Crisis in North Africa-2
ARON, RAYMOND
CRISIS IN NORTH AFRICA A liberal French observer says that granting autonomy to Tunisia and Morocco and establishing their interdependence with France is vital to the area's progress By Raymond...
...Now that France has outlined a policy of reform for Tunisia and Morocco, the United States should support French efforts...
...At a time when the impossibility of maintaining ben Moulay Arafa on the throne was apparent, the French in Morocco continued their blind resistance...
...In the long run, it is impossible to modernize a country's economy while relying for political support exclusively on traditionalist groups...
...Perhaps they are too pessimistic...
...The number of non-Jewish Moroccans who have received bachelor's degrees since the beginning of the protectorate is about 530, of whom some 400 are still pursuing their studies...
...The professional class is overwhelmingly French (875 French doctors against 36 Moroccan, 350 lawyers against 48, several hundred engineers against about 30...
...If French experts, administrators, engineers and businessmen are necessary to North Africa's prosperity, why should the nationalists hurry to dispense with their services...
...The number of Jews is about 625...
...Ben Youssef's removal in August 1953 and the French inaction which followed provided a focus for every revolt, for every claim...
...A policy confined to re-establishing order and repeating cliches about integration, even if valid reforms regarding the property system and church-state separation are added, is tragically inadequate...
...It controls about 35 per cent of the national income and pays more than half the taxes which cover the Government budget...
...In striving to keep North Africa within the sphere of modern civilization, France is serving the interests of all Europe...
...Denouncing '"foreign intrigues...
...Before the ouster of Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef, all the causes of the present crisis were already present: overpopulation, poverty in the shanty-towns, disintegration of the urban populace, deterioration of French administration, and the revolt of the educated native minority, which simultaneously invoked both French ideas and Islamic tradition...
...The impossibility of full) realizing integration may well doom it as a policy...
...A not-too-popular monarch became "an adored sovereign...
...They find it difficult to adjust to the idea that their proteges have grown up and now intend to administer the states which France in large measure created...
...But they remain convinced that only the nationalists can henceforth restore a climate of cooperation between the Moroccan masses and the French administration...
...And it facilitated the task of outside agitators who were "working on" the tribes...
...CRISIS IN NORTH AFRICA A liberal French observer says that granting autonomy to Tunisia and Morocco and establishing their interdependence with France is vital to the area's progress By Raymond Aron Paris In Morocco, unlike Tunisia, sharp contrasts are observable between cities where French influence predominates (Casablanca, Rabat), those where tradition holds sway (Fez, Meknes, Marrakech), and the tribes...
...But if this is so, how could France ever maintain the old regime by force...
...Can France undertake, however, a policy in Tunisia and Morocco leading to an association of states united in equality, and at the same time maintain in Algeria the notion of integration with metropolitan France...
...In other words, it is hoped that the nationalists will freely accept not only interdependence with France but the reality of a modern Morocco, ruled in part by Frenchmen...
...The French in Morocco, it is true, do not deny the need to associate the Moroccan elites more intimately with the administration of modern Morocco...
...One must not brush aside these basic facts...
...Moslems and Frenchmen have and will continue to have a different make-up and unequal living standards...
...Nationalism is a powerful sentiment, which it would be folly to ignore...
...The French minority (400,000 out of 7.5 million) represents a fifth of the urban population...
...In agriculture, it comprises 17 per cent, in industry and commerce 80 per cent...
...Moreover, it would be equally paradoxical to entrust this modern society at once to representatives of an essentially theocratic culture, who are hostile to the Western institutions that have sprung up in Islamic soil...
...Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco have been, in a sense, their fatherland...
...Nevertheless, the hesitations of France's allies must no longer serve her as an alibi...
...So long as France lacked a clearly defined policy, her allies could take refuge in do-nothingism and criticism...
...Certainly not the masses of the people...
...The moderate nationalists, who envisioned an Algerian Republic associated by federal lies with the French Republic,are in their turn beginning to be bypassed...
...There would soon be 150 Algerian Deputies in the French National Assembly, if the same election laws applied on both sides of the Mediterranean...
...Aron writes for Le Figaro and is author of The Century of Total War...
...She has just chosen her path in Tunisia and Morocco, and nothing has yet been decided in Algeria...
...that, without a policy of autonomy, it would be necessary to resort to severe repression which the French of France would never permit...
...Modern Morocco, as contrasted with traditional Morocco (which is modernizing slowly), is for the most part a French creation...
...they were born there, their parents lived there, and they are justly proud of what they have accomplished...
...This is the second of two articles by Raymond Aron on France's rebellious North African colonies...
...But it is no longer an unconditional principle...
...The resistance and anguish of the North African Frenchmen are understandable...
...Western prospects in Africa will suffer...
...It should be added that Moroccan Jews make up nearly half the native doctors and lawyers, and, if "Moroccan independence" were achieved, some of these would emigrate to Israel...
...The majority of cultivated Algerians once desired integration...
...For they show how na?ve it is to contend that agreement with the Moroccan nationalists would bring peace and amity at one blow...
...French policy resulted in a common front of all groups opposing French rule, despite the various movements' diversity of inspiration and objectives...
...The United States is not troubled by conscience when oil companies give feudal monarchs millions of dollars to prop up sordid regimes, but it apparently would be conscience-stricken if it helped the French and Moslems of North Africa to create together a community guided by the spirit of Western civilization...
...Even these nationalists are rejected by those who see hope only in a death struggle...
...there are too many to follow the example of the British in India...
...The top administrative echelons are more than 90 per cent French, three quarters of private investments are supplied by French capital, and two thirds of the capital-improvements budget is financed by France...
...Today, those among them who still remain faithful to this goal are threatened by the rebels and ostracized...
...The independence of Saudi Arabia or Yemen has not been an edifying spectacle...
...At the present time, there are no parties in Algeria with which negotiations could be held which would put an end to the frightful civil war...
...And the question, as with Tunisia, is whether coadministration in fact is ultimately reconcilable with internal autonomy, accorded to a government dominated by the nationalists...
...Until Americans realize that they should blush at their support of slave-holding sheiks, not at their alliance with France...
...The opposing groups, in Morocco and France, exchanged furious recriminations and insults, and did everything conceivable to make inevitable the departure of Sultan ben Moulay Arafa, ben Youssef's successor, and to turn that departure into a major defeat for France...
...real and deplorable though they may be...
...There are not enough Frenchmen in North Africa for them to follow the example of South Africa...
...The intermediate path is that of association, a narrow path but the only practical one...
...If integration were carried to its logical conclusion, it would not be accepted in France...
...is often a means of evading one's own responsibilities...
...For it is not possible to diminish Algerian nationalism by ignoring it...
...The advocates of agreement with the nationalists do not overlook the need for continuity, the weakness of the Moroccan elites, or the risks of internal autonomy...
...On the other hand, the nationalists may well prefer independence in poverty to interdependence with all its advantages...
...It reinforced the nationalist parties and agitated the popular masses, more sensitive to the fate of an individual like ben Youssef than to ideological formulas...
...The struggle in Morocco revolves around the method by which French-Moroccan cooperation can and should be developed...
...Universally regarded as major analyst of French affairs, Mr...
...The present French policy is based on the assumption that internal autonomy will prove compatible with co-administration...
...If tomorrow Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco modeled themselves after Iraq, who would gain from the change...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 45
