From the Green March
MOROCCO centre of the riots against the high cost
In the towns on the Mediterranean coast north of the Rif, where repression was apparently the fiercest, the student those of the poor neighbourhoods. unspecified number of deaths were reported from Nador as well as a number to the hunger riots resulting from the demonstrations that took place in the nearby towns such as Salouan, Zaiou (where there is a sugar refinery), Ferkhana and Zghan-Zghan the iron mines management), where a large part of the conurbation
The victims of the revolts that spread through a number of Moroccan towns in January 1984 should now be added to the death toll of hundreds that resulted from the riots in Casablanca in June 1981. (1) The police, special intervention brigades and Interior Ministry auxiliaries were joined by army units - some of which had been recalled from the Western
Sahara — in order to re-establish the strong-arm order of the monarchy.
King Hassan II is going to be able to add another winged phrase to that he came out with in August 1972, after an attempted coup d'etat, 'I am prepared to eliminate one third of the population to save the rest' that of June 1981, 'I am ready to eliminate 5,000 or 500,000 hoodlums if necessary to re-establish order'
At the moment, the political parties assembled around the king, in his national union for the annexation of the Western Sahara, have only one burning desire - to remove the trouble-makers from the political scene as quickly as possible so that they can continue playing at the farce of
The king is talking about elections in March....The royal democracy.
family and their close allies are speeding up the transfer of funds to the
United States to fatten their real-estate holdings so that they are prepared for any eventuality, and the army is continuing its military-control manoeuvres in the areas around the towns - particularly Casablanca - where the broad avenues allow easy access to armoured cars.
Charles LEGRAND
Scattered reports about the popular revolts in Morocco had been going around shadowed by the comment on the Tunisfirmed by the international press.
the proximity of the Spanish enclaves
Ceuta and Melilla to the north Moroccan towns of Nador and El Hoceima allowed knowledge of the scope of the demonstrations and repression to become known at the end of January. (2)
The royal palace had learnt from the
June 1981 experience, nounced that there would be across-theprice rises for all the basic food.
stuffs subsidised by the government that
The present rises, demanded as
International Monetary
Fund (IMF), were to be spread out over several months. The bitter pill was sup posed to go down all the more easily as the austerity measures had received sup.
port of a vote in an extraordinary session of the parliament.
not even all these precautions, even given the decline in the class struggle owing to the policies of the opposition, were enough to diffuse or forestall sharp reactions by the 25-million have less than 50 cents a day to live on.
The various facets of the austerity plan have provoked discontent among many different sectors of the Moroccan people.
The proposed measures came at the same time as the price rises for electricity, gas and petrol - without mentioning a proposal to raise the registration fees for the
They were to include a tax of 500 dirham (60 to 70 US dollars) for each exit from Morocco - which would particularly hit at the workers living near the Spanish enclaves - as well as a tax increase that would affect most traders for example. geoisie would bribe their way out of pay-
Since summer 1983 a wave of disconmany questions had been It broke through the floodgates on January 1984. From January 5 a school students strike affected most education establishments. towns, such as Safi and Agadir, the inhabitants from the popular neighbourhoods joined the demonstrations. On January 9, in Marrakesh, a secondary students strike led to the burning of several schools, and several young demonstrators were killed by the police. In Fez and the surrounding region, high schools and universities were on strike from January 12. Young people from the popular neighbourhoods were arrested, as well as political and trade-union activists.
It was the same scenario at Meknes, hile student strikes and sporadic demor rations took place at Rabat on Janual
The state of siege that existed in Casablanca during the summit of the Islamic Conference Organisation, held there undoubtedly small number of demonstrations that occurred in this city, although this economic capital of the kingdom and its huge belt of shanty towns was the
The high level of tension in the villages of the region is explained by the high cost of seed potatoes, which the peasants could not pay. School students in El Hoceima were joined in their demonstrations by all the young people and
There was a veritable popular uprising at Tetouan on January 21, which was harshly put down by the army. The favourite targets for the demonstrators in these towns were the buildings that symbolise the power, the wealth and the repression of the monarchy.
Hassan II, accompanied by his heir and his youngest son, solemnly addressed his 'dear people' on January 22. First, he denounced the many-headed Marxist-Leninist-Khomeinyist-Zionist had allegedly done its worst to keep the Islamic summit from successfully taking place and to prevent the return of President Hosni Moubarak's Egypt to the fold that there would not, after all, be price rises in January.
The king went on to mete out punishments to some of his subjects. Those in Marrakesh for example, would not have the happiness of seeing him in the next few months - unless a few hundred notables came to ask him for a royal pardon. He promised to make an example of trouble-makers, whatever their age - a sinister warning given that several hunddred youngsters are languishing in Moroccan gaols - and take severe action against a vast category of those who spread
Some days previously Hassan II had already reminded the inhabitants of the Rif that they knew each other well -referring to the carnage carried out by General Oufkir in 1959 in this region, which is traditionally hostile to the royal
Although Hassan II, like Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, has had to withdraw momentarily faced with the scope of popular discontent, repression will nonetheless continue to be his favourite form of relationship with his 'subjects.
The social and economic backdrop will remain the same in the period ahead.
See Inprecor (French edition), No 106.
International Viewpoint, No 46, February
See the Bulletin du Comite de lutte contre la repression au Maroc (CLCRM), January 1984.
For an analysis of recent events in Tunisia see International Viewpoint, No 45, January
International Viewpoint 27 February 1984
The politics of austerity practised by the regime during the last few years, which flow directly from the injunctions of the IMF, are today driving the majority of the Moroccan people to the limit of what is bearable. They are paying for the brutal social and economic choices made by the big bourgeoisie and the royal family since the beginning of the 1960s. These caused the present large budgetary deficit and the foreign debt that together, including the military debt, total 13 billion dollars. It is these debts that the IMF have focused on.
The present economic stagnation and recession are linked equally to several factors. One is the orienting of the economy towards export agriculture. Another is the policy of trying to fit Moroccan industries into the niches to which they have been relegated by the employers of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the United States. Finally, there is the weakness of productive investments by a possessing class that prefers to speculate in real estate and indulge in extravagant personal The contribution of industry to the Gross Domestic Product has stuck at 15 per cent for the last 15 years.
The growth in the public sector after independence in 1956 - where employment is now to be cut - and emigration - which is now coming up against the closed frontiers of the BEC - could not compensate for the effects of the massive rural exodus of ruined small peasants. This was caused by the greater concentration of land and the new agricultural aims of the big and middle owners. drought of the last few years has only served to cram yet more people into the swollen shanty towns that hold 20 per cent of the country's population.
A look at industrial investments from 1973 to 1982 shows that the bulk of them have been concentrated in Casablanca (60 per cent of investment and 55 per cent of projects and jobs) and along the coastal towns from Tangiers to Agadir. Very few towns in the interior benefited. This distortion of development is also one of the weightiest factors in the social
The policy of big turnkey' (i.e. ready for use) industrial projects, which bring big pay-offs for the local go-betweens, keeps getting bogged down in the problems arising from questionable industrial choices — lines of activity completely dependent on the ups and downs of the world capitalist market. Moreover, it is being undermined by the fall in the world price for phosphates, a primary product from which Morocco, third producer in the world, obtains a third of its income. The contracts with the Soviet Union on production and transport of phosphates are an insecure economic prop, not to mention those made with the Polish re-
Nevertheless, they have led the Party for Progress and Socialism (PPS), the pro-Soviet organisation in Morocco, into some convoluted analyses of the regime having some anti-imperialist sides.
Industries such as textiles and food International Viewpoint 27 February 1984 processing that produce under contracts for companies in the imperialist countries, have suffered the repercussions of the EEC's economic crisis and the protection-
The story of the tomato concentrate factory at Kenitra is a caricatural example. Having been built by the British Heinz group, it was closed after three years. In fact, the subsidies paid by the BEC to its own tomato conbrought a drop in prices that made the Moroccan factory non-competitive. (5) So today, Morocco has to resort to imports to satisfy domestic demand in this Economy bled for Sahara war
This disastrous economic situation is combined with the effects of the eightyear war against the people of the West
An army of more than 100,000 men waits bogged down in the sector of the Western Sahara delimited by the Moroccan-built wall protecting the phosphate region. More than 50 per cent of the state budget goes on military spending, building garrison towns and into the pockets of racketeers and the royal fam-
This percentage would be even higher if Saudi Arabia did not systematically pay part of the cost of the Moroccan war
The IMF plan, an imperialist tool of economic intervention in the so-called decertain aspects of the economic recession in Morocco. Aiming to re-establish the main financial balances, it does not take into account social cost or the necessary radical remodelling of economic development. In fact, it is only cynically exacerbating social inequality, upholding speculative capitalism and corruption that is fed by the massive impoverishment of the working class — in work or out - and the small peasants.
the World Bank now recognises that the deplorable economic sit-
Morocco's king cancels price hikes (DR) uation in Morocco can not be simply blamed on the international crisis. For the first time, the Moroccan economic crisis is not presented as essentially conjunctural.
Since 1981 social and union struggles have had a hard time in really taking off against the attacks on living standards and jobs. The popular demonstrations in January 1984 were not linked to actions by the organised workers movement, as had been the case on June 20, 1981, the date on which a general strike called by the unions drew behind it a mobilisation of all the oppressed sectors. (6) There are several factors that combine to explain the situation today.
The outcome of the June 1981 strike led to a certain ebb in struggles. Firstly, the repression was terrible. Also, the leadership of the Democratic Workers Confederation (CDT) — created in 1978 by the populist petty-bourgeois organisation the Union of Popular Forces (USFP) - who had taken the initiative for the general strike were sentenced to years in prison, along with hundreds of unionists.
The CDT's 1981 strike call was followed by a strange silence from the CDTUSFP leadershp - strongly recalling that of the same leadership in 1979 when the regime sacked 500 people in order to put an end to a strike in the health service and education. In both these cases the CDT, a newly-formed union, upset the social consensus and peace for the first time since 1973. But after that it showed itself to be incapable of, and not very
This example was given in the Paris daily le Monde, January 23, 1984. 6. A declaration by the United Secretariat of the Fourth Internation on June 30, 1981, noted that: On June 20 the Democratic Work
Confederation (CDT) launched a general strike. There was a massive mobilisation of the workers. The small shopkeepers and artisans joined in the protest, as well as the plebeian masses from the poorer and workers neighbourhoods. Casablanca became the scene of a real explosion - the largest since independence [in 1956]. The reaction of the Hassan II regime was brutal. (Intercontinental Press, July 27, 1981).
willing to, respond to government repres-
Thus it demonstrated the limits of its reformism, its incapacity to lead a confrontation with the regime even on limited questions, and its inability to act when faced with the regime's repressive stance. Although the hopes of many militants, sickened with the bureaucratic practices of the old union, the Moroccan Union of Labour (UMT), were placed in the CDT, it appeared a weak and uncertain instrument in the eyes of the workers.
Certainly struggles developed despite the post 1981 situation, but they did not break out of their usual framework until ter of Moroccan social formation. This within a very short period of time has become a mix of the industrial proletariat, poor peasants forced to leave the land, neglected youth in the cities. The separation between worker and unemployed in the shanty towns is not so clear, and there is a constant interaction between all these sections of the population. This explains the broad front against the regime, and, for example, the fact that the whole mining town of Khouribga was in uproar against the measures.
The policies of the reformist currents, and in particular the USFP, are thus in large measure responsible for the present ment's repression, but also the obstacles posed by the union bureaucracy particularly as the local groups often included radical elements close to the left current in the USFP. The rank-and-file union bodies are completely isolated and no longer benefit from the protection or the weight of their union centre.
The activity of the recently-created Human Rights Association - which has registered some important successes with its growth in some towns, with the creation of work commissions and its links with the International Federation for Human Rights - has also been frozen. This
January 1984.
The struggles started at rank and file level among the workers and were rapidly brought under the control of the leadership and diverted into a class-
The dictates of the IMF collaborationist direction which did not bring any significant gains.
These strug-
The measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund of the Moroccan govgles remained scattered and isolated, the ernment in 1983, as a return for the rescheduling of its foreign debt, turned around only form of liaison between them bethe need to reduce the budgetary deficit which had reached 7,800 million dirhams.
ing the UMT journal, Avant-Garde, which
This means an increase in state income of around 450 million dirhams and a reduchas been banned since 1981.
tion in state spending of 600 to 700 million dirhams, particularly in the public ser-
During 1983 many big
The decisions of the government's five-year plan for 1980 to 1985 became irtook place. But these were mainly in sec-
State investments planned for 1983 at the level of tors peripheral to the
13,200 million dirhams were reduced to 8,000 million.
Nevertheless, they revealed something
This means, among other things, a stop on buildabout the social explosions to come. At ing seven dams, 19,000 jobs lost in the state apparatus, a halt to building the Rabatthe beginning of January 1983 a general
Casablanca motorway, the port at Agadir, the airports of Agadir and Nador, univer strike developed in the high schools in
Oujda, extending to six or seven in Casa-
In addition, as well as the increase in unemployment that this would mean, the was accompanied by mass number and value of student scholarships would drop, indirect taxes would rise and new direct taxes be created (particularly the tax of 500 dirhams at the customs for each exit from the country, or the increase in fees to register at university), and a de facto devaluation of the currency, of around 10 per cent, by the adoption of strikes broke out in February in Oujda,
Berkane, Marrakesh, Fez, Rabat, Casablanca and Taroudant. Fierce repression led to several deaths in this last town.
Students in school and in college refused to sit their exams. But these courageous struggles were met with violent repression, made easier by their fragmentation and the lack of co-ordinated fight against the educational reforms of
Once again the leadership of the Navices budget and state investments. relevant given these demands.
continue to the end of the plan.
sities, etc. a floating rate of exchange. impasse of the workers movement, which demonstrated its potential strength at the end of the 1970s. After June 20, 1981, when the USFP should have built mobilisations defending democratic rights and trade-union independence, it made quite a different choice — to freeze all activity. This was more a voluntary political choice than a consequence of repression.
For example, in the weeks after the is because of a judgment that it was set-
These reductions are to ting in motion a dynamic that could get
The USFP made not the slightest response when the regime ban-
The USFP has thus put a damper on all its activities in order to get all the benfits of its compromises with the regime in the national union constructed to annex the Western Sahara.
tional Union of Moroccan Students (UNEM), a member of the USFP, played a negative role. While this union, which has a long tradition of anti-imperialist and anti-monarchist struggle, was the only ex- immigrant community in France. Nor aim. Having participated in the electoral isting legal framework, and although the students were a barometer of the social exasperation that existed, the USFP abdicated all responsibility by withdrawing from the UNEM leadership at its 17th congress, held shortly after June 1981. In these conditions it is easy to understand that these struggles failed to arouse broad solidarity. For several years they broke out from time to time on topical questions, without being able to spread.
However, the breadth of the popular explosion in January 1984 showed that the social base of the regime had dwindled away. Popular discontent affected practically every sector of the population. Every layer was hit by the crisis, young people had no future, no teachers were being recruited, etc. This partly explains the generalised character of the January
But another factor should be taken into consideration: the particular charac-
June 1981 massacres it was not repression which prevented the USFP from taking part in demonstrations organised by the was it repression that forced the USFP to cancel the traditional federal council of the UNEM in Europe, which could have organised a response to the undemocratic policies of the government. This attitude was definitely a choice.
But although the USFP put a freeze on activity opposing the regime for months, it, on the other hand, increased the guarantees to the regime. Only a few days after June 21, 1981, Abderrahim Bouabid, first secretary of the USFP, refused to criticise the palace. When Hassan II went off for the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Nairobi, Kenya, he packed in his suitcases...the leader of the USFP political group as a
Thus the CDT was deprived of its original dynamism by the USPF-inclined leadership. The few local union committees that managed to get back on their feet had not only to confront the govern-
More royalist than the king
The USFP leadership has achieved its farce of the municipal election in June 1983 and agreeing to keep quiet on the demand for the freeing of political prisoners, it is now in the government. And,
November 1, 1983, Abderrahim Bouabid is a state minister.
It is no wonder that there was growing distrust of this party, that claimed to inherit the mantle of Ben Barka (7), and preferred the corridors of power to the mobilisation of the masses. Even within the USFP itself there was an obvious crisis of confidence with respect to the Abderrahim Bouabid leadership. But the
El Mehdi Ben Barka was the leader of the Union of People's whose left wing gave rise to the Socialist Union of People's Forces (USFP). demned to death in his absence by the Rabat government, he was picked up by two French police in Paris in October 1965, and killed. General Oufkir, Moroccan minister of the interior, was involved in this Franco-Moroccan plot to assassinate the most radical leader of the
International Viewpoint 27 February 1984
left current in the USFP did not succeed in elaborating a real alternative, although it was sensitive to all the signs of a rise in struggles. Thus this current showed itself rather in opposition to the positions taken by the leadership, such as for example the elections of June 1983, when it correctly recommended a boycott of elections that would take place without any recognition of democratic freedoms.
The leadership of the USFP tried in every way possible to prevent the left expressing itself, using all the dirty tricks in the book. It decapitated the lett by expelling its top leaders, Ben Ameur and Chtouki, by dissolving the branches of the party led by the left, and then, in complicity with the regime, got them
The left current of the USFP, which had already been the target of selective repression on June 20, 1981, thus suffered at the same time from the attacks of
But this was not
The demonstrations of last January came up against the holy alliance of the monarchy and all the parties of the national union for the conquest of the Mitterrand's complicity
In France, the Mitterrand government found itself in a ringside seat, given the deep links and many leftovers of the colonial period. He adopted a low profile after the January events. After all, the great geo-political plans of a government that is busy whitewashing the neocolonial arrangements of its predecessors do not sit very easily with denunciations of the repression and massacres that take place in certain quarters of the globe.
During the meeting between Hassan II and Francois Mitterrand in January 1982, they 'agreed on the need to work together to reconfirm the special and privileged nature of their friendship'. Since that time Franco-Moroccan military co-operation has continued, as well as discussions on
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Morocco's role as French imperialism's
French-speaking These diplomatic relations take place against the background of the high-level negotiations between Rabat and the Libyan regime in the framework of the project to 'build a Greater Maghreb' and to exchange their good offices on Chad and the Sahara respectively.
For the Moroccan regime the war in the Sahara is the focal point of the situation. It is bogged down in a colonial war which alone eats up almost 50 per cent of the national budget. The Moroccan people are coming to realise more and more that the government policies it has been called upon to accept in the name of this war offer them no hope. The wave of chauvinism generated by the 'green march' -which symbolised the national union for the war of the Western Sahara (8) - could only work in the regime's favour for a limited period. From the time that the real meaning and economic effects of the war became obvious, 'national unity' faded into the background for the masses.
The king responded to this evolution by trying to make a turn on the question of the Sahara. were sent up in 1980. This new orientation was to sort out the problem as soon as possible and try to come to a political compromise with the Polisario Front. The 'phantom' that the Moroccan regime never wanted to recognise. This desire was all the stronger as Hassan II thought that he could control the military situation in the 'useful triangle' of the Western Sahara, that is where phosphates are proand thus impose a referendum with a favourable outcome for him.
But the Polisario Front is not an agent of Algeria or Libya. tain autonomy, and put the conditions negotiations quite high, while continuing its social organisation of the Saharan peoples and continuing its military actions against the Moroccan armed
In these conditions there is little margin for manoeuvre on the road to a solution, and the Moroccan monarchy cannot afford a setback. With a 120,000-strong trained army, which has already tried two coups d'etat, the king has to act with cau-
This is all the more the case given the fundamental role the army played in guaranteeing the stability of the state after the last popular revolts. The army is deployed as far as the towns in the north of the country. And the troops from the Saharan front have gone up as far as Sidi Ifni, a town on the Atlantic coast of South Morocco, to re-establish order.
This state of affairs weighs equally heavily in the attitude of the USFP leadership, which has taken for its own the royal speeches about manipulation of the masses by "Marxist-Leninists', Khomeinyites' and the 'Zionist secret services'. At the end of January USFP leader Bouabid that Leaflets from Ilal Aman [Forward, an organisation claimto be Marxist-Leninist] and fundamentalists were distributed even before the Islamic summit at Casablanca; and they were not concerned with the standard of living or unemployment but with the summit itself. demonstrators these groups were trying to give Morocco a negative image and create the worst conditions possible for the summit to take place.'
On the question of the silence of the party and the trade union during the events Bouabid made it quite precise: *This time, unlike 1981, we told our members not to move. For three reasons. First of all the price rises had not yet been decided. Next, this took place during the Islamic summit. We didn't want to fall into a trap. Finally, there were pro-Polisario elements mixed up in it.' (9)
So, it all comes together. The opposition parties, by being more royalist than the king on the question of the Sahara think that they will be able to benefit in the near future from what they will call a national betrayal if there is a compromise made on this question. (10) In reality they are putting themselves on the terrain least interesting to the masses. What is more, these parties of His Majesty's Opposition have only a relative usefulness for the regime in its attempts to integrate them into the government. may be some small use for the regime's they are not a great help as a transmission belt for a social pact to get the masses to accept the government's austerity policies. Has this not been demonstrated by the recent social
The popular masses can today see in practice the effects of the Saharan war on their daily lives and they are not going to turn towards reformist parties that are one hundred per cent in favour of the ex pansionist policy.
While the workers struggles seem to be essentially weak and defensive, the popular discontent is an explosive reality, which is going, despite the repression, to feed many more revolts. The existence of thousands of militants - students, workers, intellectuals, members of trade-union bodies, student committees or political organizations, whether reformist or revo lutionary - who continue to fight for social and democratic demands, is a reality that will also affect the social relationship of forces.
In the name of national unity in people's march in November 1975, the 'Green March', during which hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians left for the Western Sahara to express their support for the bellicose policies of Morocco. See Inprecor (English edition), No 38, November 20, 1975, 'Beyond the Green March'.
Liberation, Paris daily, January 31, 1984. 10. There is no doubt that Abderrahim Bouabid is more royalist than the king In September 1981, while Hassan II was making a tactic al turn by accepting the organisation of a referendum in the Western Sahara, the USFP leader put his name to a communique in which he denounced, 'the predisposition of the regime to concede, , indeed to abandon, the Saharan provinces. He was then sentenced to one year and imprisoned for these words. Still today Bouabid seems to want to play the card of the hardline wing of the army on the question of the Saharan war and the chauvinist reflexes of the
But the economic and social effects of LACOSCO. this war have now become more pressing realities for the popular masses than they were in 1981.
11
leading up to the next general election, due in 1988. They have two principal objectives. The first is to radically restrict the right of the unions to organise their own political activities independently of the bourgeois parties through the Labour Party. The second is to reduce