Global Voices Morocco provides a
roundup of Moroccan news and
opinion online, including English
translations of bloggers’ responses to
Moroccan news at
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-
/world/middle-east-north-
africa/morocco.According to the 2010 Human
Development Index, 28.5% of
Moroccan households are poor, and
another 11.4% at risk. Moroccan
officials dispute the validity of these
statistics, placing the poverty figure
nearer 9%.all the mod cons: electricity, trains, roads and running water. Villes nouvelles were designed to
be worlds apart from adjacent Moroccan medinas (historic city centres), with French schools,
churches, villas and grand boulevards named after French generals. No expense or effort was
spared to make the new arrivals feel right at home – which made their presence all the more
galling for Moroccans footing the bill through taxes, shouldering most of the labour and still living
in crowded, poorly serviced medinas. Lyautey had already set up French colonial enterprises in
Vietnam, Madagascar and Algeria, so he arrived in Morocco with the confidence of a CEO and
a clear plan of action: break up the Berbers, ally with the Spanish when needed and keep
business running by all available means.
Nationalist Resistance
Once French-backed Sultan Yusuf died and his French-
educated 18-year-old son Mohammed V became sultan,
Lyautey expected that French business in Morocco would carry
on as usual. He hadn’t counted on a fiery young nationalist as
sultan, or the staunch independence of ordinary Moroccans.
Mining strikes and union organising interfered with France’s
most profitable colonial businesses, and military attention was
diverted to force Moroccans back into the mines. Berbers had
never accepted foreign dominion without a fight, and they were not about to make an exception
for the French. By 1921 the Rif was up in arms against the Spanish and French under the
leadership of Ibn Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi. It took five years, 300,000 Spanish and French
forces and two budding Fascists (Francisco Franco and Marshal Pétain) to capture Ibn Abd al-
Krim and force him into exile.
The French won a powerful ally when they named Berber warlord Thami el-Glaoui pasha of
Marrakesh, but they also made a lot of enemies. The title gave the pasha implicit license to do
as he pleased, which included mafia-style executions and extortion schemes, kidnapping
women and children who struck his fancy, and friendly games of golf at his Royal Golf Club with
Ike Eisenhower and Winston Churchill. The pasha forbade talk of independence under penalty
of death, and conspired to exile Mohammed V from Morocco in 1953 – but Pasha Glaoui would
end his days powerless, wracked with illness and grovelling on his knees for King Mohammed
V’s forgiveness.
Although the French protectorate of Morocco was nominally
an ally of Vichy France and Germany in WWII, independent-
minded Casablanca provided crucial ground support for the
Allied North African campaign . When Morocco’s Istiqlal
(Independence) party demanded freedom from French rule in
1944, the US and Britain were finally inclined to agree. Under
increasing pressure from Moroccans and the Allies, France
allowed Mohammed V to return from exile in 1955. Morocco
successfully negotiated its independence from France and
Spain between 1956 and 1958.
A ROUGH START: AFTER INDEPENDENCE
When Mohammed V died suddenly of heart failure in 1961, King Hassan II became the leader
of the new nation. Faced with a shaky power base, an unstable economy and elections that