Morocco...
Snapshots, -1-
The younger camels followed their hobbled leader in a jail-break across the dunes, invading the camp site and heading nose-first into tents until their yellow-robed Amazigh tender came flying across to head them away again. I asked our guide the ring-leader’s name. He said, ‘Camel’:
On our recent trip through Morocco, we talked with the chief political officer and others at the U.S. embassy (sorry, no pictures allowed) in Rabat, the capital of Morocco since the French moved it from Fez early in the 20th Century.
American State Department career officials are tremendously accomplished and dedicated civil servants — meet as many as you can when you travel abroad. Morocco has 37 million people (comparison; Cairo has 26 million). Per capita GDP at around $3.800 is lower than its neighboring oil-producing states — and this ‘benevolent’ constitutional monarchy has less inequality than the U.S. (.41 vs. .49 GINI coefficient). Tourism is booming again, with 2022 receipts more than double 2019 pre-COVID levels.
Call centers, and car parts are major export earners for the country. The current administration of this 98% Muslim country is working to make abortion legal in all cases — a stark contrast to Texas, Florida and other red states in America.
The primary international political issue for Morocco remains Western Sahara, which Morocco annexed in 1975, sending over 350,000 to claim the territory from Algeria and Mauritania. Trump recognized Morocco’s dominion over the region as part of America’s complex pro-Israel, anti-Russia (Algeria) calculus in the region — so has fans in the country. The Chinese are aggressively interested in the region’s phosphates.
Morocco was a French ‘protectorate’ from 1912 through 1956. The French influence remains strong, particularly in the straight roads, architecture and cafes of urban areas like the Villes Nouvelles in Marrakech and Fez. But French is fading as a language, as schools have moved Arabic and Amazigh .. and English .. ahead in the curriculum.
Spain retains influence in pockets; Spanish is the second language in Chefchaouen, a beautiful blue and white city in the Rif mountains in the northwest, where Jews and Muslims fleeing Spain and Portugal took refuge in the 15th Century.
The souks in the medina in Fez and Marrakech are extraordinarily dense 15-minute cities developed 15 centuries before the West stated talking about the concept. The Fez souk has over 9,000 buildings in its 800 acres,
and remarkable traditional Moroccan architecture, whose influence extended through Spain, Portugal, Algeria and Tunisia.
Next; 20-year drought and record temperatures, and cats…