The Case Against Moroccan Nationalism:
LEHRMAN, HAL
The Case Against Moroccan Nationalism By Hal Lehrman Over the past four years, The New Leader has published many articles urging independence for Morocco. Here we present a dissenting view, in the...
...Istiqlal's "program" is a hodgepodge of stereotypes about "liberty for the people," elections and parliaments...
...Blindness—plus the default of authority by inept Paris governments to such proconsuls as Marshal Alphonse Juin, former Resident-General and still the colonials' eminence grise, whose only remedies for native unrest have been doubletalk and an iron hand...
...Either way, it would be a calamity, not only for France and the free world but for the Moroccan people...
...The "nation" in their nationalism is not the Moroccan people but the upper caste...
...Istiqlal has nothing like the organized movement which could bring out mobs to defy British guns at Suez or stage impressive street demonstrations in Tunis...
...They lack any political concept of individual choice...
...If the population abets the killers in a passive way, it is strictly out of fear...
...What is more, the Moroccan people do not really want "independence...
...Provoked by excessive concessions to the nationalists by Paris, they might even provoke a civil war which would really give Communism a chance...
...Last August the French deposed Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef...
...The truth is rather the other way around: The native nationalists have taken over the native Communists...
...France has a good record as builder and civilizer, a record which enlightened Moroccans respect...
...Hal Lehrman, author of Russia's Europe and Israel: The Beginning and Tomorrow, was OWI chief in Turkey during World War II and twice winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Middle East reporting...
...This may be so partly because the colonials have done little to prepare the Moroccans for self-government, but it is nevertheless true...
...Police files show that the party's terrorists are mostly hired assassins—small-fry thugs who can be bought for 1,000 francs (about $3)—willing enough to risk dying, but for food or drugs, not for beliefs...
...As every Frenchman finally knows, the Vietnam disaster might never have occurred if too little independence had not been granted too late...
...Moroccan agricultural and industrial workers receive lower wages...
...Moroccan farmers pay harsher taxes than the colons and get smaller benefits...
...Not the grant of bewildering and incomprehensible "freedoms" which would merely transfer the power to native misusers of it in the absence of the trained and devoted cadres indispensable if self-government is to have any lucid meaning...
...Communism has no soldiers, and few effective agents...
...The Moroccan people in general, unfortunately, have no such subtle awareness of the "mission, civilisatrice" or of the jeopardy in which it would be placed by French exodus...
...But the initiation of a social-welfare approach in the Protectorate administration which would give the masses a feeling that they have a government which cares for them and is deserving of their gratitude...
...And there is still time, by intelligent reforms, to win back the Moroccan people...
...Schools, housing, diet, sanitation, health, working conditions, living standards are far better than they were before the French came in 1912, but they are still inadequate...
...Here we present a dissenting view, in the hope that it will help clarify the issues there...
...NORTH AFRICA is not Indo-China...
...they think in traditional patterns...
...They put Arabs into the labor leadership, but they failed to make Communism stick to them...
...At present, however, the Communists are less of an actual threat than a bugaboo invented by the colonial clique to damn the independence movement...
...Here is why those who identify Morocco with Vietnam are wrong...
...they haven't an inkling of the function of a ballot-box—and they couldn't care less...
...The colonial elements have always argued that the Moroccans are not ready for self-government...
...But the government of Pierre Mendes-France is behaving as if the Asia lesson fits Tunisia exactly...
...There was a time when real Communists from France were indoctrinating Moroccan labor and trying to train Arabs as party-line union leaders...
...Their Bourbon blindness is directly responsible for the current darkness in Morocco...
...Self-rule in a hurry seems intended for Morocco, too...
...The French, in their turn, represented the former Sultan as an impediment to progress and let it be inferred that a new era of reform would follow his departure...
...There has been talk of municipal and countrywide elections at some vague future date when they become "feasible...
...Today, with the French Reds deported to the mainland and the unions outlawed, practically all native labor leaders in and out of jail are rabid members of Istiqlal, the nationalist party—and have no ideological or disciplinary ties to their old allegiance...
...The only positive step has been to reduce the power of the Sultanate by turning the present French-picked occupant of the throne into a puppet...
...A year has gone by and nothing has been done...
...Pro-Istiqlal Arab landowners and industrialists exploit their underpaid Moslem workers at least as greedily as do their French opposite numbers...
...Panicky surrender to the primitive nationalists would hasten, not hinder, the growth of Communism...
...What they do know is that the Government which exists over them is a remote and alien lord who favors his own kind...
...The local French proprietors, with some notable exceptions, are already lawless enough...
...Because there has been no crippling expenditure of blood, the French people are not demanding withdrawal at any price...
...A majority of his subjects continue to regret his departure, not because he had favored Istiqlal or resisted the French but because he had managed somehow to create the impression that he was concerned for his people's welfare or at least knew about their destitution...
...Istiqlal propagandists hence can proclaim with some credibility that the reactionary colons got rid of the pro-nationalist former Sultan in order to remove a hindrance to their own untrammelled authority...
...Sitting in French prisons, or in forced residence at isolated Legion posts in the Atlas and Sahara, or in Cairo exile (where they expend much of their energy concocting inflammatory and irresponsible appeals for broadcast over the hospitable Egyptian radio), the Istiqlal notables dream of getting rid of the French mainly in order to acquire for themselves the power, titles and emoluments which would be thereby vacated...
...Internal independence under such guides would be an invitation to chaos, in which the French would be desperately trying to hang on to control of defense and foreign affairs...
...Istiqlal, moreover, is totally unrepresentative of the Moroccan people...
...Morocco is not Tunisia...
...The Residence has instituted a few carefully limited measures which will take a long time to put into effect—such as improvement of the archaic Moslem judicial system...
...The average Moroccan is less conscious of bridges and highways than of his own acute, perennial misery...
...Few outsiders—and certainly not this writer—have tears to shed for the present embarrassments of the Aucouturiers, Bonifaces and other feudalist colons and their counter-terrorist "White Hand" societies...
...The unaffiliated Moroccan masses do not have to believe all would be well if Istiqlal triumphed, but they certainly have no reason to believe they have gained anything by changing Sultans...
...One can only hope the harassed French will resist the lure of so simple-minded an equation—at least for Morocco...
...They do not understand democracy, and they wouldn't know how to begin introducing it if ever given the chance...
...If Istiqlal ever wins control, Morocco will hurry into the League and very quickly demonstrate itself an appropriate recruit, both in sterility of foreign policy and vacuity of domestic reform...
...The area is only a few hours from France, a few minutes from Europe...
...They do not actively support the nationalists, but they feel no compelling reason to prefer the French...
...Moroccan aspirants to the civil service have less opportunity for employment in higher grades, practically no opportunity for posts where they might learn something about the techniques of government...
...Tunisia's elite may be ready for autonomy at a slower pace than Paris has prescribed, but in Morocco there is no doubt at all that the native "leaders" are at best a couple of centuries behind even the Tunisians...
...Much of the sparsely scattered Moroccan intelligentsia knows this, and dreads the dispersion of four decades of advance in civilization that would begin if the French leave...
...This is the area for liberal and enlightened reforms—the real opportunity which beckons to Francis Lacoste, the new Resident-General, and to the government of Mendes-France...
...In the end, they would have to crack down again—or get out altogether...
...The true meaning of such phrases and institutions, however, escapes the Moroccan headmen...
...In Morocco: Nationalism has no mass following...
...These colons, incidentally, are a more serious obstacle to a Moroccan settlement than the native nationalists are...
...Their external inspiration comes not from the Cominform but from the Arab League...
...But, even if the French now were to be seized with a frenzy of "democratic" reform, it would not by itself make friends and win influence...
...A special Fortune and Commentary correspondent, he last visited Morocco in January of this year...
Vol. 37 • September 1954 • No. 39
