: Birou, Anis

The 34-member Government (including the Prime Minister) comprises 22 Ministers, four Delegate Ministers and seven Secretaries of State from a coalition of four parties: the Istiqlal/Independence Party (PI, nine portfolios and Prime Minister), the National Rally of Independents (RNI, seven portfolios), the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP, five portfolios) and the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS, two portfolios). The 10 remaining members have no party affiliations. For the first time, seven women will be serving; five as Ministers and two as Secretaries of State. This is a young and fresh government. Prime Minister el-Fassi stressed the importance of the Government’s fresh leadership. “The time has come to open the door of responsibility for a new generation; there are 18 new ministers,” he said. The Government will emphasize domestic issues. The first budget the Government will submit for the Assembly’s approval has 50 percent devoted to the  social sector, particularly education, public health and the fight against poverty. Public law professor Tajeddine el-Husseini of Mohammed V University in Rabat told Magharebia news agency: “The current Government has a peculiar nature, represented in the fact that Morocco is shifting left, with a democratic nature characterized by pluralism. The seats that have been won represent a real reflection of the ballots in the absence of intervention from the Interior Ministry in the elections process.”

Fouad Ali El Himma: Background

Fouad Ali El Himma, a former classmate of King Mohammed VI and one of his top advisers, held the post of Deputy Interior Minister and has been seen as a top decisionmaker in sensitive areas including counter-terrorism and the future of Moroccan Sahara. After a period in Parliament, once before, Mr El Himma was appointed head of King Mohammed’s cabinet in 1997 when the King was still Crown Prince.

On being crowned two years later, the King dismissed hardline Interior Minister Driss Basri and installed Mr El Himma as Secretary of State, later promoting him to Deputy Interior Minister. The King “gave his high blessing to the request of Mr Fouad Ali El Himma to end his functions as deputy Interior Minister and accepted his request to stand in the coming legislative elections on the same level as all Moroccan citizens”, the Royal Cabinet said at the time in a statement carried by official news agency MAP.


October 6, 2007

Essential Reading

Changing the Dynamic in Conflict Resolution: a Look at Morocco and the Sahara

Morocco and the Sahara: Social Bonds and Geopolitical Issues. By Mohamed Cherkaoui. Oxford, 2007: The Bardwell Press, 6 Bardwell Road, Oxford OX2 6SW, UK. www.bardwell-press.co.uk. ISBN-13: 978-1-905622-03-0. 202pp, hardcover; index, bibl., maps, charts. £10; 15 euros, $20.

There are books which capture the soul, and transport the reader’s heart and mind permanently into new territory. We may never know, for example, how deeply T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom1 transformed and romanticized British and US public sentiment and foreign policy with regard to “Arabia”, or how Winston Churchill’s The River War2 affirmed Britain’s deeply-engrained commitment to Imperial duty and to the sands along the Upper Nile. Even The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was seared into generations of British hearts and into the UK’s enduring policy biases with regard to the Caucasus, Turkey, and Russia.

It could be argued that Prof. Mohamed Cherkaoui’s Morocco and the Sahara: Social Bonds and Geopolitical Issues does not fall into the literary tradition of Seven Pillars or The River War, but in many ways it is equally haunting and convincing. Indeed, a first thumbing through of the 202 pages reveals many charts and tables, maps, and an index and bibliography. Hardly the stuff of romance. And, arguably, these could all have been crammed into a separate section at the end of the book, leaving Prof. Cherkaoui free reign for his convincing narrative and analysis in the front section.

But the book, nonetheless, takes the reader by surprise. The authority goes unquestioned of the renowned Prof. Cherkaoui, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and director of the Groupe d’Etude des Méthodes de l’Analyse Sociologique of the CNRS and the Université de Paris Sorbonne, and so on. He is, of course, Moroccan by background, and makes no apology for his passion in dealing with the history of Morocco and what has traditionally been Moroccan Sahara. But his candor – and the indisputable nature of the endless facts he cites – make his case all the more appealing.

And the case, essentially, is that the bonds between Morocco and that area of the Sahara known briefly – during the 20th Century – as Spanish Sahara are deep, historically indisputable, and currently legally profound. And that attempts bankrolled since the 1960s by Algeria to create a new reality, and an irredentist POLISARIO3 movement among the essentially nomadic Sahrawi population are artificial, and disingenuous extensions of the Algerian imperial expansionism which was begun literally as part of France’s colonial occupation of Algiers and its protectorate involvement in the Kingdom of Morocco.

Prof. Cherkaoui makes his case with scientific logic and firm evidence from a wide range of international sources, including the Algerian-disposed French sources as well as others. He makes the case that the tribes of the entire Sahara have been historically nomadic, and therefore are not territorially limited (although the 20th Century saw a gradual move toward more sedentary lifestyles), but that, nonetheless, the allegiance of the tribes to the King of Morocco has been constant, even during Spanish colonial occupation of the “Spanish Sahara”.

The author notes: “Nothing distinguishes these tribes from the other Saharan populations of Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Libya, or Sudan. They all have the same culture, the same social structures, and the same way of life. This is not simply an ecological region called the Sahara, but rather, a genuine area of civilization. To define the natural, social and cultural frontiers of these populations, it would be necessary to take into consideration the entire space stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and proceed to a new distribution of the countries involved. The irony of history is that the only country with legally and historically founded borders is Morocco, is called into question, while the other nations were delimited according to the desires of the colonizer and its relevant interests.”

As he notes, the “delimiting” of Algeria has been profound.

As Prof. Cherkaoui notes: “On the eve of French colonization [of Algeria] in 1830, the coastal strip under the former Turkish administration extended no further than the 32nd parallel and was a part of the Ottoman Empire, later unified by the French army and called ‘Algeria’4 with a territory of no more than 300,000 km2. Officially, in 1920, the total surface area of French Algeria was 575,000 km2. At the time of independence in 1962, it was nearly 2,400,000 km2.” He makes the convincing argument that Algeria’s military leadership assumed essentially imperial expansionist views from France, and today continues to fund its last effort at expansion across Moroccan Sahara to the Atlantic – clearly a great geopolitical prize for Algiers – through POLISARIO.

Prof. Cherkaoui subtitles his Introductory chapter “To Erase History is to Mortgage the Future”, a leitmotif happily embedded in all strategists. He gives the reader, in this profound book, a history of the Maghreb and Sahara which, had it been widely read and understood in 1975, would have caused the great United Nations debate over “Western Sahara” to have been ended in one session.

But it is not all ancient history. Cherkaoui clearly outlines Algeria’s 20th and 21st century deep commitments to monolithic socialist and statist philosophies which today profoundly dominate its strategic actions, to the point of its joint military nuclear activities with Iran, for example, and the transformation of its military-political ties to the Soviet Union into strategic ties with a newly-invigorated Russian strategic policy. The implication, to some extent, from his detailed analysis of Algerian military and strategic actions, is that if the Algiers Government cannot be trusted on the matter of its nuclear relations with Iran and the People’s Republic of China, and its command of POLISARIO, then why should it be seen as trustworthy in the broader security arena of counter-terrorism and, indeed, the matter of “Western Sahara”?

As well, the author highlights the reality that Algiers’ flirtation – indeed, its enduring marriage – with a massively unproductive socialist economic model, along with the accompanying massive expenditure on state-of-the-art Russian defense equipment, has been facilitated by the easy money from its substantial oil and gas reserves. Morocco, on the other hand, has begun to prosper enormously – particularly since the reforms of King Mohammed VI – despite the fact that it is no longer dependent on revenues from phosphate exports.

He notes: “[I]t must not be forgotten that Morocco has neither oil nor gas. Phosphates and their derivatives no longer constitute an important source of revenue. In reality, the sole reserve on which the Kingdom can count is the human being.” And he goes on to discuss the broad transformation of Morocco into a market economy and accompanying vibrant democratic society [reaffirmed by the September 7, 2007, parliamentary elections]. He notes that “Morocco is in the process of preparing other daring reforms”, delegating powers to the major regions which never had them in the past.

Prof. Cherkaoui details comprehensively, with clear sourcing, the advances in education; the links by marriage of Sahrawis and others from the heartland, or settled, areas of Morocco; employment levels and the like. He leaves nothing to chance.

Significantly, his book appears at a time when Morocco, for the first time in perhaps three decades, really has seized the initiative in its commitment to economic vibrancy and freedom, representative governance at all levels, and integration with Euro-Atlantic economic and political structures. As such, despite its lack of oil and gas resources – although it promises to become a hub for the eventual transmission of sub-Saharan African pipelined oil and gas to Europe – Morocco has a strategic edge in the Maghreb and the Mediterranean.

Clearly, Algeria will not accept this, and will mount a serious resistance to Morocco’s political initiatives to resolve the Saharan dispute in favor of the territory’s occupants and for the Kingdom as a whole. Just how much latitude Algeria has to challenge Morocco in a military sense may well be dependent on whether foreign policy officials in the US, UK, UN, France, and elsewhere in the EU, read Prof. Cherkaoui’s book.

His unvarnished description of Saharan and Maghrebian realities will play in the reader’s mind long after the book has been placed in a special section of the bookcase. Thank you, Professor Cherkaou. – Gregory Copley.


Footnotes:

1. Lawrence, T. E.: Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. Oxford, 1922: unabridged text.

2. Churchill, Winston S.: The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of Sudan. London, 1899, two volume unabridged edition, and 1902 abridged single volume edition.

3. POLISARIO: Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y de Rio de Oro. Essentially an Algerian-financed, armed, and trained irredentist movement, claiming sovereignty for Moroccan Sahara as the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which, through Algerian diplomatic efforts, won initial recognition from some African states – but, significantly, no Arab League member states – in the 1970s. Most African Union member states have now withdrawn their recognition of the SADR, essentially given that it actually controls no territory, and international legal rulings have reaffirmed the validity of Spain’s return of the territory to Moroccan sovereignty.

4. Algeria’s name and original area was derived from the Arabic for simply “the islands”, al-Jaza’ir, defining the islands of the harbor area occupied by Muslims fleeing the Christian reconquest of Spain. This port’s name was soon corrupted in European languages to Algiers. Ottoman Turkish fleets arrived in the 16th Century and drove out the Spanish. Algeria became, at least nominally, a part of the Ottoman empire.


October 2, 2007

Moroccan Foreign Minister Tells UN That Saharan Dispute at Turning Point

Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaïssa said on October 1, 2007, that the issue of Moroccan Sahara was witnessing an “historical turning point”, and advocating a settlement based on an autonomy proposal put forward by Rabat. Addressing the General Assembly’s annual high-level debate, Mohamed Benaïssa said the turning point “results from the dynamic created by the Moroccan Initiative on a Statute of Autonomy”, which he said “has opened promising perspectives for overcoming the stalemate this issue faces at the UN level”.

The speech at the General Assembly reflects the new confidence of the Moroccan Government since the decisive affirmation of the policies of King Mohammed VI at the Moroccan parliamentary elections of September 7, 2007.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, September 10, 2007: Moroccan Elections Delivery Major Message on Stability, Direction, and Give Strength on Saharan Process.

Significantly, the new Moroccan dynamic, which takes account of a growing economic and political vibrancy in the Kingdom, provides the first major challenge in decades to the slogging battle over the former Spanish-controlled Saharan territory — which has been for many centuries, even during the time of Spanish colonial occupation, linked to the Moroccan Crown — which Morocco has been forced to wage with Algeria and Algeria’s proxy, the POLISARIO (Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y de Rio de Oro) guerilla organization.

See also Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, September 10, 2007: Principal Union Backer of Australia's Likely Next Government Seen as Funding POLISARIO Slave Labor.

Minister Benaïssa said in New York that the initiative “offers the fundamental elements necessary for a realistic, applicable and final political solution to a regional dispute that hinders the construction of a strong and homogenous Maghreb, interacting with its geopolitical environment”. It also “answers the call of the Security Council since 2004 about the need for finding a political solution to this dispute“ and “is in conformity with international law”. Morocco, he said, was committed “to advance this process in order to reach a final solution to this dispute within the framework of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as on the basis of the Autonomy Initiative as the ultimate objective of the negotiation process and as an open, flexible and indivisible offer.”

Earlier on October 1, 2007, Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told the General Assembly that his country hoped for an agreement between Morocco and the POLISARIO Front which would pave the way for the people of Moroccan Sahara to decide on their future. Persisting in Algeria’s refusal to recognize the historical Moroccan links to the territory, Medelci said that “Western Sahara” — as the region is still known in the UN — was the “last case of decolonization in Africa where the people are still deprived of their right to self-determination enshrined in relevant resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council”. He said that the international community had nourished hopes for a just and lasting solution, notably through the Security Council's support in 2003 for the peace plan put forward by James Baker, the former Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General.

He said that Algeria welcomed recent developments on the issue, including the adoption of Security Council resolution 1754, which underlined the need to achieve a just and comprehensive solution, and said that he and his Government hoped that negotiations could lead to an agreement that would allow the people of the region to pronounce themselves, “freely and without constraints”, through a self-determination referendum. Significantly, Algeria and its surrogate, POLISARIO, have hoped to create a situation whereby international processes could dictate an internal vote in Moroccan territory, something which, for obvious sovereignty reasons, Morocco has resisted, particularly since the international legal affirmation of Morocco’s ownership of the Saharan territory.


September 10, 2007

Moroccan Elections Delivery Major Message on Stability, Direction, and Give Strength on Saharan Process

Analysis. From GIS Station Rabat. The Moroccan parliamentary elections of September 7, 2007, had, by the time the results were in on September 9, 2007, delivered a stunning result, confirming King Mohammed VI’s process of electoral and governmental reform, rejecting Islamist politics, and giving the Government a strong mandate to pursue its objectives in international discussions on the future of the Saharan region of the country.

The nationalist and traditionalist parties – all of them Royalist – won a clear majority in the lower house of Parliament, the Majlis al-Nuwab/Assemblée des Répresentants (Assembly of Representatives), at the expense of the Islamist Parti de la Justice et du Développement (Justice and Development Party: PJD). This, particularly in the context of the voters’ turnout (see below), demonstrated that the Moroccan population had abandoned the lure of the “Islamic solution” panacea and was returning to the traditional approach to solutions.

Moreover, since the primary voter pool of the Islamist party was always targeted as the “embittered, disenfranchised urban poor”, and this demographic clearly rejected the Islamists, it seems clear that the lower economic urban population now sees itself as the beneficiary of the King’s profound socio-economic and political reforms over recent years. Indeed, it now appears that the class which the Islamists believed to be embittered, disenfranchised and poor among the urban population no longer sees itself in that light.

The national average voter turnout was 37 percent (some 5.7-million voters), the lowest in Morocco’s history and a manifestation of the population rejection of the parties offering a “panacea solution”. This is clear from the difference between the turnout in the Royalist, conservative rural areas — 43 percent — and the urban areas — 30 percent — where the absenteeism in the urban slums was overwhelming. Since the slums were seen as the bastion of the Islamists’ and socialists’ power, the voters demonstrated their disappointment and rejection by not voting. These urban areas do not have the traditional power structures seen in rural Morocco, because of the weakening of the tribal/clan hold on urban society, and as a result there were no viable alternatives to the Islamists and socialists for whom people could vote.

The voting patterns in the Moroccan Western Sahara (MWS) merit special attention. In a sharp contrast with the low turnout in the urban centers of northern Morocco (eg: Casablanca at 27 percent, Oudja area at 31 percent, Tangier-Tetuan at 34 percent), the voter turnout in the MWS was extremely heavy (eg: Dakhla at 62 percent; Smara at 58 percent, La Ayoune at 50 percent). This was a clear demonstration that the population in MWS considers itself Moroccan, is convinced that it has vital stakes in the political process in Rabat, and is determined to have its say there.

Indeed, foreign observers reported vibrant voting and political discourse throughout MWS. As well, no violations and improprieties were reported. The heavy turnout is all the more significant given the pre-elections campaign by POLISARIO, which urged the people to refrain from voting and also threatened terrorism. The MWS voters thus demonstrated their rejection of POLISARIO and their commitment to being part of Morocco. Thus, the Moroccan parliamentary elections in MWS prove that the local population considers itself an integral part of a single, unified Morocco. This development is effectively a genuine and accurate “referendum” about what the MWS population really wants.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 28, 2007: Morocco Taking Elections in Stride While Addressing an Internationally-Contrived Campaign to Challenge its Sovereignty.

Six parties won a total of 243 seats, representing 74 percent of the Parliament.

* The conservative Istiqlal (Independence) - 46 male MPs + 6 female MPs for a total of 52 seats;

* The Islamic Justice and Development Party (PJD) - 40 + 7 = 47;

* People's Party - 38 + 5 = 43;

* National Rally of Independents (RNI) - 33 + 5 = 38;

* The Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) - 32 + 7 = 36;

* The Constitutional Union party (UC) - 27 + 0 = 27;

* PPS (former communists) 14 + 3 = 17.

In all, 33 parties participated in the election, in 1,862 lists (compared to 1,772 in 2002) with party affiliation and 13 lists with no party affiliation.

In the new parliament:

* 55.25% MPs have a university degree;

* there are 34 women members; and

* 74 MPs are under the age of 44.

The results of the elections constituted a popular endorsement of the policies, the “march to reform”, etc. of the King and the outgoing Government:

* Parties comprising the current coalition won 186 seats;

* Parties comprising the current opposition won 90 seats;

* The Koutlah alliance (secular/nationalist power bloc comprised of the Istiqlal, the socialists and the PPS ex-commies) won 102 seats.

The elections were a success as well for the Moroccan security services. At the same time that there were security incidents in Algeria, Denmark, Germany, the UK, and elsewhere, Morocco remained quiet. The King decided not to change the date and patterns of the elections irrespective of the mounting jihadist threat. Furthermore, in order to ensure that there was not even a semblance of voter intimidation, the security forces maintained a very low profile in the vicinity of the polling stations. Foreign election observers also noted the low and friendly presence of the police, as well as their cooperation with the staff of the polling stations.

Local and international observers reported free, fair, transparent, and legitimate elections. No major incident was reported. No irregularities were reported. The elections went very smoothly. All the party and list leaders expressed great satisfaction with the conduct of the elections and stated that they did not intend to challenge the outcome/results.

The results indicate that any doubts which may have been harbored inside or outside Morocco as to the course on which the King was embarked have now been put to rest, and this means that the Government has received an endorsement to complete the reforms initiated by the King.

The elections were a major step in the modernization and democratization campaign initiated and led by King Mohammad VI. This campaign aims to take Morocco into the 21st Century, to benefit fully from the new information age, global economic development, and the like. The King and Government are convinced that these objectives cannot be realized without concurrent domestic reforms, particularly democratic reforms and individual rights.

The elections were an impressive undertaking: 15,510,505 voters were registered to vote at 380,853 polling stations, supervised by 3,000 centralizing polling stations and by 69 regional committees of census (to arbitrate and clarify in case disputes).The election was for the 325 seats in the House of Representatives, including 30 reserved for women. Selection of winners was by proportional representation at the district level.

It was an extremely lively and diverse political scene. The public had to chose from among 6,691 candidates (three percent of them women) running in 95 districts. The candidates were organized in 1,870 lists (25 of them defined as National Lists, and 58 of them headed by women). Most candidates were affiliated with 33 parties and two unions of parties. (Candidates could run as independents if they so chose.)

Because the mere conduct of the elections is considered such a major milestone in the reform process initiated by the King, it was in the vested interest of official Rabat to ensure that the elections were fair, free, transparent and legal, and that their results were legitimized and accepted by all, from political leaders of all sides to the public at large. And so it was. An example of the transparency of the authorities’ handling of the elections was the public downsizing of the participation estimate from an early reporting of 41 percent to the accurate counted number of 37 percent.

In a major first, Rabat encouraged all political parties to closely monitor and supervise the conduct of the elections by having their own National Observers: a combination of party-affiliated individuals and representatives of several civil-society NGOs. In Morocco’s 16 regions there were a total of 32 coordinators and 2,685 observers. As well, Rabat was so confident in the quality of the elections to invite a large number of foreign monitors and give them unrestricted access.

The results were not surprising. Morocco’s is a traditional and diverse society where family, clan and tribe dominate people’s life. The majority of Moroccans voted for locally-affiliated centrist Royalist candidates who, the public knows, will further the local interests within the context of the national policy as outlined by the King. Hence, the real majority lies in a coalition which includes 30-odd mini-parties and related independent candidates all of whom agree on the course of the nation, but are also committed to the interests of their own home regions. At the same time, the urban population – mainly the underprivileged urban poor who are the product and victim of Morocco’s rapid economic development and ensuing urbanization – give their votes to nationalist parties: The older generation to the socialists (USFP, PPS), and the younger generation to the Islamists (PJD). However, even these parties are committed to pursuing their policies within the parameters of the King’s laws and national direction. This commitment is as much an act of political pragmatism – given the immense popular support for the King and the reform and modernization process he has initiated – as an ideological position.

For the rest of the world, these elections were a reiteration of Morocco’s stability, of the commitment of both official Rabat and the people of Morocco to being an integral part of the West; of official Rabat’s determination continue on the path to democratization, modernization, and development as articulated in the King’s vision for the future of Morocco.


September 10, 2007

Principal Union Backer of Australia's Likely Next Government Seen as Funding POLISARIO Slave Labor

Analysis. From GIS Station, Canberra. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which is seen as the biggest single policy influence and voting bloc in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) — which polls indicate could form the next Government of Australia — has been using tax-exempt fundraising to support the Algerian-backed POLISARIO guerilla movement which has been shown to be using African slave labor in its camps in Algeria. Details of POLISARIO’s slavery practices were highlighted in May 2007, but a blog-site revealed on September 8, 2007, that the ACTU had been helping to fund POLISARIO.

Significantly, as POLISARIO has increasingly been seen as a front for Algerian aspirations to break the Saharan territory along the Atlantic coast — territory traditionally Moroccan but held for some time as a Spanish colony — away from Moroccan sovereignty, international support for POLISARIO’s “state” of the “Saharan Arab Democratic Republic” (SADR) has dropped away. No member states of the Arab League recognize the SADR, which, in any event, holds no territory, and earlier recognition of the SADR by African states, organized by Algeria, has been progressively dropped. Only pressures from left-wing groups, including union movements, in Australia had, when the ALP was in power before, built some support for the SADR and POLISARIO within the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Some major Australian resource companies, active in Africa, have been seeking a resolution of the Saharan issue so that they could invest in the rich potential of Moroccan Sahara’s reserves. One Australian energy company supported POLISARIO in the hope that it would win concessions in the territory should the guerilla group succeed in breaking the region away from Morocco, which now seems increasingly unlikely. Now, however, with revelations of ACTU support for POLISARIO coming to light and continuing, months after the evidence was brought out of POLISARIO’s slavery practices, the matter may become an election issue as Australia prepares for crucial Federal polls.

The internet blogsite which raised the matter, www.med-atlantic.blogspot.com, issued the following report:

Australia’s Next Labor Government Supporting Slave Holding Insurgents in the Sahara

Why is the main labor movement in Australia – the main force behind the probable next Government of Australia – supporting an organization which still maintains slaves as its workforce? The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which provides the principal policy, financial, and voting support for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of Prime Ministerial aspirant Kevin Rudd provides financial aid to POLISARIO, the Algerian-backed insurgency movement which is trying to break the Moroccan Saharan territory away from Moroccan control.

The quiet support which much of the Australian labor movement, and, indeed, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), has given to POLISARIO over the years was shaken when, on May 2, 2007, POLISARIO — Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro) — detained two Australian film journalists who had traditionally been supportive of the POLISARIO movement.

The reason? They had discovered that the Algerian-backed insurgency movement kept African slaves in their squalid refugee camps.

Media reporting says that POLISARIO held the two Australian documentary filmmakers, Violeta Ayala and Daniel Fallshaw, for only about five hours before releasing them for filming the slaves. They also confiscated the Australians’ cellphone, but not before a call had gone out to Australian authorities that they had been arrested. Australian sources say that it took strong threats from the Australian Government before the two were released, including the threat to reverse the traditionally supportive approach which the Australian Foreign Affairs Department had traditionally taken with POLISARIO.

POLISARIO, significantly, denied detaining the reporters, but they have told their story widely since leaving Algeria.

But it is significant that the Australian media has not questioned why POLISARIO is able to get donations through the Australian trade union movement, which offers a method for Australian private citizens to make tax-exempt donations to POLISARIO. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) division called “Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad Inc.” (APHEDA), based in Sydney, has a “Union Aid Abroad” movement which works, as it says, “in alliance with the Australia Western Sahara Association”, which is an arm of POLISARIO.

What is equally significant is that the Australian Government has made it difficult for charities in Australia to gain tax-exempt status even when raising funds for Rwandan orphaned children, for example. And yet the ACTU has found a means to offer tax relief on donations to a terrorist organization which actually maintains a workforce of slaves in abject conditions.

Moreover, the same network of support in Australia for POLISARIO has links into the support movement for the (then) marxist FRETILIN movement which fought for the independence of East Timor, and which even after winning Australian support for its independence struggle, has essentially turned its back on Australia since East Timor gained statehood.


August 28, 2007

Morocco Taking Elections in Stride While Addressing an Internationally-Contrived Campaign to Challenge its Sovereignty

Analysis. From GIS Station Rabat.1 It is significant that while Morocco is embroiled in a major strategic struggle to finally end debate over its historical incorporation of the Saharan territory with its long Atlantic coastline, the country itself is preoccupied with the forthcoming national election which is dominated by everyday issues of the economy and living standards.

The September 7, 2007, elections for the Moroccan lower house of Parliament, the Majlis al-Nuwab/Assemblée des Répresentants (Assembly of Representatives), are emerging as a debate over strictly local issues. And this may well result in an election win for Islamist Parti de la Justice et du Développement (Justice and Development Party: PJD), not because of any support that this might imply for jihadist or pro-terrorist causes which the PJD, in any event, disavows, but over issues to do with employment and daily life.

The political process is already mature; the September 7, 2007, legislative elections are Morocco’s eighth, and the second since the ascension of King Mohammed VI in 1999. Indeed, the King has been the main proponent for broadening the electoral process, largely in the knowledge that politics is confined to issues of governance, which the Crown remains firmly above.

Interior Ministry statistics by August 24, 2007, indicated that 15.51-million people, 48 percent of whom are women, had registered to vote. Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said that 75 percent of registered voters already had voter cards and that applications for voter cards would be accepted up until election day. Some 69 percent of people surveyed between July 28 and August 8, 2007, that they were “absolutely sure of voting” and 13 percent said “there is a good chance they will vote” in the September 7 elections.

Reducing unemployment was at the top of voters’ concerns, with 70 percent saying they would like to see political parties address that issue. Other concerns included improvements in the health system at 65 percent, fighting poverty at 54 percent and battling corruption at 40 percent. Resolving the long-standing dispute over Western Sahara was named by only 20 percent, while the same percentage also mentioned concerns over terrorism.

Some 33 parties were competing in the 2007 elections, with 1,870 local candidate lists vying for 295 seats. As well, there are 26 national candidate lists, which will compete for 30 seats allocated to women.

Nonetheless, the issue of the Saharan territory is now of major concern for the long-term security and wellbeing of Morocco.

The Sahara Issue

The United Nations, pushing to retain some control over the issue of the former Spanish Sahara, has thus far organized two meetings in 2007 between Moroccan officials and representatives of the guerilla group, Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y de Rio de Oro (POLISARIO). to negotiate the future of the Moroccan Saharan territory.

The latest meeting, held in Manhasset, about 25 miles east of New York City, on August 10-11, 2007, between the Kingdom of Morocco and POLISARIO focused international attention, once again, on a territorial dispute which, although legally resolved, the United Nations has allowed — even encouraged through intervention — to fester for 32 years without political resolution.

Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa and Mahfud Ali Veiba of POLISARIO headed the second New York meetings. Moroccan and POLISARIO officials had also met in June 2007; their first meeting in some seven years. The best that could be said of the June and August 2007 meetings was that they could lead to a third round of talks, although UN mediator Peter van Walsum said after the August 10-11, 2007, meetings that both sides, while not changing their positions, had agreed to some confidence-building measures. No date has yet been set for a third round of meetings.

There have been — since the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 690 brokered a ceasefire between Algerian-backed POLISARIO rebels and the Moroccan Government on April 29, 1991 — multiple resolutions, several extensions, and stillborn plans, but always a continued refusal by POLISARIO to move toward any agreement, other than one which overturns the historical and legal realities of the sovereignty of  the Moroccan Sahara region. Why, indeed, would POLISARIO change its position? Its principal backer, the Government of Algeria, is adamant in seeking to stop Moroccan control over the territory, which gives Morocco – rather than Algeria – strategically important access to a long Atlantic coastline and the increasingly apparent mineral and energy resources of the region.

For POLISARIO, it has all been gain. The legal issue, in which the occupying Spanish colonial power handed back sovereignty of “Western Sahara” to its original owner, Morocco, was clearly resolved, and undisputed. The territory was Moroccan. However, by mounting an irredentist war, POLISARIO – acting essentially as a front for Algeria – has been able to build a situation where it could stake a claim to sovereignty which was accepted, at least to some degree, by some members of the international community. This position, however, has been disintegrating in recent years: the majority of African states which recognized the independence of Western Sahara have now reversed their position, and now support Morocco’s position. No significant members of the Arab League recognize POLISARIO’s claim.

POLISARIO, and by definition, Algeria, have nowhere else to go but to press their claims to the territory through “international mechanisms” other than, for example, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This is a case which POLISARIO and Algeria hope to make solely by political pressure, international media ignorance of the history of the situation, and by the threat of being able to continue with sustained military insurrection from safe-havens inside Algeria, supported by the Algerian Government.

POLISARIO’s most significant gain has been to push for a referendum to decide the situation, based on skewed parameters. And because of political pressure, particularly from the US State Department and some UN officials, Morocco has, to some degree, been forced to succumb to this.

There has not been a referendum, despite the formal establishment of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) on April 29, 1991, which administered the ceasefire between the two contending parties, and pushed for a referendum concerning the question of the territory’s sovereignty. The failure of MINURSO to hold a successful vote within the region has caused the UN to attempt to rectify its failure, thus resulting in a cyclical pattern of resolutions and attempts at negotiations.    

Following the nearly 15 years of deadlocked UN negotiations and a failed consensus concerning a valid voting population within Western Sahara, there has been a recent push to re-evaluate the situation and desires of POLISARIO and Morocco. Yet, bringing discussions back to the UN table has only seen a reiteration of POLISARIO’s clamoring for independence, despite Morocco’s generous, albeit legally unnecessary, concession to provide autonomy for the region under Moroccan Government jurisdiction, following a referendum vote. There have been, since the passing of UN Resolution 690, almost yearly extensions to the January 1992 deadline to hold a Western Sahara referendum, most recently being the April 20, 2007, UN Security Council Resolution 1754, which extended MINURSO to October 31, 2007.

POLISARIO’s UN Security Council letter (S/2007/206), presented on April 11, 2007, not only repeated its claim of sovereignty for the territory, but also pointedly ignored the settled legal status of the territory. The letter restated, among POLISARIO’s demands for self-determination, that “Western Sahara is a territory of which the decolonization process has been interrupted by the Moroccan invasion and occupation of 1975”. POLISARIO has no interest in acknowledging the legal basis of the territory, and basing its efforts on the 1975 rulings from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the UN actions of the 1990s which brought legitimacy to an issue which had previously been resolved. The ICJ ruling was logically less than consistent. It said that there were no territorial ties between the Western Sahara region and Morocco, but acknowledged the historical connection between the people of Western Sahara and the King of Morocco. Given the nomadic nature of the population, European – or Westphalian – concepts of sovereignty could not be applied, despite the linkage of people, territory (in its broadest sense as an area of nomadic travel), and the King which were the only acceptable definition of sovereignty available.

POLISARIO, and later the UN, interpreted the inherent ambiguity of the ICJ ruling to their advantage, ignoring the earlier Madrid Accords between Spain, Morocco, and Mauritania, and illustrating it as what they claimed to be an illegitimate transfer of power., The Madrid Accords in 1975 resulted in Spain legally ceding its Western Sahara colony to Morocco – which was the original sovereign authority over the territory – and to Mauritania. [Mauritania later transferred its limited control of the region to Morocco following its inability to counter POLISARIO’s guerilla attacks in 1979.]

The POLISARIO uprising immediately following the Madrid Accords resulted in guerilla-style violence which caused Mauritania to cede its portion of Western Sahara to Morocco, again assuring the validity of the Madrid Accords by transferring territory to the only other nation that had rights over the region, rather than directly to the POLISARIO. When Morocco became the next focus of POLISARIO’s insurgent violence, the fight was not as simple as it had hoped. In 1981, Morocco began constructing The Berm, a 2,700km defensive wall which separates Moroccan-controlled areas of the Western Sahara region from POLISARIO-controlled territory on the eastern and southern borders. The Berm effectively provided not only security from POLISARIO guerilla violence, but also ensured Moroccan governance over the strategically significant phosphate mines along the coast of the Western Sahara.

Neighboring Algeria had been eyeing the mineral deposits since their discovery in the 1970s. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy editor Gregory R. Copley reported in March 1976 that Moscow, an historical ally to Algeria, backed POLISARIO and even diverted guerilla fighters from the Dhofar Province of the Sultanate of Oman to aid in the violence against the Kingdom of Morocco, a well-known United States ally during the Cold War. This suggested that Western Sahara had the beginnings of a new Cold War theater at the time of Spanish decolonization and much was at stake if Morocco did concede to POLISARIO independence at that time. The idea of a North African country directly under Soviet Union influence did not appeal to pro-Western Morocco, however, and it refused to negotiate with the POLISARIO.

Those negotiations did eventually come to pass with the fall of the Soviet Union, and it was within the chambers of the UN Security Council that the international community saw fit to discuss the apparent plight of the disenfranchised and displaced Sahrawi people, resulting in Resolution 690 in 1991. The yearly extensions of this referendum were always the result of poorly administered voting registration within Western Sahara, even after the MINURSO Identification Committee was established in 1993 to aid Morocco in compiling a valid count. In 1997, former US Secretary of State James Baker, the newly appointed Personal Envoy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for Western Sahara, organized the Houston Agreement with the goal of conducting negotiations between Morocco and POLISARIO with a proposed end-game of a referendum in 1998. This was only the beginning of several failures, including Baker Plans I and II.

Baker Plan I, proposed in 2000, was an autonomy proposal which Morocco accepted while the POLISARIO and Algeria not only denied, but countered with the unacceptable suggestion of dividing the Western Sahara between the two parties. Baker returned with Baker Plan II, at the request of the UN Security Council, which sought to placate the demands of POLISARIO by offering Western Sahara self-rule for a period of five years, at which time a referendum was to be held. POLISARIO and Algeria accepted this plan, immediately after Morocco had rejected it. Nonetheless, Baker Plan II was accepted by the UN Security Council in May 2003. Despite this, Baker resigned from his post in June 2004, citing the irreconcilable attitudes of Morocco and POLISARIO. Baker Plan II was subsequently swept under the rug, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had stopped referring to it in his reports by the beginning of 2005.

Negotiations between Morocco and POLISARIO were held face-to-face on June 19, 2007, outside UN chambers at Greentree Estate in Manhasset, New York, facilitated by current UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon’s Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, Peter van Walsum.

To complicate the situation further, Algeria has been under the international microscope due to suspicious jihadist activity, again lending a blow to the credibility of the Sahrawi independence movement. On April 18, 2007, Defense & Foreign Affairs UN Correspondent Jason Fuchs examined the new jihadist treat in North Africa:

In the Summer of 2005, as the jihadist threat mounted with the public announcement of the founding of the al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers, Algerian Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika had been more focused on reviving the West Saharan conflict with Morocco through renewed support for the separatist West Saharan POLISARIO Front in order to drum up domestic political support and, from a strategic perspective, to secure a potentially valuable land corridor to the Atlantic (while denying its restoration as an integral part of Morocco). To this end, in June 2005, Pres. Bouteflika had ordered the Army to resume training and arming fighters from POLISARIO at their main base at Tindouf, near the Mauritanian border. Plans included arming the POLISARIO fighters with advance weapons systems, including night vision goggles.

POLISARIO, significantly, represents a classical Cold War front operation, with third party states – in this case Algeria, possibly backed by Russia – using such groups as proxies to destabilize situations. Indeed, even during the Cold War, when Algeria was heavily supported by the USSR and Morocco was committed to a Western political model, the US State Department persisted in allowing Algeria and POLISARIO to undertake a disruptive campaign in Morocco’s Saharan territory. Even though the move has been disavowed by the entire Middle Eastern polity – including all of the Arab League states as well as Israel – and is increasingly disavowed by African Union member states, the US position has been to support, essentially, the Algerian solution on the territory.

In the process, Washington appears to be losing both Morocco, its traditional ally, and Algeria, which has increasingly moved back toward major defense procurement from Russia.

1.     Amanda Utterback, in the GIS office in Washington, DC, assisted in the preparation of this report.


May 29, 2007

Strategic Biographies

King Mohammed VI

King of Morocco

His Majesty King Mohammed VI was enthroned as King of Morocco on July 23, 1999, hours after the death of his father, King Hassan II. King Mohammed VI (Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan) was born on August 21, 1963, in Rabat, Morocco. He is the 23rd king in the Alaouite Dynasty, and, as a sharif — a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed — is also Commander of the Faithful (Amir al-Mu’minin). He is Morocco’s head-of-state as well as the Defense Minister.

His Majesty attended the Qur’anic school at the Royal Palace until enrolling in the Royal College. He received his baccalaureate in 1981 from the University of Judicial, Economic and Social Studies in Rabat. He continued his education with a BA in law at the College of Law of the Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1985, with his research topic “The Arab-African Union and the Strategy of the Kingdom of Morocco in matters of International Relations”. He obtained his first Certificat D'Etudes Supérieures (CES) in political sciences in 1987, and a Diplôme des Etudes Supérieures du Doctorat in public law in July 1988. He went to Brussels to train in Law, working for some months with Jacques Delors, President of the Commission of the European Economic Communities in November 1988. He received his doctorate from the French University of Nice Sophia Antipolis in 1993 with his thesis topic “EEC-Maghreb Relations”. He was promoted to the rank of major-general in 1994.

The late King Hassan II sent then-Crown Prince Mohammed abroad on several occasions as a representative of Morocco, including attendance at the memorial service to French President Georges Pompidou in 1974, and the consulting group in Geneva on the occasion of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations constitution in 1994.

While Crown Prince, he was appointed by the Late King Hassan II as chair of many delegations to represent Morocco including Presidency of the Social-Cultural Association of the Mediterranean Basin in 1979; 7th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1983 in New Delhi, India; Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1983 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Franco-African conference in 1983 in Vittel, France; and Coordinator of the Bureaux and Services of the General staff of the Royal Armed Forces in 1985.

His Majesty has supported political pluralism and social change improving rights of women and quality of life for the poor. He started the constitutional monarchy shortly after becoming king. He has initiated the Instance Equité et Réconciliation (IER) to research Morocco’s human rights violations under Hassan II.

King Mohammed VI is married to Princess Lalla Salma (Salma Bennani) and has two children.

Mohamed Benaїssa

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Morocco

Mohamed Benaїssa, who was named the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Kingdom of Morocco in 1999, was born on January 3, 1937, in Asilah, Morocco. He completed his degree in Communications from the University of Minnesota in 1963. He continued his education in the United States, receiving a Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation for Research in Communication at the University of Columbia in 1964.

His began working for the Moroccan Government as the press attaché at the Embassy of Morocco to the United States in Washington DC from 1964 to 1965. He then became press attaché for the Department of Information of the United Nations (UN) from 1965 to 1967. He held positions within the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN in Rome, Italy, from 1967 to 1971; and was in charge of communications at the FAO from 1971 to 1975; and served as the Assistant of the Director of Information and the Publications from 1973 to 1974. He was Director of Division with FAO 1974 to 1976. He also was the Assistant of the Secretary-General of the World Conference on the Food of the United Nations in New York and Rome in 1975. He was a Member of the Town council of Asilah (Province of Tangier) from 1976 to 1983. He was an elected official appointed at the Parliament (Rapporteur of the Commission of the Culture and Information) from 1977 to 1983. He was elected Mayor of Asilah, Morocco in 1983 and re-elected in 1992.

M Benaїssa was Minister of Culture from 1985 to 1992. He was then Ambassador from Morocco in Washington DC from 1993 until 1999. He then was appointed by the late King Hassan II as Foreign Minister a few months before King Hassan’s death in 1999.

He was the editor-in-chief for the Rassemblement National des Indépendents’ (National Rally of Independents) newspapers Al Mithak Al Watani (Arabic) and the Al Maghrib (French). He holds the office of Secretary-General of the Cultural Forum Afro-Arab and the office of Secretary-General of the Summer school Al-Moutamid Ibn Abbad in Asilah.

He has published several works, including Grain of Skin, published in 1974 by the Shoof House in Casablanca, as well as various research papers and publications in the field of the communication and the development.

He is married and has five children.

Abderrahman Sbaї

Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of the Administration of National Defense, Morocco

Abderrahman Sbaї, who was appointed the Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of the Administration of Defense of the Kingdom of Morocco in 1997, was born in 1940 in Fès, Morocco. He attended primary and secondary school at the College Moulay Youssef in El Jadida and Rabat, and then attended the School of Geographical Sciences in Paris. He obtained his diploma for geographical engineering in 1961 and his master’s for geographical engineering in 1967.

He started working as the Chief of Topographic Service and the Land Register of El Jadida from 1963 until 1965. He worked as Manager of Topography and as the Chief of Studies of Management of Land Conservation and the topographic surveys in the Rabat region from 1967 to 1970. He was the Chief of Central Service of the Land Register in 1971, and the head of the division of Land Register from 1972 until 1979. He then became the Administrative Director to the Ministry for the Agriculture and the Land Reform from 1980 to 1983. He was named Director-Advisor to the Prime Minister in the same department from 1983 until 1986. He became Minister Delegate to the Prime Minister in Charge of the General Affairs in 1993.

Abderrahman Sbaї has received several awards, including Ouissam Arrida de classe exceptionnelle in 1980, the Ouissam Al Arch, grade de Chevalier in 1985, and the Ouissam Al ‎Arch, grade d'Officier in 1990.

He is married and has two children.


April 18, 2007

The Jihad in the “Land of the Berbers” Revives; Algiers and Rabat Play Catch-Up

Analysis. By Jason Fuchs, GIS UN Correspondent. The two suicide bombings in Casablanca on April 14, 2007, four days after a police raid in which three suspected militants blew themselves up and a fourth was shot, along with the April 11, 2007, attack in Algiers raised fears not only in Morocco and Algeria, but across North Africa that these attacks marked the beginning of a spring offensive by “The al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers”.

Rabat needed no reminder that Morocco remained in the gun-sights of the global Islamist jihad. Further, the results of the investigation of the May 16, 2003, bombings in Casablanca indicated not only that Islamist-jihadists retained the intent to strike again inside Morocco, but also that they retained the means. That investigation, led by Moroccan National Security Director, Hamido al-Aniqari, revealed high-level penetrations of secure royal facilities and palaces in the capital.

The internal Moroccan investigation found that jihadist sympathizers had, since at least mid-2002, been taking jobs as low-level workers in the palaces of Moroccan and Saudi royals, working as secretaries, maintenance workers, electricians, air-conditioning and telephone mechanics and the like. Some had, reportedly, even been employed as chefs, waiters and gardeners. The penetration had gone virtually unnoticed for more than a year until after the May 2003 Casablanca attacks, after which the depth of this penetration began to clarify.

Particularly damaging had been the infiltration of Saudi royal staffs. The Saudi royals maintain a number of palaces throughout Morocco. The result is that a significant amount of cargo is shipped back-and-forth, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and vice verse, without being checked by Moroccan customs officials so long as it is marked as being shipped to or from a Saudi prince. This allowed jihadi moles, embedded on the staffs of Saudi royals, to take advantage of Saudi privileges to move arms and material in and out of the country.

This pipeline worked both ways as was revealed by Saudi interrogations of captured al-Qaida militants in June 2004, when these suspects claimed that they had access to stockpiles of arms, SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, RPG launchers and RDX explosives which had been moved into the country from Morocco by air freight or shipped in containers through Egyptian or Saudi ports.

Moroccan security services have spent the past three years poring over royal personnel with the help of Washington and Jerusalem, but have yet to address the issue of Saudi diplomatic privilege.

Another equally important issue had been the lack of cooperation between Algiers and Rabat, despite the fact that both were equally threatened by jihadi terrorism. Continued Algerian interest in attempting to stop the restoration of full international recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Saharan area formerly occupied by Spain has, for some years, stood int he way of good relations between Algiers and Rabat.

In the Summer of 2005, as the jihadist threat mounted with the public announcement of the founding of the al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers, Algerian Pres.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika had been more focused on reviving the West Saharan conflict with Morocco through renewed support for the separatist West Saharan POLISARIO Front in order to drum up domestic political support and, from a strategic perspective, to secure a potentially valuable land corridor to the Atlantic (while denying its restoration as an integral part of Morocco). To this end, in June 2005, Pres. Bouteflika had ordered the Army to resume training and arming fighters from POLISARIO at their main base at Tindouf, near the Mauritanian border. Plans included arming the POLISARIO fighters with advance weapons systems, including night vision goggles.

This policy of renewed support severely hampered any kind of security cooperation between Morocco and Algeria. Moreover, the Algerian support for POLISARIO had begun to backfire by the first week of February 2006 when a wave of POLISARIO fighters arrived in the small Mauritanian mining town of Zouerate direct from Tindouf and began to “spread money around”. The emigration of Tindouf-based POLISARIO fighters into tiny Zouerate continued through March 2006, by which time there were an estimated 2,500 POLISARIO fighters based in the village.

The POLISARIO fighters were preceded in Zouerate by a contingent of wealthy Arab and African jihadis who had moved into the town and begun buying real estate in December 2005. When the POLISARIO fighters arrived months later, they moved into these jihadist safe-houses.

Western intelligence services became aware of these developments and soon it had become clear that POLISARIO was now cooperating with jihadist elements who had financed their move into Zouerate, which was fast becoming a central node for jihadi operations into North Africa. POLISARIO had repaid Algiers for its support by allowing itself to be co-opted by Algiers’ most fierce enemies.

An October 24, 2006, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis report by editor Gregory R. Copley had noted of the Western Sahara issue:

The Western Sahara dispute has already been resolved legally, and is today only sustained by Algerian covert funding of irredentist claims to the region by an externally-based group.

Because of the Algerian funding, pressure from Scandinavian governments and pro-national liberation NGOs, and activities by some US pressure groups — largely oriented toward winning offshore petroleum rights off Western Sahara’s Atlantic coast — the matter has been sustained as a “legitimate” dispute, despite the legal rulings (including the World Court’s) which confirm the historical Moroccan sovereignty over the territory.

The pressure on Morocco in the UN intensified recently because the shift in the US position. This has nothing to do with any change in the situation in north-west Africa. Rather, the driving force behind the US position is the Bush Administration’s strategy to get out as quickly as possible from its military involvement in Iraq

... Placating the “Arabist” establishment in Washington (mainly State Department and CIA, but also the energy sector) in order to influence “our friends in the Arab world” to support the Bush Administration’s Iraqi exit strategy. The “Arabists” of Washington support POLISARIO — although, significantly, most of the Arab states of the Middle East do not — and therefore the Washington “Arabists” are determined to get what they want.

There were indications that Algiers would now be forced to take the issue of terrorism more seriously and allow the issue of Western Sahara to finally be laid to rest. The Algerian press had reacted to the bombings on April 11, 2007, with unanimous condemnation with an editorial in the liberal daily Liberté declaring in an April 14, 2007, editorial: “Today, the entire world has understood that Algeria, beyond [the fight on] its own territory, is waging a battle of universal dimensions against a poison that has no borders: Islamist terrorism.”

As the Director General of the Saudi Al-Arabiya news network, ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, put it in an April 15, 2007, editorial for Al-Sharq al-Awsat: “…Even if the Americans left Iraq tonight, and the Jews fled Palestine, and extremist religious governments were established in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt — this would not satisfy them … They want Paradise, and for this they will travel to the ends of the earth, to the North Pole and the South Pole, to fight the infidels, whose numbers, in their view, are five billion."

On April 10, 2007, US Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns met with a senior Moroccan delegation to discuss the Western Sahara issue, while at the same time an autonomy proposal was delivered by Morocco to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York. Burns called the Moroccan initiative “a serious and credible proposal to provide real autonomy for the Western Sahara”. The proposed approach would bring autonomy to Moroccan Sahara, “within the framework of the Kingdom’s sovereignty and national unity”. POLISARIO also on the same day presented its proposal to the UN Secretary-General, also, like the Moroccan Government, calling for a referendum, proposing a choice of three solutions: autonomy, independence or full integration. The UN rejected both proposals and called for direct negotiations between the two parties.

Significantly, however, POLISARIO, now increasingly out of favor with the African Union (AU) states and with the US — and possibly even with Algiers to some extent — continues to function solely outside of the Moroccan Saharan territory which is continuing to gain in prosperity under Moroccan governance. The likelihood now exists that POLISARIO will attempt to expand alternative bases of operations not dependent on Algeria — as the Mauritanian activities have shown — and that it will expand its ties with the jihadist movements, such as al-Qaida, in order to find a new lease on life, just as the international community moves toward the recognition that Morocco’s legal position on the Sahara is justified.


October 24, 2006

Annan Tries Last Push for UN-Oriented Settlement of Western Sahara Issue Despite Realities on the Ground

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. One of the last major gestures of outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been to ensure that the UN continues to perpetuate the dispute over the Moroccan Western Sahara region under the guise that it is mediating a valid issue.

The Western Sahara dispute has already been resolved legally, and is today only sustained by Algerian covert funding of irredentist claims to the region by an externally-based group.

Because of the Algerian funding, pressure from Scandinavian governments and pro-national liberation NGOs, and activities by some US pressure groups — largely oriented toward winning offshore petroleum rights off Western Sahara’s Atlantic coast — the matter has been sustained as a “legitimate” dispute, despite the legal rulings (including the World Court’s) which confirm the historical Moroccan sovereignty over the territory.

The pressure on Morocco in the UN intensified recently because the shift in the US position. This has nothing to do with any change in the situation in north-west Africa. Rather, the driving force behind the US position is the Bush Administration’s strategy to get out as quickly as possible from its military involvement in Iraq. Two elements of this political dynamic have a direct bearing on Morocco:

(1) The Baker Commission on Iraq — set up by the US Congress and under former US Secretary of State James Baker — is expected in November 2006 to deliver the “panacea solution” and a “political miracle” for the White House. There is, therefore, a strong effort within the Bush Administration to consolidate Baker’s image as a “miracle worker” who delivers magic solutions for seemingly insoluble world problems. As a result, doubting the Baker Plan on the Western Sahara — which came out in 2000 under the auspices of the UN — is the last thing the White House wants to see happening.

(2) Placating the “Arabist” establishment in Washington (mainly State Department and CIA, but also the energy sector) in order to influence “our friends in the Arab world” to support the Bush Administration’s Iraqi exit strategy. The “Arabists” of Washington support POLISARIO — although, significantly, most of the Arab states of the Middle East don not — and therefore the Washington “Arabists” are determined to get what they want.

There is also the following gossip coming from New York: outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is still very ambitious. He wants to continue to be a central figure in international relations. He needs strong governments to protect him (and his reputation) against the oil-for-food and other corruption stories. While he might be willing to consider becoming President of Ghana, his leftist Scandinavian wife is adamantly against it. She doesn't want to live in Accra and, besides, she knows that it would be difficult to be a white First Lady. Instead, she has reportedly urged Kofi Annan to take a position in an international “NGO of sorts” — like Carter and Clinton — and use it to sustain his “presence” in world affairs and high society. The Scandinavian governments are willing and eager to sponsor bold initiatives to resolve — in a progressive manner — lingering and enduring crises in the Developing World. Kofi Annan is being proposed as the head of this initiative. Mrs Annan would love to shuttle between Scandinavia and New York. Hence, Kofi Annan’s  sudden enthusiasm re Western Sahara and other “causes”.

Thus, Annan, in the final days of his UN leadership, in October 2006 attempted to resurrect the framework for a UN-controlled “settlement” which is at odds with reality of the dispute over Morocco’s Western Sahara territory.

Annan, in calling on October 18, 2006, for a further six-month extension for the UN peacekeeping mission for Western Sahara — MINURSO: United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara — tried to force a resolution process which, in fact, reinforces the conflict which the United Nations itself has artificially sustained for several decades. The essence of the UN process is that it recognizes the “dispute” over the sovereignty of the territory — which was, in fact, effectively and legally not in dispute after the formal cession of the area by Spain back to Morocco after the colonial protectorate period — only because of Algeria’s support for POLISARIO’s claim to Western Sahara.

In other words, Algerian strategic objectives and maneuvering against Morocco represents the only substance for the Western Sahara “dispute”.

The UN has been particularly involved in the Western Sahara since the 1991 deployment of MINURSO, but in fact from 1985 when the office of the UN Secretary-General became involved in attempting to mediate the claims by the POLISARIO group to Western Sahara.

Essentially, the “dispute” has been sustained by Algerian funding and support since Spanish withdrawal from the territory — which it controlled as a colony — in 1975. Algeria, in opposing Morocco for its own strategic reasons, has financially and logistically sustained POLISARIO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiet al-Hamra and Rio de Oro) and its self-styled Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) since that time.

Significantly, neither POLISARIO nor its self-proclaimed government structure, the SADR, actually control the Western Saharan territory, which form the southern provinces of the Kingdom of Morocco. Even the online Wikipedia encyclopedia notes:

Since a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire agreement in 1991, most of the territory is at present administered by Morocco. The remainder, which is almost unpopulated, is administered by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as the Free Zone. The ceasefire line corresponds to the route of the Moroccan Wall. Both sides claim the territory in its entirety. The SADR is recognized by 44 nations (not including 23 nations that have cancelled their earlier recognitions and 13 nations that have frozen their relations), and a full member of the African Union. Moroccan sovereignty over the territory is explicitly recognized by the Arab League, and supported by 26 states.

Morocco divided the territory under its control into administrative units (wilayas) after annexing it in 1976. Flags and coats of arms were created for the three wilayas of Boujdour, Smara and Laayoune. There were further changes in the territories in 1983, with the area becoming four wilayas through the addition of Dakhla. In 1990 Wadi al-Dhahab (Rio de Oro) was added.

In reality, even the “Free Zone” does not exist, and the SADR is only a figment of Algerian financing of POLISARIO, which maintains its camps in Algerian territory. Even the acceptance of the SADR as a member of the Organization for African Unity (OAU), which later translated into membership in the African Union (AU), was prompted by lobbying by Algeria. The initial flood of recognition of the SADR abated and, even as the Wikipedia entry noted, 23 states withdrew recognition and 13 states froze recognition of the SADR as a state without legal foundation or territory. That number grew in October 2006: Kenya announced that it would withdraw recognition of the SADR.

The Arab League, in contradistinction to the AU, recognizes Western Sahara as part of Morocco, and on the ground the Western Sahara is a seamless part of Morocco in terms of infrastructure and governance. And now even the AU is fracturing on the subject of recognition of the SADR.

The UN claim that there had been few “ceasefire violations” in Western Sahara since the creation of MINURSO disguises the reality that the Moroccan Government and the Moroccan Armed Forces and internal security are in complete control of the region. That has largely been because POLISARIO enjoys little support within the Western Sahara region.

Significantly, the “Saharawi” movement billed itself as “Arab”, despite the strong ethnically Berber element of the local population, and yet the Arab League supported Morocco’s position on the territory while the OAU supported the “Arabized” POLISARIO movement over the African population of the region. The “Arabization” of the region has largely been based on linguistic and religious trends; the Hassānīya Arabic dialect has substantially overtaken the use of Berber dialects in Western Sahara and many parts of the greater region.

Western Sahara was Moroccan in the pre-colonial era, and a 1975 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that there had been ties of allegiance between some tribal leaders and the Moroccan throne, although noting that these ties alone did not constitute sovereignty. Spain first claimed the area at the Congress of Berlin in 1885 but only began real occupation in the early part of the 20th Century; as late as the 1930s, there was still local resistance — as well as Moroccan resistance — to Spanish rule in the interior of the Western Sahara.

The discovery of major phosphate deposits at Bou Craa suddenly gave the region strategic importance. As Spain moved toward decolonization in 1974, Morocco began to press its claim and Mauritania too claimed the area. In November 1975, after the ICJ decision, King Hassan II of Morocco organized a “Green March” of unarmed Moroccan civilians to occupy the territory. Spain yielded in early November 1975, signing the Madrid Accord, which announced the end of Spanish rule in February 1976.

The accord established an interim Government “with the participation of Morocco and Mauritania” in consultation with the Jomaa, the local tribal council. In fact, Morocco and Mauritania drew a partition line across the territory with Mauritania occupying Tiris al-Gharbiya (Rio de Oro) in the south. The Jomaa voted to recognize Moroccan sovereignty, although some members claimed coercion and later supported the SADR. Mauritania later dropped its claim to the Tiris al-Gharbiya, which allowed Morocco to resume its claim to, and control over, that area.

It is also significant that POLISARIO’s activities have risen or declined in direct proportion to Algerian funding, again begging the question of whether there exists any meaningful influence by POLISARIO within the Western Saharan wilayas. And yet the dispute’s continuation has meant that foreign investment in the territory — and particularly the exploitation of offshore and onshore energy resources — has been deterred.

The effect has been that normal economic development has been denied to the inhabitants of the region for the almost-three decades since the withdrawal of Spanish colonial occupation.

Despite this, UN Secretary-General Annan said on October 18, 2006, that Morocco and POLISARIO should drop any preconditions and begin negotiations to end the dispute over Western Sahara. Annan, in his latest report advocating the six-month extension of the MINURSO mission after its routine six-month cycle ends on October 31, 2006, said that Morocco’s demand that its sovereignty over Western Sahara be recognized and that POLISARIO’s demand that there must be a referendum with independence as an option should be discussed within the negotiations.

Annan noted that the two military sides in the dispute did not have direct contact with each other, 15 years after a UN-sponsored ceasefire went into effect, and that “this continues to have a negative effect on mutual confidence and prevents the adoption of procedures that could help to stabilize the situation during critical periods.” Annan said, citing the findings of his Personal Envoy, Peter van Walsum, that the impasse did not benefit either Morocco or POLISARIO.

The UN process has ensured that, despite the realities on the ground and the legal sovereignty of Morocco over the territory, both parties have been given parity in the negotiating process. Algeria and POLISARIO have nothing to lose by protracting the process, and Morocco can neither accede to demands to relinquish territory it holds legally and physically, while at the same time the population of the region have been denied the benefits of international investment. It has been, for Algeria, an effective strategy to weaken and isolate Morocco, but there are signs that Morocco’s new initiatives to build ties with sub-Saharan African states may end-run both the Algerian and UN processes.

Nonetheless, the Western Sahara issue continues to resonates in the coffee houses around the UN in New York and around the State Department in Washington, DC, giving Algeria continued hope.


September 5, 2006

Morocco Sustains Crackdowns on Jihadist Groups, But Broader Links Remain

Analysis. By GIS Station Rabat. The Moroccan Ministry of Interior in early September 2006 was continuing its aggressive pursuit of Islamist jihadist groups, but it was evident from the latest arrests of members of the Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi group [see profile, below] that the networks established by former al-Qaida leader, Abu-Mussab al-Zarqawi, had survived the death of Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006.

See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 9, 2006: Zarqawi Killing Directly Linked to Iranian-Provided Intelligence, Raising Significant Questions.

There was strong circumstantial evidence that Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi was a direct creation of the al-Qaida “command” known as “The al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers”, which Zarqawi supervised and sponsored. Zarqawi's web of jihadist entities was reportedly taken over by a troika of overseers, including the Syrian, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (not to be confused with Abu Ayub al-Masri, currently in prison in Cairo, who has also used the nom de guerre of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir), Abdallah Rashid al-Baghdadi, and Abdul-Hadi al-Iraqi, in June 2006. This does not discount the rôle of Karim al-Mejjati, the al-Qaida senior official dispatched from Afghanistan, ostensibly by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, to assist in establishing and subsequently supervising on behalf of Zawahiri cells in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Spain. Mejjati was killed in al-Ras, Saudi Arabia, by Saudi security forces in April 2005. Two of the women involved in Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi had been in contact with Mejjati’s wife.

Moroccan counter-terrorism officials said in May 2005 that Mejjati had provided explosives training to a cell of Islamic radicals recruited from the slums surrounding Casablanca. At first, investigators thought the May 2003 terrorist attack in Casablanca was conceived and planned locally. But a suspect who later divulged Mejjati's name to interrogators led them to conclude that those responsible for the attacks were taking their strategic commands from al-Qaida's senior leadership. It is possible that “the al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers” was created directly as a result of the death of Mejjati, consolidating his Moroccan, Spanish, and possibly Bosnian links under the new leadership.

More specifically, the deployment into the field of operatives such as Mejjati and Zarqawi reflected the move of al-Qaida number two leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to bring his second-generation jihadists into the field to ensure that regional groups came under the supervision and ideological motivation of “the center”.

The fact that Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi was gearing up for operations in 2006, after the deaths of Mejjati and Zarqawi, indicated that the new level of command and control of “The al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers” continued to function. One question remains unanswered as of this point, however, is whether the command is being controlled by the troika of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Abdallah Rashid al-Baghdadi, and Abdul-Hadi al-Iraqi. Baghdadi, an Iraqi, was a major political/theological guide of Zarqawi and the entire Majlis Shura of Jihad (in Iraq and the Middle East). According to Yossef Bodansky’s authoritative 2004 book, The Secret History of the Iraq War, al-Iraqi was a senior mujahedin commander and former chief of the training complexes in the Khowst area of Iraq. Until his defection in the early/mid 1980s, Abdul-Hadi al-Iraqi was a veteran member of the Iraqi Ba’athist security and intelligence apparatus. He was then drawn to radical Islam and ultimately escaped from Iraq to join the Afghan Jihad, leaving behind a lot of closet supporters among his Ba’athist colleagues. In August 2003, Osama bin Laden personally sent Abdul-Hadi to not only escalate the Islamist Jihad in Iraq, but also to reach out to, and build cooperation with, his former Ba’athist colleagues fighting the US forces in Iraq. To expedite the anticipated escalation of the jihad, emphasis was also put on the activation of experienced cadre: veterans of Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other jihad theaters.

But what is clear is that recruitment, planning, and conduct of jihadist operations continues in “the Land of the Berbers”, and other related areas — Bosnia, Kosovo, Western Europe — with ongoing links to the al-Qaida “center”, which, at this stage, operates within a framework largely determined by Iran’s clerical leadership, overriding the underlying conflict between Shia and Sunni objectives.

Group Profile:

Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi, Morocco

aka: Ansar al-Mahdi

Background: Level of links to Iraqi-based Ansar al-Mahdi group of jihadists or to the Ansar al-Mahdi unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC: Pasdaran) not yet ascertained, but likely links with so-called al-Qaida group established by the late (Iraq-based) Abu-Mussab al-Zarqawi, “The al-Qaida Organization in the Land of the Berbers”, established in early 2005.1 Significantly, the Moroccan-based Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi2 was reportedly created after the May 2003 terrorist attack in Casablanca (and its origins appear to be directly linked to that attack), although broken up by Moroccan authorities in the months following May 2006, with the Moroccan Interior Ministry reporting that the group was no longer effective as of August 2006.

By September 1, 2006, the Moroccan Government had detained four women on charges of terrorism links, bringing to 56 the total number of arrests of Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi followers, whose cells were accused of planning large-scale attacks. Interior Minister Chakib Ben Moussa said on September 1, 2006, that four women were detained including two wives of pilots of the national airline, Royal Air Maroc (RAM). The women were believed to have financed the group, and were reportedly also prepared to stage suicide attacks in Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Suspects from the group  arrested earlier included several army and police officers. The group was believed to be plotting attacks against tourist installations, government buildings and people representing the state.

Moroccan Interior Ministry reports said that Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi intended to stage an even bigger strike than the Casablanca suicide bombings, which killed 45 people in May 2003. The women had reportedly been in contact with the wife of Karim Mejjati, an al-Qaida activist who was killed in an anti-terrorist operation in Saudi Arabia in 2005. They had given money to Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi leader Hassan Khattab to acquire weapons from narco-traffickers and to two other group members for travel to Iraq. Some of the women had told Khattab that they were willing to participate in martyr attacks in Iraq and Palestinian territories and had watched a video showing a training camp in northern Morocco.

One of the three women, known as Oum Saad, was accused of paying 150,000 dirhams ($17,400) to the suspected head of the network, Hassan Khattab, including for treatment for a heart condition. Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Ben Moussa said on August 31, 2006, that the network had 52 members (some reports claimed 56), including five soldiers, five members of the Royal Gendarmerie, and a police officer. It was planning to “announce a jihad (holy war) in the mountains of north Morocco, attack sensitive targets, foreign interests and well-known Moroccans because they represent the state or for moral reasons”, the Minister said. Arrests of the group’s members took place in six Moroccan cities, and quantities of leaflets, explosives, communications devices, “laboratory materials”, and other materials were seized.

Those arrested also included at least five former soldiers with training in the use of explosives. Interior Minister Ben Moussa told a Moroccan Parliamentary commission in August 2006 that while the recruitment of members of the military and security services by Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi was a new element in the jihadist operations in Morocco, the number was very limited and involved isolated cases. He said one of the men recruited belonged to a military music unit and another to a vehicle-servicing department.

The network was formed by Hassan Khattab who, after serving a two-year prison term, had gathered together a group of individuals, divided into a number of cells in Salé, Sidi Yahya Gharb, Sidi Sliman, Youssoufia, and Casablanca. It is likely that — in line with established jihadist and Iranian practice — Khattab was recruited while in prison.

Targets and Operations: No known successful operations conducted by Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi by the time of its penetration and break-up. Known targets of the group were reported to include Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (Socialist Union of Popular Forces, USFP)  leader and Moroccan Minister of Territorial Development, Water, & Environment, Mohamed el-Yazghi, as well as Minister of Finance & Privatization Fathallah Oualalou, and Mohamed El Gahs, the Secretary of State for Youth, both also affiliated to the USFP. A mayor and a parliamentarian were also to be abducted, as part of a jihad which was to have included bombings of key Moroccan targets. Also intended to fund activities through bank and armored car robberies.

Leader: Hassan Khattab. Note: Not to be confused with the jihadist who used the nom de guerre Abu-Khattab as the key al-Qaida fighter in Chechnya, killed by Russian forces, nor another jihadist called Hassan Khattab in Algeria. Jamaat Ansar Al Mehdi leader Hassan Khattab also uses the nom de guerre of “Abu Osama”, indicating fealty to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Footnotes:

1. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 20, 2005: Zarqawi Begins to Take His Jihad Into North Africa.

2. Ansar, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, derives from the Arabic word “helper”, and the term originally applied to some of the Companions of the Prophet. When Mohammed left Mecca for Medina, the Ansar were the Medinese who aided him and who became his devoted followers, serving in his army. The term was revived in the 19th Century to refer to the followers of the Sudanese al-Mahdi, al-Mahdi's successor, or his descendants.


November 12, 2003

POLISARIO Repatriation of Moroccan Prisoners Does Not Address Underlying Concerns in Rabat

A gesture by the Western Saharan secessionist group POLISARIO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiet al-Hamra and Rio de Oro) on November 8, 2003, to release 300 of the 914 Moroccan prisoners it had been holding for more than 20 years seemed unlikely to change the underlying strategic basics of Morocco’s position on the territory. POLISARIO had, with the UN, been seeking acceptance by Morocco of a plan by former US Secretary of State James Baker for a resolution of the Western Sahara issue.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that it had supervised the repatriation of 300 Moroccan prisoners of war released by POLISARIO. The ICRC said that the prisoners were released  in the Algerian town of Tindouf and were flown back to Morocco on November 8, 2003, significantly in an aircraft provided by the Libyan Government, which had interceded, it said, to secure their release. Since February 2003, 643 Moroccan prisoners had been, but 614 remain in detention.

The latest UN plan, devised by former US Secretary of State James Baker earlier in 2003, proposed that the inhabitants of the Western Sahara be given a large degree of autonomy for five years, after which they would vote in a referendum for independence, continued autonomy or full integration with Morocco. This plan was accepted by POLISARIO and endorsed by the UN Security Council, but was rejected by Morocco’s King Mohamed VI. The plan, although a compromise, acknowledged, in effect, that POLISARIO was a legitimate negotiating partner in the process. The Front has been financed, historically, by Algeria, and has had Libyan links; factors acknowledged by the continued use by POLISARIO of Tindouf, in Algeria, and the use of a Libyan aircraft to repatriate the former prisoners.


August 2, 2002

UN Renews Referendum Mandate for Western Sahara

The UN Security Council on July 30, 2002, renewed for six months the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) and invited former US Secretary of State James Baker to continue overseeing the mission. Resolution 1427, adopted unanimously on July 30, 2002, in the presence of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, invited Baker to continue as the Secretary-General’s special envoy in the effort, which seeks a political solution to the quarter-century-long dispute between Morocco and the Algerian-backed POLISARIO Front over Western Sahara.

The mandate of the current mission was to have expired on July 31, 2002.

Tensions have been high between Morocco and POLISARIO  regarding Western Sahara's fate, and the new resolution papers over disagreement between Security Council members as to whose claim to the disputed territory is more valid. While the United States, Britain and France back Morocco’s claim, Russia and the non-aligned states side with Algeria’s POLISARIO Front.

Most UN diplomats agreed that finding common ground for Morocco and Algeria to even begin talking was now difficult. There were four proposals as possible ways out of the impasse: a referendum in the territory, autonomy for the region under Moroccan sovereignty and two ways of dividing up the former Spanish colony. A referendum had been ruled out because the parties were unable to agree on who would take part, and Moroccan sovereignty was unacceptable to Algeria, while splitting the territory was rejected by Morocco.

Established in April 1991, the UN mission has a mandate to essentially monitor the ceasefire. With a budget exceeding $50-million as of June 1, 2002, the staff of 540 includes 231 military observers.


August 4, 2003

King of Morocco Bans Islamic Parties

King Mohammed IV of Morocco said on July 30, 2003, that religiously-, ethnically- or regionally-based political parties in the country would be banned. In essence, however, the ban applied to Islamist parties, those political groupings using Islam as a vehicle for politics.

The King, a sharif — a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed — has a strong spiritual as well as temporal leadership rôle in Morocco, which has a population which is 99 percent Muslim. He was speaking on the fourth anniversary of his accession to the throne, but significantly he was speaking just more than two months after bomb blasts in Casablanca killed 44 people, including 12 suicide bombers. The targets were almost all Moroccan Jewish facilities. Trials resumed in Morocco on July 31, 2003, of hundreds of suspected Islamist terrorists, including many not linked with the attacks.

The King said that parties with a “religious, ethnic or regional base” would be outlawed, adding: “No one can use Islam as a trampoline to power in the name of religion, or to perpetrate terrorist acts.” The King said that he would immediately push a law through parliament to ban “parties or groups claiming to monopolize Islam”.

The King’s measure would close down the Justice and Development Party, a moderate Islamic party opposed to violence, which has become the country’s third strongest party. The King said that he would not permit the spread of “religious doctrines alien to Moroccan traditions”. This was seen as a reference to the influence of Saudi Arabia, whose radical Wahabbist interpretations of Sunni Islam were said to have stirred up fundamentalism in Morocco’s poor areas and unofficial mosques. The King blamed local authorities for allowing slums to proliferate.

Meanwhile, on July 29, 2003, Algeria offered to re-establish links with Morocco. Algerian Pres. Abdelaziz Bouteflika told Morocco that he wanted “to close ranks and strengthen relations ... between our two countries”. Algeria also suffers from a major terrorist problem caused by Islamists, but the two countries remain opposed over the question of the future of Western Sahara, which Morocco claims as an integral part of the Kingdom. A UN deadline to resolve the Western Sahara conflict expired on July 31, 2003, with no resolution. There were signs of movement towards resolution when the POLISARIO Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguiet al-Hamra and Rio de Oro) signaled recently that it could accept autonomy within Morocco. 


January 17, 2001

Morocco's King Mohammed Visits Libya

Morocco's King Mohammed left Libya on January 16, 2001, after a 24-hour visit ostensibly designed to boost economic cooperation and political dialogue between the two states. It was the King's first trip to Libya since he succeeded his father, King Hassan, in July 1999. King Mohammed then left for Cameroon, where he was to attend the Franco-African summit on January 17, 2001. The King was accompanied by a delegation including the ministers of foreign affairs, finance, agriculture, trade and transport. Libya and Morocco are members of the five-nation Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) but their bilateral trade remains below potential at around 1.46-billion Moroccan dirhams ($138-million) per year. 


September 20, 1999

King Mohammed VI Takes Firm Grasp of Moroccan Leadership

Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who assumed the throne on the death of his father, King Hassan, 70, on July 23, 1999, has moved quickly in the past two months to end a debate on the future of the 400-year-old dynasty. The new King's success, thus far, in maintaining stability in Morocco is seen as evidence of the extensive preparation made during the past year or more for his succession. However, King Mohammed continues to maintain a number of his father's key ministers and advisors in place.

King Mohammed said that he would speed up social and economic reforms to bridge a widening gap between rural and urban areas, create jobs for more than two-million unemployed and modernize the education system. He has created an independent arbitration body to look into demands for compensation by families of some 112 activists whom the Government acknowledges disappeared during the 1960s and 1970s during social and political unrest. The King also appointed a former college colleague and diplomat, Hassan Aourid, 37, as official spokesman for the Royal Palace.

The move, the first of its kind in Morocco, was established direct channels with the media. Prime Minister Youssoufi, 75, has close ties to the new King, who regards him very much as part of the family, but there was concern expressed among some diplomats in Rabat about Interior Minister Driss Basri, whose influence is strong in many key ministries. As the Interior Minister in successive governments for 25 years, Basri enjoyed a close relationship with King Hassan, who had rejected opposition calls to remove him from Youssoufi's Government. Clearly, King Mohammed is likely to bring in his own group of young reformist technocrats to gradually replace some conservative royal advisors in the Makhzen, the powerful and secretive court hierarchy, but at present he needs ministers of the strength of Driss Basri to sustain domestic calm.

Basri is widely seen as the Makhzen strongman.


 

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