Talk Morocco offers frank, irreverent
commentary about Moroccan identity,
democracy, red tape, gender relations
and more at www.talkmorocco.net.revealed divides even among nationalists, Hassan II consolidated power by cracking down on
dissent and suspending parliament for a decade. With heavy borrowing to finance dam-building,
urban development and an ever-expanding bureaucracy, Morocco was deep in debt by the
1970s. Attempts to assassinate the king underscored the need to do something, quickly, to turn
things around – and then in 1973, the phosphate industry in the Spanish-controlled Western
Sahara started to boom. Morocco staked its claim to the area and its lucrative phosphate
reserves with the Green March (see the boxed text, Click here ), settling the area with
Moroccans while greatly unsettling indigenous Saharawi people agitating for self-determination.
Years of Lead
Along with the growing gap between the rich and the poor and a mounting tax bill to cover
Morocco’s military debt from the Western Sahara, King Hassan II’s suppression of dissent
fuelled further resentment among his subjects. By the 1980s, the critics of the king included
journalists, trade unionists, women’s-rights activists, Marxists, Islamists, Berbers advocating
recognition of their culture and language, and the working poor – in other words, a broad cross-
section of Moroccan society.
The last straw for many came in 1981, when official Moroccan newspapers casually
announced that the government had conceded to the International Monetary Fund to hike prices
for staple foods. For the many Moroccans subsisting on the minimum wage, these increases
meant that two-thirds of their income would be spent on a meagre diet of sardines, bread and
tea. When trade unions organised protests of the measure, government reprisals were swift
and brutal. Tanks rolled down the streets of Casablanca and hundreds were killed, at least
1000 wounded, and an estimated 5000 protesters arrested in a nationwide laraf, or roundup.
Far from dissuading dissent, the Casablanca Uprising
galvanised support for government reform. Sustained pressure
from human-rights activists throughout the 1980s achieved
unprecedented results in 1991, when Hassan II founded the
Equity and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human-
rights abuses that occurred during his own reign – a first for a
king. In his very first public statement as king upon his father’s
death in 1999, Mohammed VI vowed to right the wrongs of the era known to Moroccans as the
Years of Lead. The commission has since helped cement human-rights advances, awarding
reparations to 9280 victims of the Years of Lead by 2006.
NEW REGIME, NEW HOPES
As Moroccans will surely tell you, there’s still room for improvement in today’s Morocco. The
parliament elected in 2002 set aside 30 seats for women members of parliament, and
implemented some promising reforms: Morocco’s first-ever municipal elections, employment
non- discrimination laws, the introduction of Berber languages in state schools, and the
Mudawanna, a legal code protecting women’s rights to divorce and custody. But tactics from
the Years of Lead were revived after the 2003 Casablanca trade-centre bombings and a 2010
military raid of a Western Sahara protest camp, when suspects were rounded up – in 2010
Human Rights Watch reported that many of them had been subjected to abuse and detention
without counsel. Civil society is outpacing state reforms, as Moroccans take the initiative to
address poverty and illiteracy through enterprising village associations and non-governmental
organisations.