Morocco

A YOUNG, energetic, well-educated, “modern” heir to a line which has ruled the country since 1649, King Hassan II succeeded to the throne of Morocco in 1960. Toward the end of 1962, he introduced a “democratic, socialist, and popular” constitution under which Morocco, already the freest country south of the Pyrenees, behind its absolutist exterior, was to become endowed in the space of a year with all the institutions of a functioning constitutional monarchy. Today the old freedom is gone.

Morocco is the only kingdom, and the only newly independent Muslim African country, to have a coastline which is both Atlantic and Mediterranean. Along with only five other countries, it is at once African and Arab, but its Arabism is mitigated by the presence of Berbers — highland herdsmen and Saharan Blue Men, who actually speak Berber and no Arabic — and its Africanism by its relative fertility, prosperity, and temperate climate. With 170,000 square miles divided between plain and mountain, with agricultural and mineral riches, with cities and towns, factories, roads, ports, and hotels (most of which were built during the French protectorate), Morocco appears to be a paradise of development if one comes from, say, Iraq or Saudi Arabia.

The three political parties which express the will of the 12 million Moroccans are the rightwing Istiqlal, the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces, and the Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions, which supports the King. Istiqlal means “Independence.” Its leader, Allal el-Fassi, a man in late middle age, resembles Franco in appearance and, his opponents say, in character. If Morocco had not had an effective monarch, Muhammad V, at the moment of its independence, el-Fassi would no doubt have become the Bourguiba of Morocco; but by now frustration has broken his spirit.

Until last January he was Minister of Islamic Affairs, and his younger associates occupied various other ministries. Then King Hassan turned on the Istiqlal, dropping three of its leaders from his Cabinet. The reaction was especially bitter because just a month before, the party had done all in its power to get out the yes vote in the referendum which approved the new constitution. Despite its estrangement from power and the pungent attacks it suffered from the royalist press during the election campaign, the Istiqlal won 41 out of 144 seats in the House of Representatives. It is the party which claims Mauritania and most of the Algerian Sahara.

The UNFP, or National Union of Popular Forces, which is usually called by foreign commentators “the opposition of the left,” sprang into being in 1960 as a sizable splinter from the Istiqlal. The UNFP is intricately involved with the Moroccan trade unions; and the head of the UMT (equivalent to our AFL-CIO) tries to dominate the UNFP chiefs, and they try to dominate him. The UNFP is the big-city party, the party of the intellectuals, and the only Moroccan party that the Algerian F.L.N., the Egyptian Arab Socialist Union, and the Syro-Iraqi Baath can contemplate without retching.

The King’s bloc

When Hassan II promulgated his constitution in late 1962 the referendum turned up a yes vote of over 90 percent despite a UNFP boycott, whereupon the King (who speaks better French than most of the 160,000 Frenchmen resident in his realm) turned his eyes toward Europe and the Gaullist UNR, a group which, with the aid of referendums, De Gaulle had used to transform France from anarchy into a monarchy. Hassan II told Ahmed Reda Guedira to form a Union for the New Republic for Morocco. Guedira, a childhood friend of the King’s, the director of the Royal Cabinet, the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of Agriculture, found time to launch the new party in March, 1963, just as Hassan II was leaving for his state visit to the United States. Named the Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions — the Arabic initials are JDMD, but everyone calls it the FDIC (pronounced fuh-deek’) — it grouped together several small parties. The opposition quickly dubbed it “the King’s bloc.”

Guedira is a curious and brilliant character, about thirty, elegant in Italian-cut suits, with the gloomy and cynical good looks of a bullfighter. His editorials in his papers Clarté and Les Phares ("Beacons”) during the two months leading up to the first elections are gems of polemical French. He spared no words against el-Fassi, caricaturing him unmercifully as a muddled old mullah and a would-be caudillo, or against the UNFP’s tendency to veer with winds from Algeria, Egypt, Baathland, and even from farther East. The Istiqlal papers and the Arabic At-Tahrir of the UNFP attacked Guedira and his FDIC with something like the same candor, although with less talent.

The prestige of the monarchy was high, and even the stupidest peasant was supposed to see that the FDIC was the King’s chosen instrument, helped by the friendly advice of local mayors, governors, policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, judges, relief officials, caids, sheiks, and muqaddams — all of whom got their paychecks from one of Guedira’s ministries or the Palace. But when May 17 came, the machinery somehow slipped. The FDIC took only 69 out of 144 seats; and 7 out of 9 ministers, all FDIC-supported, were defeated at the polls. Not only did the Istiqlal win a surprising 41 seats, but the UNFP came up with 28, and the independents won 6. The FDIC lacked a majority.

Consternation in Rabat

The elections had been managed as well as they could be, under democratic conditions; the King’s bloc was certain that the Istiqlal and the UNFP deserved annihilation; but still the opposition had come up with 75 out of 144 seats. Maybe democracy was not such a good idea for a country in which people do not know what’s good for them. At this moment of bitter rumination four prosperous gentlemen of the Istiqlal, all deputies newly elected, dispatched an open letter to the American Embassy to protest the FDIC’s alleged use of American grain to buy votes. They were arrested for “intelligence with a foreign power” and were released provisionally only at the end of August, as a measure of clemency to mark the birth of the Crown Prince, Sidi Muhammad. The government next proceeded to the systematic elimination of every civil servant suspected of Istiqlal sympathies and fined two Istiqlal papers for falsehood.

The Istiqlal screeched ever more loudly, despite the fines, as pressure on the party grew. For two months the UNFP and the UMT had the pleasure of seeing their greatest enemy and parent forced to submit to every kind of harassment. Commentators on Moroccan affairs freely hypothesized Palace-UNFP or Palace-UMT rapprochements as the only way to achieve a manageable parliament over the dead body of the senior party.

Then, on July 16 the Palace struck at the UNFP, and more brutally than it had ever done at the Istiqlal. Over a hundred UNFP leaders, twenty-one of them elected deputies, were arrested at a national council meeting at Casablanca, and simultaneous arrests all over the country raised the total number of arrests to “not hundreds, but thousands,” in the words of the UNFP paper AtTahrir, before it was forced to close down. An official release said the national police had been following for months the growth of an armed conspiracy and that “important arms caches have recently been discovered which have led to the arrest of a certain number of plotters.” The border with Algeria was temporarily closed. Alger-Républicain urged “Moroccan progressive forces” to “unite against feudalism and reaction.”

As it happened, the arrests came just as the UNFP was deciding to boycott the “masquerade” of the forthcoming municipal elections. Fhe Istiqlal and the UMT arrived at the same boycott decision during the following week, leaving the FDIC as the parti unique. The government responded that the series of elections scheduled through October would go on just the same, that withdrawals of candidacies were illegal, and that anyone who tried to keep anyone else from voting would go to jail for from five to twenty years.

In this manner Hassan II canceled his oppositions, putting large numbers of their militants in prison. A show trial of the UNFP plotters, of whom 104 were indicted (others escaped to Algeria), was promised. His throne, his lineage, his ceremonial parasol for the Friday prayers have not prevented the young King of this agreeable country from becoming a Ben Bella, a Nasser, a Touré, Tubman, Bourguiba, Sukarno (the list is endless), or what Allal el-Fassi or Mehdi Ben Barka or any other UNFP leader would become if either had enough power.

The French newspaper Le Monde said, commenting on the UNFP jailing, “In Africa, and especially in the Arab countries, the borderline between opposition and sedition is often imprecise, and those in power are tempted to discredit and break their adversaries by accusing them of the blackest designs.” Hassan II was already top man when he discovered that democracy was inefficient and national solidarity essential. The current heads of state of Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, France, to name just a few, reached the same conclusions before they came into power and applied them after successful coups d’etat.

Patriotism as a weapon

Morocco is a country in which 80 percent of the people are totally illiterate; 80 percent live in the country (most of them under tent or thatch); 50 percent are under twenty years of age; and women have only recently been enfranchised. For the vast majority life is more or less as it was in the Middle Ages, aside from roads, transistor radios, mounting population pressure, and rising expectations.

This describes the Morocco known to most Moroccans, not the beautiful boulevards and beaches and luxurious hotels and auberges patronized by tourists. The King’s declared aim is to guide his people toward slow but sure development with the aid of Western capital, which is abundant. He sees the Istiqlal as an opportunistic party of Old Turbans and reactionaries, and the UNFP as an importer of foreign and retrograde isms from points East. To put it briefly, he wants to make Morocco another Spain; his opponents want to turn it into another Afro-Arab country.

In terms of food and jobs and the slow buildup toward economic independence, the policy of the King and his FDIC might win the approval of most of those who agree with the economic theories prevailing in the Western world. In terms of pride and militancy, with accompanying emphasis on nationalization and abhorrence of neocolonialism, the UNFP and its partner, the UMT, excite the automatic sympathy of most Africans, Asians, South Americans, and all Communists.

Can Hassan II get along without the UNFP and the Istiqlal and their internal and external supporters? In the short term his assets look a lot better than those of, say, Hussein of Jordan. Hassan’s army and police forces are loyal and very well equipped. The idea of a monarchy is much more popular and firmly entrenched in Morocco than anywhere else in Africa, and the personality of Hassan inspires wide confidence. The King’s only real threat comes from the immediate East — Algeria, Egypt, the Baath — and from those of his subjects who are responsive to the signals of those areas.

By the end of October violent radio propaganda threatened to escalate the fighting on the Algerian border into real war. President Ben Bella of Algeria is in more trouble internally than King Hassan of Morocco, and both have seized on patriotism as a way out. As a matter of fact, the French did amputate much Moroccan territory during the 1950s, when France thought that Algeria was “French forever,” and Morocco has sound claims to areas on its unmarked southern border. But the Algerians apparently fired the first shots, capturing two frontier posts occupied by Moroccans in July of 1962.

In spite of the friction with Algeria, the UNFP and the Istiqlal remained in opposition to the King. The “plotters” remained in jail — more than one hundred of them. Guedira remained number two man and head of the FDIC. And the opposition papers still attacked Hassan’s “arbitrary regime.”