Fifteen years ago, I wrote an editorial in the newspaper I was managing in Casablanca under a heading in the form of a question: “Why did the dream of the Arab Maghreb fail?” This was on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Arab Maghreb Union, and in that editorial I focused on one reason among many that still hinders the achievement of this dream. It is the absence of democracy. I wrote that the five states of the Arab Maghreb are, without exception, undemocratic. In Morocco, there is an executive monarchy that concentrates all power in the hands of the King. In Algeria and Mauritania, the military establishment is considered the actual ruler of the country. In Tunisia, the police regime that Zein El Abidin Benali had established was suffocating the people. As for Libya, the dictatorship of Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi was dominating every aspect of power and capabilities.
The day after the editorial was published, I received a lengthy statement from the Libyan Embassy in Rabat describing me as “ignorant” because I did not know anything about the nature of the “Jamahiri” regime that Colonel Qadhafi had established. With the statement, the Embassy sent a box of many books, among them numerous copies of the “Green Book” with translations into many languages, as well as other books about what Libyan official propaganda at that time was calling “The Third International Theory of Colonel Qadhafi.”
Out of respect for the right of response, we published the Libyan Embassy’s statement. However, one week later I received a summons from the Moroccan Judicial Police because the Moroccan Foreign Ministry, probably under pressure from the Libyan Embassy in Rabat, had filed a lawsuit against me on the charge of “publicly insulting the dignity and character of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi” in describing him as a dictator. Qadhafi’s representative stood before the court and demanded that the severest penalties and material compensation equivalent to one million dollars be imposed because the Colonel’s dignity “is priceless,” as his defense stated to justify the huge monetary compensation he was demanding. Indeed, the court granted his demand, and a sentence of one year in prison and a fine equal to one million Moroccan dirhams, the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars, was issued.
However, it appears that the Libyan Embassy was not happy with the sentence and appealed it. Just then, the revolutions of “the Arab Spring” broke out, starting from Tunisia, and their spark reached Libya and destroyed Qadhafi, his rule, his Jamahiriya, and his International Theory. When the Court of Appeals began examining the case after Qadhafi’s death, it pronounced its judgment of acquittal at its first session. This took place in my absence and of course in the absence of Qadhafi and his defense. This demonstrates the degree to which the Moroccan judiciary is independent.
Why did I begin discussing the Arab Maghreb Union with this particular story? Because I still consider that the absence of democracy is the biggest impediment to establishing the Maghreb Union. This Union will not come into being without achieving this condition. All the formulas for top-down unions among the regimes of these countries have been tried, and all of them without exception have failed. This includes the five-party Union whose creation was announced in Marrakesh 36 years ago among non-democratic regimes. Each one of them had its own calculations and agendas behind the commemorative photo that brought the leaders of the Arab Maghreb states together for the first time in history as they looked out from the balcony of the City Hall of Marrakesh.
The Absence of Democracy
When I speak of the absence of democracy, I am not reinventing the wheel, let alone introducing anything new. This is because, even in the past, leftist elites and currents that have despaired of pushing their regimes to unify their states have raised the slogan of building a “Maghreb of Peoples” to circumvent the regimes that were and are still confiscating the will of their peoples and impeding any rapprochement among them. The condition of success of all the successful unions in the world has been democracy. The prominent example is the European Union. This Union began small among several states for whom the most crucial factor bringing them together was their democratic systems. The Union still puts the political criterion that stipulates the need “to have stable institutions that guarantee democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and the respect and protection of minorities” at the top of what are known as the “Copenhagen Criteria” by which states that are candidates to join the Union are granted membership.
In the Maghreb case, not only are all these conditions absent, but there are other difficult problems that complicate the situation even more, such as the lack of stability in some Maghreb states, e.g., Libya, which has been classified as a failed state and is threatened with partition. Add to this the dispute concerning Western Sahara which, with all its historical and geographic backgrounds and geopolitical dimensions, poisons relations between the two largest Maghreb states, Morocco and Algeria, the backbone of any structure for union in the region. And we should not forget to speak of the weakness if not the absence of any economic integration among these states. Trade among them does not exceed five percent of their total economic exchanges, most of which they direct to external partners, especially the European Union and China. In recent years, some of these countries have started to open their economies to two foreign partners known for their dangerous agendas in every region they enter, the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
However, the biggest obstacle to achieving the Maghreb dream remains the lack of political will among its regimes. The political turmoil these states have known since the so-called “Arab Spring” and the counter-revolutions that have worked to thwart all attempts at peaceful change, along with the accompanying political and economic disturbances and crises, have added to the failure of some of these regimes and the self-absorption of those that remain in power and their focus on the internal problems of their states. Thus, in recent years, each of the Maghreb states without exception has registered major retreats in the realm of democracy and liberties, e.g., Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. Conversely, inside these same states chauvinistic tendencies fueled by the propaganda of the existing regimes to strengthen “the sacred consensus” around national constants have grown among their peoples. These are nothing but ideological pretexts for legitimizing their monopoly of power and neutralizing all opposing voices so that no uncontrolled change occurs.
Must we despair and declare surrender? Failure does not mean the absence of a need for a Maghreb Union. Nor is it linked merely to the lack of a genuine political will to overcome the historical and political disputes among its states. Nor is there a need to attribute it to the set of complicated political, economic, historical, and geopolitical factors that there is no room here to enumerate. The continued freeze of the idea of the Union leads every year to the loss of many opportunities for development and integration among the states of the region, but it is the lack of discussion about this dream that delays its achievement and makes it impossible. Hence the importance of initiatives like the project of the International Centre for Dialogue Initiatives (ICDI), which aims to strengthen the role of civil society in the five states of the Arab Maghreb by launching constructive discussions and developing joint initiatives that transcend political and historical differences and strive to build bridges of trust and cooperation among the elites of these states and engage their civil societies to create an environment that enables civil initiatives to influence decision makers within their states.
A Road Map
Reviving the Arab Maghreb dream begins with drawing up a roadmap capable of overcoming the obstructive historical legacy and rebuilding trust and integration on new, realistic, and effective foundations. This map must consider contemporary geopolitical and economic challenges, activate new roles for nontraditional actors, and rely on the soft power of civil society with the strong engagement of youth. To do so, it must launch informal dialogues among the independent cultural, economic, political, and media elites from the different Maghreb countries and create cultural, academic, and artistic exchange programs that will encourage innovation and overcome all the legal and bureaucratic obstacles that shackle youthful energies in these states to build new bridges of trust among the rising generations based on shared values and a social history that brings together the peoples of the region.
No ready-made description of building a union among several independent and sovereign states exists, but there is also nothing that forbids presenting ideas and testing them. In this case, even if you fail, the honor of trying is enough, for it is a sign of perseverance, determination, and effort made to continue on the road until the desired goal is achieved. And in the case of striving to build integration among the Maghreb states, what those who dream of this idea need is free political will and far-sighted leaderships that seek the interests of their countries and peoples, proceeding in gradual steps without skipping stages, starting from points of convergence and what represents mutual interests even if they are small, setting aside issues in dispute without forgetting them, and addressing them gradually by building a broad consensus, even if small concessions are required at the outset, to build trust because it is the basic factor in continuing the march together. It does not matter if the beginning is with a limited number of states, even if it concerns only two, because every success they achieve will constitute an attractive force for other states to join the caravan in the future.
The dream of building the Union of the Arab Maghreb states has not died, but it has been almost totally comatose for decades. Reviving it will require clear vision and courageous decisions not just from “decision makers,” because it is not in the interest of their regimes for a Union that reduces their power and brings their peoples closer together to be established. Thus, the responsibility for reviving the idea of the Union falls today on the shoulders of “the holders of soft power,” to build a new Maghreb generation capable of overcoming all the obstacles to the achievement of the dream that has haunted generations of pioneers and still nourishes the hopes of youth.
Ali Anzoula is an independent Moroccan journalist.
