by Guy Arnold
In 1959, when Mohammed V was still on the throne, a new political party had been formed by Mehdi Ben Barka, who broke away from the dominant Istiqlal party to create the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires – UNFP (National Union of Popular Forces). The UNFP soon attracted repressive measures from the police and army, which were under the control of the King, and in 1960 UNFP formed the opposition to the government. In 1962, under Hassan II, a new constitution turned Morocco into a constitutional monarchy and guaranteed personal and political freedoms. The king then formed his own party, the Front de Défendre des Institutions Constitutionelles – FDIC (Front for the Defence of Constitutional Institutions). Elections were held in 1963 but the FDIC, which won 69 seats, did not have a clear majority; Istiqlal and UNFP, both in opposition, won 41 and 28 seats respectively and there were also six independents. Following an alleged coup attempt some of the UNFP MPs were arrested, imprisoned and tortured and a number were sentenced to death. The King began to rule through a government composed of FDIC loyalists, but growing unrest at the limitations upon political activity led him to proclaim a ‘state of exception’ in 1965, when no political parties or trade unions could form a parliamentary majority, and the King assumed full legislative and executive powers. Later that year, while on a visit to France, Ben Barka, the UNFP leader, disappeared and was never seen again. General Oufkir, a close associate of the King, was accused by France of being implicated in Ben Barka’s disappearance and relations between France and Morocco plummeted as a result. Ben Barka had been abducted and killed in Paris with the collusion of the French police and the affair caused an international scandal. The French at one stage suggested that the CIA was responsible for the disappearance. The emergency remained in place until 1968 and despite mounting pressures the King continued his direct rule.
Although he practised political repression at home, Hassan II was far more flexible in his foreign policy. He adopted a moderate line in the councils of the Arab world, a stance made easier by the fact that Morocco was geographically far removed from Israel and could not be seen as a front-line state in relation to the Arab-Israeli confrontation. While he developed close relations with the United States that resulted in a substantial flow of US aid, he also made successful overtures to the USSR, which concluded an aid agreement with Morocco in1966 that began to take shape in 1967 when Soviet designers started work on a hydroelectric project on the Draa River. As a pro-Soviet gesture, or as a tactic to create further disunity on the left, the government permitted the establishment of the Parti de Libération et du Socialisme under Ali Yata, the former secretary-general of the Moroccan Communist Party.
Morocco’s claims to neighbouring territory, at this time and later, were to cause much friction with Algeria and Mauritania and then, in the 1980s, with the OAU. Morocco argued that an historic Greater Morocco had included Mauritania, although the latter had become independent in 1960, and a large part of Algerian Sahara, as well as Western Sahara, then still under Spanish control. Together these claims amounted to a larger landmass than the existing state of Morocco. Algeria, in response, contended that Moroccan rule over the Sahara regions had been sporadic and short-lived and that Algeria had inherited the territory that France had delineated and that the colonial borders should be maintained. A brief border war between Morocco and Algeria in 1963 over the Moroccan claim had attracted international attention and led to OAU meditation that produced an agreement under which Morocco vacated the territory it had occupied while Algeria consented to an ‘examination’ of the Moroccan claim. However, at the 1964 OAU summit the organization adopted a general resolution on border disputes that called upon all member states to accept their inherited colonial boundaries. In the circumstances Morocco felt it had been cheated out of the promised examination of its claim. The border quarrel with Algeria was finally settled in 1969 on the occasion of the Boumedienne visit to Morocco. Later that year Morocco came to amicable terms with Mauritania, which it had refused to recognize up to that time, instead regarding it as an integral part of its own territory. The government’s hand had been forced when in September 1969 the Islamic Summit Conference was held in Rabat and the conference secretariat insisted that Mauritania’s President Ould Daddah should be invited. The two countries entered into full diplomatic relations with each other in 1970. Morocco also achieved a rapprochment with France in 1969 after de Gaulle resigned. The rumbling Ben Barka affair was finally allowed to die out. In April 1970 President Podgorny visited Morocco to cement the relations between the two countries that had been growing stronger ever since 1966 when Hassan had visited Moscow.
By 1970 Hassan had established both his political power at home – he would become increasingly autocratic in the coming years – and his international position. He was non-aligned and had achieved good relations with both the United States and the Soviet Union and, after the passing of de Gaulle, an improved relationship with France. He was seen as a moderate in the councils of the Arab world but increasingly conservative in terms of Africa to the south. The border conflict with Algeria appeared settled though Morocco had little sympathy with the more radical politics of either Algeria or Libya under Gaddafi, its radical new ruler. The economy was doing reasonably well at the end of the decade: the agricultural sector had profited from good harvests with cereals, olives and citrus fruit output all increasing; there had been a rise in mineral production, especially phosphates which accounted for 30 per cent of export earnings; and under the 1968–72 Five Year Plan a programme of light industrialization was under way though development generally was hampered by insufficient financial resources and a shortage of foreign aid.
TUNISIA
Tunisia, which achieved independence in the same year as Morocco, came to be regarded as a moderate in both the Arab world and Africa. On 12 April 1956 Habib Bourguiba was voted Chairman and first Premier of independent Tunisia. On 25 July 1957 the Constituent Assembly abolished the monarchy, proclaimed a republic and made Bourguiba President. He was careful to maintain friendly relations with France even while Tunisia was drawn into the civil war in neighbouring Algeria. In January 1960 the second All-African People’s Conference was held in Tunis at which Bourguiba showed himself to be more moderate than such African leaders as Nkrumah and Touré. He believed, contrary to them, that African countries should establish their stability before engaging in political union. At the same time he favoured some form of Maghreb association. He fell out with Morocco over its claim to Mauritania, which it advanced at this time, and did not attend the January 1961 Casablanca Conference.
Although he desired good relations with France Bourguiba was uncompromising over colonialism and on 5 July 1961, in a calculated move, Bourguiba formally demanded the return to Tunisia of both Bizerta, which France had maintained as a base after independence, and a stretch of Saharan territory in the south-west although it was occupied by French troops. Fighting between Tunisians and the French around Bizerta and the disputed Saharan territory broke out; Tunisia broke diplomatic relations with France and appealed to the United Nations. By 22 July, when the fighting ceased, 800 Tunisians had been killed while the French remained in control of both Bizerta and the Sahara strip. On 26 August the UN General Assembly declared that French troops at Bizerta violated Tunisian sovereignty and called on France to negotiate. Negotiations with France occupied much of the rest of the year, but following the Algerian ceasefire of March 1962 the atmosphere rapidly improved and on 30 June 1962 France handed over its base installations at Memzel Bourguiba near Bizerta. Over the six months from July 1961 when the Bizerta crisis erupted a third of the 95,000 French community of settlers left the country while thousands of Italians, mainly in the mechanic trades, prepared to do so. In March 1963 an agreement was reached with France on the transfer of 370,000 acres of French-owned land. Tunisia’s stand against France led to an improvement in its relations with the more radical Arab states, for Tunisia generally took a moderate line in Arab politics. One of Tunisia’s complaints, first against t
he UAR and then against newly independent Algeria, was the support these countries gave to the ‘Youssefists’, followers of the radical opponent of Bourguiba, Salah ben Youssef, who at independence had gone into exile in Cairo. However, an agreement was signed with Algeria in July 1963.
The Bizerta crisis had a destabilizing impact upon the economy but the government went ahead with its plans to increase Tunisian participation in business and commerce: all foreign businesses, except banks and petroleum distributors, were given one year in which to admit 50 per cent Tunisian participation. The process of taking over French-owned land continued in 1964 with legislation in May to expropriate all foreign-owned land, which meant a further 750,000 acres. France retaliated by cancelling all financial aid that had been agreed. The Neo-Destour party changed its name to emphasize its socialism, calling itself the Parti Socialiste Destourien – PSD (Destour Socialist Party). French relations with both Tunisia and Morocco deteriorated at this time, not least because of the growing attachment of their leaders to close relations with the United States. The following appraisal of Tunisia’s performance in international affairs during the 1960s shows how essentially conservative the Bourguiba regime was in its foreign policy:
Tunisia is one of the United States’ most faithful allies, and receives very generous American aid. This special attention has undoubtedly affected Tunisia’s international policy, and the line that she has taken both in her relations with the Arab states and with the Third World in general. She has broken off her short-lived diplomatic relations with China, and has taken the American side in the Vietnam conflict. This alliance, reinforced in 1966, still constitutes the basis of Tunisian policy. She has normal relations with the eastern countries of the Soviet Bloc, but they are not particularly cordial.4
There was growing opposition to the government in 1968 although for the 12 years since independence Bourguiba and the renamed Socialist Destour Party had achieved a reasonable level of stability. Bourguiba’s moderate stance over the Israel–Palestine question – that Israel and the Palestinians were ‘naturally’ the negotiators – made him enemies with the more radical Arab states, and especially Egypt. His ideas had been rejected by a conference of Arab kings and presidents in 1965; they opted instead to wage a sacred struggle against Zionism in Palestine, to work for the removal of Israel and to support the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Following the disaster for the Arabs of the Six Day War, Bourguiba changed to the extent of saying that strength did not lie just in armies and equipment but in unity of heart and rank: ‘We do not want the extermination of the Jews but we are defending a right and just cause.’ Later, however, when the emotions that the Six Day War had aroused receded, the Tunisians blamed Nasser for his unilateral action and for imposing his viewpoint on the Middle East, claiming that his ambition and determination to be the leading Arab was insulting to others and divisive. In 1968, as a consequence of this line, Tunisia was refused permission to present its condemnation of Egypt’s 1967 role at the meeting of the Arab League Council. There was, at least, an agreement in 1968 with Algeria that settled the border dispute between the two countries although statements of Maghreb solidarity at this time did not lead to any closer union. Tunisia found herself to be relatively isolated in the Arab world at the end of the decade and so began to show greater interest in Africa south of the Sahara. Bourguiba established especially warm relations with Houphouët-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, both men sharing similar views. Houphouët-Boigny visited Tunisia in March 1968. Bourguiba also sought closer ties with Congo (K) Republic and Senegal, two other like-minded countries.
Agricultural co-operatives had been created out of the land bought from the colons and in 1969 the area was extended through the seizure of the remaining French-held land; these co-operatives accounted for 50 per cent of agricultural production but the workers were wage earners, when they were paid, and their wages were low. Tunisia had achieved a reasonable level of industrialization by this time with 20 per cent of the active population working in the industrial sector. This covered phosphates and superphosphate production, the Bizerta oil refinery, cement, lime and petroleum products. In January 1968 a joint Tunisian-French commission, meeting in Tunis, expressed the wish for closer co-operative relations between the two countries after the difficulties of the previous years, especially relating to the expropriation of land from the French settlers. The rapprochment with France resulted in an invitation to Bourguiba to visit France in 1970. Tunisia was upset by the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in Libya since it had regarded the government of King Idris as a moderate ally to counter-balance socialist Algeria and Egypt. By the end of the decade Bourguiba had become more concerned with maintaining his power than carrying out further reforms. ‘In the early years of his rule he was a secular modernizer, advancing women’s rights and curbing the powers of the Islamic fundamentalists, but he was never able to find the right economic balance to make his country grow and prosper and entered a long struggle with the unions.’5
A MAGHREB UNION?
One of the first OAU arbitration missions was undertaken in 1963 to stop the fighting between Algeria and Morocco over their disputed border. Emperor Haile Selassie and Ghana’s Foreign Minister Kojo Botsio, accompanied by Ghana’s provisional representative at the OAU, Kwesi Armah, visited North Africa to talk with the two sides. Following their efforts at mediation, Algeria’s Foreign Minister Bouteflika requested a meeting at Foreign Minister level of the OAU and this was arranged for 16 November. The frontier fighting had begun on 8 October with clashes at Colomb-Bechar and by 10 October Moroccan forces had taken control of two frontier oases – Hassa Beida and Tinjoub, which were 18 miles inside Algeria. A ceasefire was agreed after two days of talks held in Bamako, the capital of Mali, and signed by King Hassan of Morocco, President Ben Bella of Algeria, President Modibo Keita of Mali and Emperor Haile Selassie. Darsie Gillie of the Guardian commented as follows on this mediation effort:
The conciliators, Emperor Haile Selassie and President Modibo Keita, were both passionately convinced of the grave danger to all Africa, including themselves, of a war between two African states so soon after liberation. Were the foreigners so recently thrown out as conquerors to be brought back again as peacemakers to run Africa on the basis of a new plea?…
It is not expected that the laying down of arms will in itself mean a cooperative state of peace. The Algerian inclination to cause revolution in Morocco, and the Moroccan desire to press claims right across the Western Sahara, have been too evident. The most that is hoped for is that the two men will have learned that the game of seeking solutions to internal troubles by pressing adventures abroad can prove even more dangerous than the original trouble at home.6
At this stage the policies of the three Maghreb countries appeared too divergent for a union to make sense. Algeria was firmly ranged with the ‘revolutionary’ countries while Morocco, and even more Tunisia, were among the ‘moderates’. Over the first decade of Maghreb independence from 1956 to 1965 the three countries witnessed – and hastened – the departure of the French and other settlers only subsequently to feel the economic and social impact that their departure entailed. In 1955 the non-Muslim population of the three was 1.8 million; by 1965 it had been reduced to 0.6 million; and by 1970 to 0.3 million. The settlers had exercised major control over the economies of the three territories and without them the prospects of obtaining sufficient aid for effective development had receded. Algeria had major oil and natural gas deposits that would provide the economic base for modernization but the other two countries did not, although in 1964 some oil was found in the south of Tunisia near the Algerian border at El Borma. Although the three had somewhat more developed economies than most African countries to the south, apart from oil and mining they depended mainly upon agriculture and, if anything, competed with one another in their exports to Europe. Local financing for development would remain modest for years to come while there was little sign that they could obtain finance from a
broad on the scale required to achieve successful economic take-off.
Nonetheless, as with other potential regional groups the ideal of a Maghreb Economic Union had its appeal and in 1964 the Maghreb Permanent Consultative Committee was established with headquarters in Tunis. Its object was to investigate all problems relating to economic co-operation in member countries and to propose measures to reinforce co-operation and bring into being a Maghreb Economic Community. Its members were Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The possibilities of closer Maghreb union improved in 1969–70 when there was a rapprochment between Algeria and Morocco, a rapprochment between Morocco and Mauritania, and a treaty between Algeria and Tunisia in December 1969, which solved ‘all outstanding problems’ and was followed in January 1970 by a visit to Tunisia of Algeria’s Foreign Minister. In real terms, however, despite their common backgrounds of religion, language, ethnicity and French colonialism the Maghreb countries were no closer to an effective economic union at this time than were any of the other groupings that came and went in sub-Saharan Africa.