Pundits do not, as a rule, make good prophets, but that does not stop them from aligning themselves with various scenarios of what will happen in the Arab world in the wake of the regime change in Tunisia. While Egypt followed Tunisia with its own serious domestic uprisings calling for changing the government, and Yemen may well face the same challenge, a broad brush approach is hardly useful in defining what US policy options are or ought to be.
Morocco is a case in point. It is a strong monarchy with a representative Parliament, and its King enjoys a unique religious and political leadership status with his people. It is a country that has moved away from authoritarian behavior and invested in institutional change that is opening political space for its citizens and responsible opposition to critique government policies, exercise individual freedoms, and seek opportunities from a market-centered economy.
Morocco is not Tunisia or Egypt or Yemen. It has steadily and coherently worked to enlarge opportunities for its people and reduce conditions that undermine stability – whether through programs to reduce poverty and its drag on economic and social development, or to empower women and to encourage youth to take greater ownership of their future. This solid record of accomplishments has been referred to as the “Moroccan exception.”
A great deal of real and tangible progress has been made in Morocco to allow for popular expression through a flourishing civil society and free elections. Current efforts to address the needs of the poor through projects like the National Human Development Initiative and affordable housing programs continue to contribute to raising the standard of living of the most disadvantaged sectors of society. And while much more remains to be accomplished to advance further political reforms, the King's latest effort to undertake a thorough overhaul of the judiciary to ensure its independence is yet another progressive step forward that distinguishes Morocco from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa where regimes have been slow to rebuild a positive relationship between the State and the people.
Some analysts lately have pointed out that the King of Morocco enjoys popular legitimacy and support in the country by virtue of his role as the Kingdom's religious leader and his responsibilities as Commander of the Faithful. While this is true, it is not the whole truth. In fact, the King’s legitimacy in Morocco is, as importantly if not largely, the result of his efforts to redefine the citizen-State relationship through the kind of steady reforms that are lacking elsewhere in this region. Morocco has never held itself out as a model for others and has not undertaken these reforms in order to offer anyone any lessons. Reforms in Morocco are Moroccan inspired and have been the product of a consensus between the monarchy, political parties, civil society, and the people themselves through a process of dialogue and public debate.
While Morocco’s experience and the specifics of its ongoing process of liberalization may not be possible for other societies in the MENA region, there are certainly some lessons to be learned here. The international community, particularly the United States, should note that long term peace, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East and North Africa will require encouraging the kinds of reforms that Morocco has been implementing for more than a decade. Morocco didn’t wait for a crisis to begin its progressive policies. Morocco confronted similar challenges by making choices that promote both stability and democracy. Those who wish to promote peace, freedom, growth, and prosperity in the region would do well to recognize and provide meaningful support to those already on the right road and seek their quiet advice and counsel on how best to help those who are struggling to move forward without destabilizing their countries.
By Edward M. Gabriel served as U.S. Ambassador to Morocco from 1997 to 2001, and currently advises the government of Morocco.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Staging a Human Rights Atrocity
By JENNIFER RUBIN - 11.23.2010 - 5:25 PM
It has become a familiar pattern: violent provocateurs create a confrontation with lightly armed anti-riot squads. The state officials defend themselves. The instigators claim there has been an atrocity. The flotilla incident? Why, yes. But also a recent confrontation between Morocco and the violent Polisario Front, which refuses to accept a Moroccan autonomy plan for the Western Sahara and keeps refugees warehoused in dismal camps in Algeria.
As the Israeli government did in the flotilla incident, the government of Morocco has put out a video of a recent incident in Laayoune. This video, which is exceptionally graphic but should be reviewed in full to appreciate the extent of the Polisario Front’s propaganda campaign, shows peaceful demonstrators in a tent city (who came to protest overcrowding, totally unrelated to the dispute in the Western Sahara) dispersed without incident by Moroccan police, loaded onto government-provided buses, and exiting the area. Then onto the scene come the Polisario Front, with knives, rock-throwers, incendiary devices, and much brutality. What unfolds — vicious attacks on the police, the ambush of an ambulance, buildings burning in the city center, a near beheading of a policeman, etc. — is evidence that the Polisario Front is the aggressor in this incident.
And yet the Polisario Front, with a willing media, played the incident up as a human rights violation — by the government of Morocco. This report duly regurgitates the Polisario Front’s claim that the Moroccan government was guilty “of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Laayoune and warned the international community that if it did not intervene to find a peaceful solution, ‘the Sahrawi people will resort to all measures, including war.’” This AP report tells us: “Moroccan forces raided a protest camp in the disputed territory of Western Sahara on Monday and unrest spread to a nearby city, with buildings ablaze and rioters roaming the streets. Five Moroccan security officials and one demonstrator were killed, reports said.” One would think that the government’s forces instigated the violence with the peaceful protesters there, and it would be hard to glean — as the video shows — that the protest camp had been dismantled before the Polisario Front forces attacked the police.
So what is going on here? Well, it seems that the incident came just as there was to begin the “re-opening of informal U.N.-sponsored talks Monday in Manhasset, New York, between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which long waged a guerrilla war on Morocco in a bid to gain independence for the desert region and its native Saharawi people.” Hmm. Sort of like the killing of Jews that inevitably breaks out when “peace” talks begin between Israel and the PA.
Whether the group is the PA or the Polisario Front, the modus operandi is the same — stage violence, claim victimhood, label the incident as a human rights atrocity, and thereby delay or disrupt peace negotiations that might resolve the conflict and leave the terrorists without a cause. You would think the media would be on to it. Unless, of course, they really don’t care about getting the story straight.
It has become a familiar pattern: violent provocateurs create a confrontation with lightly armed anti-riot squads. The state officials defend themselves. The instigators claim there has been an atrocity. The flotilla incident? Why, yes. But also a recent confrontation between Morocco and the violent Polisario Front, which refuses to accept a Moroccan autonomy plan for the Western Sahara and keeps refugees warehoused in dismal camps in Algeria.
As the Israeli government did in the flotilla incident, the government of Morocco has put out a video of a recent incident in Laayoune. This video, which is exceptionally graphic but should be reviewed in full to appreciate the extent of the Polisario Front’s propaganda campaign, shows peaceful demonstrators in a tent city (who came to protest overcrowding, totally unrelated to the dispute in the Western Sahara) dispersed without incident by Moroccan police, loaded onto government-provided buses, and exiting the area. Then onto the scene come the Polisario Front, with knives, rock-throwers, incendiary devices, and much brutality. What unfolds — vicious attacks on the police, the ambush of an ambulance, buildings burning in the city center, a near beheading of a policeman, etc. — is evidence that the Polisario Front is the aggressor in this incident.
And yet the Polisario Front, with a willing media, played the incident up as a human rights violation — by the government of Morocco. This report duly regurgitates the Polisario Front’s claim that the Moroccan government was guilty “of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Laayoune and warned the international community that if it did not intervene to find a peaceful solution, ‘the Sahrawi people will resort to all measures, including war.’” This AP report tells us: “Moroccan forces raided a protest camp in the disputed territory of Western Sahara on Monday and unrest spread to a nearby city, with buildings ablaze and rioters roaming the streets. Five Moroccan security officials and one demonstrator were killed, reports said.” One would think that the government’s forces instigated the violence with the peaceful protesters there, and it would be hard to glean — as the video shows — that the protest camp had been dismantled before the Polisario Front forces attacked the police.
So what is going on here? Well, it seems that the incident came just as there was to begin the “re-opening of informal U.N.-sponsored talks Monday in Manhasset, New York, between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which long waged a guerrilla war on Morocco in a bid to gain independence for the desert region and its native Saharawi people.” Hmm. Sort of like the killing of Jews that inevitably breaks out when “peace” talks begin between Israel and the PA.
Whether the group is the PA or the Polisario Front, the modus operandi is the same — stage violence, claim victimhood, label the incident as a human rights atrocity, and thereby delay or disrupt peace negotiations that might resolve the conflict and leave the terrorists without a cause. You would think the media would be on to it. Unless, of course, they really don’t care about getting the story straight.
Moroccan parliament to probe W. Sahara violence
RABAT — Moroccan members of parliament on Monday decided to set up a commission to probe the violent events on November 8 that marked the dismantling of a settlement camp in the Western Sahara.
"It's the first time that a parliamentary commission of inquiry will work in the (Western) Sahara," Saad-Eddine Othmani, an MP from the opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) and one of the vice-presidents of the commission, told AFP.
According to a statement published Monday by the parliament, the commission will investigate "the events at the Gdim Izik camp and the acts of violence recently witnessed in Laayoune," the chief town in the Moroccan-controlled territory.
Moroccan security forces on November 8 stormed and dismantled the Gdim Izik camp erected outside Laayoune by some 15,000 Sahrawis who objected to living conditions inside the town.
Violence erupted, in which Morocco says that 11 security officers and two civilians were killed, while the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the Western Sahara, says the casualty toll was far higher.
"Among the objectives of this commission, which will work for at least 45 days, are the pinpointing of responsibilities for what happened in Laayoune, from the putting up of the first tents right up to the events that followed the dismantling of the camp," Othmani said.
On November 25, the European parliament said it favoured a United Nations inquiry into the violence and voiced "the greatest concern about the significant deterioration of the situation in Western Sahara."
Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched Sunday in the northern port city of Casablanca to denounce what they saw as a "biased and unjust" resolution by the European parliament, accusing Spain's opposition Popular Party of being behind it.
Spain was the colonial power in the Western Sahara until 1975, when settlers left and Morocco later annexed the phosphate-rich territory.
Morocco has already rejected the notion of an investigation into the violence by the UN force deployed in the Western Sahara, MINURSO, which is monitoring a 1991 ceasefire between government troops and the Polisario Front and is mandated to oversee a referendum on the territory's future.
Polisario, backed notably by neighbouring Algeria, wants a UN-organised referendum that would give Sahrawis a choice among three options: being part of Moroccan territory, independence or self-government under Moroccan sovereignty.
Morocco will only agree to broad autonomy under its sovereignty and rejects any notion of independence.
"It's the first time that a parliamentary commission of inquiry will work in the (Western) Sahara," Saad-Eddine Othmani, an MP from the opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) and one of the vice-presidents of the commission, told AFP.
According to a statement published Monday by the parliament, the commission will investigate "the events at the Gdim Izik camp and the acts of violence recently witnessed in Laayoune," the chief town in the Moroccan-controlled territory.
Moroccan security forces on November 8 stormed and dismantled the Gdim Izik camp erected outside Laayoune by some 15,000 Sahrawis who objected to living conditions inside the town.
Violence erupted, in which Morocco says that 11 security officers and two civilians were killed, while the Polisario Front, which wants independence for the Western Sahara, says the casualty toll was far higher.
"Among the objectives of this commission, which will work for at least 45 days, are the pinpointing of responsibilities for what happened in Laayoune, from the putting up of the first tents right up to the events that followed the dismantling of the camp," Othmani said.
On November 25, the European parliament said it favoured a United Nations inquiry into the violence and voiced "the greatest concern about the significant deterioration of the situation in Western Sahara."
Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched Sunday in the northern port city of Casablanca to denounce what they saw as a "biased and unjust" resolution by the European parliament, accusing Spain's opposition Popular Party of being behind it.
Spain was the colonial power in the Western Sahara until 1975, when settlers left and Morocco later annexed the phosphate-rich territory.
Morocco has already rejected the notion of an investigation into the violence by the UN force deployed in the Western Sahara, MINURSO, which is monitoring a 1991 ceasefire between government troops and the Polisario Front and is mandated to oversee a referendum on the territory's future.
Polisario, backed notably by neighbouring Algeria, wants a UN-organised referendum that would give Sahrawis a choice among three options: being part of Moroccan territory, independence or self-government under Moroccan sovereignty.
Morocco will only agree to broad autonomy under its sovereignty and rejects any notion of independence.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Western Sahara : Chronology and Fact Sheet on Disturbances in Laayoune, Morocco
November 15, 2010 Chronology and Fact Sheet on Disturbances in Laayoune, Morocco
On October 9, residents of Laayoune began setting up a symbolic protest camp in the desert east of the city. People came to the camp from their homes in Laayoune to demonstrate for additional housing and job opportunities to accommodate the growing population.
Over the past year, there has been a significant increase in the influx of refugees from the Tindouf camps in Algeria. The people in the camp believed the recent arrivals received preferential treatment in terms of housing and subsidies based on specific tribal affiliations and the government’s desire to settle newcomers as quickly as possible. Over the next two weeks, Moroccan authorities met with the protestors, who numbered in the thousands, to discuss their grievances.
Committees made up of public authorities, sheiks, elected officials, and representatives of civil society began meeting regularly. What began as a peaceful protest quickly deteriorated into a dangerous situation when a number of known criminals and pro-Polisario militants infiltrated the camp and tried to gain control. On October 24, there was a violent altercation that led to the death of a 14-year old boy.
The car in which the youth was riding attempted to run a checkpoint and came under fire from authorities. After shots were fired and the vehicle stopped, weapons were found in the possession of some of the passengers. In investigating this episode, authorities discovered the infiltration by the criminal element and by pro-Polisario militants who tried to hijack this social protest having nothing to do with Polisario political aims. Last week, authorities concluded that the people in the camp were in danger.
After securing the judicial authorization required by Moroccan law, the decision was made to dismantle the camp in the early morning hours Monday November 8, 2010. The time was determined by the fact that there were the fewest number of people in the camp on Monday mornings, since many of them regularly left the camp to return to their homes in Laayoune for the weekends. On Monday morning, before 6 a.m. local time, authorities sent helicopters with megaphones asking people to leave the camp. A majority of them complied with the request and left. From 6:30-7:45 a.m., anti-riot forces moved into the camp with only anti-riot equipment and water cannons, carrying no weapons. A small group of militants inside the camp fought the anti-riot forces with bottled gas canisters, Molotov cocktails, and knives.
70 Moroccan policemen were injured and 10 killed by the militant group inside the camp. Immediately after the camp was disbanded, small armed groups from the camp went into the city of Laayoune and set fire to targeted buildings including a TV station and a bank. The militants beheaded an unarmed policeman. Following these events, 65 people carrying weapons were arrested and await prosecution. The Polisario and its supporters have made a number of unfounded allegations trying to cover up the deplorable violence committed by their backers.
After examining the camp site, the UN Secretary-General's representative, MINURSO head Hany Abdel-Aziz, gave an account that countered these allegations. He told French daily Le Monde "I saw no trace of bullet cartridges" in the camp authorities dismantled outside Laayoune. Instead, he was “amazed by the number of butane gas bottles" which militants used to set fires.
In addition, Spanish news agency EFE admitted to erroneously publishing 4-year-old Gaza photos supplied by pro-Polisario sources that falsely identified the infant victims as coming from Monday’s unrest in Laayoune. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said exploiting the photos of injured Palestinian infants was “disinformation” to mislead international public opinion and distort Morocco’s record. He reiterated Palestinian support of Morocco’s efforts to settle the Western Sahara conflict by peaceful means.
On October 9, residents of Laayoune began setting up a symbolic protest camp in the desert east of the city. People came to the camp from their homes in Laayoune to demonstrate for additional housing and job opportunities to accommodate the growing population.
Over the past year, there has been a significant increase in the influx of refugees from the Tindouf camps in Algeria. The people in the camp believed the recent arrivals received preferential treatment in terms of housing and subsidies based on specific tribal affiliations and the government’s desire to settle newcomers as quickly as possible. Over the next two weeks, Moroccan authorities met with the protestors, who numbered in the thousands, to discuss their grievances.
Committees made up of public authorities, sheiks, elected officials, and representatives of civil society began meeting regularly. What began as a peaceful protest quickly deteriorated into a dangerous situation when a number of known criminals and pro-Polisario militants infiltrated the camp and tried to gain control. On October 24, there was a violent altercation that led to the death of a 14-year old boy.
The car in which the youth was riding attempted to run a checkpoint and came under fire from authorities. After shots were fired and the vehicle stopped, weapons were found in the possession of some of the passengers. In investigating this episode, authorities discovered the infiltration by the criminal element and by pro-Polisario militants who tried to hijack this social protest having nothing to do with Polisario political aims. Last week, authorities concluded that the people in the camp were in danger.
After securing the judicial authorization required by Moroccan law, the decision was made to dismantle the camp in the early morning hours Monday November 8, 2010. The time was determined by the fact that there were the fewest number of people in the camp on Monday mornings, since many of them regularly left the camp to return to their homes in Laayoune for the weekends. On Monday morning, before 6 a.m. local time, authorities sent helicopters with megaphones asking people to leave the camp. A majority of them complied with the request and left. From 6:30-7:45 a.m., anti-riot forces moved into the camp with only anti-riot equipment and water cannons, carrying no weapons. A small group of militants inside the camp fought the anti-riot forces with bottled gas canisters, Molotov cocktails, and knives.
70 Moroccan policemen were injured and 10 killed by the militant group inside the camp. Immediately after the camp was disbanded, small armed groups from the camp went into the city of Laayoune and set fire to targeted buildings including a TV station and a bank. The militants beheaded an unarmed policeman. Following these events, 65 people carrying weapons were arrested and await prosecution. The Polisario and its supporters have made a number of unfounded allegations trying to cover up the deplorable violence committed by their backers.
After examining the camp site, the UN Secretary-General's representative, MINURSO head Hany Abdel-Aziz, gave an account that countered these allegations. He told French daily Le Monde "I saw no trace of bullet cartridges" in the camp authorities dismantled outside Laayoune. Instead, he was “amazed by the number of butane gas bottles" which militants used to set fires.
In addition, Spanish news agency EFE admitted to erroneously publishing 4-year-old Gaza photos supplied by pro-Polisario sources that falsely identified the infant victims as coming from Monday’s unrest in Laayoune. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said exploiting the photos of injured Palestinian infants was “disinformation” to mislead international public opinion and distort Morocco’s record. He reiterated Palestinian support of Morocco’s efforts to settle the Western Sahara conflict by peaceful means.
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