Laayoune, a windblown oasis on one edge of Moroccan Sahara, is the westernmost settlement of the Arab world. Here, the “Arab Spring”, the upsurge currently unsettling regimes from Syria in the east to Tunisia next door, is but a distant thunder. Yet, not so long ago, this was the scene of bitter fighting between Moroccan forces and the rebel Polisario Front.
Laayoune town was a Spanish settlement till thirty-five years ago and settled primarily because of its perennial water supply. The Spanish built a small fort atop a hillock and a cluster of villas to house officials and a few barracks for soldiers.
To the west of Laayoune, the desert gives way to a pitiless coast; bleak, treeless and without any source of fresh water. Potable water, local fruits and vegetables from Laayoune supported a small Spanish fishing port 30 miles away. From here, the Spanish operated trawlers to fish the southern Atlantic. In 1975, they signed an agreement to vacate the area which was part of Western Sahara and handed it over to Mauritania. Three years later, Morocco took over the territory and for years fought with the Polisario Front that wanted independence for Western Sahara.
A peace agreement promising a referendum was signed in 1991 and the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) moved in. The referendum was never held and the UN mission remains with its small contingent of international peace keepers, a special envoy and a fleet of white UN SUVs. Laayoune’s small desert airport is lined up with a few UN aircraft, which occasionally ferry peacekeepers to the nearest family station forty five minutes away at La Palmas in the tourist paradise of the Canary Islands.
For the Arabs of Laayoune, regime change is not a priority, co-existence between the aboriginal Sahrawi people and the Moroccan Arabs is. The two sides had been locked in a long, murderous conflict that left an estimated 25,000 people dead till the 1991 ceasefire. Since then an uneasy peace has ensued marred by “isolated” instances of violence.
The Moroccan militia and the military maintain peace in the area with check posts, pickets and small fortified establishments. The aboriginal Sahrawi tribes have backed down and withdrawn deep into the desert, tending their flocks of sheep and camel and adapting their nomadic ways with the indomitable Landrover. UN military observers keep a constant vigil criss-crossing the stony desert in their immaculate vehicles.
As the country went to the polls on 25 November 2011, the turnout was remarkable with even the Sarahwi nomads driving through the desert with their families to cast their votes. At Douara, a remote desert village with a total settled population of just 450 and a nomadic population of over a thousand, Sahrawis in their characteristic blue robes turned up in the hundreds with their retinues of women and children to vote.
Hany Abdel-Aziz (Egypt), Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, who drove around the area on polling day, said the locals were voting and things were peaceful. A young peacekeeper with the special envoy said they had not seen or heard of any fighting for years.
“The challenge is to learn to coexist in a manner that gives dignity and rights to all people,” felt Hamdi Sherifa, a young PhD. student. “Elections are one way forward because it can empower young people with different ideas from the past. We have learnt that conflict is not the answer.”
Today, the dominant issues are employment, education and economic infrastructure. “I am jobless, my friends are jobless and unless we elect young people with ideas, nothing will change in our lives,” said 29 year old Mariam, who is doing her masters in English.
“Our King wants to bring change and the elections are proof of that,” remarked 25 year old Azmat Nasser of Douara. Curiously, the sentiments in the outpost of Laayoune finds echo in the rest of the country. The buzzword for the majority is reform not revolution.
Morocco is different from most other Arab regimes, in that it has been pursuing a slow but determined reforms process that aims to provide greater self-rule authority to the country’s diverse population and regions. Morocco’s monarch has also voluntarily agreed to pare his powers and introduce Constitutional reforms to grant more powers to local governments and a national Parliament.
The November elections paved the way for a coalition government headed by a moderate Islamist Prime Minister — Abdelilah Benkirane — of the Justice and Development Party (PJD). On being elected, Benkirane was quick to assure both the regime and the international community.
“The head of the state is the king and no can govern without him. If someone can do it, it is certainly not Abdelilah Benkirane,” he declared. He also made it clear that he was not about to enforce strict Islamic injunctions in Morocco.
“We are proud that our point of reference is Islamist,” Benkirane remarked.
“I will never be interested in the private life of people, Allah created mankind free. I will never ask if a woman is wearing a short skirt or a long skirt.”
To be sure, there are adherents of a revolutionary solution and a movement that seeks to overturn the country’s monarchy.
The “February 20 Movement” tailored after other “Arab Spring” groups have been demonstrating against elections and demanding “true” separation of powers.
Though the anti-regime protests are small by international standards, they are significant given Moroccan civil society’s suspicions about the regime’s real intentions as well as concerns about the economy and the oppressive bureaucracy.
Although the regime’s opponents have managed to grab headlines all over the world, they have not managed to get the numbers to re-enact anything like a Tahrir Square. As long as the Moroccan regime sticks to its promise to reform the system and share power in a transparent manner that provides hope to young Moroccans, the Arab Spring will remain a distant thunder echoing across deserts afar.
Indranil Banerjie is an independent security and political risk consultant

Approx. 1,000 words

By Indranil Banerjie
6 December 2011
Email: Indranil.banerjie@gmail.com