Why the Maghreb Really Matters

Editor: John Feffer
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The Maghreb is again a major talking point in the United States. In the perceived interests of fighting terrorism and promoting trade, a group of politicians and pundits are urging the Obama administration to side with Morocco and against self-determination for the Sahrawis of Western Sahara. They also urge a regional union for the Maghreb. Yet reaching for a quick fix that supports Morocco’s campaigns in any of these areas would set such a Maghreb Union back years.

Those who see the Sahrawi’s decades-long reach for freedom as an obstacle to the perceived bigger picture often have high profiles. Among them are a wrong-headed group of U.S. members of Congress who wrote to President Obama in April. Their letter suggested that the president should set in stone an extraordinarily flawed solution promoted by Western Sahara’s illegal occupiers — Morocco — to entrap the Sahrawi in an autonomous structure rather than offering self-determination, which is their just and legal right.

This group of legislators took their lead and some of their language from a new report Why the Maghreb Matters from the Potomac Institute and the Conflict Management Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The report presents the long-stalled union in the Maghreb region as posing both significant threats and opportunities for U.S. interests. In seeking to over-promote both scenarios, the report highlights a common reaction of those looking to find an end-game solution in the region at whatever cost: over-simplification.

The cost in this case, should the U.S. government and the international community continue such realpolitik analysis, is the welfare of more than 200,000 people in the occupied territories of Western Sahara, Africa’s last colony.

Why the Maghreb?

The Maghreb — generally including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara — is significant for many reasons. According to the Potomac/SAIS report, "the U.S. government should have a profound interest in North Africa because developments in the region impact significantly on our national interests." These developments relate first of all to trade and investment. Countries within the region have tended to under-perform economically. So, the argument goes, a regional union based on free and fair trade is likely to benefit everyone, including the United States.

Few would dispute the importance of promoting economic development in the region. But when the discussion turns to the Maghreb’s significance in terms of threats, disagreements arise. The Potomac/SAIS report focuses on the threat of terrorism and highlights a five-fold increase in terrorist attacks in the region since 2001. That these figures indicate a serious problem for civilians in the region is undeniable.

Yet, identifying their source, both geographical and ideological, has become a blame game with the highest possible stakes. The United States and others are in danger of not only getting it all terribly wrong by allying with Rabat in the efforts to stamp out terrorism in the region but of casting a massive injustice upon the Sahrawis.

Documented cases of human rights violations abound. In a report late in 2008, Human Rights Watch "found that Moroccan authorities repress this right [of self-determination] through laws penalizing affronts to Morocco’s ‘territorial integrity,’ through arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, restrictions on associations and assemblies, and through police violence and harassment that goes unpunished."

Why then have key analysts and policymakers in the Untied States ignored these factors and viewed the Moroccan perpetrators of these acts as the solution to the problem?

The Real Problem in the Maghreb

For the last three decades, Morocco has denied Western Sahara the basic human right to self-determination, one of the tenets of the United Nations. An International Court of Justice ruling in 1975 confirmed Morocco’s invasion as illegal. Numerous UN resolutions established the mechanism for a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara. And there has been a long-running UN mission in the region designed to move the populace toward self-determination. Still, the forced occupation of Western Sahara continues.

In Western Sahara, 160,000 Moroccan military and para-military personnel are aided by one of the world’s largest minefields and by a 2,700 km security wall that runs right through communities and extended families. We Sahrawi sought the inclusion of a human rights monitor in the UN mission. But the proposal met with resistance from a slick and expensive lobbying effort run by Morroco’s foreign public relations representatives (all nine of them) and by a recalcitrant and counter-intuitive France, which used its veto to block the proposal.

So, the reality, as opposed to the realpolitik, makes a compelling case against Morocco’s tainted "autonomy" proposal (in actuality, a "non-independence" proposal). Generalizations about terrorism and threats to U.S. interests should not detract attention from the real problem at the center of the Maghreb: the denial of basic human rights to those who live in Africa’s last colony, Western Sahara.

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Aminatou Haidar is a Sahrawi human-rights defender, the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award laureate, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Elecciones europeas y Sahara Occidental

El domingo hay elecciones europeas. En las elecciones europeas se deciden cosas que afectan a España... pero también se van a decidir cuestiones esenciales en relación con Marruecos y el Sahara Occidental. Pero no todos los partidos son iguales. Quien apoye la causa del pueblo saharaui, si es coherente, tiene que saber qué candidaturas puede apoyar y cuales no. Veamos cuales.

La Unión Europea decide cuestiones muy relevantes para España... pero también destina nuestro dinero a países terceros. Y viene haciéndolo, muy generosamente, con Marruecos. Igualmente, la UE firma acuerdos económicos que pueden suponer un expolio de las riquezas de otros. Es el caso del Acuerdo pesquero expoliando las riquezas de los saharauis. Por eso en estas elecciones también se deciden cuestiones que afectan a la política del norte de África.

La Coordinadora Española de asociaciones de apoyo al Sahara (CEAS) ha tenido la buena idea de hacer un análisis de los programas de las candidaturas en liza para comprobar qué postura defienden sobre el Sahara Occidental. Se trata de una iniciativa que no cabe sino alabar, y desear que se repita en todos los procesos electorales que se vayan a hacer en España. No me consta (y si me equivoco quisiera ser corregido) que CEAS haya hecho este análisis anteriormente. Pero, insisto, es una gran idea que, aunque haya tardado tiempo en concretarse hay que aplaudir. No obstante, haré algunas precisiones complementarias a las observaciones de CEAS. En especial, creo que hay que prestar atención no sólo al programa, sino a las personas que aparecen o han sido excluidas de las candidaturas.

CEAS, en primer lugar, analiza la posición de los partidos con representación en las Cortes Generales

PSOE

Incluye una breve referencia en la página 17: "Apoyamos, asimismo, una solución justa, aceptable por las partes y duradera para el Sahara Occidental, de acuerdo con las Resoluciones de la ONU ".

Aunque, irónicamente, el anterior párrafo de su programa dice: "La Presidencia española de 2010 organizará la Conferencia de Autoridades locales y regionales, el Encuentro civil Euromed, el Foro empresarial Euromed y la Conferencia de Mujeres, y la reunión de la Asamblea Parlamentaria Euromed. Y promoverá la profundización en el Estatuto Avanzado de Asociación con Marruecos ya alcanzado ".

Podríamos añadir algo más.
La candidatura del PSOE está encabezada por un notorio enemigo de la causa saharaui (López Aguilar). Y no sólo eso, sino que ha sido excluido de la mismaCarlos Carnero. ¿Quien es Carlos Carnero? Pues un especialista en la Unión Europea que ha sido euro-diputado desde 1994 y, que, atención, fue uno de los principales inspiradores del Informe del Parlamento Europeo que denuncia las violaciones de derechos humanos por Marruecos en el Sahara Occidental.
A mi juicio, no hay duda ninguna, de que la exclusión de Carlos Carnero se ha producido por presiones del majzén.

PP

No hace ninguna referencia al Sáhara ni a los y las saharauis; sin embargo, habla positivamente del Estatuto Avanzado con Marruecos

No sólo eso. Sino que en esta candidatura figuran varios miembros del lobby pro-marroquí (Mayor, Millán Mon, Iturgaiz).

CIU-PNV-CCCIU, PNV y CC comparten candidatura llamada "Coalición por Europa"

PNV y CiU, no hacen mención alguna a este tema.
Coalición Canaria, en la página 7 de su Programa Electoral, dice: "Especial mención tiene para nosotros por la cercanía y lazos especiales de amistad el impulsar desde la Unión Europea un papel firme y coordinado en el desenlace del conflicto del Sáhara a partir de las resoluciones de Naciones Unidas, que acabe de una vez por todas con este largo proceso para que el pueblo saharaui decida libremente su derecho a la autodeterminación vía Referéndum. Junto a esto la Unión Europea debe seguir contribuyendo a la calidad de vida del pueblo Saharaui a través de la necesaria ayuda humanitaria"

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El problema es que la candidata de Coalición Canaria está en el número 4 y es casi imposible que salga elegida.

ERC-BNG-ARALARs, más otras formaciones menores, conforman la candidatura "Europa de los Pueblos-Verdes"

El partido catalán no hace ninguna referencia a los saharauis, mientras que el gallego está interesado en mejorar los acuerdos pesqueros con el reino alaui, afirmando en la página 11 de su Programa Electoral, apartado 5.3 "O sector pesqueiro" que defenderá, entre otros, la: "Renovación e mellora dos acordos pesqueiros vixentes: introdución de buques galegos no acordo con Marrocos, ..."

IU

El Programa Electoral Elecciones Europeas 2009 de IU refleja una preocupación real y argumentada por este tema. En la página 49, dentro del apartado "Por una Europa de Paz y Solidaridad", se puede leer: "Izquierda Unida vuelve a poner de manifiesto su compromiso con un proceso de seguridad y cooperación de todos los estados del Mediterráneo y el Oriente Medio, así como el derecho del pueblo Saharaui a la autodeterminación, sobre las bases de las resoluciones 1754 y 1783 de las Naciones Unidas ".
Y prosigue: "La relación entre la UE y Marruecos debe supeditarse a un respeto real de los Derechos Humanos y de las libertades públicas e individuales, en particular a las libertades de expresión, prensa y asociación.
A pesar de los esfuerzos de comunicación por parte del Estado Marroquí para dar una nueva imagen, siguen estando al orden del día en Marruecos situaciones propias de una dictadura, en particular la represión brutal de los movimientos sociales, la criminalización y el encarcelamiento arbitrario de los líderes de movimientos de izquierda, etc.
En el Parlamento europeo, IU seguirá denunciando esta situación y exigirá que Marruecos respete los Tratados. IU llevará estas cuestiones al Parlamento solidariamente con las organizaciones progresistas de Marruecos que luchan por una democracia real en su país".
Además, incluye en la página 51 el Anexo 1. DECLARACIÓN MARCHA AL MURO DE LA VERGÜENZA 10 DE ABRIL DE 2009 , en el que se expresa su postura ante el triste accidente ocurrido.

La candidatura de Izquierda Unida y otros partidos asociados está encabezada por dos eurodiputados que han demostrado un compromiso sincero e intenso con la causa saharaui, Willy Meyer y Raúl Romeva.

UPyD

Otro partido que parece haberse tomado en serio el asunto del Sáhara es UPyD. En dos secciones de su Programa Electoral aparece reflejada con amplitud su situación.
Cuando en la página 12 se refiere al "Desarrollo de una Agricultura y Pesca europeas modernas y racionales", afirma: "Defendemos que las relaciones con la Unión Mediterránea, África, Rusia y los países de la antigua órbita soviética ocupen un lugar prioritario dentro del programa de acuerdos a desarrollar por la UE. Rechazaremos de modo explícito la inclusión de los caladeros y bancos de pesca en aguas de Sáhara Occidental en el tratado de pesca a firmar en breve entre la UE y Marruecos, y que, como paso previo a la firma del Tratado de Libre Comercio en 2010, se exija en el Parlamento Europeo al gobierno de Marruecos el respeto de las resoluciones de Naciones Unidas sobre Sáhara Occidental. También promoveremos una relación específica con la América latina como área de relaciones prioritarias para la UE".
Y se muestra aún más contundente cuando, más adelante, en el apartado "Desarrollo de una Política Exterior verdaderamente común", afirma lo siguiente: "60. UPyD exigirá que la Política y la Acción Exteriores de la UE respondan siempre a unos principios básicos mínimos como son:
1º)- El respeto a los Derechos Humanos, la legalidad Internacional y las Resoluciones de la ONU. Al respecto, UPyD defenderá específicamente en el Parlamento Europeo el derecho a la autodeterminación y plena independencia del pueblo Saharaui y el reconocimiento de la República Árabe Saharaui Democrática, y denunciará en Europa a Marruecos como ocupante ilegal del Sáhara Occidental, que a la vez viola los Derechos Humanos de los Saharauis y esquilma sus recursos naturales.
2º)- El respeto a la integridad territorial de la UE, entendida como la integridad del territorio de sus Estados miembros, a la hora de diseñar las relaciones políticas con terceros Estados, algo esencial para salvaguardar la integridad territorial española frente a Marruecos".

Conviene advertir que el número 2 de la candidatura de UPyD, Fernando Maura, ha manifestado públicamente su compromiso de visitar oficialmente los territorios liberados de la RASD.

CEAS analiza también la posición de los partidos que no tienen representación parlamentaria en las Cortes Generales y dice

La mayoría de estos partidos no hacen referencia en sus programas al pueblo saharaui. Sin embargo, queremos destacar la apuesta de Izquierda Anticapitalista, que en su Programa-Marco ante las Elecciones al Parlamento Europeo 2009, cuando habla de "Un nuevo internacionalismo" expone: " Los pueblos del Estado español tenemos una deuda histórica con el pueblo saharaui como antigua colonia que la dictadura franquista entregó al régimen dictatorial marroquí en 1975. Por eso debemos exigir el fin de la ocupación marroquí, del saqueo de sus recursos y el respeto al derecho a la plena libertad e independencia del pueblo saharaui mediante el RECONOCIMIENTO DE LA REPÚBLICA ARABE SAHARAUI DEMOCRÁTICA POR EL ESTADO ESPAÑOL Y LA UE. Una tarea que ha de ir estrechamente unida a la solidaridad con el pueblo marroquí frente a un régimen represivo que se ha convertido en el principal aliado del imperialismo en el Norte de Africa. Denunciamos los crímenes de ejércitos y mercenarios extranjeros, así como de las milicias sectarias paramilitares". Más adelante, reafirma su compromiso al exigir: "Contra la ocupación marroquí, RECONOCIMIENTO DE LA REPÚBLICA ARABE SAHARAUI DEMOCRÁTICA POR EL ESTADO ESPAÑOL Y LA UE ".

En efecto, algunos de los partidos con más presencia mediática no hacen alusión alguna al Sahara Occidental. Es el caso de Libertas o de Iniciativa Internacionalista.

CONCLUSIÓN
Naturalmente, en un voto pesan muchos factores.
En una candidatura, igualmente, no sólo importa lo que diga el programa sino las ideas de todos y cada uno de los candidatos. Puede afirmarse que, a pesar de quienes son los nº 1 de las candidaturas de PSOE y PP, dentro de esas candidaturas, junto a personas amigas del majzén, hay también amigos del pueblo saharaui.
Pero para aquel ciudadano que considere que en su voto el apoyo al pueblo saharaui tiene un valor preponderante sólo hay dos opciones claras e inequívocas en estas elecciones europeas: Izquierda Unida y Unión Progreso y Democracia.

Why the Sahara undermines the Mediterranean Union

To achieve its goal of Mediterranean unity, the EU needs to be committed to the UN s goal of self-determination for Western Sahara.
The EU s attempt to create a union including nations on both sides of the Mediterranean has considerable merit. The trouble is that its idealism falters in the face of reality. This is most evident in the case of Western Sahara.

The challenge posed by reality is, in fact, captured in the subtle change of name of the body. Until July 2008, it was to have been the Mediterranean Union . Now we have the Union for the Mediterranean . This is no mere tweaking of semantics. It is recognition of the fact that the states along the Mediterranean s southern coast are a long way from anything like a union.

In recognition of this reality, the agenda has shifted away from more lofty goals. While the original trans-Mediterranean partnership process – the Barcelona Process – aimed to create “a common area of peace and stability underpinned by sustainable development, rule of law, democracy and human rights”, the agenda since 2008 has had a more prosaic focus, on trade and investment.

This political evolution is also an attempt to skirt around the fact that Africa s last remaining colony sits squarely within the proposed union.

That colony is, of course, Western Sahara, which was forcibly annexed and occupied by Morocco. Without a sustainable solution here, no union – whether of the Mediterranean or the Maghreb – will have a real impact.

The United Nations has set out what such a solution could be: a referendum on self-determination. It did so after the International Court of Justice said in 1975 that it could “not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco”. In short, the annexation is illegal.

The UN has advocated a referendum since the early 1960s. Morocco itself backed the idea in the early 1980s and accepted the UN s settlement plan of 1990. However, attempts to establish the basis for a vote on self-determination have been blocked by Morocco – now under a new monarch – and by supporters in the UN Security Council.

This stalemate is putting up political walls throughout the region, drawing battle-lines between expediency and justice. It is a major reason why intra-Maghreb trade and investment is both miniscule and complicated.

The continued, well-documented violation of the human rights of Sahrawis creates an ethical vacuum for any body, such as the Union for the Mediterranean, that seeks to create a trans-Mediterranean union.

Most European governments seem aware of this. So too is the European Parliament, which, in March, produced a report on human rights that voiced concern over continued abuses and recognised that abuses will continue until Sahrawis right to self-determination is recognised. That right is recognised by most members of the UN Security Council and the EU; those who are preventing recognition of that right are chiefly Morocco and France.

The current position of Morocco and France amounts to a disavowal of a process of organic self-determination in favour of a shoddy form of autonomy within Morocco. It ignores the basic human right to choose.

For any Mediterranean union to gain a foothold in reality, Morocco must be prepared to accept its own former proposal, a free and fair referendum.

Polisario, which represents Sahrawis who seek independence, has a vested interest in a Mediterranean union. It wants to see greater trade; it wants the southern Mediterranean region to have links – political, social and economic – with Europe that are stronger, but also free and fair. Such a union will remain merely an ideal as long as Western Sahara remains in its current state.

Mohammed Khadad is a member of the Polisario leadership and is its co-ordinator at the UN.

Mali acusa a la llamada "Al Qaida" del Magreb de tener apoyos de Marruecos: España interpelada

Que el terrorismo no suele ser lo que parece creo que está claro para los que leen este blog. Es indiscutible que el "terrorismo" a menudo oculta operaciones encubiertas ejecutadas quizá por grupos de individuos, pero dirigidas por los servicios de inteligencia de algunos Estados. Ahora en la mismísima prensa francesa se vuelve a acusar a Marruecos de apoyar el terrorismo de la llamada "Al Qaeda del Magreb Islámico"

Es una constatación que el terrorismo y los grupos terroristas suelen ser instrumentalizados. Pero es más complicado saber quien instrumentaliza el terrorismo. No obstante hay un antiguo criterio que no suele fallar: ¿a quien beneficia (cui prodest) ese terrorismo?

El grupo llamado "Al Qaida del Magreb Islámico" (AQMI, que en realidad es un grupo que de "Al Qaida" sólo tiene el nombre), es la denominación que, desde enero de 2007, recibe el "Grupo Salafista de Predicación y Combate" (GSPC) que a su vez surge a partir del "Grupo Islámico Armado" (GIA). Esta supuesta "Al Qaida" es un grupo turbio y cuya instrumentalización por algún Estado (en concreto, Marruecos) ya ha sido denunciada hace tiempo. Los lectores de este blog habrán leído un artículo titulado "Al Qaida del Magreb Islámico: genealogía de una mentira" (31-XII-2008) donde recojo el testimonio de un terrorista (Abdelhak Layada), nada más y nada menos que el fundador del GIA, que reconoce que Hassán II le apoyó para cometer atentados en Argelia como castigo por el apoyo de este país a la causa saharaui.

Ahora esa acusación vuelve. Pero no vuelve en una publicación cualquiera. Vuelve, nada más y nada menos, que en la revista francesa de referencia en política africana. Una revista muy cercana, por lo demás, a los intereses y consignas del "Quai d'Orsay" (el ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores francés). Una revista muy cercana a Marruecos del que suele ofrecer una imagen "idílica". Esa revista se llama "Jeune Afrique". En el número 2524 de Jeune Afrique (24-30 de mayo de 2009), páginas 38-39, se incluye un artículo sobre la lucha contra el terrorismo en Mali. En este artículo, firmado por Pierre-François Naudé (periodista de la redacción de Jeune Afrique especializado en Mali) aparece el siguiente fragmento, que traduzco:

Otra incertidumbre que, desde el punto de vista maliense, pesa sobre el arreglo de la cuestión salafista: las tensiones entre Argelia y Marruecos. "Es evidente que los grupos islamistas se benefician de ciertos apoyos de Marruecos", acusa un miembro de los servicios de inteligencia de Mali. Según este último, se trataría de una respuesta a los numerosos vínculos que Mali mantiene con el Polisario.

En efecto, Mali reconoció a la República Arabe Saharaui Democrática (RASD) el 4 de julio de 1980.

De los testimonios existentes se deduce que:

1. Marruecos, según el fundador del GIA, apoyó el terrorismo en Argelia porque este país apoyaba a la causa saharaui.
2. Marruecos, según el testimonio de un miembro de los servicios de inteligencia de Mali recogido por la revista francesa de referencia en política africana, apoya el terrorismo en Mali porque este país apoya a la causa saharaui.

La pregunta es:
¿apoya o ha apoyado Marruecos el terrorismo en España como respuesta al apoyo a la causa saharaui que se ha dado por España antes de que Rodríguez llegara a la presidencia del Gobierno?

POST DATA (2-VI-2009)
El artículo, publicado el 26 de mayo en la edición de papel, ha sido subido a internet por Jeune Afrique con acceso gratuito el 2 de junio.
Íntegramente, esto es, sin cambiar una coma del párrafo que he traducido.

Prostitution, l'autre industrie au Maroc

La prostitution gagngrène la société marocaine. Et cette gangrène se projette à l'extérieur des frotnières du royaume au point de devenir un trait caractéristique de la femme marocaine vivant en terre d'exil.

Les prostituées ne se cachent pas au Maroc. On en trouve partout, des rabatteurs, des clients, des hotels propose leurs chambres, les macros encaissent, c'est une veritable industrie qui fait le succès du tourisme au Maroc.

La banalisation de la prostitution au Maroc ne permet plus de distinguer ce fléau comme une déviance nocive du corps social. Marrakech est une des plus grandes villes du pays. Que son économie soit exclusivement fondée sur le proxénétisme ne semble plus déranger personne.

A Rabat , la fille d'un ex-conseiller et ancien ministre du roi Hassan II, accusée de diriger un réseau de prostitution de luxe, d'écouler de la cocaïne au profit de ses clients, des dignitaires du Makhzen et étrangers, dont de grandes personnalités de la politique et du milieu des affaires, aurait bénéficié de la "protection" des cadres des services de la police, dont le Préfet de Police, ainsi qu'un responsable à la Direction générale de sûreté Nationale (DGSN). Elle en est sortie indemne.

A Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, Fès, Tanger, Agadir, le commerce de la chair fait florès. C'est une activité comme une autre. Une donnée, encore une fois. Un attribut de l'espace urbain marocain. Des villes de tolérance, avec des réseaux, des filières, des clients, des fournisseurs, des circuits institutionnalisés, des appels d'offres et des cahiers de charges.


Une enquête de l’Organisation Panafricaine de Lutte contre le Sida au Maroc (OPALS-Maroc) auprès de 500 prostituées marocaines, dans sept villes du pays, Azrou, Khénifra, Béni Mellal, Meknès, Fès, Agadir et Rabat, dévoilée en janvier 2008, met en lumière un phénomène peu évoqué au Maroc. Une partie des résultats est tristement prévisible mais beaucoup sont très surprenants. 13% des prostituées interrogées sont des « célibataires vierges » qui ont toujours leur hymen. Ce chiffre met en lumière le problème de la sacro-sainte virginité demandée avant le mariage et les pratiques exercées par certaines femmes pour avoir malgré tout une activité sexuelle.

Les fondements de la société marocaine sont à nouveau ébranlés dans cette étude lorsqu’on apprend que 59,4% de ces femmes ont eu leur premier rapport sexuel rémunéré entre 9 et 15 ans. Une femme interrogée avoue même avoir eu son premier rapport à 9 ans. Par ailleurs 32,6% des femmes ont pratiqué ou subi un acte sexuel entre 6 et 15 ans. La faible probabilité que l’enfant de 6 ans soit consentant renvoie encore une fois aux problèmes de la pédophilie et aux violences sexuelles infligées aux jeunes filles, dans un pays où la sexualité est taboue. Tout comme le cas des mineurs qui errent à longueur de journée pour vendre leurs corps sans aucune protection contre les maladies. Ainsi se dessine la cruauté d'un destin pitoyable pour beaucoup d'adolescents marocains.

Un autre phénomène alarmant qui sévit depuis longtemps : La prostitution en milieu estudiantin. Lycéennes ou étudiantes, de jeunes Marocaines se livrent, contre des cadeaux ou de l'argent, à un commerce du sexe qu'elles refusent toutefois d'appeler prostitution. En Europe, les témoignages et alertes se multiplient face au phénomène des jeunes filles marocaines qui se prostituent et dont la principale cause est la pauvreté.

Pourquoi le ministre de l'intérieur a refusé l'installation d'un bureau local de l'association française "Ni Putes Ni Soumises"? Pour la seule raison que cela risque de déranger l'institution de la prostitution au Maroc, que cette association fasse l’état des lieux de la prostitution et le tourisme sexuel extrêmement grave au royaume alaouite.

Quand on additionne à ce fleau évolutif qu'est la prostitution des temps modernes (complicité de la famille, tourisme sexuel, pédophilie.....) à l'industrie des stupefiants bien encadree par les decideurs et les barons de la cours royale (le Maroc est le premier producteur mondial de cannabis et premier fournisseur de l'Europe) non obstant des autres fléaux socio-economiques endémiques, on est en droit de se poser la question suivante : Où va le Maroc de Sa Majesté le roi Mohamed VI?

Malheureusement pour la population sahraouie, ce fléau n'a pas épargné les territoires occupés du Sahara Occidental, où la présence de plus de 160.000 soldats, le long du mur de défense, fait de ce métier l'un des plus lucratifs après le trafic de drogue dirigé par les généraux de l'armée marocaine.

La mythomanie marocaine

On ment pour cacher une réalité ou en créer une, pour s’économiser l’effort d’une explication, pour se protéger soi-même ou un autre, pour obtenir des privilèges, des faveurs, des avantages, on ment pour se valoriser, entretenir chez les autres une image idéalisée de soi-même, souvent très loin de la réalité. Parfois l’illusion construite dans le mensonge est si parfaite qu’on commence à y croire, comme menteur. On se ment alors à soi-même. À ce stade, on glisse vers la pathologie: la mythomanie. C’est le système maniaque de la menterie qui s’énonce sans contrôle. Les mythomanes demeurent de mauvais menteurs car les bons savent doser.

La tâche qui le goubernement s'est donnée dans le but de projetter une image extérieure d'un Maroc moderne, stable, démocratique et respectueux des droits de l'homme est une mission qui s'est avérée impossible à cause de la réalité quotiedienne. Cela a conduit les responsables marocains à devenir des véritables professionnels de la mythomanie.


Premier mensonge : "Le Maroc change"

"Le Maroc change!". Depuis quelque années, cette formule qui ressemble étrangement à un slogan de campagne électorale est sur toutes les lèvres. Le gouvernement et les autorités du pays l'utilisent sans cesse. Selon eux, grâce à l'avènement du nouveau millénaire et le changement de monarque, le Maroc serait entré de plein-pied dans la modernité. Les experts internationaux usent également sans modération de cette affirmation. Chaque fois qu'ils sont interrogés, ils n'hésitent pas à déclarer que le progrès répand désormais ses bienfaits sur l'ensemble du pays. Dès lors, l'information se propage dans toutes les rédactions. Repris avec empressement par la presse et les médias, relayé et diffusé à toute la planète via Internet, ce mensonge est en passe de devenir une vérité absolue. Alors que la réalité vécue par les citoyens est faite de misère criante, d'inégalités sociales flagrantes et d'injustices évidentes. La justice incarcère des citoyens pour outrage à la personne du roi, la police frappe et arrête systématiquement les participants aux manifestations, la RTM, même devenue Al Aoula, continue d'ouvrir invariablement ses journaux d'informations sur les activités royales (avant, dans le générique du téléjournal on voyait Hassan II sur son cheval blanc. Mais comme Mohamed VI n'aime pas beaucoup les chavaux, ils pourraient mettre son image sur un jetski). La pratique de la torture est largement répandue dans les prisons et les commissariats du pays. Les autorités marocaines accusées de participer au programme américain de transferts illégaux de prisonniers. Sinistre réalité ! Le Maroc est toujours considéré comme un pays où les services de sécurité pratiquent la torture. Tout le monde est unanime là-dessus : amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Commission NNUU à Génève, Parlement Européen…) Les sites webs du Journal Hebdo, Nichane, Al Watan alan, Youtube… censurés. Ceux qui croient ou qui prétendent croire que le Maroc change mettent sur le compte des vieilles habitudes toute atteinte aux libertés fondamentales. Ils expliquent qu'il est difficile de changer les mentalités. Ils tentent de démontrer combien les réflexes du passé, dont eux aussi affirment vouloir se débarrasser, sont ancrés dans la société. Ils oublient qu'à force de se répéter, les réflexes finissent par devenir des habitudes. Chaque année, la justice prononce des interdictions de parution et condamne des journalistes à des peines de prison et des amendes exhorbitantes conduisant directement à la faillite. Les plus optimistes, ceux qui ne perdent pas espoir et persistent à croire en des jours meilleurs – y voient une embellie quand les peines prononcées sont assorties de sursis. Bien maigre consolation !

Le retour massif des Marocains résidents à l'étranger lors de la période estivale attisera les envies de départs de ceux, nombreux, qui ne se voient plus vivre chez eux. Au bout du compte, un changement majeur s'opère : à défaut d'éclaircie, le ciel s'assombrit. Les petits métiers – porteurs de précarité – se développent. Le "système D" et la solidarité pour échapper à la pauvreté demeurent les seules solutions pour lutter contre la paupérisation. Pis, des diplômés "Bac + 2" et même "Bac + 4" finissent comme opérateurs téléphoniques dans des centrales d'appels. Et Tandis que les partis traditionnels n'ont plus aucune crédibilité chez le citoyen marocain, les partis islamistes sont entrés en scène et s'engouffrent en promettant remporter les élections communales. A moins que l'entrée spectaculaire du PAM fasse de vrais miracles.


Deuxième mensonge : le terrorisme

N'importe quelle manifestation pacifique reprimée par la force, ses participants sont immédiatement dénoncés comme des fauteurs de trouble-fêtes. Le militant des droits humain Amazigh, victime de la grossière accusation de complot avec les services secreta espagnols. Un vif souvenir de l'époque de Hassan II! Les militants sahraouis sont accusés de pratiquer le terrorisme dans les universités et dans les villes occupés du Sahara Occidental et condamnés à des années de prison parmi les délinquants d'ordre commun. Les fausses accusations sont le seul moyen que l'administration a trouvées pour réprimer l'Intifada dans les villes sahraouies.

La mythomanie marocaine va plus loin encore jusqu'à prétendre que le Front Polisario a des liaisons avec la nébuleuses d'Al Qaida dans le Sahel. Une nébuleuse qui ne va pas au-delà d'une poignée de trafiquants de cigarettes "Marlboro" dont le seul but est l'enrichissement à travers le kidnapping de touristes européens.

Le Maroc, en accusant les sahraouis de terroristes, veut faire croire au monde que la stabilité et la sécurité du pays passe par l'occupation du Sahara Occidental alors que la réalité c'est que le terreau favori de l'intégrisme est la pauvreté et l'injustice, les deux maladies chroniques du Maroc de Mohamed VI.

La menace integriste (réelle ou inventée)est un alibi pour imposer le fait accompli de l'occupation illégale du Sahara Occidental et pour effrayer les forces libérales et progressistes et de se poser en rempart contre des forces politiques que ces mêmes régimes ont parfois soutenu.

Mais les responsables marocains oublient que celui qui dit un mensonge ne prévoit point le travail qu'il entreprend; car il faudra qu'il en invente mille autres pour soutenir le premier.

D'autres mensonges ? La série de démantèlements de réseaux terroristes. Ma menace communiste à Sidi Ifni. La spécifité marocaine, plat chaud servi pour accéder au statut avancé avec l'UE. La crise financière internationale n'a eu que de faibles répercussions sur le Maroc. En 2010 il n’y aura plus de chômeur, plus de mendiants, tous les marocains vont travailler dans le tourisme, ils auront tous accès aux soins gratuits...etc…etc…

Cependant, le menteur finit toujours par être dépassé par ses mensonges, comme le dit si bien un certain poète anonyme : Le menteur finit par être dépassé par tous les mensonges qu’il a forgés , laissant entrevoir les contradictions, de toutes ses erreurs d’inattention, les cartes truquées vont bientôt s’écrouler, et le menteur sera enfin dévoilé.

Le mensonge de l'autonomie

En 1952, la résolution 637(VIII) de l’Onu déclare que le droit des peuples et des nations à disposer d’eux-mêmes est une condition préalable de tous les droits fondamentaux de l’Homme. Le 14 décembre 1960, la résolution 1514 de l’Assemblée Générale déclare que "tous les peuples ont le droit de libre détermination ; en vertu de ce droit ils déterminent librement leur statut politique"...

Afin de refuser la violence et la violation des droits fondamentaux de l’Homme et des peuples, afin également de redonner sa légitimité à l’ONU, il n’y a pas d’autre choix qu’un retour aux valeurs fondatrices de l’Organisation.

La résolution 1871 du Conseil de Sécurité de l'ONU, adoptée à l'unanimité au mois d'avril 2009, évoque les droits inaliénables du peuple sahraoui à l’autodétermination sans ingérence extérieure et son droit à l’indépendance et à la souveraineté. Mais ce droit, envisagé par les accords de 1991, tarde à se réaliser. Les sahraouis, dans le désespoir de créer leur propre Etat, redoublent de manifestations contre l'occupation , et subissent de plein fouet les exactions des forces de sécurité marocaines. Les droits de l'homme les plus élémentaires ne sont pas respectés et ils sont même bafoués de la manière la plus officielle qui soit. Les manifestants pacifistes sont reprimés et emprisonnés comme des criminels au nom de la "défense de l'intégrité territoriale".

Dans ce climat peu serein, l'ONU demande au Front Polisario de négocier avec le Maroc, de croire en sa bonne volonté. Seulement cette bonne volonté est accompagnée par une obsession malsaine de l'usage de la force et la violence contre des civils désarmés et pacifiques dont le seul crime est d'exprimer leur besoin de se prononcer sur leur avenir.



Aujourd'hui, les sahraouis se trouvent face à des défis importants : Rétablir la légalité internationale et poursuivre les négociations, même en étant conscient de la stéritlité de cette voie du fait que le Maroc n'a d'autre proposition que l'autonomie. Une autonomie qui ne peut être qu'utopique, puisque le pouvoir au Maroc continue d'être concentré dans des insitutions défiant tout processus démocratique et la presse reste à la merci de la classe dirigeante. Qui dit autonomie dit déconcentration du pouvoir et transfert des compétences du centre aux infrastructures locales et régionales. Le roi Mohamed VI sait que le projet d'autonomie deviendra un choix d'organisation de l'Etat marocain et ne concernera pas uniquement le Sahara Occidental, ce qui veut dire un consentement à l'avance d'une limitation géante de ses pouvoirs et renforcement des rôles des autres intervenants. Les partis politiques n'ont pas été à la hauteur de saisir cette occasion pour étendre leurs revendications démocratiques parce qu'ils savent que cette déconcentration de la gestion du pays n'aura pas lieu. Tout simplement parce qu'il n'y a pas de transition démocraitque non plus. La transition a lieu après un changement de régime. Au Maroc, le même régime est toujours surplace et le paysage politique est toujours le même. The Economiste Intelligence Unit Unit a fait un classement pour l'année 2008. sur 167 pays examinés, le Maroc figure à la 121ème place, dans la catégorie régimes autoritaires. Le classement est basé sur cinq indicateurs: Processus électoral et pluralisme, libertés civiles, fonctionnement du gouvernement, participation politique et culture politique.

Nous ne devons pas craindre d'emprunter la voie des négociations et continuer à lever les obstacles que l'autre partie sèmera, au fur et à mesure que nous progressons dans notre marche inéluctable vers l'indépendance. La résistance des militants sahraouis, partout où ils sont, consistera à brandir l'arme de la résistance pacifique et accumuler davantage de soutien politique et humain à notre cause et incitera les dirigeants marocains à renoncer à l'usage de la violence contre les jeunes manifestants dans les territoires occupés de la RASD. Toutefois, les combattants sahraouis reprendront les armes le jour où il sera établi que la voie des négociations s'est avéré infructueuse.

Pour une cause juste, comme la libération de son pays, le retour aux armes est légitime surtout lorsqu'il est la seule voie de recours. Nous espérons que les pays que se disent démocratiques comprendront que le soutien aux entêtements du royaume chérifien n'aidera pas à éteindre la flamme de l'instabilité dans cette région et ne réussira pas à faire taire les voix indépendentistes sahraouis.

Hausse de la pédophilie au royaume de Mohamed VI

L’augmentation du nombre d’agressions sexuelles sur les enfants au Maroc est «effarante», selon l’ONG marocaine «Touche pas à mon enfant», qui cite un taux de progression «choquant et dangereux» par rapport à 2007. L’association affirme avoir recensé 306 cas d’agressions sexuelles sur des enfants en 2008, un chiffre six fois supérieur à celui contenu dans un document de la «Coalition contre les abus sexuels sur les enfants» (collectif d’ONG des Droits de l’Homme) pour le premier semestre 2007.
Dans un rapport rendu public le 19/05/2008, «Touche pas à mon enfant» souligne que «les cas déclarés par les familles des victimes (...) ne constituent qu’un infime pourcentage des abus commis». Cela s’explique, ajoute l’ONG, par «la sensibilité de cette question au sein d’une société conservatrice comme la nôtre».
«Les agressions sexuelles sont, au Maroc, comme dans beaucoup d’autres sociétés, entourées d’une chape de silence quasi total» car elles sont considérées comme «un sujet tabou», note le rapport, et «même les victimes des sévices sexuels et leurs proches n’osent pas en parler».
L’augmentation des chiffres déclarés de la pédophilie au Maroc ne signifie pas une augmentation des victimes mais (le fait) qu’on est en train de casser des tabous», a pour sa part relativisé la ministre du Développement social, de la famille et de la solidarité Nouzha Skalli.
«La pédophilie a toujours existé au Maroc, a-t-elle déclaré à l’AFP. Le fait qu’elle soit révélée au grand jour par les medias et les ONG (...) ne signifie nullement une augmentation directe du nombre des victimes de la pédophilie».
Selon Najat Anwar, présidente fondatrice de l’ONG, «l’augmentation des chiffres de la pédophilie en 2008 est due au développement d’Internet, de la persistance du phénomène des ‘petites bonnes’ et au tourisme sexuel». «Les données du rapport ont été recueillies par l’Association, a-t-elle insisté dans un entretien à l’AFP, et ne reflètent en aucun cas la réalité au Maroc. Ce ne sont que les cas que l’association a rencontrés».
«Les enfants issus de familles marocaines pauvres sont la cible la plus exposée et convoitée des agressions», ajoute ce rapport, le premier du genre depuis la création de «Touche pas à mon enfant» en 2004.
Il apparaît également que les filles «sont plus exposées aux agressions sexuelles que les garçons» et que la tranche d’âge la plus vulnérable est celle des 0 à 8 ans, selon l’étude. Les agressions «ont souvent lieu dans le milieu familial» et en des endroits réputés sûrs comme la maison, l’école ou un club sportif. «Les grandes villes sont les foyers des agressions et exploitation sexuelles sous toutes leurs formes en raison du tourisme sexuel, du travail des enfants, de la croissance du nombre d’enfants abandonnés», indique encore le rapport. «Touche pas à mon enfant» estime que «les faibles sanctions» prises par la justice à l’encontre des agresseurs d’enfants «encouragent la pérennité des agressions». L’ONG recommande «une implication des autorités compétentes, telles que la police et autres organismes» ainsi que «l’adoption de lois adaptées pour éradiquer ce phénomène».
«Touche pas à mon enfant» appelle aussi au «renforcement des sanctions» dans la législation pénale marocaine. Ce genre de comportement est monnaie courante, explique Najat Anouar, présidente de l’association « Touche pas à mon enfant » aux journalistes français. Et d’ajouter : « Pour l’heure, la police marocaine procède à des arrestations efficaces mais ce n’est pas assez. Pis encore, les procédures contre les étrangers restent très rares, du fait que les autorités craignent de porter préjudice au tourisme en ternissant la réputation du pays. » Là où le bât blesse, c’est que des associations qui oeuvrent pour sauver les enfants marocains de la dépravation existent, mais elles restent impuissantes toutes seules face à cette situation alarmante. Il est grand temps de sortir la ville ocre et Agadir de la débauche patente qui y sévit en se prémunissant d’outils juridiques à même de combattre ces abus et vices.
La réalité vécue par les enfants marocains issus de familles citadines ou rurales défavorisées est donc bien éloignée de l'idéal énoncé par l'ONU. La violence, les enfants la subissent sous plusieurs formes : selon l'Organisation Internationale du Travail, le Maroc reste aux côtés de la Chine et de l'Inde "l'un des pays présentant les pires formes de travail des enfants". Leur nombre est évalué à 600.000, dont l'âge s'échelonne entre 6 et 15 ans. les salaires se situent en dessous de toutes les normes, les heures ne sont aucunement réglementées. Les garçons occupent des emplois dans les commerces ou des entreprises.Les filles sont employées dans le textile et de nombreuses autres, entre 7 et 10 ans, recrutées dans les campagnes et littéralement achetées à des parents très pauvres, deviennent les "petites bonnes" taillables et corvéables à merci dans les familles citadines. Des tentatives pour scolariser quelques heures par semaines ces enfants travailleurs restent des exceptions.Ceux qui ne peuvent plus supporter les conditions de travail accompagnées assez souvent de brutalités commises par l'employeur, s'enfuient et vont grossir le flot des "enfants des rues" issus de familles pauvres déstructurées, enfants de mères célibataires, enfants abandonnés.Ces enfants, certains très jeunes, vivent dans l'insécurité totale de la rue, sans aucune hygiène, mal nourris, exposés à l'exploitation sexuelle dès dix ans, aux rafles de la police, emprisonnés souvent puisque le vagabondage est un délit...

Britain: the depth of corruption

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the current scandal of MPs' tax evasion and phantom mortgages conceals a deeper corruption that is traced back to the political monoculture of the United States.

The theft of public money by members of parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the “leak”. Why?

The answer lies in a deeper corruption, which tales of tax evasion and phantom mortgages touch upon but also conceal. Since Margaret Thatcher, British parliamentary democracy has been progressively destroyed as the two main parties have converged into a single-ideology business state, each with almost identical social, economic and foreign policies. This “project” was completed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, inspired by the political monoculture of the United States. That so many Labour and Tory politicians are now revealed as personally crooked is no more than a metaphor for the anti-democratic system they have forged together.

Their accomplices have been those journalists who report Parliament as "lobby correspondents" and their editors, who have “played the game” wilfully, and have deluded the public (and sometimes themselves) that vital, democratic differences exist between the parties. Media-designed opinion polls based on absurdly small samplings, along with a tsunami of comment on personalities and their specious crises, have reduced the “national conversation” to a series of media events, in which the withdrawal of popular consent – as the historically low electoral turnouts under Blair demonstrated – has been abused as apathy.

Having fixed the boundaries of political debate and possibility, self-important paladins, notably liberals, promoted the naked emperor Blair and championed his “values” that would allow “the mind [to] range in search of a better Britain”. And when the bloodstains showed, they ran for cover. All of it had been, as Larry David once described an erstwhile crony, “a babbling brook of bullshit”.

How contrite their former heroes now seem. On 17 May, the Leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman, who is alleged to have spent £10,000 of taxpayers’ money on “media training”, called on MPs to “rebuild cross-party trust”. The unintended irony of her words recalls one of her first acts as social security secretary more than a decade ago – cutting the benefits of single mothers. This was spun and reported as if there was a “revolt” among Labour backbenchers, which was false. None of Blair’s new female MPs, who had been elected “to end male-dominated, Conservative policies”, spoke up against this attack on the poorest of poor women. All voted for it.

The same was true of the lawless attack on Iraq in 2003, behind which the cross-party Establishment and the political media rallied. Andrew Marr stood in Downing Street and excitedly told BBC viewers that Blair had “said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.” When Blair’s army finally retreated from Basra in May, it left behind, according to scholarly estimates, more than a million people dead, a majority of stricken, sick children, a contaminated water supply, a crippled energy grid and four million refugees.

As for the “celebrating” Iraqis, the vast majority, say Whitehall’s own surveys, want the invader out. And when Blair finally departed the House of Commons, MPs gave him a standing ovation – they who had refused to hold a vote on his criminal invasion or even to set up an inquiry into its lies, which almost three-quarters of the British population wanted.

Such venality goes far beyond the greed of the uppity Hazel Blears.

“Normalising the unthinkable”, Edward Herman’s phrase from his essay The Banality of Evil, about the division of labour in state crime, is applicable here. On 18 May, the Guardian devoted the top of one page to a report headlined, “Blair awarded $1m prize for international relations work”. This prize, announced in Israel soon after the Gaza massacre, was for his “cultural and social impact on the world”. You looked in vain for evidence of a spoof or some recognition of the truth. Instead, there was his “optimism about the chance of bringing peace” and his work “designed to forge peace”.

This was the same Blair who committed the same crime – deliberately planning the invasion of a country, “the supreme international crime” – for which the Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremberg after proof of his guilt was located in German cabinet documents. Last February, Britain’s “Justice” Secretary, Jack Straw, blocked publication of crucial cabinet minutes from March 2003 about the planning of the invasion of Iraq, even though the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has ordered their release. For Blair, the unthinkable is both normalised and celebrated.

“How our corrupt MPs are playing into the hands of extremists,” said the cover of last week’s New Statesman. But is not their support for the epic crime in Iraq already extremism? And for the murderous imperial adventure in Afghanistan? And for the government’s collusion with torture?

It is as if our public language has finally become Orwellian. Using totalitarian laws approved by a majority of MPs, the police have set up secretive units to combat democratic dissent they call “extremism”. Their de facto partners are “security” journalists, a recent breed of state or “lobby” propagandist. On 9 April, the BBC’s Newsnight programme promoted the guilt of 12 “terrorists” arrested in a contrived media drama orchestrated by the Prime Minister himself. All were later released without charge.

Something is changing in Britain that gives cause for optimism. The British people have probably never been more politically aware and prepared to clear out decrepit myths and other rubbish while stepping angrily over the babbling brook of bullshit.

Morocco: The Municipal Elections As a Test

The upcoming Moroccan municipal elections scheduled for next June face a big challenge. The latter does not only have to do with the competition among the political partners to win the largest number of seats possible, but also with securing a broad participation that befits an event directly related to running public affairs.

Despite forecasts of a 50% turnout rate in social strata of more than 13 million voters, a previous experience of abstention during the 2007 parliamentary elections dominated the political scene, at least as some political groups - to whom the low turnout participation was a punishment - embarked on self-criticism.

The method [of conducting elections] was not very palatable. Failure to conduct fair and transparent elections reflective of the true partisan and political maps dominated the struggle for power, a period during which the political elites were tamed and their projects undermined. In the meantime, and given the numerous setbacks, the gap widened between the government and the opposition. However, ever since these relations, marred by precaution and lack of trust, were redressed when the political transition took shape in 1998, hopes were revived and assessments diverged, with political realism gaining upper hand and coexistence endorsed as an alternative to time-consuming struggles in the framework of an imposed pluralism.

Succumbing to the de facto situation was a consensual choice dictated by data of future dimensions. The political forces that barricaded behind the wall of the opposition mustered a courage no less aggressive than conjuring up the missing understandings between the palace and the opposition. However, this belated attempt did not help answer all the questions. Nor did it meet all aspirations. Hence, the huge abstention was a mere spontaneous expression of a different kind of chasm that was getting deeper between the street and the political elites.

Between the boycotted practices that have proven their inability to absorb the genuine concerns related to the present challenges - with the emergence of many demands and aspirations tailored to the measure of the prevailing social, economic and cultural developments - and the ongoing behaviors and mentalities that overlooked these developments, the political scene stood at a standstill. After all, the reforms, regardless of their legal, political and procedural importance, are measured by how likely they are to bring about realistic approaches to change the prevailing structures, whether at the level of determining the role of the state, activating the political parties and benefiting from the experiences and aspirations of the civil society, or in terms of addressing and promoting reality. The coming municipal elections will be a mere test for willpower and capacity.

In such competitions that focus on running public affairs, political backgrounds will certainly come into play. Bygone is the time when the state was an economic actor and a key driver of the development cycles. However, to lift the burdens off the concept of the central state does not necessarily mean absolving it from its responsibilities in comprehensive rehabilitation which gives a space for the private sector and local producers and consecrates the decentralization of administrative decisions. Nevertheless, the global economic and financial crisis can not be overcome if roles are not redistributed. In this sense, new lessons must be learnt vis-à-vis the challenges of local development.

Just like other emerging democracies, Morocco has tried many recipes for state welfare and role of parties. It has also tried to reconcile economic and commercial privatization, benefiting from its revenues. This had taken place to the rhythm of questioned new developments. The importance of the forthcoming elections does not lie in their competitive aspect which is likely to redraw a semi-fixed map, but rather in the opportunity they present for contemplation and revision. Measured by the momentum of popular participation, advanced democracies gain their credibility first and foremost from renewing the ideas and elites and leading change.

Omar Hadrami and how to write a CV in the Sahara

The invaluably irreverent gossip-machine that is Bakchich has an interesting article in its No. 31:

A few days before the publication of Ban Ki Moon's piece of prose, the [Moroccan] interior ministry, locked down by Fouad Ali El Himma, proceeded to create a Sahrawi unit. This will operate in the shadows of the aforementioned ministry, which, eight years after the dismissal of Driss Basri, remains in control of the Saharan dossier. The exact task of this unit remains a mystery, but looking at its composition, one may fear the worst...

By royal decree of Mohammed VI, three Sahrawi walis -- Mohamed Ali El Admi, Mohamed Rachid Duihi and Khalil Dkhil - have been promoted to the rank of extraordinary walis ["walis détachés"] within the concerned minstry. With respect to the origins of the three men, the tribal balance has certainly been respected, but ... because there's always a but with the Makhzen: one of the men, Mohamed Ali El Admi, is a horrible torturer who served in the 80s in the refugee camps of Tindouf before joining Morocco. Known under the name of Omar Hadrami, he has savagely tortured both Moroccan soldiers who had been taken prisoners by the Polisario Front (who would be happy to do him in today) and Sahrawi prisoners of opinon, for whom he built a torture centre in Tindouf. In short, a reprehensible person who's got a CV just as reprehensible and who figures in the "best of" of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
[shoddy translation from french by western sahara info]

What Mr. Hadrami did between 1972 and 1990

The Omar Hadrami case always was something of a litmus test for both Polisario's and Morocco's propaganda. For Polisario, because they pretended that all was well within the refugee camps during the 1980s, while in fact unsavory characters such as Hadrami ran amok amassing personal power and silencing opposition. He was by all accounts widely feared in the camps, by supporters and detractors alike, and his stature was such that the relationship with secretary-general Muhammad Abdelaziz grew increasingly uneasy. He didn't lose power until the late 1980s, after he faced off with Abdelaziz in an attempt to grab power. The coup attempt led to traumatic disturbances in the camps -- of which Sahrawis are still reluctant to speak -- and in the end Hadrami and his collaborators were defeated and thrown in prison. He was however released relatively quickly, and named representative to Washington; still a very prestigeous post, but far from the centre of power in Rabouni camp. From there, he defected to Morocco. He was immediately promoted to governor and lavished with attention by the court and king Hassan II, and has appeared as its loyal Sahrawi face ever since, meeting with countless visiting delegations to tell his ghastly stories about what he saw happen in the Tindouf refugee camps.

But, thing is, as head of Polisario's military security apparatus, he was himself responsible for most of that abuse. This is rarely mentioned in the Moroccan press, just as Polisario would never have mentioned it while he was on their side. In the MAP's official CV, his Polisario years are left out entirely -- there's a curious gap between his 1972 graduation from a Moroccan university and his 1990 installation as wali. Amnesty International's reports on the conflict regularly feature this sour little line:

Those responsible for human rights abuses in the [Tindouf] camps in previous years continued to enjoy impunity. The Polisario authorities failed to hand over perpetrators still resident in the camps to the Algerian authorities to be brought to justice, and the Moroccan government failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of abuses in the Polisario camps present on its territory.

That's a not-too-veiled reference to Hadrami, and the AI has been even clearer:

"In the Polisario camps there was repression until 1992, says [Amnesty International's Donatella] Rovera." "It improved a lot after 1988 when they recognized this and asked forgiveness of their people." Amnesty maintains that Omar Hadrami, chief of internal security in the Polasario camps, actually was given a job at the interior ministry in Morocco after 1988. "If the Moroccans are serious about cracking down on torture, they should bring Hadrami to trial," Rovera says.

Human rights under Polisario

As for the human rights situation in the Tindouf refugee camps, some serious question marks remain. Most observers seem to agree that the repressive structures that were in place under Hadrami have been considerably liberalized by the 1991 structural reforms of Polisario, where the Front also expressly committed itself to multipartyism and other democratic treats -- after independence. A major Human Rights Watch mission that toured the camps extensively in 1995 -- just a couple of years after Hadrami was purged -- found that despite some problems, the situation was now "satisfactory" (the main exception being abuse of Moroccan POWs). The recent UN fact finding mission stated that there were no complaints of human rights abuse in Tindouf, even if a more thorough look at the situation would be necessary. Amnesty now refers to abuse in the camp almost exclusively in the past tense, noting that the Polisario has not -- contrary to Moroccan allegations -- tried to restrict investigations in camps (rather, "they went out of their way to assist us").

Even so, the clique around Muhammad Abdelaziz remains reluctant to share power, and while dissident voices are tolerated, they are neither encouraged nor given any serious chance to affect decision-making. On the grass-roots level in the camps, there is a decently democratic structure of local councils that run day-to-day business, but the sensitive political, military and economic decisions seem to rest in the hands of a select few. This is hardly out of the ordinary in the Maghreb, and by the standards of both liberation movements and refugee camps, the Tindouf exile republic comes off as positively ultraliberal. But nevertheless, the situation on the ground clashes with Polisario's attempts to construct a media image of itself as a shining beacon of uncorrupted desert democracy, and an increasing number of Sahrawi youths are fed up with the stagnated ruling elite.

The Ould man out

However, there's more in the Bakchich article. It goes on to note that, while we don't know who is behind the appointment of the group -- the inner workings of the Makhzen are no less obscure than, say, the legendarily intransparent Algerian military elite -- it's easy to tell who the move has been directed against. Because there is a name missing from the list: the monarchy's all-time palace Sahrawi, Khelli Henna Ould Errachid.

Now, this could perhaps be because he already has a platform -- the CORCAS council, of which he is the formal head. But, honestly, Khelli Henna never was the one to shy away from salaried titles, was he? No. As Bakchich points out, all three interior ministry Sahrawis are long-standing enemies of Ould Errachid, and this must be interpreted as a move to directly undermine him. Omar Hadrami in particular has long been seen as his main rival, and the two men are said to absolutely loathe each other.

In favor of the favored

A peculiar twist is added by the fact that both Duihi and Dkhil are former members of PUNS, an organization set up by Franco to act as the territory's only legal party in the dying days of Spanish fascist rule. Established essentially to draw support from Polisario, the PUNS faithfully advocated Spain's line down to the letter: it demanded the independence of Western Sahara under Spanish guidance, longed for "privileged relations" with Madrid, and most of all, it hotly contested any Moroccan or Mauritanian ties to the territory -- for such was Spanish policy right up until the Madrid Agreement. As the Green March approached, the PUNS leadership even declared itself ready to fight a Moroccan entry with arms in hand to preserve Sahrawi independence hand in hand with Spain. Who the leader of the party was? Why, a certain Khelli Henna Ould Errachid -- then the most outspoken defender of a Sahrawi-Spanish alliance against the machinations of both "expansionist" Morocco and "communist" Polisario. Once again something that will not figure in the official biographies.

As Spain began to withdraw -- and made clear to Khelli Henna that he was no longer slated to become Western Sahara's first president -- all three of Franco's Sahrawis suddenly discovered their Moroccan roots. And ever since 1975, they've been paraded as proof that the Sahara always was and always will be Moroccan.

However, as the case of Mr. Hadrami makes abundantly clear, a shared past doesn't necessarily mean a shared future. The palace Sahrawis have been at each others throats ever since, competing for power and privilege. Morocco has always had a policy of encouraging Sahrawi tribalism -- divide and rule -- and the fortunes of its Sahrawi finger puppets have shifted with the mood of the Makhzen, not to mention with the fortunes of competing clans within the Moroccan power structure. For long, Khelli Henna appeared to be the king's go-to-guy, and he has been allowed to amass a huge fortune through semi-legit businesses in El Aaiún (he and his brother -- who formally runs the business empire -- are sometimes called the richest men in the Sahara). But given his less than impressive performance as head of CORCAS, perhaps the monarchy has decided it is time for another spin on the wheel of Sahrawi fortune?

But don't worry. Some things never change -- and should Western Sahara one day become independent, there will be few Sahrawis who will celebrate as loudly as these three. By then with a fresh set of inexplicable gaps in their CV:s.

CORCAS core cracks?

In the last couple of weeks, infighting within the palace-friendly elite in Morocco’s majority slice of Western Sahara seems to have reached boiling point. At the heart of it lies the continual squabbling within CORCAS, which, as you know, is short for the Royal Consultative Council for Saharan Affairs, but it seems mainly to serve as cover for a set of political, financial and personal rivalries which run all the way into the Moroccan regime elite, the makhzen.

CORCAS, you may recall, was (re-)established in 2006 to provide a reliably controllable voice for pro-Moroccan Sahrawis in the state’s campaign to promote autonomy as an alternative to a referendum. “Here,” the palace would say, “is the legitimate voice of the Sahrawis — it’s not the separatists.” Pretty good idea, if not always a convincing act, given how transparently obvious it is that the group is run on remote control from Rabat. (POLISARIO, which has its own embarrassing credibility issues with regards to its ties to the Algerian deep state, seems like a jolly band of maverick independents in comparison.)

Most problematic, however, is that they are a quarrelsome bunch, this motley of tribal sheikhs, businessmen, go-betweens, POLISARIO defectors, and makhzen clients. It worked for a while, just paying them a fat salary to toe the line, but in the past year or two, rivalries within CORCAS has rendered the group nearly inoperable, with constant bickering and large parts of the membership sometimes boycotting sessions. Far be it from me to claim any deeper insights into Saharo-makhzenite clan politics, but at the core of it all seems to be the hostile relations between CORCAS chairman Khellihenna ould el-Rachid and his brother Hamdi, on the one hand, and the group gathered around another southern strongman, Hassan Derham, on the other.
Khellihenna ould el-Rachid

Khellihenna ould el-Rachid

Khellihenna is a native to the territory, and a veteran politician. He started out as chairman of the PUNS, a Spanish marionette organization which demanded “privileged ties” with Franco’s Madrid; later moved towards demanding independence when that seemed to be the winning bet; only to end up by discovering the Sahara’s eternal Moroccanity in 1975, as the Kingdom’s troops began pulling up on the border. Ever since, he’s been the most well-known Sahrawi face for Moroccan rule, although his fortunes temporarily dipped with the loss of support from regime pillar Driss Basri, who was cast out of power when Mohammed VI took the throne. He then returned in grand style in 2006, as M6’s anointed chairman of the CORCAS, and has since been back in business. In business, incidentally, is also his brother Hamdi, who aside from politics (multiple stints in parliament) acts as the family cashier, and whose privileged ties to the country’s political and military elite has allegedly made him the richest man in the Sahara.
Hassan Derham

Hassan Derham

The other gentleman involved, Hassan Derham, is also a politician-businessman, and also firmly implanted in Morocco’s Saharan patronage and clientèle system* However, he is not himself Sahrawi, but rather of the Aït Ba Amran, a south-Moroccan Berber tribe (with their own grievances against the state). Unlike the el-Rachid brothers, who are aligned with the Moroccan Istiqlal party, Derham now works with its rival leftist offshoot, the USFP, having previously been involved with pro-palace parties MP and RNI. Given the way their respective party affiliates faced off in the 2007 parliamentary elections, it’s obvious there’s little love between them.

It now seems that Derham’s supporters have withdrawn from some CORCAS sessions of late, joining protests against Khellihenna’s impopular and autocratic style of management and his refusal to inform council members of what’s going on (in reality, it may be that he isn’t himself very well informed, since decisions are taken not in CORCAS meetings, but in Rabat; CORCAS serves to provide media and local Big Man endorsement). I wouldn’t be too surprised if it transpires that Khellihenna’s comments about Moroccan mass killings of Sahrawis in 1975, which were published to his great embarrassment and presumably to no help in relations with the government, were also strategically leaked in this context. But what do I know.

The most recent development is that local USFP politicians have complained to Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa about how some El Aaiún land lots were granted by the municipality to private individuals — in effect, they’re saying that state resources were used for a vote buying scam (which, given the way the Moroccan part of the Sahara is run, appears plausible to the point of goddamn obvious). Hamdi ould el-Rachid is apparently the one targeted, and he promptly shot back through Istiqlal papers with accusations of corruption in the local USFP (meaning Derham’s men). However, it seems the Ministry has decided to start an investigation of the matter. If so, that’s bad news for the el-Rachid brothers, since regime corruption in the Sahara is not something a minor clerk will decide to start digging in on his own — he’d be digging his own grave, more likely. If the courts and the government follow through with this affair, it must presumably mean that Derham has some serious backers for a push to clip the wings of Hamdi and Khellihenna, whose star has for some time been fading again.

At least that’s my guess. To add a note of caution, all of the above is my own interpretation of what I’ve gleaned through the press, not necessarily as accurate and detailed as I’d like, and I’m sure there are all kinds of nuances to add. Obviously, neither CORCAS nor other Saharan politics can or should be reduced to a rivalry between two clear-cut teams, given the vast complexities of tribal and other politics in these areas, and that’s not the impression I want to give either. So, you’re all most welcome to chime in with both comments and corrections.
Mohamed Abdelaziz

Mohamed Abdelaziz

Finally, a couple of closing thoughts:

* Where is POLISARIO in all this? I’m sure they’re doing their very best to fan the flames of discontent, but it seems unlikely they could even hope to rally the losers in this battle, given the extraordinarily strong ties of both factions to Morocco. So maybe Chairman Abdelaziz will just sit back with a bowl of popcorn to watch how the game plays out, casually giving the rumor mill an occasional spin to keep things going?

* And do the Saharan elite scuffles have any relation to the election of another influential pro-palace Sahrawi, Sheikh Biadillah, as leader of the PAM, Morocco’s soon-to-be dominant political party, run behind the scenes by royal confidant Fouad Ali el-Himma? It’s sure to affect the center of gravity in Moroccan Sahrawi politics, wherever that actually lies.

— — —

*) Curiously, he was accused a few years back of double-dealing with Sahrawi nationalists, allegedly having links to a Mauritanian businessman involved with something concerning the POLISARIO oil sales campaign. But since nothing ever came of it, I assume it might have been just political slander, although these kinds of ties across the Berm are probably a lot more common than either side would want to acknowledge.

http://maghrebinenglish.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/corcas-core-cracks/

Al-Qaida threatens to kill UK hostage

CAIRO, Al-Qaida in North Africa said Sunday it would kill a British hostage if London does not release an imprisoned radical preacher .

The group said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site that it will execute a British tourist held by the group since late January if the extremist Muslim preacher Abu Qatada is not freed in 20 days.

Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-Jordanian, was jailed in Britain in 2002 for links with militant groups but was released in 2005. He was re-arrested and is pending deportation to Jordan where he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia.

Britain's lower courts said he couldn't be deported because of his fears he would likely be tortured but the Law Lords ruled there was no proof of a real risk to him.

Four tourists, including two Swiss, a German woman and a British man, were kidnapped by gunmen Jan. 22 in Niger, their tour operator said.

Two of the tourists, a Swiss and German woman, were subsequently released on Wednesday along with a kidnapped Canadian diplomat and his assistant. The kidnappers said they were exchanged for four of their imprisoned fighters.

In addition to the British man, another Swiss tourist remains with the kidnappers.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, known by the French language acronym AQMI, is an Algeria-based group that joined Osama bin Laden's terrorist network in 2006 and conducts dozens of bombings or ambushes each month. It operates mainly in Algeria but is suspected of crossing the country's porous desert borders to spread violence in the rest of northwestern Africa.

Countdown to the crackdown

After the recent hostage release by the southern/Saharan wing of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), there has been much political and military movement in Algeria, Mali and the surrounding countries. According to numerous press rumors, a major joint operation in the border areas is about to go into action any day now.

The political arguments have centered around vague but barely concealed insinuations of state support for AQIM’s southern wing, although there’s precious little proof offered by anyone involved. Libya is the state most in the crosshairs, for allegedly funding or/and facilitating the payment of fat ransoms to AQIM, in a deal also involving the Malian state releasing AQIM members in return for someone’s thick wad of cash. Algeria is livid over this, and parts of the éradicateur press is so upset as to appear slightly deranged in its accusations against all and sundry for conspiring to undermine state security.

However, in fact Algeria has good reason to be upset, if one disregards the hyperbole. The government quite rightly believes that ransom payments encourages new kidnappings, and that this — not to mention the prisoners releases — is what keeps the southern AQIM networks running. Algeria also worries, again rightly, that such money will filter up to AQIM’s northern strongholds in the Kabylie, from where the group continues to inflict damage on the Algerian state and military. However, European governments do not seem to give a damn about this, as long as they can bring back their citizens safe and sound; while the poorer local governments are fine with whatever they’re paid most to be fine with, since they don’t stand a chance of securing these areas alone anyway. So the kidnapping circus continues.

Bouteflika has for some time, after offering amnesty upon amnesty, shown signs of exasperation with this whole AQIM business, and the Algerian army appears to be slowly reverting into extermination mode in its treatment of insurgent holdouts. Presently, then, the country is spearheding efforts to pull together a major pan-Saharan/Sahelian coalition to hit AQIM hard, either to cripple it militarily or to at least establish a steep deterrent cost for fucking with Algeria’s south. Among the other nations coming along for the ride, convinced by a mixture of stick and carrot from Algiers, are of course Mali, but also Niger and Mauritania, the two remaining neighbors to the area of concern. You can count on the US to cheer them on and supply whatever is available of satellite imagery and other expertise. However, it seems that Algeria is steering the bandwagon, quite in line with how it has been asserting itself as the maker-or-breaker of regional security in the last few years, and perhaps also for honestly feeling there’s nothing left to do but shoot its way out of this painful deadlock.

Militarily, things have been progressing quickly. A bunch of army units were just pulled down from the Algerian north towards the border, and high-level military coordination between the countries concerned is proceeding apace. For example, Niger’s chief-of-staff flew up to meet with the Algerian top brass (Gaid Saleh and Guenaizia), and Mali’s defense minister did the same some days ago. At the same time, Algiers has started airlifting military supplies to the Malian army in preparation for the expected assault, and minor manhunts are already running, with claims of an important kill just the other day.

How big this will be is impossible to tell: perhaps just a quick crackdown on the areas under suspicion, and brush-up of border security through reinforcements and coordination? But it seems like bigger things are in the making. In so far as the press can be trusted (a big if, admittedly), a large-scale sweep is more likely, although I guess the key to it all is not scale per se, but rather how long it will go on and what it will leave behind. In any case, one should remember that while the Touareg rebellion in Mali’s north just quieted down, the situation remains unstable and is liable to be affected in some way by any major military offensive. On the other hand, there’s no better time to go at it than now, when there’s no hot war complicating matters; and in fact, decisively settling the Touareg conflict may well be one of the unspoken motives for the push.

Also worth bearing in mind is that two European hostages remain in the hands of AQIM. It has demanded that Britain release Abu Qatada, a Jordanian-Palestinian preacher with longstanding ties to al-Qaida’s core leadership as well as to the Algerian Jihadi movements (he used to be sort of a chief Mufti for the GIA back in the day, and later encouraged the GSPC split which evolved into AQIM). That could turn into some nasty headlines.

Hostage update: anti-Qaida strike postponed

Algeria’s El Khabar reports that the Sahel countries* are “temporarily” postponing their offensive against al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) for two weeks. The reason is said to be that unnamed European countries have pressured Algiers to wait until they can get the remaining two AQIM hostages (from the UK & Switzerland) released.

This supposed to happen “within weeks”, and hopefully no later than July, after negotiations with the AQIM group of Yahia Djouadi (Abu Ammar) have “made great progress without substantial concessions to the group holding them”. The negotiations are said to involve tribal mediators and “Salafists from Europe”. Worth recalling, then, that AQIM had demanded the release of Abu Qatada al-Filastini from British jails.

*) Algeria, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. Oh, and who’s missing?

Morocco don’t worry, Palau stands behind you

Morocco has decided to open diplomatic relations on the level of ambassador with the Republic of Palau, a Micronesian island-state with a population of 21,000 souls.

Will this not be a strain on foreign ministry resources? Not at all, since Morocco recently severed ambassadorial ties with Venezuela and Iran, freeing up two experienced ambassadors for this important mission. Clearly, the men in Rabat are planning ahead.

Previous game-changing diplomatic moves in the region: the Sahrawi Republic establishes relations with Vanuatu.

Distant voices, desperate lives

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the catastrophe facing the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, whose distant voices have appealed to the world for almost as long as the Palestinians.

In the early 1960s, it was the Irish of Derry who would phone late at night, speaking in a single breath, spilling out stories of discrimination and injustice. Who listened to their truth until the violence began? Bengalis from what was then East Pakistan did much the same. Their urgent whispers described terrible state crimes that the news ignored, and they implored us reporters to “let the world know”. Palestinians speaking above the din of crowded rooms in Bethlehem and Beirut asked no more. For me, the most tenacious distant voices have been the Tamils of Sri Lanka, to whom we ought to have listened a very long time ago.

It is only now, as they take to the streets of western cities, and the persecution of their compatriots reaches a crescendo, that we listen, though not intently enough to understand and act. The Sri Lankan government has learned an old lesson from, I suspect, a modern master: Israel. In order to conduct a slaughter, you ensure the pornography is unseen, illicit at best. You ban foreigners and their cameras from Tamil towns like Mulliavaikal, which was bombarded recently by the Sri Lankan army, and you lie that the 75 people killed in the hospital were blown up quite wilfully by a Tamil suicide bomber. You then give reporters a ride into the jungle, providing what in the news business is called a dateline, which suggests an eyewitness account, and you encourage the gullible to disseminate only your version and its lies. Gaza is the model.

From the same masterclass you learn to manipulate the definition of terrorism as a universal menace, thus ingratiating yourself with the “international community” (Washington) as a noble sovereign state blighted by an “insurgency” of mindless fanaticism. The truth and lessons of the past are irrelevant. And having succeeded in persuading the United States and Britain to proscribe your insurgents as terrorists, you affirm you are on the right side of history, regardless of the fact that your government has one of the world’s worst human rights records and practises terrorism by another name. Such is Sri Lanka.

This is not to suggest that those who resist attempts to obliterate them culturally if not actually are innocent in their methods. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have spilt their share of blood and perpetrated their own atrocities. But they are the product, not the cause, of an injustice and a war that long predate them. Neither is Sri Lanka’s civil strife as unfathomable as it is often presented: an ancient religious-ethnic rivalry between the Hindu Tamils and the Buddhist Sinhalese government.

Sri Lanka as British-ruled Ceylon was subjected to a classic divide-and-rule. The British brought Tamils from India as virtual slave labour while building an educated Tamil middle class to run the colony. At independence in 1948, the new political elite, in its rush for power, cultivated ethnic support in a society whose real imperative should have been the eradication of poverty. Language became the spark. The election of a government pledging to replace English, the lingua franca, with Sinhalese was a declaration of war on the Tamils. The new law meant that Tamils almost disappeared from the civil service by 1970; and as “nationalism” seduced parties of both the left and right, discrimination and anti-Tamil riots followed.

The formation of a Tamil resistance, notably the LTTE, the Tamil Tigers, included a demand for a state in the north of the country. The response of the government was judicial killing, torture, disappearances, and more recently, the reported use of cluster bombs and chemical weapons. The Tigers responded with their own crimes, including suicide bombing and kidnapping. In 2002, a ceasefire was agreed, and was held until last year, when the government decided to finish off the Tigers. Tamil civilians were urged to flee to military-run “welfare camps”, which have become the symbol of an entire people under vicious detention, and worse, with nowhere to escape the army’s fury. This is Gaza again, although the historical parallel is the British treatment of Boer women and children more than a century ago, who “died like flies”, as a witness wrote.

Foreign aid workers have been banned from Sri Lanka’s camps, except the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has described a catastrophe in the making. The United Nations says that 60 Tamils a day are being killed in the shelling of a government-declared “no-fire zone”.

In 2003, the Tigers proposed a devolved Interim Self-Governing Authority that included real possibilities for negotiation. Today, the government gives the impression it will use its imminent “victory” to “permanently solve” the “Tamil minority problem”, as many of its more rabid supporters threaten. The army commander says all of Sri Lanka “belongs” to the Sinhalese majority. The word “genocide” is used by Tamil expatriots, perhaps loosely; but the fear is true.

India could play a critical part. The south Indian state of Tamil Nadu has a Tamil-speaking population with centuries of ties with the Tamils of Sri Lanka. In the current Indian election campaign, anger over the siege of Tamils in Sri Lanka has brought hundreds of thousands to rallies. Having initially helped to arm the Tigers, Indian governments sent “peacekeeping” troops to disarm them. Delhi now appears to be allowing the Sinhalese supremacists in Colombo to “stabilise” its troubled neighbour. In a responsible regional role, India could stop the killing and begin to broker a solution.

The great moral citadels in London and Washington offer merely silent approval of the violence and tragedy. No appeals are heard in the United Nations from them. David Miliband has called for a “ceasefire”, as he tends to do in places where British “interests” are served, such as the 14 impoverished countries racked by armed conflict where the British government licenses arms shipments. In 2005, British arms exports to Sri Lanka rose by 60 per cent. The distant voices from there should be heard, urgently.