[This is a joined article written by Adele from Tufts University & me representing Al Akhawayn University within the Soliya Program for connecting future global leaders.]


Education is the most important mean of shaping the identity and impregnating a certain community of the values of its cultural system. As the aim behind the Soliya program is implementing a better mutual understanding between the American and and Arab societies, we’ve chosen to present throughout this common work a comparative overview of the American and the Moroccan universities’ educational systems, as institutions of elite production. We will approach this very sensitive subject by dividing the work in two parts, one dealing with the American model and the other with the Moroccan one. In each part we’ll be focusing on tree levels of description: the universities’ infrastructures, the educational pedagogy and the educational content.

I.The United States Universities Educational System

The University education system in the United States began in 1636 with the founding of Harvard University in Cambridge MA, and has since grown to close to 300 Universities. Universities in the U.S. for many years were primarily for privileged white men from elite families. Because of the limited educational opportunities for women, colleges solely for women began to develop in 19th century America. While these women’s colleges continue to prosper, beginning in the mid-20th century those universities reserved only for men started opening their doors for women. Currently in the U.S. there are still a small number of women’s colleges but by and large the majority of the United States Universities are available to anyone regardless of sex. Presently applicants are judged based on essays, teacher recommendations, a transcript, extra-circular activities, and finally College Board admission exam scores. Based on these attributes and sometimes an interview universities accept members into there student body. Overall these University students live on or near campus away from home and study as a student full time.

The United States undergraduate education system is primarily divided into two types of institutions based on there sources of funding. In the United States, with the exception of military service academies, there are no universities directly regulated by the federal government. Instead they government gives money and assistance to universities and it is the state governments that are more involved in the management of public universities. These public universities which receive funding from both the state and local governments systems and that cost less to attend. There are also private universities and colleges who are managed independently of the government and receive minimal state funding. In the United States some of the private universities are religiously affiliated but the role religion has in education varies enormously. In some institutions religion is large part of the education and in others it is simply affiliated and has minimal influence over the curriculum.

There are several types of pedagogy in the United States education system that are used to varying degrees in most universities. First there are large lecture classes in which enrollment can be as many as a few hundred students. In this environment the professor teaches the lector class while the Teaching Assistants run smaller recitations, labs and review sessions. Smaller types of class are seminars which have less then 20 people, there are often no Teaching Assistants and these are the most intimate between professors and students. Often with smaller classes the course is based more on discussion and writing then are larger classes focused on professor lectures. There are also medium sized classes that incorporate some discussion and lecture to try to find a balance between the two extremes. The variety of classes available allows students to find classes that fit them the best offering the most options for success.

The University System in the United States offers a wide range of educational opportunities. In terms of content there are technical schools that teach there students the necessary skills for being successful in specific jobs immediately after graduation. However that is not the norm. Typically Universities require students to study a core curriculum designed to ensure a basis of knowledge and breadth of curriculum for all students. After that, students pick a major or concentration which allows them to focus on a specific topic or field that interests them. This major or concentration is sometimes a direct preparation for work after graduation and in other cases it may have little relevance on what careers a student chooses to pursue.

II.The Moroccan Universities Educational System

Morocco is originally a tribal archaic society, where knowledge is considered as a priceless capital. Because of that, the religious doctors who can read and write constituted a powerful class with whom all the monarchies of the kingdom tried to ally themselves in order to contain and influence the street people. Morocco has the oldest university in the world; Al-Qarawiyin University founded in 859 by Fatima Feheria, a wealthy woman who came to Morocco from the East. This religious style university, which still exists today, was offering a range of fields of specialization among the most important of that period. The university also had a campus where students can eat and sleep & a huge library as well as financial independence. Nowadays, there are three different kinds of higher education institutions in the Moroccan educational model. First, there is a traditional religious family of institutions which still subsist to form the specialists in Islamic affairs. These institutions are very firm and produce a narrow-minded minority. Second, there are the specialized institutions, which attract the best students to study different fields like engineering, journalism and management. This kind of institution is the legacy of the French style education left by the colonization period. Then there are the universities which constitutes a network of 13 public free universities, situated in the most important cities of the country, unfortunately these universities are very weak & poor academically because of there dependence on the state and ministry of education. Finally, there is an American style very modern university dedicated for the upper classes and the elite of the society, which is Al Akhawayn University. In addition to these forms there are many private institutions, but which have no apparent impact in shaping the cultural identity of the elites. According to the official figures, the different Moroccan universities produces 24000 new graduated student every year, on a population of 30 million, for 2500 teachers, and more than 19% of the country’s general budget.

In terms of pedagogy, the Moroccan universities face different kind of problems. A mixture of the religious rigid system and the French inflexible model influenced the perception of education in Morocco till the late 1990s, when King Hassan II called for a general reform of education and constituted The Special Commission of Education and Formation. Another problem, is the luck of interactivity between the teachers and the students, which creates passive submissive & frustrated individuals roughly able to think and produce ideas. Furthermore, teachers receive very few training on the techniques of pedagogy and andragogy, which makes them not ready to face young generations. As a result of these reasons and many others, Moroccan universities produce young people with no practical experience and no courage to face the harsh market of work, so many of them remain jobless and start thinking of immigrating legally or illegally abroad.

As far as educational content is concerned, it is important to mention that the ideological turmoil Morocco was living during the 1970s in the universities pushed the leader parties to shut philosophy courses and replace them by religion courses. This huge mistake in the history of Moroccan’s education system succeeded in calming the communist voices but in exchange offered an excellent cradle for extremists and crippled the regenerations of the elites during the 1980s and 1990s. Among the other characteristics of the educational content, is the focus on the theoretical aspects not the practical ones of knowledge, and a narrow perception of the world presenting sometimes the others as evil, which is very contradictory to the Moroccan culture, which is labeled as being tolerance.

Moroccans have a good reputation of being very brilliant in languages and new technologies, yet, this is mainly due to the human natural potential not the educational system which still needs to reform itself to cope with the needs of the global world. Unfortunately, this genuine luck in this crucial field push more and more Moroccans to chose to finish there education abroad, and most of the time never come back to Mother Land.

Sources:

-Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/
-Harvard University: www.harvard.edu
-Learning in Morocco: www.cp-pc.ca/english/morocco/learning
-The Higher Education Field official web site: www.enssup.gov.ma
-The Moroccan Ministry of Education official web site: www.men.gov.ma/
-The Special Commission for Education & Formation official web site: www.cofef.co.ma
-Tufts Office of Admissions http://www.tufts.edu/home/admissions/

A crying Shiit iraqian woman after voting for the constitution.
(A Reuters Picture)

Far from being a post-Cold War Nostradamus prophesising for a global apocalyptic Armageddon on religious and doctrinal basis, Samuel Huntington is a very serious scholar from Harvard University who formulated one of the most controversial post-Cold War theories about the New World Order. The Clash of Civilisations theory says that within the new world order conflicts will occur between religious and cultural civilisations not between traditional ideological nation-states. Huntington’s thesis has proven to be wrong in many of its claims. Yet, it may be very relevant to explain some contemporary global issues.

In this paper, I would try to give a general overview of Huntington’s theory and multiple streams that have influenced it. Then, I would try to analyse different aspects of this theory based on nowadays’ global events, to demonstrate how they could be relevant or not to the future world order.

Samuel Phillips Huntington was born in 1927. He graduated from Yale at the age of 18, and had his PhD at the age of 23 from Harvard, where he still teaches Political Science. Huntington was first known during the 1960s for his researches on Coups d’état, Party System and Political Order, which he combined in his very well known book Political Order in Changing societies. His tough state-centred recommendations, made him hated by the 1960s liberal movements and the adviser of some Latin American transitional dictatorships like Brazil. During the post-Cold War period, Huntington elaborated his theory on The Clash of Civilisations, as the form of the 21st century global conflicts. Recently, another Huntington theory was subjected to controversy, as he argued that American identity is threatened by the huge numbers of Latin migrants, which can lead to an internal clash of civilisations and to a shift in the American identity.

In 1993 Samuel Huntington first published an article in the academic journal Foreign Policy an article entitled “The Clash Of Civilisations”, where he wrote “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”(Huntington 1993). This thesis generated a wide academic controversy, which pushed the Harvard Professor to explain his theory in depth in 1996 in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

To understand The Clash of Civilisations theory, we should put it into its historical setting of the end of the Cold War, and the beginning of the 1990s Globalized world era. After its publication, Huntington’s article was seen as the encounter of Francis Fukuyama’s theory in 1989 on The End of History. Fukuyama’s theory which he explains by saying, "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (Fukuyama 1989). Huntington’s theory challenges Fukuyama’s Global Liberalism theory by demonstrating that the western model won the ideological war but not the civilisational one.

In fact, Huntington’s theory based on fear of the Western civilization’s collapse and the Muslims and Sinic civilization’s rise, has been deeply influenced by many other thesis of that period. The term Clash of Civilizations was first used Bernard Lewis in 1990 in a research article called The Roots of Muslim Rage, where Lewis warns from Islamic fundamentalism. In addition to that, we can notice Huntington’s influence by Oswald Spangler’s theory on Western civilization’s fall because of the rivalry of other strong civilizations on the international scene. Some critics also see the influence of British scholar A.J Toynbee’s division of civilizations on Huntington’s work.

While preparing for this paper, I discovered with astonishment that the Moroccan visionary Mehdi El Manjra from Rabat University preceded Samuel Huntington in elaborating the theory of The Clash of Civilizations. El Manjra wrote in August 1991 after the first Gulf War in his book in Arabic The First Civilisational War “The Gulf War is only the first episode of a North-South conflict, which will be dominated now on by cultural considerations [translation mine]” (El Manjra 1991). It is also amazing to notice that El Manjra focuses on the same issues Samuel Huntington pointed out, which are as explained by El Manjra “The three main fears by the West are; The Fear of Demography, The Fear of Islam and The Fear of Asia [translation mine].”(El Manjra 1991). However, El Manjra’s work differs from Huntington in a way that the Moroccan advisor of the Japanese Emperor sees the possibility of peaceful interaction between different civilisations.

According to the book The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, the world is divided into major civilisations on ethnic, cultural and religious criteria. Even if Huntington used many ethnological and historical studies to establish these divisions, it may still seem very ambiguous in some specific regions. The work came out with the following civilisations:

- The Western civilization, including North America, Europe, Australia…
- The Orthodox civilization, including Russia, Slavic countries and Eastern Europe.
- The Latin American civilization.
- The Muslim Civilization, including the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, Malaysia, South Asia and Indonesia.
- The Hindu civilization, including India and Nepal.
- The Sinic civilization, including China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan…
- The Sub-Saharan African civilization.
- Other hybrid countries like Japan or Lone countries like Israel and Haiti… (Huntington 1996)

Further more, Huntington explains the dynamics of relations between these civilisations and which are more challenging than the others. According to Huntington, the Sinic civilization is growing faster than the others economically and demographically, which constitutes a threat to the Western civilization. Especially that there is huge number of Sinic migrants installed in the West. In addition to luck of real hegemony in the Asian region, which will facilitate the task for China to dominate the whole region. The second potential challenger of the West according to the author is the Islamic civilization or what he calls “the Islamic Resurgence”, which has a strong young population and well impregnated cultural values that could clash with the West. For Huntington, Christianity which is the basis of the Western civilization and Islam are Missionary religions looking to expend its followers, which stimulates fundamentalism and hatred between the two blocks. The scholar even describes Islam as having “bloody borders” in his original article, in reference to the Islamic expansionism throughout Spain and Eastern Europe. However, what the American Political scientist fears the most is potential alliances between two big civilisations like the Sinic and the Islamic civilization to clash with Western values imposed on the world, or the alliance between the Islamic and the Orthodox civilization against the West…

After 9/11 events which chocked the West, Samuel Huntington’s theory gained widespread attention again, as he declared to the press “Clearly, Osama bin Laden wants it to be a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West. The first priority for our government is to try to prevent it from becoming one. But there is a danger it could move in that direction. The administration has acted exactly the right way in attempting to rally support among Muslim governments. But there are pressures here in the US to attack other terrorist groups and states that support terrorist groups. And that, it seems to me, could broaden it into a clash of civilisations.”(The Guardian 2001). The events that followed 9/11 (Iraq War, Madrid bombing, Iranian Nuclear issue…) were all considered as being the signs of achievement of Huntington’s prophecy about the clash between Western and Islamic civilisations. But in this case the Crusades were a Clash of Civilisations with all the war before Westphalia. From an other point of view, it is legitimate to ask to what extent can transnational terrorist groups or isolated militias be representative of the whole Islamic civilization, to be able to judge about are we clashing or not.

Paul Berman in Terror and Liberalism argues that, in nowadays global world there is no more distinct cultural boundaries between civilisations. We may agree with Berman that the information revolution and the cross-borders interactions are huge between civilisations, but within this interaction there is a dominant Western culture which rule over the initial cultures that may revolt under the pressure. And as Huntington says "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."(Huntington 1996), as he explains in his theory that the West should forget about “democratic universalism” and “incessant interventionism”, because the United Nations model and Human Rights clauses are the fruit of the Western mind not of the growing challenging cultures, which will ask for reforms sooner or later, even if Modernization, in some exceptions worked very well like in East Asian Tigers or in Japan, as can explain Mehdi El Manjra.

The Arabic thinker and Columbia University Professor Edward Said “The Clash of Civilizations thesis is a gimmick like The War of the Worlds, better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.” (Said 2001). What Edward Said means is that Huntington’s theory is nothing but an academic framework to justify the United States interventions against China and the Islamic World, or to keep Said’s words in his long answer to Huntington’s theory entitled The Clash of Ignorance” An imagined Geography to legitimate certain policies”. Said also highlights the effect of cultural Interdependence between civilisations, which fits into Joseph S. Nye Complex Interdependence theory, who describe Huntington’s vision as “suffer[ing] from trying to fit the post-Cold War world into one or other pattern. But one size does not fit all… not only are there multiple cultures, but there are very different types of states in terms of economic modernization” (Nye 2005). In fact, Nye points out a very important weakness of Huntington’s theory, which is the internal tensions and conflicts between the same civilization. Since the civilisational new actors can’t get rid of the legacy of the Nation-States, these components of one civilization will struggle within the same system. And even inside one state there are still heterogeneous identities; this is maybe what made Huntington turn to analyze the impact of internal clashes in his new work about migrant societies in United States.


The Clash of Civilization’s theory has many weaknesses in perceiving the dynamic movement of identity within one civilization and between one civilization and an other. Yet, it offered an important framework, which revealed how much a unipolar universalism can stimulate cultural hatred and so civilisational clashes. Some persons around the world like, former Iranian President Mohamed Khatami or Un Secretary General Kofi Anan already have understood the importance of the initiation of a real Dialogue between Civilisations and created the Alliance of Civilisations’ initiative, for a better understanding of the others.

REFERENCE LIST

-El Manjra, Mahdi. 1991. La première guerre civilisationelle, ed. Oyoun. Casablanca: 27-218.
-Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. The end of history. The National Interest. Summer:2-19.
-Huntington, Samuel. 1993. The clash of civilisations. Foreign affairs. Summer:21-45.
-Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The clash of civilisation and the remaking of world order, ed. -Simon & Shuster. New York.
-Huntington, Samuel. 2001. Civilisations at war. Interview in The Guardian. October, 21.
-Nye, Joseph S. 2005. Understanding international conflict, ed. Longman Classics in Political Science: 242-252.
-Said, Edward. 2001. The clash of ignorance. The National Interest. Fall:1-5.
-Wikipedia. On-line Encyclopaedia.

The Atlas Mountains in Greek Mythology were described as ‘the end of the world’, a far place where never-ending thunders and lightening strike all time long. This frightening image of the north western Africa can be still true because of the perpetual crisis between the two Powers in the Maghreb, the two brother enemies: Morocco and Algeria. What is ironic is that the etymology of the world Atlas seems to mean ‘to uphold’ or ‘to support’ according to Wikipedia On-Line Encyclopedia, but since their independence on 1956 for Morocco & 1962 for Algeria, the two neighbors did everything but support each other.

So why is the atmosphere so tense between Morocco & Algeria? Let’s ask the question to King Hassan, the Moroccan sovereign and its foreign policy architect, trough Eric Laurent who had the opportunity to hear him answer that “…Algerians had reasons to fear Morocco, & Morocco had its reasons to consider Algerians as the pure and simple heirs of colonialism [translation mine]”(Hassan II 1993, 44).

The truth is that the reality of such a conflict transcend the simple fact of two countries seeking to build their Nation-States within the post-colonial world. The apprehensive relationship in fact can best be explained by a combination of territorial boundaries, ideological boundaries, economical boundaries and especially psychological boundaries which separate the Moroccan country and the Algerian one.

In this paper I would try to analyze four main explanations of the Moroccan Algerian difficult relations since their independence, which are: the territorial problems, the ideological differences, the economic differences and the psychological complexes.


THE TERRITORIAL PROBLEMS

Historically, major parts of the today’s Algeria were parts of the Cherifian Empire till the beginning of the Franco-Spanish colonization of North Western Africa. After Morocco’s independence France offered to solve the amputated territories matter, but King Mohamed V refused and suggested to wait until the full independence of his neighbor.

After its independence on 1962, Algeria followed, according to Abdallah Laroui, “a schizophrenic logic” (Laroui 1976, 82), and consciously forgot about what Morocco’s Monarch did by calling to maintain the colonial boundaries, that’s how the territorial boundaries rose as a source of conflict between the two states.

The Istiqlal party’s leader Allal El Fassi increased the Algerian worries, when he came out with his Greater Morocco’s Project, and established a map which includes huge parts of Algeria (Bechar, Touat & Tindouf) as well as parts of Mali & the whole Mauritanian state (Hodges 1983,86).

The territorial boundaries’ conflict exploded in the 1963 war. Afterwards, “a committee of O.A.U studied the problem to let it cool down, and in 1972 the two neighbors signed an agreement delimiting and providing the demarcation of a boundary”(Zartman 2001, 210), but the explicit Algerian support of the S.A.D.R pushed King Hassan to play the territorial boundaries’ card to blackmail Abdelkader’s sons, by arguing that Rabat Agreement was not permanent. Consequently, King Hassan II“came to consider Algeria the major enemy of Morocco throughout his life”(Zartman 2001, 210).

This leads us to the second and most important territorial issue between the two countries, which is the Western Sahara. The U.N Resolution number 2229 released on 1966, claimed Algeria as “concerned part” (Zouitni 1997, 325) in the Sahara Conflict. In fact, Algeria has been playing an important role in the Sahara Conflict since the 1970s as a strategy to contain Morocco’s territorial expansion, which threatens the Algerian leadership over North Africa. As “the Kingdom territory will increase by nearly 60 percent, from 172.000 square mile to about 275.000 square miles”(Damis 985, 139). Therefore, Algerians adopted a regular discourse in its foreign policy about the Western Sahara subject, where they call for The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, which “made it clear to King Hassan, that they would not tolerate a Moroccan fait accompli in Western Sahara”(Dunbar 2000, 157).

But the territorial boundaries that separate Morocco from Algeria are just one cause among many others which explain the difficult relationships between the two countries and which may be solved by new leaderships. Especially that Morocco has a new Monarch who has a different perception, and who is not obliged to fellow his father’s governing style.


THE IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES


Many scholars and experts argue that the Moroccan Algerian conflict is mainly due to the ideological boundaries that separate the two neighbors since their independence. During the Cold War, both countries appeared as being Satellites in the East-West race for ideological domination over the world.

Algeria and its other neighbor, the revolutionary Libya stood for the Eastern front in North Africa against a Morocco allied to the West . The Cherifian Kingdom used the situation to get political & financial support, so “he appealed to his fellow monarchs in the Arabian peninsula to support Morocco in it’s battle with socialist and revolutionary Algeria”(Damis 2000, 29). From the other side, he asked for armament supplies from both of
France and U.S, claiming that “because of the Soviet arms employed by the Polisario…Morocco was actually fighting the Soviet Union” (Damis 2000, 29). So Morocco benefited for a while from Saudian Money and U.S armament.

Also ideological differences may have been the cause behind personal antipathies among the Maghribi leadership, especially between Colonel Kadafi and King Hassan II, who was pointed by the first as a “Feudal pro-western monarch in a age of revolutionary Arab socialism”(Damis 1985, 145).

Morocco which is a kingdom that “grow as more tribes swore allegiance to the sultan” (Finan 2002, 5), has chosen a more liberal economy and a plural political field whereas Algeria has taken the revolutionary unique party path (Damis 1985, 144), but things are not as clear as they seem. The Morocco of the 1960s and 1970s if far from being a real democratic liberal country. And Algeria’s “90 percent Soviet origin arms” (Damis 1985, 148) does not mean Algeria’s definitive alienation to the East.

In 1978, the Camp David Accords, proved how much ideological orientation are fragile compared to the state’s interests. After the Cold War’s end and the late Algerian and Libyan cooperation with the West, there is no apparent excuses anymore for any ideological boundaries that separate Morocco from Algeria.


THE ECONOMIC PROBLEMS


Economic interests played an important role in the Morocco-Algerian conflict. “Owing to its oil and gas deposits, Algeria since independence has had a per-capita G.N.P of at least twice that of Morocco” (Zartman 2001, 209). Whereas Morocco is the fist phosphate producer in the world and have a prosper agriculture, but still relays on its importations of energy supplies.

But “maintaining military superiority over Morocco… contributed significantly to the economic problems… that Algeria is currently facing”(Dunbar 2000, 154). Also the Moroccan bill spent on armament and the conflict zone’s development is very high.

According to Laroui, Algerian aims to get a coastal opening into the Atlantic is not sensible, because a simple Moroccan Algerian cooperation can be held to allow Algeria to export it’s gas and oil trough Northern and Southern Morocco(Laroui 1976, 89).

As Europe’s salvation came from the United States, maybe the Maghreb’s salvation too can come from the Uncle Sam’s plans, thus the Eizenstat Initiative may heal the Maghreb’s years of difficult relations and may unite them on economic and strategic basis. So the
Economical boundaries won’t be a relevant cause of the Moroccan Algerian conflict anymore.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXES


The main reason of the Moroccan Algerian conflict may be deeper than territorial, ideological or economical interests; it may go back to the far history of each country. From one side, Morocco as the only real pre-colonial entity of the region which were once covering today’s Algeria, Mauritania, Mali & Senegal. From the other side, Algeria that was a
Moroccan territory then a Ottoman territory before being for more than a century a French colony governed by direct ruling. So we wonder if there is not a form of psychological boundaries which separate the two states, and if it is not one of the main reasons behind the whole Moroccan Algerian issue.

Yahia Zoubair says that “Moroccans display a superiority complex vis-à-vis Algerians, arguing that they have a long history of state and nation that Algerians do not have” (Zoubir 2000, 70). This can explain the Moroccan people’s support of the Great Morocco’s idea and even their volunteering for the Green March.

The fictive writing of Edward Moha explains how Algeria trays to compensate it’s historical complex by supporting a country she “created out of sand” (Moha 1984, 11) to contain it’s neighbor’s geopolitical domination over North Africa. But the populations’ psychology studies are quite inexistent concerning the Moroccan and the Algerian citizens or the political rulers’ political behaviors.

Kant explained in his Physical Geography, that “physical geography determines political geography”. In the Moroccan Algerian case, I’ll say that it’s the psychological geography which determines the political geography. Yet, to survive within the New World Order impregnated by regionalism, both Morocco and Algeria may open a new page, by adopting economical functionalism like Europe, which will solve gradually their political conflicts.

REFERENCE LIST

Demis, John. 1987. The impact of the Saharian dispute on Moroccan foreign policy. In
Domestic Policy, ed. Zartman. New York: Preager.
-----------. 2000. King Hassan and the Western Sahara. The Maghreb Review 25:1-2.
Dunbar, Charles. 2000. Saharan statis. Middle East Journal 4 (Fall).
Finan, Khadija Mohcine. 2002. The western Sahara dispute and the UN pressure.
Mediterranean Politics 7:2.
Hassan II. 1976. Le défi. In mémoires, ed. Albin Michel, 12-40. Paris.
-----------. 1993. La mémoire d’un roi. Entretiens avec Eric Laurent, ed. Plon, 44-48. Paris.
Hodges, Tony. 1987. The greater Morocco. In Western Sahara, ed. Lawrence Hill & Co.
Westport.
Laroui, Abdellah. 1976. L’Algérie et le Sahara Marocain. ed. Serrar, 81-95. Casablanca.
Marks, Thomas. 1990. Spanish Sahara – background to conflict. African Affairs 28 (March-
April), no. 2. Database on-line. Available from (www.jstor.org).
Moha, Edward. 1984. Mercenaire d’un pays imaginaire. ed. Albatros, 1-17. Paris.
Mortimer, Robert. 1993. Regionalism & geopolitics in the Maghreb. Middle East Report
(September-October), 184:16-19.Database on-line. Available from (www.jstor.org).
Wikipedia. Online Free Encyclopedia. Available from (www.wikipedia.org).
Yata, Ali. 1982. Le Sahara Occidental Marocain à travers les textes. ed. Al Bayane, 287-295.
Rabat.
Zartman, William. 2001. Morocco. In Diplomacy in the Middle East, ed. L.Carl Brown.
London: I.B.Tauris.
Zoubir, Yahia. 1976. Western Sahara conflict impedes Maghrib unity. Middle East Report
298 (January), 75:3-13. Database on line. Available from (www.jstor.org).
----------. 1998a. Algerian-Moroccan relations and their impact on Maghribi integration. The
Journal of North African Studies 5, no.1 (Spring).
----------. 1998b. Western Sahara: political economy of a conflict. ed, Ayachi . Westport:
Peager.
Zouitni, Hammad. 1997. Les intérêts nationaux entre la pratique politique extérieure du
Maroc et les besoins d’une redéfinition par rapport au nouveau système international.
In Rapport Annuel sur l’évolution du system international. Rabat

Despite its being the widest country of the black continent, crossed by the biggest river of the world The Nil and enjoying a rich amount of mineral resources especially oil and gold, Sudan remain one of the hot spots of the world because of a bad distribution of resources among the diverse components of the Sudanese body which damages the unity of the regions and menace many of its close neighbors. After the Mehdi’s putsch, the South crisis and many bloody episodes, now is the turn of Darfur to explode in peaces, while the international public opinion and the media are busy following every helicopter sound in Iraq and every single word pronounced by Ahmadi Najad. Whereas, millions of citizens from Darfur and the Chadian borders are suffering the real apocalypse.

In this paper, I would try first to present Sudan in general and especially the region of Darfur, as to throw a preliminary background of the crisis, where I will lay on some generic sources. Then, I would talk about the conflict, its causes and give a diagnosis of what is happening now after the UN involvement in the issue from the UN missions’ reports, Secretary General reports and other trustworthy NGOs. The third part of the paper would tackle with the Sudanese position and interests in this crisis, relaying mainly on the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs web site and Sudanese leaders declarations to the media.

I

Sudan situated in Northern Africa and bordering the Red Sea, Covers the 2.505.824 Km², which makes it the larger state in Africa. Because of it size, Sudan border many African countries: “Central African Republic 1,165 km, Chad 1,360 km, Democratic Republic of the Congo 628 km, Egypt 1,273 km, Eritrea 605 km, Ethiopia 1,606 km, Kenya 232 km, Libya 383 km, Uganda 435 km.”(www.cia.gov, CIA fact book). As Sudan lies in the Tropics and is quite completely landlocked, it has a tropical Climate in the south, arid desert in the north, whereas a rain varies by regions and seasons. As regards its physical features, Sudan is mainly flat apart from some mountains in the south, northeast and west. Yet, the desert dominates the north. Sudan has a rich amount of natural resources; “petroleum, gold, small reserves of iron ore, copper, chromium ore, zinc, silver, hydropower…” (Atlas of the Earth) But most of these resources remained largely unexploited until the Chinese came. One of the most important issues in this apparent balanced image is environmental issues which caused ethnic and national disputes like: inadequate supplies of potable water, soil erosion, desertification and periodic drought explains the CIA world Fact book.
The Sudanese population was more than 41 million inhabitants in July 2006, mostly between 0 and 14 years old, which is low compared to the large area Sudan covers. This population is constituted by many ethnic groups: Black 52%, Arabs 39%, Beja 6% and foreigners 2%. Among this population there is 70% of Sunni Muslims situated in the north, 25% indigenous believers and 5% of Christians situated in the south and Khartoum. (www.cia.gov, CIA World Fact Book). The Arabization program did not kill native languages and dialects like: Ta Badawie, Sudanic, Nilotic and Nubian…

Sudan’s economy is an emergent fragile economy that lived a huge change after the starting of oil exportation but is still facing many agricultural troubles. “Sudan has turned around a struggling economy with sound economic policies and infrastructure investments, but it still faces formidable economic problems, starting from its low level of per capita output. From 1997 to date, Sudan has been implementing IMF macroeconomic reforms. In 1999, Sudan began exporting crude oil and in the last quarter of 1999 recorded its first trade surplus, which, along with monetary policy, has stabilized the exchange rate. Increased oil production, revived light industry, and expanded export processing zones helped sustain GDP growth at 8.6% in 2004. Agricultural production remains Sudan's most important sector, employing 80% of the work force, contributing 39% of GDP, and accounting for most of GDP growth, but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic instability - resulting from the long-standing civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian/pagan south, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices - ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty line for years.”(CIA World Fact Book)

Politically, since its independence from UK in 1956, Sudan’s political scene was dominated by Military Islamic regime, which doesn’t take into considerations the diverse components especially the non-Arabs and non-Muslims living in the south. Consequently, the country sunk into two long civil wars during the second half of the last century. The first civil war lasted till 1983. The second war and famine affected more than 4 million people, in the crisis of the South. The crisis lasted in a final Nayvasha peace treaty of January 2005, which granted the southern rebels autonomy for six years, after which a referendum for independence would be held. At the same time another sensitive crisis acquired in the Darfur region in 2003, which we will deal with in more details. Sudan also, suffers from refugees problems, and is waiting for crucial national elections for 2008 - 2009. (Human Rights Watch Africa)

II

The Darfur conflict is not as simple as it seems, as it rots go back to the bitter history of magnetization of the non-Arab and non-Muslims by Khartoum, and because many actors are involved in the issue. Such that, the conflict began when years of drought touched the miserable region of Darfur, which means (Land of the Fur) in 2003, when rebel group influenced by John Guarang began attacking government targets and fertile private exploitations, as they were claiming that the region was being neglected by Khartoum and left in famine because of there non-Arab origins. Since then, the arid land of “Darfur has been facing many years of tensions over fertile land between nomadic Arabs from one hand and farmers from the Fur, Massaleet and Zagawa communities” (www.bbc.com). On the land of conflict there are two main rebel groups: the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). In addition to these two, there is the National Redemption Front, led by Ahmed Diraige, which units the groups opposed to the May Peace Treaty initiated by the government of Khartoum. From its side the government mobilized “self-defense militias” as they like to call them. But quickly these militias lucked of discipline and start seeking their own interests and became what is called the Janjaweed. “Refugees from Darfur say that following air raids by government aircraft, the Janjaweed ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering men, raping women and stealing whatever they can find Many women report being abducted by the Janjaweed and held as sex slaves for more than a week before being released.” (Human Rights Wash report) However Sudanese government denies any relations with these groups or having any control over them. Yet after international pressure and the threats of sanctions, they promised to disarm the Janjaweed. Under such conditions about 200.000 Sudanese flee as refugees to Chad, which causes a huge diplomatic problem between the two countries. Especially, with the persistent Janjaweed threat over the 600 km of borders where the refugees’ camps lay in a disastrous humanitarian conditions. Non Sudanese actors are trying to save the situation. “About 7,000 African Union troops have slowly been deployed in Darfur on a very limited mandate. Experts say the soldiers are too few to cover an area the size of France, and the African Union says it does not have the money to fund the operation for much longer. Sudan has resisted strong western diplomatic pressure for the UN to take control of the peacekeeping mission. The latest plan (resolution 1706) envisages 17,000 troops and 3,000 UN policemen.”(www.un.org, secretary general report). In addition to that United Nations Mission in Sudan is very active in helping refugees, and international help and NGOs started acting to improve the situation there.

III

As far as the Sudanese Government position is concerned it is clear that, Sudan is in a sensitive situation especially after the potential losing of its southern rich countries in the coming referendum. Sudanese government is also waiting for crucial elections within two years, and by allowing a foreign intervention in the Darfur crisis it will menace to throw the public opinion against the Islamic regime, that many see as illegitimate. Economically, the government is very friendly with China, that has an exclusive right to exploit the Sudanese oil, but in the Darfur Regions the populations are more sympathizing with the American which supplies them with food. With the American in Darfur the Chinese interests are being menaced and so are the government interests and image. The government also committed a huge mistake by constituting the Janjaweed, thinking it will be cheaper. And now they are paying the hard price, as their image at the international level is very bad. So Sudan continued refusing the UN resolution, and playing the card of sovereignty, but was forced to accept them to avoid a regular international intervention. Especially with the Chad involved and backed up by the French army. In the Sudanese Foreign ministry web site we can read the following headlines: “there is a deep engagement to fight organized terrorism… and support peace efforts and to improve our international cooperation in terms of economic development of our entire region” (www.mfa.gov.sd). Yet, it is clear that these idealistic words are far away from the bitter reality of the ruling process.

Until Resolution 1706 Sudan was calling for non violation of its Sovereignty and calling for the reinforcement of only African peace keeping troops, but the image of the humanitarian disaster are being more and more clear to the international community. The frustrations millions of Sudanese have been leaving since 1956 may reach an end with the explosive file of Darfur and by the coming elections. But the price was bloody tragedies and decades of marginalization.

Reference List

-www.bbc.co.uk
-www.act.darfurgenocide.com
-www.hwr.org (human rights watch)
-www.mfa.gov.sd (Sudanese Ministry of Foreign affairs)
-www.un.org (United Nations)
-www.crimesofwar.org
-www.sudan.net
-www.unmis.org (United Nations Mission in Sudan)
-www.cia.gov (American Central Intelligence Agency, The World fact Book)
-Atlas of the Earth: ‘the Marshall Cavendish Illustrated Encyclopedia’, London & New York (1990).

“Morocco resemble to a tree whose roots are deeply immersed in the African land, and which breath thanks to its foliage shift following the winds of Europe[translation mine]” (Hassan II, 1976, p. 189). This statement by king Hassan illustrates how the Moroccan kingdom in constantly turned to the west for historical, political, economical as well as military reasons. This attachment to the west is synonymous for Morocco to a range of strong ties with its major western partners: Spain, France and USA. Spain shares many centuries of common history with Morocco, when the Cherifian kingdom ruled Andalusia. But Spain is also is the country that colonized Morocco for the longest amount of time till 1975 and is still present on the Moroccan soil through Ceuta & Mellilia. France from its part, has vary particular relations with its past colony, since Moroccans fought on the French side during war and inherited many juridical administrative and economical cultural aspects of France. Moroccan American relations go back to 1777 when Morocco was one of the first states to recognize the United States as an independent country. Furthermore, the 1787 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the two countries remains the longest unbroken US treaty. This relations with all of Spain, France and the US are translated into a political, economical and military cooperation which has gone throughout periods of total accord of interests and some phases of discord. In this article I will try to analyze Morocco’s relations with Spain, France and the US, and I’ll try to highlight the different interests that regulate this relations following the particularity of each of these countries and of the historical moment and the national interests which dictate this relations since 1956.

Morocco and Spain live in a geographical “face to face”, which implies relations that none of the two countries can never avoid. Morocco’s political priority after independence was to recuperate the rest of the land still occupied by the Spanish, so it got back gradually Tarfaya in 1958, then Ifny in 1969 and the Western Sahara after the Green March and the Madrid treaty in 1975. Yet, the two cities of Ceuta and Mellilia are still a sensitive political issue between the two neighbors “The presence of two small Spanish cities on the coast of North Africa remains an underlying source of friction between Morocco and Spain, despite the long-standing nature of the Iberian presence. Ceuta ,at the entrance to the striates opposite the rock of Gibraltar, was taken by Portugal in 1415, was affected by the Portuguese-Spanish union of 1580-1640 and was ceded subsequently to Spain in 1668 ” (Richard Gillespie 2000, 66). Spain argues that Ceuta and Mellilia were Spanish before the establishment of the nowadays modern Morocco, whereas Morocco compare the case of the two cities to Gibraltar, the British rock, claimed by Spain as being part of its territory. But Morocco’s politic towards the two cities is very much varied, first because Morocco is military weaker than its northern neighbor and because Morocco is engaged in the Western Sahara affair and can’t open two political fronts at once, moreover, even the citizens of Ceuta and Mellilia enjoy more living under the flag of the Spanish 6 th world power than joining the still struggling for development Morocco. However the two cities are seen by the Moroccan foreign politicians as a political pressure card, which can serve the Moroccan interests in certain conflicts that could oppose the two countries such as the Sahara conflict. Which leads us to the Spanish position on the Sahara issue, as the colonizer of that north African territory since The Protectorate Treaty of March 1912, dividing Morocco into French, Spanish and international zones. The Spanish called for a referendum on 1974 about the Western Sahara, that was “terra nullus” according to them, since then continued to support the cause of the SADR directly or indirectly maintaining its position about a “fair referendum” for the Sahraoui people. Spain also helped in the international recognition of the conflict from the Polisario’s point of view by its medias and strong NGOs. To understand the Spanish position we should consider three factors, the first is to keep Morocco busy with the Sahara so it won’t be able to officially claim Ceuta and Mellilia, the second is about a certain historical/psychological fear of a united strong Morocco, which may invade Andalusia one day, the last is about making pressure on Morocco as to get better advantages on the fishing treaty which millions of Spanish fishers depend on. The Fishing treaty is one of the main lines of the Spanish Moroccan economical relations. According to Hernando De Laramandy “One of the favors Morocco gave to Spain within the Madrid treaty was fishing rights between 15 and 20 years, to 800 Spanish ship in all of Mediterranean, Atlantic and Saharian waters” (De Laramandy 2005, 326), this great favor was in exchange of the ending of the Spanish colonial era in Morocco and was followed by two other treaties in 1975, 1977 and 1983. Yet in 1986 Spain joined the European Union, so it’s agricultural exportations towards the other EU countries shadowed the Moroccan ones, which pushed Morocco to renegotiate the fishing treaty, but this time directly with the EU in February 1988, before the shift of the late 90s when Morocco refused to renew the treaty. As a result, this led to an important political crisis, illustrated by the Spanish support to the SADR and the crisis of the little rock called Leila . In fact, Spain joining the EU was of direct impact on Moroccan economy as all the country’s main exportations started passing through the Spanish state, which has quite the same kind of agricultural and manufactured production, this pushed the Spanish government to impose more restrictions on the Moroccan exportation, which generated the famous Tomato Crisis because the Spanish customs officers let the Moroccan products pending until it was spoiled.
Despite this economical interest conflicts, Spain remains Morocco’s second economical partner and importer and th fourth foreign investor in Morocco as well as one of the most important loan donor (De Laramandy 2005, 350-354). In addition to that, the clandestine trade between the two countries generates millions of dollars annually. At the militarily level , Moroccan Spanish relations are the perfect form of cooperation, thus Spain gave Morocco different loans to equip and supply its military segment. Gillespie said “During the Gonzalez period, there were strong ethical objections to the use of development aid (FAD) credits to finance Moroccan military purchases from Spain. Between 1977 and 1994, Morocco was the third largest recipient of these credits, after China and Mexico, and one quarter of the sum conceded to Rabat was used to purchase Spanish military equipment” (Gillespie 2000, 57). Also king Hassan’s visit to Spain in 1989 opened the opportunity of a bilateral defense agreement as Gillespie explains “From 1984, there were joint military exercises, at first involving the air forces, then the navies and finally the armies of the two countries. During King Hassan’s visit to Spain in 1989, this activity was consolidated by a bilateral defense agreement which also provided for annual meetings, exchange visits, training corporation, joined production of military materiel and common programs to develop arming systems” (Gillespie 2000, 55). However, the Moroccan Spanish relations remain very fragile because of political conflict of interests as we’ve seen, and the best example to illustrate that is the Leila island’s crisis.

France and Morocco seem to be doomed for good collaboration and strong never-ending alliance. Morocco is very much related to France, culturally because most of its elites studied in France. Linguistically, as Morocco belongs to the francophone family. Economically since the Moroccan economical structure depends on the French one. And most of all, historically because of the colonial era, which was characterized by the special treatment of the French to the Moroccan case during colonization. We notice that, while France was exerting direct ruling over Algeria and Tunisia, it has maintained the Moroccan Monarchy even after 1912 treaty. Also, Morocco fought on the French side during the World War by serving as a land of meeting for the Allies during the Anfa Summit, and sending Moroccan soldiers to fight with the colonizer (Berramdane 1987, 20). Politically, Morocco counts on the French perpetual support to defend the Cherifian Kingdom at the European Union and the United Nations to take its territorial aspirations to a international level, in spite of the mild crisis that divided the two countries during the mandate of De Gaulle of after the assassination of Mehdi Ben Barka. Even if France remains silent about the Western Sahara issue, it is obvious that France stands as a major Moroccan ally, by providing Morocco with financial, logistical and military aids. Here we should ask what does France gets in exchange of this services? Fist of all, France enjoys the prestige of being a sort of “God father” to its ex-colonies especially Morocco, and an active actor in the third world development. But France’s interest in Morocco is mainly economical, as it stands as the privileged economical partner with more than 40% of Morocco’s exportations going to France and its investments being on the top of Moroccan foreign investors lists. We can explain this strong economical partnership, not only by the strong political will, but more by the heritage of the 40 years of the French colonial existence in morocco, that made the Moroccan economy very much dependent on the French’s one. Moreover, Morocco is one of the most important workers’ provider to the aging France of the post war era and even now. In exchange, Morocco benefits from the foreign currency the Moroccan immigrants send regularly to their mother land. Yet, France fears the flourishing of the American interests over Morocco after the free trade convention, which menaces the French domination of the Moroccan economy. Military, France provided Morocco with military assistance to face the Polisario and Algerian threat, as Morocco associated these two entities with the U.R.S.S during the cold war as to get western support and to maintain the balance of power inside the region during the Cold War. To illustrate the French helps Damis says that “The total value of French arms sales to Morocco between 1974 and 1982 is probably in the range of $1, 5-2, 00 billion, not including weapons supply through credits…” (Damis 1985, 148). As a consequence of all these mutual interests, Moroccan French relation are characterized by deep historical roots, translated by good friendship relations and common interests.

Official discourse often relate Moroccan American relations to the 18 th century Moroccan recognition of th USA as an independent state from the British empire. Yet, in our realistic world governed by mutual interests we can interpret the Moroccan American relations according to political, economic and military factors. Politically, Morocco served as an intermediate between the East and the West, as Morocco tried to highlight its quality of being a tolerant country and the fact that the Moroccan king is the Al Quods Committee’s president. However, the Camp David treaties gave to the US a new ally inside the middle east which contributed in the Diplomatic isolation of the Morocco of the 80s. Still, the US is counting today on Morocco as a regional stabilizer in north Africa and a sure soldier in the region on US war against terrorism (Selected Papers 2003). But Morocco is one of the exporters of the extremist terrorists, if we consider the number of Moroccan terrorists involved in the terrorist attempts since 2001, which weakens its position on this subject. In return, Morocco count on the US for supporting it’s territorial issue among the international community. Nowadays, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, US does not intervene on Morocco’s side on the Sahara conflict directly, because the Algerian oil and gas are more valuable for the American interests, thus US plan through the Marshal Plan to build a peaceful atmosphere in the region for prosperous economical exchange. US has for a long time avoided north Africa as to not interfere in what is considered as a French economical territory, so till the late 90s the trade rates between Morocco and USA remained very low. In 2004, “the Free Trade Treaty which anointed Morocco as a Special Ally outside the NATO, and gave Morocco very comfortable trading terms” (De Laramandy 2005, 402) is a kind of standing point in the relations between Rabat and Washington, even if king Hassan has said before “that US can never replace France” (Hassan II 1993, 53). The free trade came in a historical moment where US needed Morocco as a gate keeper against terrorism, while Morocco was aiming to expend its economical horizons outside the European island after the structural adjustments of the late 80s. The US Moroccan Military cooperation was strengthened by the Carter and Regan government, even if 5 military American bases were in Morocco since the 50s, as the USA provided Morocco with different kinds of armaments and trained the Moroccan army in many occasions, because during the Cold War Morocco was the Western castle in north Africa, whereas all of Algeria, Libya and Egypt were more pro-communists. Parker said about this military aids “that the United States is trying to build up a position of military strength in Morocco” (Parker 1987, 161). Morocco was more than happy with the American gifts, as it served in the long Moroccan Algerian Polisario conflict, in addition to the Saudian funds that served in baying arms from the US. To illustrate the huge amount of loans and aids spent in Morocco by the US Zoubair & Zunes explain that “Morocco has, since independence in 1956, received more US aid than any other Arab country except Egypt. Indeed, since the beginning of the war over Western Sahara in 1975, Morocco has obtained more than one fifth of all US aid to Africa, totaling more than 1$ billion in military assistance alone. The United States played a major role in reversing the war over Western Sahara to Morocco’s favor through large-scale economic and military aid, military advisors, and logistical assistance”(Zoubair & Zunes 1999, 234). US Moroccan relations, as we see ,are purely based on pragmatic mutual interests, which varies following the historical events.

During the reign of Hassan II the branches of the Moroccan tree have reached the heart of the west, as foreign policy was one of the sovereign’s priorities. Consequently, Morocco has built strong ties with all of France, Spain and the U.S for mutual interests. Yet, the Moroccan tree nowadays is more turned to its inner matters to build a better Morocco from the inside, able to stand as a high-ranking negotiator face to the West.

REFERENCE LIST

- De Laramandy 2005 / Zoubair & Zunes 1999 /
Parker 1987 / Damis 1985 / Berramdane 1987 /
Gillespie 2000 / Hassan II, 1976 (...)