Hollande’s First Official Visit to Morocco: #FAIL

Image taken from Moroccan state media and posted on Facebook.

It’s only the first day of French president, François Hollande’s visit to Morocco and what a media failure it’s been! First, his former budget minister is exposed in a major fraud scandal revealing that he held an offshore account. Instead of admitting to it at first, he denied, then recanted, which just made things worse. So now, of course, the French media and political scene is focused entirely on this scandal. While I was watching France24 this morning, all they were talking about was anticipating Hollande’s remarks in Morocco regarding the scandal, nothing about the visit. All this, while footage of King Mohammed VI greeting Hollande at the Casablanca airport streamed on constant loop, with le petit prince Hassan trotting behind the two heads of state. The only remark the news coverage made about Hollande’s visit to Morocco that was not associated with the political scandal was the thirty agreements between French and Moroccan companies were made. What kind of agreements? Which companies? Who knows.

To make the visit even more of a media fail, the visit was prefaced with statements from both Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders urging Hollande to address and pressure the Moroccan government on its human rights abuses and violations on press freedom.

Even if the Moroccan regime wanted to use this visit as an opportunity for positive media coverage, the only place that’s going to happen is on Moroccan state media where the regime already controls every headline. On the other hand, French media is preoccupied with the scandal at home, and Moroccan independent media is echoing the calls of HRW and RSF to call the regime out on its ongoing violations.

And to top it all off, the scenes of the king and his crew welcoming Hollande are beyond archaic. I really can’t get over Hassan following them from behind. I wish someone could reproduce the footage of him following the king and Hollande while dubbing it with a presumed narration of his thoughts.

On Morocco’s Lobbying Effort in DC

I’ve been meaning to post an excerpt of my recent investigative piece on the Moroccan lobby’s activities in DC. By the way, FARA is a super useful tool and I’ve filled the piece with links to various records for those interested.

Morocco has advanced its message through organizations with anodyne names, such as the Moroccan American Cultural Center, Moroccan American Trade and Investment Council, and the Moroccan American Center for Policy, all of which are offshoots of the Moroccan American Center. The Moroccan American Center is a nonprofit funded and supervised by the Moroccan government. While these may sound like a cultural organization or an independent think tank, they are actually a vehicle for advancing the Moroccan regime’s interests.

Public records available on the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) site show the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) has been actively lobbying U.S. policymakers immediately since its registration in 2004, in support of the priorities of the Moroccan regime.

MACP’s latest supplemental statement  also shows a long list of contacts with Congressmen and members of the media. It also includes a breakdown of MACP’s expenses, showing that the organization spent $648,590on consultants and another $183,279 on advertising and public relations — from May to October 2012.

MACP pushes the regime’s agenda on a wide array of issues, notably its territorial claims over the Western Sahara and its bilateral relationship with the United States. The policy section on MACP’s website lays out Morocco’s position on the Western Sahara dispute, linking to a 2009 letter sent to President Barack Obama by 233 Congressmen that warns of the emergence of al Qaeda in the region, and claims, “The single greatest obstacle impeding the security cooperation necessary to combat this transnational threat is the unresolved territorial dispute over the Western Sahara.”

Continue reading the piece on Free Arabs.

Morocco? A Regional Leader? A Source of Stability?

Kal, from the Moor Next Door (which, by the way, is an amazing blog that I highly recommend), tweeted a link to this brief article by Anouar Boukhars. The article is called “Look to the More Stable Neighbors,” referring to Algeria and Morocco. However, it was the conclusion of the article that struck me the most:

If Algeria refuses to engage in the conflict in Mali, then the international community must look for leadership in Morocco, the other North African heavyweight directly affected by the chaos in the Sahel. Morocco has the will, the influence and the capability to contribute to conflict resolution in the region.

Boukhars has been a prominent source for information on the Maghreb, namely Morocco, for many. Yet, the conclusion to this article is so far removed from the actual reality of Morocco’s role in the region. How can Morocco be expected to lead an initiative for conflict resolution in Mali while it is actively involved in the longest running territorial dispute in Africa? Morocco’s ongoing human rights abuses in the Western Sahara and the tumultuous relationship it has with Algeria as a result of the Western Saharan conflict indicate anything but “the will, the influence and the capability to contribute to conflict resolution in the region.” This is a country that initially rejected UN envoy, Christoper Ross, over the fact that he was doing his job in reporting human rights abuses in the Moroccan-controlled Western Saharan territory. The closest the conflict ever came to a resolution was when the 1991 referendum was due to take place, yet it was Morocco who imposed conditions that would have systematically yielded the referendum results in its favor (Morocco stipulated that Moroccan settlers be able to participate in the referendum, while the referendum should have taken place based on the 1973 census).

I don’t want to initiate a game of Oppression Olympics, but while the crisis in Mali is certainly a major source of instability in the Maghreb, despite its technical location in the Sahel, dismissing the situation in the Western Sahara and removing it from an analysis that addresses Moroccan-Algerian ties in the context of leading measures for greater stability paints an incomplete picture. But given his less-than critical position toward the Moroccan regime, I don’t doubt that the exclusion of the Western Saharan conflict was strategic.