Morocco’s ‘Shah’ cows the opposition

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 18

Morocco’s ‘Shah’ cows the opposition

By

SUSAN MORGAN

in Casablanca

“There will certainly be another Casablanca,” said the Western diplomat, “and next time there will be even more bloodshed." He was referring to the “black Saturday” of rioting after a strike in Morocco's largest city in June in which 2000 people were arrested and. according to the opposition, 637 were killed. This figure was allegedly taken from a list at the morgue in Casablanca’s main hospital. Most were shot by , paramilitary forces brought in to quell the disturbances, the worst since independence. The rioting was caused by massive increases in food prices, following I.M.F. recommendations to drop food subsidies. (The I.M.F. is providing JI billion to prop up the ailing Moroccan economy, hit this year by severe drought, a debilitating Saharan war, and low world prices for phosphates. Morocco’s main ex-

port.) Butter, for example, went up 78 per cent. Forty per cent of the 18 million Moroccan population is below the $2OOO a year “poverty line.” The World Bank said in a recent report that Morocco's rich are getting steadily richer while the poor get poorer. As a result of the explosion in Casablanca, subsidies have been partly restored, but conditions for more than half the population remain desperate. "Casablanca was an expression of the rage of the poor,” one well-placed Moroccah told me. About half the teeming population of this dusty port city are aged under 15. Only a quarter are in school. The huge shanty-town population is constantly swollen by newcomers from the country, driven off the land by a two-year drought. A thousand people a day leave the country for cities, and most head for Casablanca. “The city is today a powder-keg,” said

my Moroccan informant, “and the Government has no answer — except repression.” Despite the desperation and frustration of many Moroccans (comparisons tend to be made with the situation in Morocco today and that of Iran in the final days of the Shah) everything indicates that King Hassan is still well in control. He has staked his throne on a successful outcome to the Saharan issue. He now looks set to win the war against Polisario nationalist guerrillas not just on a military level but on the. far trickier diplomatic level. He has revealed himself just as canny a political operator on the internal front. When conciliation fails in Morocco, the traditional response of the authorities is repression, and it looks as if the King is likely to succeed in cowing the opposition. The threat from the only really effective opposition party, the Socialist Union of Popular Force (U.S.F.P.), has been defused. Two thousand U.S.F.P. militants throughout the country have been arrested for their

role in the Casablanca riots and that of their militant affiliated trade union, the C.D.T. (The C.D.T. set fire to 50 buses after their drivers, from a blackleg union, refused to join the strike.) The King arrested the internationally known leader of the U.S.F.P., Mr Abderrahim Bouabid, and two party leaders for criticising his acceptance of an O.A.U. referendum and ceasefire on the Sahara. Finally, U.S.F.P. parliamentarians who had protested at an extension of Parliament by two years w r ere forced back into Parliament after first leaving and then being placed under house arrest. ;■ •. 5 “Morocco is a fragmented society,” said a Moroccan Socialist. “The King is able to play one faction off constantly against another. He co-opts and divides the opposition. If that fails he uses repression.” Less than two years ago, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency predicted that King Hassan “would lose control of events — probably within a year — and eventually his throne.” But after escaping two assassina-

tion attempts in the 19705, and despite the enormous gamble he has taken on the Sahara, the

monarch seems here to say. — Copyright. London Observer Service. .