Should we really be surprised that the first week of the El Mansouri government has generated more headlines about a minister who never even took office than about the programme that will shape the country’s future for the next five years?

First, the facts, as far as they are known.

On Friday, October 16, Madiha Khayr, an Istiqlal MP from Béni Mellal who had recently been appointed president of her party’s parliamentary group, was named Minister Delegate for Vocational Training and Qualifications.

The very next day, a psychiatric certificate dating from around 2004 and an old newspaper article describing a case involving forgery, identity theft and nineteen bounced cheques, allegedly involving a woman named Madiha, began circulating on social media.

On Sunday, October 18, at the request of the Head of Government, the Royal Cabinet announced in a statement that His Majesty the King had terminated her appointment under Article 47 of the Constitution.

The Khayr affair is extraordinary on several counts.

But the government has neither commented on the contents nor confirmed the authenticity of the documents. No formal connection has ever been established between the psychiatric certificate and the judicial case, while both the woman concerned and her party have remained silent.

A minister was therefore removed on the strength of old documents dug up and thrown to the wolves, some of which fall under the most basic principles of medical confidentiality.

The government spokesperson cited a « political and institutional assessment » shared by the entire majority, intended to avoid jeopardising the government’s investiture.

Fair enough.

But if, as press reports suggest, the Head of Government knew nothing about the matter, then the question is no longer about Madiha Khayr. It is about the screening process.

Who checks what, when, and with what degree of diligence before a name is submitted to the Sovereign?

The parties, which hand out ministerial portfolios like rewards? Or the Executive, which accepts their nominees with its eyes closed?

Whatever the case, the first breach of trust runs deep.

In a country where distrust of the political class has spilled onto the streets, driven in particular by a younger generation that no longer believes in promises, this episode reinforces the worst possible stereotype: that of elites appointing one another within their own closed circles, without scrutiny or accountability.

The government had not even received its parliamentary investiture before it was already managing its first crisis.

But the most insidious damage lies elsewhere.

The appointment of Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, the first woman to lead a Moroccan government, was supposed to change how women are perceived in public life.

Instead, the first female Head of Government has had to make her first decisive act of authority the dismissal of another woman, against the backdrop of a psychiatric certificate.

The anti-feminists could hardly have asked for more.

And while nobody has ever concluded from the misconduct of a male minister that men are unfit to govern, women bear precisely that burden: every individual mistake is held against an entire gender.

That is also why this casting error will cost this government more than it would have cost another.

Yet on Monday, October 19, addressing both chambers of Parliament in a joint session, the Head of Government presented a programme that, for once, ventured into the territory of actual figures.

« We want to move from expanding social protection coverage to improving the quality of services, from the volume of investment to its returns, and from multiplying programmes to ensuring their complementarity and tangible impact, » she declared.

It was a philosophy of consolidation rather than rupture.

On purchasing power, direct social assistance, income tax, retirement benefits, pensions, youth training and even education, the programme is backed by numerical targets.

On paper, then, it is a serious piece of work.

But the Head of Government was careful to qualify her ambitions, specifying that the majority’s electoral commitments would be implemented « progressively, with due regard for operational realism and the sustainability of public finances. »

Translated into plain English: not everything that was promised will necessarily be delivered. Or not immediately. Or not in full.

The first real test will therefore be the 2026 Finance Bill, approved by the Government Council on October 20 and now in the hands of Parliament.

Because this will be the programme’s first translation into budgetary terms, and its first moment of truth.

And the first hundred days will reveal whether this programme is a genuine roadmap or merely a catalogue.

For expectations are enormous, particularly on the social front.

Direct assistance doubled, pensions increased, young people trained and integrated into employment, household bills reduced: each of these promises speaks to millions of families who are counting their dirhams long before the end of the month.

But even more than the amounts involved, it is the timetable and the method of implementation that will determine this government’s credibility.

Which measures will take effect in 2027? Which in 2028? With what funding, and according to which performance indicators?

All too often, the phrase « by the end of the term » has served as a convenient refuge for the most expensive commitments.

And experience has now established what happens at the end of a term: there is neither a proper assessment nor any real accountability.

Just another election campaign.

And another round of promises.

Zouhair Yata

The post El Mansouri: A False Start? appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The new majority led by Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, officially confirmed on October 12, brings together the PAM, Istiqlal, the USFP and the PPS. In other words, the party that topped the September 23 legislative elections has joined forces with the old Koutla and its two socialist parties, while the RNI, the embodiment of business-oriented liberalism that has governed for the past five years, joins the PJD on the opposition benches.

To appreciate just how unusual this choice is, one need only look around.

Latin America, which was singing the praises of the « pink tide » just four years ago, has watched that tide recede with remarkable brutality. In December, Chile elected José Antonio Kast with 58% of the vote, an unrepentant admirer of Pinochet. Bolivia, once a stronghold of the Bolivarian revolution, turned the page on twenty years of MAS rule in a runoff from which the left was entirely absent.

Honduras and Costa Rica followed, then Colombia in June with Abelardo de la Espriella, and Peru with Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former autocrat. In Argentina, Javier Milei won the midterm legislative elections with nearly 41% of the vote. And on October 4, Flávio Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, with 47% against 45%.

Europe is hardly immune.

In the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš returned to power by allying himself with the anti-immigration far right. In Germany, the AfD has just won Saxony-Anhalt with 44.5% of the vote, the strongest result for a German far-right party since 1945, and is leading nationally.

In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage swept up more than 1,400 council seats in May, including in Labour’s traditional working-class strongholds. In France, six months before the presidential election, the National Rally is polling at 35% to 38% of first-round voting intentions.

Further afield, Japan has handed a two-thirds majority to Sanae Takaichi, an avowed admirer of Margaret Thatcher.

And looming over this entire political mosaic is the shadow of Donald Trump, who is no longer content merely to inspire his imitators but actively endorses them and threatens those who vote the wrong way.

The forces driving this wave are well known. Insecurity, immigration, the rising cost of living and a sense of downward social mobility are fuelling a demand for order that left-wing governments have failed to understand.

But what is most striking is that it is not the traditional right that is benefiting. It is the right of the right.

In Colombia, the candidate representing traditional Uribismo barely exceeded 6%. In Saxony-Anhalt, Chancellor Merz’s CDU collapsed to 17%.

So why is Morocco escaping this tidal wave?

First, because in our country, the issues that fuel populism elsewhere are not electoral commodities.

Security, territorial integrity and migration policy are matters of national consensus, shaped by royal leadership and placed above partisan confrontation. No political firebrand can thrive by claiming ownership of these issues. Deprived of this fuel, identity-based one-upmanship runs out of steam.

Second, because Moroccan anger has a different complexion.

When Generation Z took to the streets, its young protesters were not demanding walls or deportations, but hospitals and schools worthy of the name.

The development of the social state, championed at the highest level for several years, has established the idea that the State should protect rather than withdraw.

And the outgoing government, perceived rightly or wrongly as one in which political power and economic interests had become entangled, paid the price for those disappointed expectations.

Where Argentina has embraced the budget-cutting chainsaw, Moroccans have punished what they saw as too much market and too little social protection.

We should, however, resist any temptation to celebrate prematurely.

The El Mansouri majority is no popular front.

Istiqlal remains a conservative party, attached to tradition and wary of societal reforms such as the revision of the Moudawana, Morocco’s Family Code.

The PAM, which identifies with social democracy, has long been viewed more as a party of political machinery than of ideological conviction.

And the USFP and PPS are mere shadows of the forces that shaped political debate thirty years ago, with 26 and 19 seats respectively.

Above all, conservatism has not disappeared from the political landscape. It has simply moved to another bench, alongside a PJD that has rebounded from 13 to 54 MPs.

Morocco’s departure from the global trend therefore rests less on ideological conviction than on a specific and pressing set of expectations.

Employment, healthcare, education, purchasing power: voters expect this majority to prove that a government can be both socially minded and effective, at a time when the rest of the world seems convinced that effectiveness requires a hard line.

Recent history offers a lesson that our distant neighbours have learned the hard way.

People do not vote for an ideology. They vote against the disappointment of the moment.

Chileans, Colombians and Bolivians, too, once enthusiastically brought the left to power, only to dismiss it unceremoniously.

If the incoming majority fails to honour its promises by 2031, there is no guarantee that the next wave will not arrive as a tsunami on our own shores.

Zouhair Yata

The post Morocco Goes Against the Tide appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

That said, Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri is no newcomer, either to politics or to public service, and her appointment is the « natural » outcome of her career, insofar as the PAM won the elections and the Constitution made her an obvious candidate for the position she now holds. A lawyer by training, the first woman to become mayor of Marrakech in 2009, a minister in the outgoing government and coordinator of the collective leadership of a party that came first with 97 of the 395 parliamentary seats, she has climbed the ladder one rung at a time.

This is therefore neither an exercise in affirmative action nor a political earthquake, but proof, if any were needed, that some things are moving forward, step by step, in our country.

What may be new, however, is how Moroccan citizens, the political class and economic decision-makers perceive and react to her, complete with their own prejudices about what her actions, abilities and decisions should look like, not merely as a legitimate Head of Government, but as a woman.

Every decision, every hesitation, every display of firmness will be viewed through that prism, whereas her predecessors were judged solely on their results — when they were judged at all. It is far from certain that this will make her job any easier, but only time will tell.

As for the composition of the new government, the first thing that seems settled is the RNI’s exclusion. Given the tensions, recriminations and attacks we have witnessed between the PAM and RNI, despite their having served together in the outgoing government, this is at least reassuring as to the limits of political hypocrisy.

The Dove party had nevertheless declared itself ready to sign up for another term, but the PAM grassroots, gathered at a National Council meeting in Skhirat, delivered an unmistakable message.

The RNI in opposition, however, is something of an oxymoron. At this stage, it is difficult to imagine what a party that has lost its leadership and fallen from 102 to 66 seats could actually oppose, other than the PJD, thereby depriving the latter of the privilege of being the real opposition, loudly railing against the system.

With its 54 regained seats, the Lamp party will therefore have to share both the opposition benches and the microphone, something that is hardly second nature to its Zaïm.

Next, the PAM, which describes itself as centre-left despite certain members’ fondness for business interests, appears to be heading towards an alliance with something younger generations have never known: Koutla 2.0, bringing together Istiqlal, the USFP and the PPS.

This is a revival of the bloc born in the 1990s that paved the way for Morocco’s political alternance.

Together, the four parties would hold 207 seats, nine more than the absolute majority required.

Beyond the gift handed to these parties, particularly those on the left, which would be joining the government without having performed especially well at the polls — the USFP and PPS actually lost seats — this coalition’s composition certainly offers a clue as to the social orientation of the difficult reforms Mansouri will have to carry through during her term.

Pension reform, for instance, is likely to require heated debates and inevitable compromises with the country’s key social stakeholders, particularly trade unions, with which the left has traditionally maintained closer ties.

Likewise, reform of the Moudawana, Morocco’s Family Code, which has been in the pipeline for some time and is eagerly awaited, will require both the mobilisation of progressive circles and the approval of more conservative constituencies historically associated with Istiqlal.

Then there are employment, healthcare, education and purchasing power, issues on which a younger generation, to whom she says she wants to « restore hope », expects something more than promises.

But above all, by sidelining the RNI and allying itself with tactically useful partners, the PAM is ensuring that it retains control of the government while avoiding too many contradictions, tensions or obstacles within its own majority.

With 97 seats compared with Istiqlal’s 65, the USFP’s 26 and the PPS’s 19, the Tractor party alone carries almost as much weight as its three partners combined.

That is a very different proposition from having to accommodate an RNI with 66 MPs and considerable experience in government.

Under this arrangement, the PAM will have considerably more room to manoeuvre.

The question now is what it intends to do with that freedom.

Because when your hands are free, there is no one left to blame when things go wrong.

Zouhair Yata

The post Government Coalition: The PAM Has a Free Hand appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

With the voting-age population estimated at between 27 and 28 million, more than 11 million Moroccans chose to remain outside the game before it had even begun. All told, more than 21 million adults did not vote. Nearly four out of five. Young people, meanwhile, have all but disappeared from the radar: 18- to 24-year-olds now account for just 4% of the electorate, half their share in 2021.

In terms of actual votes, Morocco’s largest party therefore has no acronym, no seats, and no candidates heading its lists. It is the party of abstention, encompassing both non-voters and the unregistered.

And this party is sending a twofold message.

The first is that Moroccans are placing their trust somewhere other than in the government and those aspiring to form it. In the State that plans and builds beyond electoral cycles, in major infrastructure projects, or simply in their own resourcefulness.

The second is even more troubling: some of our fellow citizens have simply lost all hope that their vote can make any difference.

Videos showing suspicious ballot boxes in Tangier and reports of withheld electoral records here and there, even though no fraud has been established at this stage, will only reinforce that feeling.

It is a slap in the face, and it is not aimed at any particular party. It is directed at the entire political class, government and opposition alike.

For those who did vote, the result has a distinctly familiar ring to it.

The PAM, RNI and Istiqlal, the three partners in the outgoing coalition, occupy the top three positions, merely in a different order. Together, they hold 228 seats, comfortably above the 198 required for an absolute majority.

Admittedly, the bloc has lost around forty MPs in five years, and the RNI is paying a heavy price for the wear and tear of a prime minister who had eventually become the focal point of every frustration.

But rearranging the factors does not change the product.

The summer transfer window, which saw Fouzi Lekjaa bring MPs from the RNI and Istiqlal into the Tractor’s ranks, illustrates this perfectly: often, the same men have simply changed jerseys.

Same old faces, different colours.

The coming weeks will therefore be devoted to speculation over the identity of the next head of government, whom His Majesty the King will choose from within the PAM, and to negotiations over ministerial positions.

The chances of Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri and Fouzi Lekjaa will be weighed, portfolios counted, and political balances negotiated.

But whatever alliances emerge, little is likely to change fundamentally, either abruptly or spectacularly.

The only real shockwave of this election came from the Lamp.

From just 13 seats in 2021, the PJD has climbed to 54, more than quadrupling its parliamentary representation.

This time, the party did not campaign on social mores, family values or religious morality. It campaigned on integrity and against the intertwining of business interests and politics.

And the fact that this message resonated speaks volumes about how some of our fellow citizens feel.

It also says a great deal about the ability of one political firebrand, Abdelilah Benkirane, to rally crowds, command attention and turn indignation into ballot papers, without even having to put forward a credible alternative programme.

We had wondered in these columns whether the Zaïm’s media resurrection could translate into an electoral comeback.

Now we have our answer.

What is even more disheartening is that the PJD has effectively become the only genuine opposition force, because the left remains fragmented.

Add together the USFP’s 26 seats, the PPS’s 19 and the eight won by the Left Alliance formed by the FGD and PSU, and you get 53 seats.

Just one seat short of the PJD’s total.

United, the left could have constituted a genuine opposition force, capable of championing a different vision of Morocco’s economic and social model.

But the Moroccan left continues to prefer its little fiefdoms, its battles of ego and its quarrels over history to building a common front.

Those whose hearts are on the left must surely be feeling heavy-hearted today.

Ultimately, what remains of these elections, apart from the campaign leaflets still littering the pavements of our cities, which were hardly short of rubbish to begin with?

What remains, as before, are the enormous challenges facing healthcare, education and purchasing power, issues that concern all Moroccans, whether they voted or not.

And what remains is the observation that not a single political party managed, throughout this campaign, to convince voters of its ability to tackle these pressing problems in any lasting way.

Democracy has left a decidedly bitter taste.

Zouhair Yata

The post 2026 Legislative Elections: But Who Really Won? appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

By the summer of 1945, some scientists were arguing for a demonstration rather than using the weapon against cities. We know what happened next: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, then Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita — « Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds » — before opposing the hydrogen bomb and having his security clearance revoked in 1954. History teaches us that, in America, whistleblowers are not thanked. They are pushed aside.

The Cold War subsequently turned the arms race into doctrine. In 1946, the Baruch Plan proposed placing atomic energy under international control. Moscow rejected it and detonated its own bomb in 1949, with invaluable help from spies embedded deep within the American programme. Then came the hydrogen bomb, intercontinental missiles, arsenals containing tens of thousands of warheads, each side swearing it was only arming itself because the other was doing the same.

It took the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 for fear to become a shared experience, leading to the hotline between Washington and Moscow, the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, and the SALT agreements in 1972. In other words, humanity only agreed on the danger after coming within a hair’s breadth of disaster.

Eighty years later, the film is playing again. Different setting, different cast, but the script has hardly changed.

It all began with the resignation, on September 9, of Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who had worked at OpenAI and then Anthropic. He walked away from the industry with a warning: « The people building AI genuinely believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade. »

The episode might have been dismissed as the misgivings of a young engineer, except that Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s head of alignment science, promptly backed him up, putting the probability of AI wiping out humanity within ten years at more than 10%.

Three days later, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a statement calling for a slowdown, warning: « I fear that within 6 to 12 months, a group of [agents] could take control of the entire Internet. » Sam Altman at OpenAI, Elon Musk, Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella followed suit.

And it had been quite a summer. In July, during testing, OpenAI agents reportedly broke out of their confined environment, accessed the Internet and attacked the Hugging Face platform without anyone instructing them to do so. Other similar incidents have since been reported. Science fiction has ceased to be fiction and become an incident report.

Of course, not everyone is buying the apocalypse.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang considers the idea of AI bringing about humanity’s extinction « completely absurd », while Yann LeCun mocks what he sees as wildly disproportionate fears.

But the fiercest counterattack came from a man Wall Street learned to listen to the hard way: Michael Burry, the investor who foresaw the subprime mortgage crisis and whom Hollywood turned into the hero of The Big Short.

Writing under the pseudonym Cassandra Unchained — a nod to the prophetess nobody wanted to believe — he posted a four-point response on X on September 14 that pulls no punches and deserves a closer look.

First: « Let’s all take a moment to understand just how self-serving it is for OpenAI, Anthropic and the other major hyperscaler executives to talk about slowing things down. »

Second: « LLMs are not AI and will not become AGI. There is no AI to slow down. »

Third: competition is approaching fast, and slowing development benefits the incumbents. Initial public offerings need hype and exaggeration; claiming « we are so amazing that we might become dangerous » is simply another form of hype.

And finally, he argues that the warnings are a smokescreen concealing a genuine, uncontrollable slowdown in growth, just as potential IPOs appear to be slipping further into the future.

The argument is worth examining because it turns the prevailing interpretation completely on its head.

For Burry, language models are merely sophisticated statistical machines, not the gateway to superintelligence. Fear, therefore, is not a confession but a sales pitch. A company that describes itself as dangerously powerful is also telling investors that it is extraordinarily valuable.

Better still, a coordinated slowdown overseen by governments would amount to shutting the door behind the market leaders, freezing their advantage precisely when competitors — particularly Chinese ones — are catching up.

And behind the existential drama would lie a far more mundane reality: slowing growth and increasingly distant stock-market listings, something OpenAI’s introduction of advertising would also seem to suggest.

In other words, the real danger would not be humanity’s extinction but the bursting of a bubble. And Burry knows better than most what bubbles cost when nobody wants to see them.

Yet despite all the parallels and contradictions, what we are witnessing is unprecedented.

Whether driven by genuine fear or a clever communications strategy, for the first time in industrial history, the manufacturers themselves are begging governments to put them in handcuffs.

And governments are refusing.

Speaking first from Ireland and then Washington, Donald Trump denounced an « unhealthy conspiracy » against AI, attacked « very negative forces » warning of « things that will never happen », and declared on Truth Social that « the only control or safeguard AI needs is a strong and intelligent president, and the United States has plenty of those. »

Modesty has never been the White House occupant’s defining characteristic, but his underlying thinking can be summed up in one sentence: whoever wins AI wins everything. And the adversary he really has in mind is China.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson makes essentially the same argument when he warns that an American slowdown would hand the advantage to Beijing, just weeks before midterm elections in which AI has become a campaign issue.

So is it recklessness or cynicism?

Neither, really. Because the logic of the race is relentless, and game theorists have a name for it: the prisoner’s dilemma.

The player who stops alone does not save the world. He merely hands it over to his rival.

Truman could not abandon the bomb knowing Stalin wanted one. Trump refuses to abandon AI knowing Xi is developing it.

Dario Amodei himself said much the same thing last January, arguing that slowing down was impossible because, if democracies hit the brakes, autocracies would keep going.

It is hardly a coincidence that his current appeal for restraint comes with demands for tighter restrictions on chip exports to China and stronger protection against the theft of Western models.

Caution, certainly — but not at the cost of second place.

Across the Pacific, Beijing is playing its own hand with considerable skill.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun advocates AI that is « open, inclusive, universally beneficial and ethical », while suggesting that calls for safety are merely a pretext for tightening technological sanctions against Chinese companies.

At the BRICS summit in India, Xi Jinping called for a global governance framework « based on consensus », while promising to build an open-source AI community within the bloc.

In other words, China is positioning itself as the champion of multilateralism while freely distributing models that have caught up with the best American systems.

And this is precisely where the nuclear analogy reaches its limits.

AI is made of code. It can be copied in seconds, distributed as open source, developed by private companies, and leaves behind no missile silos for inspectors to examine.

Yet the very danger researchers are describing today is that of a technology escaping the control of its own creators.

As Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego put it, once AI becomes genuinely dangerous, it will not care whether we are Chinese or American.

Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the White House in late September, where AI is expected to feature prominently, will reveal whether the two powers are capable of inventing their own hotline before the crisis rather than after it.

That is far from certain.

Meanwhile, countries like ours, already making extensive use of these technologies without having the slightest say in the rules governing them, are watching the game unfold from the stands — much as the non-aligned nations once watched the arms race.

Zouhair Yata

The post AI: The Blue Pill or the Red Pill? appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The RNI spells it out in black and white in its manifesto. So does the PAM. And the PPS. Other parties have settled for 500,000, perhaps out of caution. But one million has become the standard unit of measurement in this campaign, the minimum stake required to be taken seriously. And since everyone is offering the same figure, it no longer sets anyone apart.

The problem is that this figure rests on nothing verifiable, and it is difficult to take at face value when one considers that, over four years, the Moroccan economy created some 94,000 net jobs. Delivering on the promise would therefore mean generating an average of 200,000 jobs a year, more than eight times the pace actually recorded. Meanwhile, unemployment in the strict sense affects 1.25 million people, nearly three in ten economically active young people, while labour underutilisation reaches 45% among 15- to 24-year-olds. Between the diagnosis, which is accurate, and the promise, which is a nice round number, there is a missing piece: a convincing explanation of how to get there. And the 2030 World Cup cannot, on its own, serve as the ultimate horizon.

As so often happens, election manifestos contain everything and its opposite. The PJD, for its part, has unveiled 467 measures — quite a programme — without attaching a single numerical target to them. Its secretary-general explained that announcing figures would be misleading if subsequent coalition arrangements prevented the party from delivering on them. And, it must be acknowledged, the argument is clever and, above all, revealing. Besides conveniently relieving Benkirane’s party of the burden of substantiating its proposals, it amounts to admitting, even before the vote, that a single party’s election manifesto is worth very little until the coalition that will run Morocco’s next government is known.

Another paradox is plain to see: the discord between the RNI, PAM and Istiqlal, which governed together for five years and are now presenting voters with three different accounts of the same record. The PAM is campaigning under the slogan « To Change Course », a rather peculiar way of drawing a line under an administration in which it played a full part. Istiqlal is going out of its way to distinguish itself from its partners while simultaneously presenting its experience in government as proof of competence. As for the RNI, it is promising one million jobs — the same million it promised back in 2021, under different leadership and in an entirely different context. Each claims credit for collective achievements and pins the shortcomings on its partners around the cabinet table. Yet voters will have only one ballot with which to choose between three versions of the same story, and the risk is that they punish all three at once.

But the biggest question is whom all this is supposed to address. The manifestos are overflowing with measures aimed at young people: programmes for those neither in employment nor in education or training, training vouchers, first-work-experience contracts, reserved housing, and support for young businesses. Yet 18- to 24-year-olds account for just 4% of the electorate, or 632,046 registered voters, compared with nearly 915,000 five years ago. More broadly, the final electoral rolls contain 15.8 million voters, 1.7 million fewer than in 2021, out of an estimated voting-age population of 27 million. Nearly a third of registered voters are over 60. In other words, parties are making sweeping promises to the young while addressing an ageing electorate, designing policies for citizens who are not even on the electoral rolls.

Abstention will be a major player in this election. We know that much. And while abstaining, as is often the case, does not necessarily reflect a lack of interest, it may be further fuelled by the political judgement of many of our fellow citizens who believe that elected officials do not keep their promises. In other words, the bidding war over numerical targets is a response to distrust that, in turn, helps deepen that very distrust. The more spectacular the pledges, the more their failure to materialise will reinforce the case that citizens have already built against the political class.

It is a circular mechanism, a vicious circle that no one seems willing to break. And nearly 12 million Moroccans of voting age have already drawn a conclusion that sounds very much like a verdict: not registering to vote at all.

For everyone else, the parties and their leading figures have a little less than two weeks to convince us that the million is more than just another promise.

Zouhair Yata

The post September 23 Legislative Elections: A Million… Promises appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

Do we really need to reread what His Majesty King Mohammed VI said in Tetouan on July 29? That the Kingdom’s economic and social achievements “transcend government and parliamentary terms,” that they are the result of a cumulative dynamic built up over years and not the record of any single executive. The sentence named no one, which is precisely what made it so clear. On the eve of an election, it sets the record straight on attempts at political appropriation. The Sovereign was careful to add the terms of reference for the next government: preserve the achievements and pursue far-reaching reforms.

A month later, the spectacle has shifted into another register. On August 25, the RNI’s political bureau issued a statement of unprecedented harshness between government allies, denouncing pressure on its elected representatives, naming eight of them and pointing the finger at the PAM. A few hours later, a recording attributed to Rachid Talbi Alami, Speaker of the House of Representatives, began circulating, mocking the idea of applying FIFA rules to politics and vowing that Fouzi Lekjaa would not get the Finance Ministry. The following day, the PAM convened its bureau for an emergency meeting and reminded its ally of 2021, when the RNI fielded more than seventeen parliamentarians who had come from five different parties, including six from the Tractor. On the 27th, in Oulad Nasser, Lekjaa hit back, declaring that “the real terrorists” were those who had turned the joy of Eid into anxiety, with red meat still out of reach at 150 or 160 dirhams per kilo. The heaviest word in Morocco’s political vocabulary, dropped like a bomb by a serving Budget Minister.

And yet, five years is precisely how long these two parties governed together, voted for the same Finance Acts and defended the same record. Now they are convening emergency meetings of their governing bodies to quarrel over the ownership of a dozen or so local powerbrokers. Abel and Cain had no dispute other than divine favour; here, the motive is rather more prosaic, and it has a name: the premiership.

Meanwhile, Abdelilah Benkirane is doing what he does best: fanning the flames. A seasoned practitioner of the art, he has the routine down to perfection: brushing up against the red line without ever quite crossing it, plain speaking standing in for a programme and the affection of the people for a record. But the most revealing detail lies elsewhere: the Lampe’s pyromaniac will not himself be a candidate. He starts the fire and leaves the room, leaving others to deal with the blaze.

The others are hardly doing any better. On August 19 in Fez, the Popular Movement officially welcomed Hamid Chabat into its ranks. At seventy-three, the former secretary-general of the Istiqlal Party and former mayor of the city then saw his daughter placed at the head of the party list in Fez-North. Elsewhere, some prefer to stage displays of solemn remembrance, with cameras and lapel microphones summoned as witnesses to a sudden burst of piety before the graves of party founders.

Meanwhile, more than 18 million voters are being called to the polls on September 23. Household purchasing power remains under strain, and the wholesale price of lamb has risen from 58 dirhams per kilo in the spring of 2020 to 140 dirhams in August 2026. Healthcare and education remain the two blind spots of any national conversation. Unemployment and the discouragement of a large part of the country’s youth have received no answer, and the Gen Z episode has apparently taught no one anything. Voters would be entitled to expect commitments, costed proposals and clearly assumed policy choices, even if promises bind only those who believe them. Instead, anathemas and ad hominem attacks have taken over the electoral debate.

Amid all this noise, no honest assessment is possible, no accountability is discernible, and no programme, however serious, can stand out. The comments circulating on social media—disillusioned, cynical and often savage—say enough about what the ballot box may ultimately confirm. Not anger, which would at least still be a sign of life, but a profound indifference towards a political class perceived as a caste whose privileges far exceed its achievements.

And yet, perhaps there is still room for hope, because all of this unfolded over just a few days at the end of August, between two press releases and a leaked recording. Officially, the election campaign has not even begun. It starts on September 10.

Can’t wait!

Zouhair Yata

The post Legislative Elections: At Daggers Drawn appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

How can one not feel solidarity with such distress, and admiration for the courage it takes to leave behind everything one has ever known in an instant, for the promise, however faint, of a better life? Can the country’s undeniable development—built on economic growth, infrastructure and new ambitions—coexist with the systemic distress affecting a large part of its youth?

What kind of life are we promising the 37% of unemployed young people aged between 15 and 24? And what about those who work 191 hours for 3,192 dirhams net a month, who often have to support their parents, brothers and sisters, pay for housing, food and basic expenses, not to mention healthcare? Do they not also have the right to live with dignity and aspire to build a life rather than merely endure one?

There is nothing demagogic or populist about listing the collective failures that explain why an entire generation is being sacrificed. Public education and healthcare are so desperately short of resources that their mission seems doomed from the outset, while the policies introduced simply lack the scale required to turn things around. These same observations have been repeated for months, for years, to the point where we no longer even know how to assess what may have been accomplished, because whatever has been done remains, in any case, insufficient.

So yes, for many Moroccans, the situation has improved. That is undeniable. Our country is objectively progressing, but with the lingering sense that its priorities require looking elsewhere when it comes to the most disadvantaged, who are left watching a train speed past that they were never invited to board. The question is whether this is what the majority truly wants, or whether it would be better to move forward more slowly, starting with those who need it most, with the help of those who already have more than enough.

What we need is a national mobilisation, involving everyone. Those who support would-be emigrants and wish them a better future, and those who say they would rather have the asphalt of their own country than the bread of others, or who, from the comfort of their screens, feel humiliated by the image these past few days have projected to a world watching us. Because, ultimately, this concerns us all.

We need a solidarity tax paid by the wealthiest, a conditional universal income, an increase in hourly wages, apprenticeship schemes and mandatory youth recruitment programmes in companies, mutual-aid associations, a civil service programme prioritising education and healthcare, a stronger fight against corruption, and political parties that mobilise to address problems rising from below rather than seeking approval from above.

The Royal directives are clear, and the Sovereign expressed them explicitly in his Throne Speech: “Our ultimate goal is to improve the living conditions of Moroccans and establish social and spatial justice.”

We must now have the courage to tackle the underlying problems behind this distress, which has erupted before our eyes this week but remains latent the rest of the time. Collectively, we must seek, find and implement solutions until we eliminate the source of despair affecting part of our people, whatever the cost, because death cannot be the price to pay.

Zouhair Yata

The post Ceuta and Melilla: Spectators of Despair appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The first sentence worth retaining is that the results of public action “are no accident,” with the Sovereign anchoring them in a “doctrine of governance” whose guiding principles he sets out: initiative, rigorous monitoring, constructive self-criticism and determination. The results achieved are therefore no coincidence, and the future calls for an equally sustained commitment and effort.

Then comes the pivotal sentence, and certainly the weightiest of the speech. The country stands at a “turning point” where an ideal of confidence and optimism “must prevail over any rhetoric liable to fuel despair and frustration.” Eight weeks before a legislative election, His Majesty points, without naming them, to the political entrepreneurs of resentment, those whose stock-in-trade is frustration.

Three successive sentences then hammer home the same word. Security and stability as the first source of pride. Political and institutional stability as a “rare commodity” and an “invaluable asset” in a regional environment beset by upheaval. Stability, finally, as a “key variable in the development equation” and as “strategic capital.” Commodity, asset, variable, capital: the lexical shift is remarkable. Stability is no longer described as a condition; it is accounted for as an asset. Morocco is no longer content simply to be stable; it assigns value to its stability, and does so using the language of markets rather than that of political morality. In a region where instability has become the norm, the reading is both clear and accurate.

Then comes the inventory, and the figures are as eloquent as the facts. Growth of around 4.9% in 2025, expected to remain at that level or higher this year. Rainfall that has restored the country’s water and food security. Morocco as the continent’s leading automotive exporter, with annual capacity approaching one million vehicles, and an industry that, together with aeronautics, now accounts for more than 40% of national exports, ahead of phosphates. Nearly twenty million visitors welcomed in 2025. Agri-food and pharmaceutical industries covering close to 80% of domestic needs. The first authorisations granted under the Morocco Green Hydrogen Offer. An industrial and technological base for defence and cybersecurity currently being established.

It is not the length of this list that matters, but the thread running through it. The key word is not growth; it is sovereignty. In a world where protectionism has once again become the norm and securing supply chains has replaced the doctrine of free trade, the speech explicitly establishes strategic self-sufficiency as a pillar of industrial development. The fact that automotive and aeronautics have overtaken phosphates is therefore not merely another customs statistic. It is the story of a country defined by what lies beneath its soil becoming a country of assembly, and of a country of assembly now aspiring to produce what it no longer wishes to depend on others for. The same logic applies to the organisation of major continental events, which, the text notes, has earned the Kingdom esteem and, with a diplomatically understated turn of phrase, a few envious glances.

The social component, meanwhile, rests on one fundamental requirement. The universalisation of social protection, social and spatial justice, and, above all, an emphasis on integrated territorial development programmes that must encompass every region, “without any exception whatsoever.” This clarification is no mere turn of phrase, because by stressing that there should be no exceptions, it implies that this is not yet entirely the case today.

Beyond the assessment, His Majesty then devotes a substantial part of his speech to the financial means required to go further, stressing that the transformation will require resources on an unprecedented scale, most of which will have to come from domestic financing. The national financial sector is called upon to support investment, qualitatively broaden access to bank and non-bank financing for SMEs, innovation, industrialisation and exports, demonstrate greater openness and creativity, mobilise institutional savings and revitalise financial markets.

In the final sequence, King Mohammed VI sends, as he often does, a clear message to the political arena. By stating that the achievements “transcend government and parliamentary terms” and stem from a cumulative dynamic built up over many years, the Sovereign sets the record straight on attempts to politically appropriate the country’s progress on the eve of the elections. Finally, by expressing the hope that the coming electoral deadlines will usher in a new cycle whose watchwords will be preserving achievements and pursuing far-reaching reforms, he effectively lays down the terms of reference for the next government. On September 23, therefore, the vote will not be about the trajectory—it has been set by the King. The vote will be about the ability of those taking over to deliver it.

Zouhair Yata

The post Throne Speech: “Made in Morocco” appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

Make no mistake about the significance of this trip, especially in the wake of France’s July 14 National Day celebrations and its World Cup defeat to Spain, another major partner of the Kingdom. The fact that Sébastien Lecornu chose Rabat for his very first official trip abroad since arriving at Matignon last autumn, and that he is landing there flanked by a dozen ministers, is anything but a courtesy visit. You do not mobilize half a government, nor bring Foreign Affairs and the Interior along in the same movement, for a ceremonial handshake. In diplomacy, the choice of a first destination always sends a message, and this one could not be clearer: for Paris, Morocco is once again a priority.

To appreciate how far things have come, one must remember where they started. Not so long ago, in 2021 and 2022, relations were at daggers drawn. Paris halved the number of visas granted to Moroccans, further poisoning relations between the two capitals, while Rabat, far from bowing its head, blocked the return of its nationals and turned towards other European partners. Then, in the summer of 2024, Emmanuel Macron’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, much to Algiers’ dismay, followed by the October State visit, set the record straight and paved the way for the bilateral relationship to be celebrated today as an “exceptional partnership.”

Yet this rapprochement can no longer be read in the way it once was. Bilateral trade reached a record €14.8 billion in 2024, more than double its 2015 level. France remains the Kingdom’s leading economic partner, but Morocco has become France’s leading customer and supplier on the continent, accounting on its own for more than 40% of French exports to Africa. A logistics and financial hub, a gateway to the continental free trade area, its ports are emerging as strategic alternative routes at a time when tensions are mounting in the Strait of Hormuz. Put simply, what France comes looking for in Rabat is no longer so easily found elsewhere.

There is, moreover, something revealing in the contrast between the two situations. The Prime Minister stepping onto the Moroccan red carpet governs at home under constant threat. His 2026 budget only made it through thanks to repeated use of Article 49.3 and no-confidence motions narrowly defeated, more through abstentions than genuine support. He leads a majority in a fractured National Assembly, where every piece of legislation is fought over tooth and nail. The French head of government therefore also comes to Morocco in search of valuable victories for his domestic front. On our side, our own Head of Government, who will welcome his guest on the tarmac and lead negotiations with his counterpart, is certainly embarking on his last major hurrah as September’s elections draw near.

In reality, the horizon of this visit extends beyond the high-level meeting itself, the first of its kind since 2019. It lies elsewhere: in the “exceptional” treaty that both capitals are calling for, and in Mohammed VI’s State visit to France, agreed in principle in May without any date having yet been announced. The Moroccan Sovereign has not made an official visit to France since March 2000—that was already twenty-six years ago.

We can therefore welcome the context surrounding this visit, but that does not mean giving in to overconfidence. Although courted, Morocco has already demonstrated its diplomatic lucidity and pragmatism. There are many joint projects with France, and the country has every interest in seeing this visit prove fruitful for both sides. But it is precisely this reciprocity, now approaching a genuine balance, that gives this latest encounter between the two countries a more satisfying flavour—and makes it worth highlighting.

Zouhair Yata

The post Morocco-France: Extra Time appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The first victory is the most visible, and yet perhaps the most staggering: the journey itself. To see an African and Arab nation establish itself, once again, among the eight best teams on the planet is anything but ordinary. What might begin to look like an emerging habit remains, in the history of world football, an achievement of exceptional rarity. And behind this consistency, there is no coincidence. There is the concrete, massive and patient work of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation; there are the investments made, the infrastructure built, the academies developed and generations of players trained far from the spotlight. This consistency at the highest level is, in itself, a victory: that of a vision now bearing fruit before the eyes of the world.

The second victory belongs to the diaspora and its communion with the people back home. It is embodied by those players whose parents once took the road of emigration, particularly to Europe, and who return to proudly wear the national colours, becoming a source of pride for Moroccans here and abroad alike. It also lives through the hundreds of thousands of supporters based overseas, who find in every match an opportunity to express an undiminished patriotism, beyond borders and distances. What football reveals here goes far beyond football: a people dispersed across every continent, becoming whole again around a single flag.

The third victory is that of the country’s image. An image that hardly needed improving, but which is once again reinforced: that of a land of values, hospitality, kindness and openness. After Qatar, it is now in Uncle Sam’s backyard that millions of spectators are discovering the infectious passion of our national team and its supporters. The warmth spilling out of the stands, that blend of pride and elegance, that joy bringing people together far beyond Moroccans alone. There could be no finer ambassador, and certainly none that any communication campaign could ever hope to match.

The fourth victory is that of meeting France again so deep into the competition. A friendly nation, a close nation, a partner in so many shared endeavours, France nevertheless remains the former colonial power. And this confrontation, on the pitch as much as in people’s minds, symbolically sets the record straight for all those who, unfortunately, continue to believe in some form of Parisian precedence over Rabat. As equals, in diplomacy as on the football pitch, Morocco and France face one another and respect one another. It is precisely this mutual respect, between two nations finally looking each other straight in the eye, that makes all the difference.

The fifth victory, finally, is about the future. By establishing itself durably among the world’s best-performing national teams, by asserting itself as a genuine football nation—more so, dare we say it, than many devotees of soccer—Morocco further consolidates a legitimacy it has already earned: that of co-hosting the next World Cup in 2030. What the Kingdom is preparing to host, it will first have earned on the pitch, through the truth of the game and the consistency of its results.

And so, in the end, it will be the football gods who decide the outcome of the match. As Achraf Hakimi reminded us, Mbappé may be his friend, but not on the pitch. No one yet knows the result, and therein lies the beauty of the sport. But whatever happens, and whatever the score when the final whistle blows, one thing is certain: Morocco has already won.

Zouhair Yata

The post Why Morocco Has Already Won appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

And, it must be said, for most of us, music and arts festivals are perhaps the closest thing we have to a living connection and an ongoing relationship with culture—our own in particular. This rhythmic, annual ritual may seem self-evident today, but it is worth remembering how far we have come. Not so long ago, a taste for Metal could earn you associations with witchcraft and accusations of Satanism, while the slightest sway of the hips would awaken calls for modesty from the self-appointed guardians of morality. The distance between those days and today is considerable—and we crossed it to the sound of music.

What is striking now is the sheer breadth of the phenomenon. Morocco’s festival scene spans the entire spectrum of the country’s sensibilities, from moussems to folk arts, from Amazigh culture to sacred music, from qraqeb and guembris to rhythms from every corner of the globe. There is, quite literally, something for everyone.

And that is precisely where it all comes together, because something for everyone also means accompanying Morocco’s openness—or rather confirming it, because our geographical position has always made us a country connected to the rest of the world. Musical legends have always stopped in Morocco, from Essaouira to Tangier, recognizing the contribution of our heritage to their art even before we did.

All these festival editions held over nearly thirty years—and even more so in the age of Instagram and TikTok—also represent thousands of artists from every continent and every background sharing their worlds with our fellow citizens, through improbable fusions and encounters, and, above all, leaving with a piece of Morocco inside them.

This circulation has ultimately received recognition at the highest level. Some events, such as the Gnaoua Festival, have carried the banner of Moroccan culture so high that UNESCO inscribed Gnaoua music on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2019. A music born out of slavery and long relegated to the margins has become one of the Kingdom’s signatures on the world stage.

And then, in a Kingdom where regionalization lies at the heart of the Royal vision, these festivals showcase the regions, reveal their defining attributes and present a country that is both united and plural. Every stage becomes a showcase, every edition one more argument for a Morocco that embraces its diversity and celebrates it.

Then there are the Cassandras. They will continue to rail against VIP areas and sponsors’ money, as though the cultural sector alone were somehow responsible for correcting the inequalities of a world overflowing with them. Yet they always overlook the obvious: music travels far enough and loud enough to touch the souls of all those exposed to it, whether they are seated in the VIP stands or standing in the crowd.

Last but not least, from Jazzablanca to Mawazine, from Gnaoua to Timitar, from the Popular Arts Festival to the Festival of Sacred Music, not to mention the Beach Festival and so many others across the country, millions of festivalgoers now sustain thousands of service providers, employees, temporary workers, artists, restaurateurs and shopkeepers who make a living from this dynamic. A dynamic set in motion by passionate people who, for years, have stayed the course through thick and thin.

Let the music play.

Zouhair Yata

The post Festivals: “Let the Music Play” appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

In today’s world, even History, from which we are supposed to draw lessons to avoid the mistakes and excesses of the past, is becoming obsolete. Because the situation we are living through is unprecedented in so many respects.

Who could have imagined that the celebrations of an American President’s birthday would include an MMA octagon on the grounds of the White House? Who could have anticipated a Red Bull-style motocross show in front of the Oval Office? As one anonymous American commentator remarked with a mix of irony and cynicism on X (formerly Twitter), the scenario resembles an epic from Ancient Rome, with the emperor staging games in his own honour at the Colosseum after concluding a war with Persia. Yet this analogy does nothing to lessen the absurdity of a production that even Hollywood has never scripted.

But the most troubling aspect is not this latest eccentricity of Donald Trump, which is merely the visible tip of the iceberg monopolizing media attention. What is truly unsettling is what has become latent and constant across large parts of societies around the world.

Powers and elites with unmistakable totalitarian overtones are multiplying, and one cannot help but observe the nihilism they increasingly display. In France, close to home, the divide between the far right and the far left has become so deep that sooner or later one will overwhelm the other in a political tidal wave that will spare none of those who believe it cannot happen.

Because the ideas with which the masses are being fed, and the whole snakes we swallow in front of our screens, have never been so nauseating. Racial theories disguised as anti-immigration discourse; toxic masculinism emerging as a reaction to the #MeToo movement and nearly a century of struggle for women’s rights; paedocriminality, whose institutionalized scale and judicial leniency are being uncovered simultaneously; the Epstein affair, which has produced no convictions—all of this contributes to the same outcome. A process of dehumanization that, slowly but surely, leads us to accept the unthinkable.

At the very moment when social media and the phones grafted to our fingers bombard us with a volume of images and information unprecedented in human history, our reactions and our capacity for action are diminishing. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perhaps the clearest demonstration that propaganda, manipulation and indoctrination ultimately anaesthetize their audience, which no longer feels what it should feel, caught between entertainment, football and marketing content that make us forget our condition as slaves to modernity.

In this context, where the unthinkable is becoming the norm, one almost finds oneself hoping that extraterrestrials might intervene in our affairs. At least that scenario remains more ambiguous than the prospect of our societies, our minds and our souls being taken over by an artificial intelligence to which only its creators—hiding away in their survivalist bunkers—would (perhaps) not be subject.

The revolution will not be televised…

Zouhair Yata

The post Dystopia Will Not Be Televised appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

APSACO brought together participants from more than twenty nations, including former ministers, senior United Nations officials, presidential advisors, NATO experts, senior African military officers, leading figures in diplomacy and mediation, as well as defense experts and specialists from Africa, Europe, and North America.

Over the course of ten years, APSACO has consistently addressed African security challenges. Topics have ranged from political transitions and regional conflicts to the emergence of technological warfare. Throughout this period, the conference has maintained a central objective: to create a platform for analysis and discussion of the continent’s security challenges, all made primarily by African actors. Furthermore, the dialogues have sought to move beyond theoretical frameworks by proposing innovative, realistic, and context-specific solutions tailored to the continent’s strategic environment.

The 2026 edition was held under the theme “A Decade in Review: Africa’s Evolving Security Landscape.” In this context, discussions examined the transformation of threats over time, ongoing counterterrorism strategies, governance models adapted to African political conditions, and the increasing role of technology as a strategic force multiplier in warfare dynamics.

The discussions also presented the main findings of this year’s Annual Report on Africa’s Geopolitics. The report comprises 26 papers, each examining Africa’s position amid the changing composition of the current world order. Additionally, the contributions explore the continent’s strategies to balance competing priorities, including security, development, sovereignty, and regional integration.

In summary, over its decade of existence, the African Peace and Security Annual Conference has showed consistency and longevity as a program dedicated to the continent’s security challenges. The annual keeps providing a space for African actors to analyze and debate the continent’s challenges, instead of having extra-continental powers do so.

S.Z

The post APSACO: A Decade of Serving African Security appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The outrage was immediate and understandable. People spoke of humiliation, double standards and generalized suspicion based solely on nationality. But on closer inspection, none of this is accidental.

These scenes are not the result of overzealous customs officers. They align perfectly with the doctrine of an administration that has placed some of the qualified nations under either travel restrictions or enhanced scrutiny. Haiti, Iran, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal have all faced restrictions, while Egypt, Ghana, Jordan and Uzbekistan have been subjected to more rigorous screening. In reality, the host country has not suspended its foreign policy to welcome the world; it has simply rolled it out on the tarmac. Serious sport, Orwell wrote, is war minus the shooting. Trump’s America chose to remind everyone, from the arrivals hall onward, who holds the weapon.

Football may well be the ultimate instrument of soft power, with its ability to attract without coercing. Yet by searching its guests, Uncle Sam sends a cold message: the appeal of the beautiful game carries little weight against the power that controls borders. The red carpet is reserved for those whose signatures are appreciated at the bottom of agreements; the others will go through inspection. It is brutal, calculated, and it works—because we are talking about it.

Our Lions, by contrast, were welcomed very differently. Upon landing in Newark, they were greeted by Morocco’s ambassador to Washington, Youssef Amrani, a seasoned figure of Moroccan diplomacy, surrounded by consular officials and a jubilant diaspora. Settled into their New Jersey base camp, Achraf Hakimi and his teammates are preparing for their opening match under ideal conditions, befitting a bilateral relationship celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. It is worth recalling that Morocco was the first country to recognize American independence.

Not everything is idyllic, however. While the team itself has been warmly received, many Moroccan supporters have had the bitter experience of visa refusals, a reminder that a World Cup can be geographically open yet politically inaccessible. The world has been sold the idea of a global celebration, while at the same time its guests have been carefully filtered. And Morocco, despite the excellence of its relations with Washington, has not been entirely spared this political logic of quotas.

None of this, fundamentally, is new. Every World Cup carries its share of politics: Qatar and its controversies, Russia and its theatre of power. Each edition has reminded us that sport and diplomacy play on the same pitch. The boundary between the two has never been more than a chalk line, one that a simple backheel can erase. To claim otherwise is either naïve or hypocritical.

Still, in a few hours, the ball will roll, and it will finally have the last word. The humiliations on the tarmac, the denied visas and the continental resentments will eventually have to be settled where they should never have intruded in the first place: on the field. That is the only justice football truly promises, and it almost always delivers.

So strength and good fortune to our Lions, who step into the spotlight of the entire world carrying on their shoulders the support of an entire people, both here and abroad.

Zouhair Yata

The post The Worlds’ Cup appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The meeting co-chaired by the Moroccan Minister of Industry and Commerce and the British Minister of State for International Trade was a notable event of the week in Morocco. Rabat hosted the 4th session of the Morocco-United Kingdom Association Council on June 2nd, with the broader goal of redefining the economic and strategic partnership between the two kingdoms.

The partnership seeks to create synergy between Morocco and the UK by targeting several objectives: doubling trade volumes, maximizing investments in Morocco, supporting the organization of the 2030 World Cup, advancing UK entry into the African market, and strengthening Morocco’s global economic presence.

According to Moroccan Minister of Industry and Commerce Ryad Mezzour, the growing interest of British companies in Morocco was evident in the conference’s participation numbers, which rose to 50 this session from approximately 15 in the previous session.

On the other hand, the minister stated that Morocco is committed to facilitating the entry of these companies into the national industry, seizing the opportunity to open up new prospects, create high-value-added jobs, and secure production chains.

This collaboration comes at a timely moment, as Morocco prepares to host the 2030 World Cup and affirms its position as a gateway between Europe and Africa. In this light, the partnership will not only focus on agricultural and manufactured products and services but also extend to British expertise to ensure the success of the international football event.

The partnership also covered the tourism sector, which is a profitable and foundational sector for Morocco’s economy. Mr. Bryant encouraged citizens of his country to consider Morocco as a tourist destination and also welcomed Moroccans to the United Kingdom.

To further demonstrate the United Kingdom’s official interest in Morocco, Mr.Bryant is making an official visit at the head of a British delegation of senior government and private sector representatives. During this visit, further discussions are expected regarding the commitments made during the Association Council session.

In short, this session of the Morocco-United Kingdom Association Council aimed to make trade and investment partnerships more robust, especially in light of the 2030 World Cup preparations in Morocco. The discussions went beyond traditional sectors to include tourism, manufacturing, and event management, reflecting a shared vision to strengthen their economic fabric.

S.Z

The post Morocco-UK: Hand in Hand for Economic Growth appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

Trump, as we know, is never more comfortable than under the spotlight. The Middle East offers him the largest of stages, and he occupies centre stage with the ease of a ringmaster who knows that as long as the audience is watching him, it is watching nothing else. And that, precisely, is where the sleight of hand lies.

Because while the cameras remain fixed on Tehran, Israel is advancing methodically wherever it can genuinely do so. In Lebanon, the Israeli army has crossed the Litani River—until now a de facto frontier—by taking Beaufort Castle, where its flag now flies as it did during the occupation from 1982 to 2000, and has ordered the evacuation of a large part of the south. Netanyahu speaks of a “major turning point.” In reality, it is the April 17 ceasefire that now appears definitively buried. France did succeed in securing an emergency meeting of the Security Council on June 1, but, as usual, there was concern, regret and condemnation, and then everyone went home without the situation on the ground changing by an inch.

In Gaza, the same score is being played in a lower register. Six months after the October agreement, the situation remains suspended in a limbo that is neither official war nor tangible peace, while the Israeli army now controls more than half of the enclave. The toll has long since surpassed comprehension: nearly 73,000 dead, including more than twenty thousand children. Yet these figures no longer lead the news bulletins or dominate Instagram stories. Their failing is that they are no longer new, and our algorithms, as we know, only love what has just emerged.

It is against this backdrop that rumours surfaced of a heated phone exchange between Donald and Bibi. Trump is said to have lost his temper, ordered Netanyahu to halt his escalation in Lebanon, and reportedly uttered a few colourful remarks that the American press immediately relished. The Israeli Prime Minister’s entourage denied the tone of the exchange while acknowledging that the call had been “tense.” Let us therefore take the story for what it is—a rumour—but also note that there is rarely smoke without fire, since in the wake of the call Israel did refrain from striking Beirut while maintaining, without the slightest hesitation, its ground advance.

This is, in fact, the real lesson that reveals the hidden side of this grand masquerade. When the president of the world’s leading power must telephone in an attempt to restrain his ally and then content himself with being granted a symbolic concession while the essentials remain untouched, the question of who is leading the dance has already been settled. It is not Washington that dictates the tempo to Tel Aviv; it is very much the other way around. America is running behind events, busy putting out fires in order to preserve its own negotiations with Iran.

If the exchange between the two men did indeed take place, it will at least reinforce the views of those who, even among Israel’s natural allies, believe that Netanyahu’s policies are inflicting lasting damage on the country’s image in world opinion. And that he pushes the boundaries ever further because his political survival depends on it. The Knesset has just voted in first reading, by 106 votes and not a single dissenting voice, for its own dissolution, paving the way for elections as early as the autumn. When one knows that Netanyahu’s corruption trial continues to be postponed from hearing to hearing in the name of “wartime obligations,” there can be little doubt: war is not merely a matter of collective security; it is also a deeply personal matter for Bibi.

At its core, the same mechanism is at work everywhere: the spectacle is intense, the action derisory. It is the Russo-Ukrainian theatre—a war of attrition in which each side takes a step forward and another back, while the international community, and even Europe, weighs on nothing. It is the United Nations reduced to drafting reports and issuing condemnations that evaporate almost as soon as they are pronounced.

It is America methodically disengaging from Europe, with a NATO Secretary General politely inviting the old continent to “assume a greater role.” A highly diplomatic way of telling Europe that it must now learn to defend itself.

As for China, it is often described as silent, but it is above all attentive. It observes what others allow themselves, takes note of it as a new norm, and applies it to itself without the slightest inhibition. Barely days after receiving Trump with great pomp, Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, signing around twenty agreements and jointly condemning the American missile defence shield. To host one and then the other in the same breath, without ever choosing sides, is to have understood before everyone else that there are no longer any camps, only power relations and the art of carving out the best possible place within them. Enough to make Lao Tzu proud.

To conclude on this side of the globe, a proverb attributed to Confucius says that when the wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger. Well, for months now, Iran has been the finger pointed at us—and we keep staring at the finger. Meanwhile, the moon is rising over a world where law no longer carries any weight, where force has regained all its rights, and where the cards are being reshuffled away from the spotlight, in Chinese shadows.

Zouhair Yata

The post Chinese Shadows appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

This year, fortunately, the context has changed. Rainfall has been exceptional, groundwater reserves are being replenished, livestock farming is breathing again, and herds are grazing once more. One could therefore reasonably have expected prices to ease, if not fall outright. After all, the law of supply and demand—which economic commentators tirelessly recite to us—logically suggested that emerging from the crisis would translate into some relief for household budgets.

Far from it. Prices are soaring, despite the claims of the Minister of Agriculture, who insists he has proof that sheep can be purchased for as little as 1,000 dirhams. Breeders point to the high cost of feed, intermediaries blame speculation, butchers shrug their shoulders, and the consumer pays. And often pays dearly. A sheep that once sold for a few thousand dirhams now costs nearly twice as much, or even more depending on its size and on when the buyer decides to make the purchase. For affluent households, it is a budgetary inconvenience. For modest families, it becomes a genuine trade-off between the ritual and everything else, between religious dignity and making it to the end of the month.

This paradox raises a simple question—one that is carefully avoided. Why can the State, which subsidizes butane gas, cooking oil, flour and sugar to protect the purchasing power of the most vulnerable, not consider a similar mechanism, even a targeted one, for the Eid sheep? The issue is not to challenge the policy choices underlying the Compensation Fund, which are rooted in well-established economic and social considerations. It is to understand why a ritual so central to national cohesion is left entirely at the mercy of the market and its excesses.

Because it must be said: speculation is everywhere. Intermediaries emerge at every stage of the supply chain, inflate margins and impose their prices on consumers who find themselves in a position of weakness, caught between the urgency of the calendar and social pressure. Nobody wants to be the neighbour, brother or father who misses out on Eid. And it is precisely this emotional inelasticity of demand that is exploited without the slightest scruple. The closer we get to the big day, the more the average citizen finds himself trapped between tradition and the calculator.

Then there is the territorial dimension, which cannot be ignored. In rural areas, sheep are a matter of proximity, family farming and sometimes even self-consumption. In urban areas—and particularly in large metropolitan centres—they become a market transaction, subject to every distortion of the logistics chain. Yet it is precisely in these cities that modest-income households are concentrated and where these expenses weigh most heavily. The territorial divide thus mirrors the social divide, and Eid, which is meant to bring people together, ends up exposing our inequalities.

So, what should be done? We can continue as we have, shrugging our shoulders and resigning ourselves to the idea that every year will look the same. Or we can take this issue seriously by considering mechanisms to regulate prices during this sensitive period, by combating the multiplication of unnecessary intermediaries, by supporting breeders directly without allowing intermediary margins to spiral, and perhaps even by imagining a targeted support scheme for the most modest families. Other Muslim countries have done so on varying scales. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; what is required is the political will to address the problem.

Beyond this seasonal anecdote, there is a genuine issue of governance, fairness and social cohesion. A religious celebration cannot become yet another marker of inequality. Nor should it become an opportunity for opportunistic enrichment at the expense of the most vulnerable. And it deserves better than a collective shrug followed by a technical communiqué on the availability of livestock.

Because what ultimately remains is the unpleasant feeling that, once again, we have been taken for goats.

Zouhair Yata

The post Sheep and Goats appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

As these lines are being written, the official count stands at around ten confirmed cases among the ship’s 147 passengers and crew members, and three deaths. The first victim, a 70-year-old Dutch man, died at sea on April 11, and his death was initially attributed to natural causes. His wife, who subsequently left the vessel to travel to South Africa, died the day after arriving in Johannesburg. A German passenger then lost her life during the crossing. The World Health Organization now estimates that the risk of the virus spreading beyond the ship is low. All the better—but what if the damage has already been done?

Because it must be said: the sequence of events is perplexing. An infectious cluster identified on a ship in the middle of the ocean offered, on paper, the ideal scenario for perfect containment. A floating lockdown: 147 people, GPS coordinates, doctors on board. Would it not have been more logical and prudent to isolate the ship, implement a strict protocol, disembark the bodies under controlled sanitary conditions, treat the sick, and quarantine everyone else under observation? The deceased passengers would have been, to put it bluntly, the only “sacrifices” in this affair. And perhaps the entire world—including the crew and the other travellers, isolated for as long as necessary—would never have had to hear the word “pandemic,” a term that has become part of our everyday vocabulary, and that of our children, since Covid.

Instead, what followed was a gradual disembarkation across Europe and beyond. A Turkish videographer who left the ship during its stop in Saint Helena at the end of April quietly returned to Istanbul, with no major precautions, after having shared all-you-can-eat buffets for three weeks with passengers, one of whom had already died. French, Dutch, Swiss, Spanish, Australian and British travellers found themselves scattered across three continents. And then authorities had to chase down contact cases, retrace flights, identify cabin neighbours, mobilize health agencies, convene crisis meetings, and dispatch military aircraft between Tenerife and Paris… At every link in this chain, what prevention would have cost in inconvenience, dispersion cost in complexity.

Since then, governments—each with its own interpretation of what constitutes prudence—appear to be stumbling in a strangely familiar way, as they did in 2020. A 72-hour quarantine for some, a strict 45-day isolation period for others; preventive hospitalization here, simple phone monitoring there. In the Netherlands, for example, twelve hospital staff members were placed in isolation for six weeks following procedural errors during a sample collection. Every administration is improvising, negotiating with public opinion, calibrating its protocol so as not to be accused of doing either too much or too little.

The media frenzy has also accelerated rapidly. Around-the-clock news channels have restarted their old machinery: red banners, live broadcasts from hospitals, “studio experts,” and maps of Europe dotted with impact points. In just a few days, hantavirus has become the latest recurring character in the serial drama of global anxiety. Because in an age fuelled by the attention economy, fear remains the best business model.

So one may hope—and the WHO seems to encourage such hope—that this virus will quickly join the graveyard of forgotten alerts, alongside SARS, avian flu, and a few other scares that ultimately failed to deliver on their ominous promises. Likewise, one may continue to dismiss as conspiracy theorists those who are already predicting a new lockdown orchestrated by transnational elites with obscure intentions. Except that, admittedly, over the past few years a number of theories once labelled “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be rather embarrassing for those who had rushed to disqualify them. Doubt is no longer the preserve of paranoiacs. It has become an ordinary form of intellectual hygiene, and one is entitled to wonder whether “we” are heading toward another pandemic and, if so, what its scale might be globally.

In the meantime, here we are again, preparing for a few weeks—perhaps a few months—of scrutinizing curves, counting cases, comparing protocols, and debating mask mandates in airports. Here we are again, as always, confusing information with anxiety and prevention with panic. Here we are again, in short, failing to learn the lessons of what we experienced barely five years ago. “Hanta”: perhaps a new virus, but above all, the same collective reflexes.

Zouhair Yata

The post “Hanta,” a New Virus… appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

Football passion in Morocco is not merely a topic; it is an empirical reality. For decades, ultras culture, chants, tifos, and the creativity of the terraces have formed part of the country’s popular DNA. The entire world realized this in 2022 FIFA World Cup, when the Moroccan “red wave” transformed the tournament into a demonstration of fervor, dignity, and civic spirit. That image became a brand, almost an international signature. The Moroccan supporter in the stadium was someone other nations spoke about with admiration.

And yet, only months after an Africa Cup of Nations globally praised for its organization, atmosphere, and the elegance of its supporters, those same stadiums have become the backdrop for scenes resembling urban guerrilla warfare. The contrast is brutal, and it raises questions not only about responsibility, but also about solutions.

It is important to remember that during the tournament, many voices — including that of the national coach and several players — complained about a lack of fervor in the stands. The public was accused of becoming “bourgeoisified,” invaded by influencers and selfie enthusiasts, with football transformed into a weekend entertainment product confiscated from the “real supporters.” Beneath that criticism lay a broader one: the idea that Morocco was building world-class stadiums when, as some argued, “the country needed other things.”

Then, barely after the tournament ended, it was precisely those terraces once criticized for being too calm that erupted into violence. On April 30 in Rabat, an AS FAR vs Raja Casablanca classic that should have been a celebration spiraled into chaos. Clashes erupted in the stands, projectiles flew, the press gallery was invaded, journalists were targeted, and a freshly renovated stadium suffered serious damage. Eleven days earlier, in Safi, Morocco had already embarrassed itself on the international stage when supporters of USM Alger stormed the pitch before kickoff, chairs were used as weapons, a Moroccan photographer was injured and taken to the hospital, and the match kickoff was delayed by an hour and twenty minutes. Nor are these isolated incidents. Even the final of the Africa Cup of Nations itself, held at Stade Moulay Abdellah, had already been marked by unrest among Senegalese supporters. Before that, ultras groups from Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir, and elsewhere had repeatedly made headlines, sometimes ending in tragedy.

The question can therefore no longer be avoided. Now that the stadiums exist — modern, secure, and dedicated to the popular passion Morocco proudly claims — why are they so systematically and violently destroyed by the very people who demanded them? What does this determination to destroy what was built for oneself reveal? Is it the responsibility of these young people, of their parents, of the state, or of society as a whole? Whatever the causes may be, the consequences appear to be spiraling beyond everyone’s control.

The sanctions imposed following the Rabat clásico were, it must be acknowledged, exemplary and unprecedented. Five matches behind closed doors for AS FAR, three for Raja Casablanca, fines of 200,000 dirhams for each club, shared repair costs, and above all a generalized ban on away supporters until the end of the season — which, incidentally, is nearly over anyway. The clubs will therefore pay the financial price, while supporters will lose the celebration. But this firmness, however legitimate and necessary, solves nothing in the medium or long term. How can it be explained that police forces, deployed in massive numbers, are still overwhelmed? How can it be explained that law enforcement officers are attacked with such violence, or that hundreds of bladed weapons are confiscated around stadiums before every high-risk match? A purely repressive response, however exemplary, does not seem capable of holding back the tide crashing against it.

Because it is indeed a tide. Like waves crashing violently against the coastline, these outbreaks reveal what society pretends not to see, and what none of the country’s tangible and objective advances have managed to absorb. A part of Morocco’s youth has been abandoned, left to fend for itself, in the grip of drugs and an everyday violence that has become, in the end, the only real sport they practice. Does this excuse them? Of course not. But honesty requires acknowledging that poison cannot serve as an antidote. Stadiums can be closed to them, entire seasons played behind closed doors, arrests multiplied, and prison sentences increased, but all that amounts to putting on blinders to avoid confronting the economic, social, and intellectual misery feeding this anger.

The snake is eating its own tail. These youths are violent; they destroy what is built for them, and yet they have every reason in the world to be angry because no credible alternative has been offered to them. It is the exact same dynamic witnessed when the largely peaceful protests of Generation Z were followed almost nightly by astonishingly violent outbursts: hooded youths, urban riots, senseless destruction without slogans, leaders, or articulated demands. Just a raw need to release frustration, to scream hatred and despair. The stadium has now become another stage for this phenomenon — more visible, more mediatized, but driven by the same underlying force.

In such a context, what can parents, neighbors, educators, authorities, or football enthusiasts themselves realistically do in the face of this wave? Who will have the political courage to confront the deeper problem — one no longer measured in dozens of troublemakers, but in thousands of citizens adrift? Must the country, as too often happens, wait for a tragedy before finally addressing the issue at the scale it deserves?

Over the next five years, Morocco will play one of the most demanding matches in its recent history by preparing to host the 2030 FIFA World Cup. In just a few weeks, the final of the African Champions League will take place at Stade Moulay Abdellah. Legislative elections are scheduled for September. And in the background lies an entire development model struggling to fully embody itself.

The country has already demonstrated — and the Africa Cup of Nations provided dazzling proof — that it knows how to organize, host, secure, and impress. What remains to be demonstrated, with equal ambition, is whether it also knows how to repair what is cracking internally, in those margins society prefers not to film.

Because wherever one stands on either side of the barrier, there is truly reason for concern.

Zouhair Yata

The post Football: New Stadiums, Old Fractures appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

But in France, as elsewhere, grief has become prime political raw material. And what has unfolded over the past ten days around this incident goes far beyond Quentin Deranque’s personal fate.

Because the method is well known, well rehearsed, and imported. Americans even have a word for it: “martyrology.” Transforming a victim into a symbol, a symbol into mobilization, and mobilization into legitimacy. Charlie Kirk and his counterparts within the Trumpist right have elevated it into an art of governing. Every incident involving an opponent becomes proof of an existential threat; every death within the conservative camp signals the urgency of a total cultural war. The mechanism is relentless and requires neither a program, nor a record, nor coherence. It only requires an image, a crowd, and a designated enemy.

In France, the sequence was orchestrated perfectly. Within hours, Quentin Deranque’s death was no longer a homicide under judicial investigation, but proof that “the far left kills.” Jordan Bardella called for a republican cordon sanitaire against La France Insoumise. Marion Maréchal declared on television that “far-right violence is negligible; statistically, it does not exist.”

Meanwhile, activists from Italy, Belgium, and Germany marched through Lyon behind a portrait of the deceased young man, while mosques were vandalized with graffiti and left-wing offices attacked. And the Interior Minister authorized the march. That says it all.

But facts, in this kind of sequence, are never really the issue. The issue is opportunity. And the opportunity here is twofold.

First, to accelerate the normalization of the far right within the French political landscape. The Rassemblement National and its satellites are no longer seeking mere tolerance; they are seeking to replace the republican right altogether, a political family that has melted away like snow under the sun. To achieve that, they need a suitable image: the camp of order, defenders of victims, respectable patriots. Quentin Deranque, a deceased neo-fascist activist affiliated with the Allobroges according to established elements of the case, has become the martyr who makes presentable what should not be.

Second, the strategy aims to kill two birds with one stone by cornering La France Insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, fusing radical left-wing politics and physical violence into a single rejection, making the very idea of a Mélenchon vote toxic ahead of the next presidential election, and building a moral sanitary cordon around a candidate whom polls still place firmly in the political game. McCarthyism? The word may be old, but the method is similar: designate an internal enemy, assign them collective responsibility for violence, and demand public capitulation.

LFI nevertheless condemned the violence. It does not matter. In this game, condemnation is irrelevant; only association endures.

What is happening in France reflects a much deeper schism observable throughout the Western world. The dividing lines are no longer traditionally left versus right. They have become irreconcilable cultural blocs, tribes that no longer share the same facts, the same grief, or even the same dead to mourn. It is an Israeli-Palestinian logic imported into Western democracies. Each camp has its legitimate victims and its invisible victims, its martyrs and its structurally guilty enemies. In such a universe, politics is no longer the art of compromise. It has become the permanent theater of a war of narratives.

And that is where the deepest danger lies. Not in the violence of a few militants from either extreme, but in the way democratic systems themselves have become springboards toward something else.

Democracy has once again become a stepping stone, with elections serving as tools and institutions functioning as costumes. One recalls that Adolf Hitler came to power through the ballot box, that Benito Mussolini was appointed prime minister through perfectly legal procedures. Donald Trump returned to the White House through electoral means before signing executive orders in rapid succession.

The democratic form survives, while the substance empties out. Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote that beauty would save the world. But watching what is happening in Paris, Washington, Budapest, or Rome, one is entitled to seriously doubt it.

Zouhair Yata

The post Democracy, a Stepping Stone to the Worst appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

This year, alhamdulillah, the atmosphere feels noticeably different. The rains have arrived, reservoirs have filled up, and the agricultural sector, long suffocated by drought, is regaining more favorable prospects. As a result, that infamous inflation has stabilized and growth is holding steady. Nothing euphoric, of course, but a welcome normalization after several periods of uncertainty. In short, the country is breathing a little easier.

Adding to this was the unifying interlude of football. The Africa Cup of Nations offered a collective moment of relief, unity, and positive projection despite its outcome. In a tense regional and international context, this type of event acts as a psychological stabilizer. It restores a sense of momentum to an entire nation, even if only temporarily.

Objectively speaking, Morocco is therefore entering this Ramadan under materially and emotionally more favorable conditions than during the previous two years.

But this relative improvement raises another question: what do we do with a moment of calm?

Because while economic indicators are improving, the political scene appears frozen and lethargic. We know the rhythm well: after football comes Ramadan, followed by the two Eids. Then summer will arrive with its festival season. In reality, the social calendar is as crowded as the political calendar appears empty.

Political parties have remained remarkably discreet, despite their customary Ramadan proximity campaigns where ftours are distributed in exchange for the hope of future votes. With legislative elections only months away, where are the programs? Where is the public debate? Yet the current head of government’s withdrawal from the race for the next premiership created a rare political opening. One might have thought this would be the moment for our politicians to seize the opportunity, to structure a new political offering, respond to the aspirations expressed by the youth, and open a substantive debate on the economic, social, and institutional model for the years ahead.

Of course, one can understand the collective temptation to enjoy this respite. After years marked by drought, rising prices, and international uncertainty, no one would deny the right to catch one’s breath. Ramadan itself invites people to slow down, refocus, and prioritize what truly matters. And that uniquely Ramadan-like torpor, that gentle suspension of time, offers a welcome pause.

But by endlessly moving from one soothing sequence to another, we end up postponing the structural questions. Yet the September elections are approaching, and they will determine the rhythm of the next five years leading us toward that much-discussed 2030 horizon. And if, by then, no serious debate has emerged, if no clear political direction has been articulated, the awakening could prove brutal.

Because, as the saying goes, the tree often hides the forest.

In the meantime, Ramadan Mubarak to everyone.

Zouhair Yata

The post Ramadan, the Tree and the Forest appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

On April 28, 2026, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand officially announced, following talks with her counterpart Nasser Bourita, her country’s new position recognizing Morocco’s autonomy plan as the “basis for a mutually acceptable solution,” while drawing the appropriate conclusions from UN Security Council Resolution 2797 adopted on October 31, 2025. An official visit by Canada’s top diplomat to Morocco has been announced for the coming weeks, and Canada thus joins the now substantial circle of states that have clarified their position on a matter that has shaped Moroccan diplomacy for half a century.

Ottawa is not just any capital in this equation. Canada hosts one of the world’s most dynamic Moroccan communities, particularly concentrated in Montreal and active in strategic sectors such as healthcare, higher education, technology, and services. For years, this diaspora has served both as a cultural bridge and, paradoxically, as one of the points of friction in bilateral relations, in a country where certain voices hostile to the Kingdom had become accustomed to thriving beneath the comfortable umbrella of a sometimes poorly understood multiculturalism. Canada’s gesture therefore goes beyond diplomacy alone; it also restores coherence for hundreds of thousands of Moroccans in Canada between their dual identity and the official position of their host country.

In reality, this recognition is part of a broader dynamic that began long before last October. European, African, and Latin American support for the autonomy plan has steadily accumulated in recent years, but Resolution 2797 marked the true turning point by consecrating autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the sole basis for negotiation. Since then, the momentum has moved in only one direction: the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, Ecuador, and now Canada, not to mention Honduras’s withdrawal of recognition for the so-called “SADR.” Each time, the calendar seems to produce another diplomatic adjustment, as though chancelleries that once hesitated now understand they have more to lose from ambiguity than from clarity.

And while this patient diplomacy advances step by step, the security dimension follows the same trajectory, with the same method. On April 27, Agadir hosted the official launch of African Lion 2026, the largest military exercise conducted on the African continent. More than 5,000 soldiers from around forty countries were deployed across Benguerir, Tan-Tan, Taroudant, Dakhla, and Tifnit, while the maneuvers expanded to include Ghana, Senegal, and Tunisia. The 2026 edition stands out for its technological leap forward, integrating rapidly evolving domains such as electromagnetic warfare, cyberspace, outer space, and unmanned aerial systems.

But the detail that deserves particular attention lies elsewhere. For the first time on the African continent, the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces were integrated into the secure tactical communication system Link-16, previously reserved for NATO members. This is not a technical footnote for specialists. It is the military translation of what Resolution 2797 represented diplomatically: Morocco is now perceived and treated as a first-rank strategic partner, on par with the closest allies of the Western bloc. When the Pentagon shares a communications channel, it is never insignificant, and it says more than any long speech about the depth of the alliance.

All of this can only irritate neighboring Algeria, which hardly views Morocco’s diplomatic advances favorably, as every Moroccan step forward represents a step backward for Algiers. Yet one must resist any triumphalist reading, because Algeria is itself experiencing a paradoxical geopolitical moment. The war in Iran and the resulting instability in global energy markets have restored a strategic centrality to Algerian gas that it had temporarily lost, placing Algiers once again in the role of key supplier for a Europe seeking energy security. Added to this is a frequently underestimated geopolitical reality: Algeria has long been a historical partner of Tehran, and the absence of a decisive strategic defeat for the Islamic Republic, despite the blows it has suffered, reinforces an axis that will continue to shape future regional balances.

This is precisely why Morocco must avoid the temptation of bravado. The doctrine adopted by Rabat — strategic restraint on the ground combined with patient firmness diplomatically — is exactly what has produced tangible results sequence after sequence. Canadian recognition, integration into Link-16, and the continuous expansion of international support have not materialized by chance. They are the product of a long-term vision, assumed at the highest level of the state and executed with rare discipline in an era that often values noise more than results.

Ultimately, what this sequence of events in April 2026 reveals is that a country can continue to build, consolidate alliances, and expand its sphere of influence even while the world around it burns between Tehran, Tel Aviv, and Washington. Morocco is moving forward — calmly but steadily — with the understanding that consistency over time always prevails over grandstanding.

Zouhair Yata

The post From the Moroccan Sahara to “O Canada” appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

One year later, the Salon International de l’Agriculture au Maroc 2026 opened in Meknes from April 20 to 28 and chose, precisely, to place animal production at the heart of its eighteenth edition. The symbolism is far from accidental. Placing livestock at the center of the national agricultural narrative, in the same year that the sacrificial ritual regains its place under finally generous rainfall, is to publicly acknowledge that what happened last year was not an isolated episode, but a warning.

And indeed, it rained — heavily. Sometimes even excessively, as evidenced by the floods that struck the country’s northwest and forced large-scale evacuations. Yet none of that diminishes the relief. Alhamdulillah, reservoirs are filling again, pastures are turning green, fodder crops are regrowing, and the livestock sector is mechanically breathing once more. Feed prices, long hostage to global markets and imported oilseed meal, are easing their grip. Breeders are slowly rebuilding their herds. Households are finding slightly more breathing room in meat prices. Objectively speaking, the economic climate is gentler than it has been in years.

But as is often the case, periods of relief are precisely when one must beware of false conclusions. A good rainy season does not constitute an agricultural policy, just as one swallow does not make a spring. And confusing a cyclical rebound with an escape from structural crisis would be the worst possible interpretation of what the country has just endured.

By linking the sustainability of animal production with food sovereignty, this 2026 edition openly acknowledges what the past seven years have etched into public consciousness: Morocco’s dependence on imported inputs — whether raw materials for animal feed, seeds, fertilizers, or the energy required to produce them — has become a major strategic vulnerability. And that vulnerability is no longer merely economic; it is geopolitical.

This is where the reasoning takes on another dimension. In the world now emerging before our eyes, food sovereignty no longer exists as an isolated concept. It has become the reverse side of the same coin whose other face is energy sovereignty. Producing food means producing the energy that powers tractors, pumps irrigation water, manufactures fertilizers, keeps cold chains running, and transports harvests. Disconnecting these two dimensions is a luxury that only large integrated powers can still afford — and even they, increasingly, cannot.

The choice of Portugal as guest of honor for this edition is therefore less anecdotal than it might appear. Beyond the diplomacy of exhibition pavilions, Rabat and Lisbon share a common agro-climatic reality: chronic water stress, rainfall variability, and the necessity of adapting productive models to climate disruption. What the two countries can exchange are not political postures but tested methods — precision irrigation, cooperative pooling, agro-industrial valorization, and sophisticated water-resource management. Whereas Spain and France, honored in previous editions, primarily brought scale, Portugal brings proximity of constraint, which paradoxically may sometimes be more valuable than grand lessons from the North.

Because a country’s food sovereignty is first and foremost written in its soil. And in 2026, soil can no longer be nourished randomly. The needs of farmland in Meknes are not those of Senegalese or Indian soil, and pretending they could all be treated with the same recipe was a dead end the global economy could tolerate only when energy and agricultural inputs were cheap. That world is now behind us. Agronomic precision, which may sound highly technical, is in reality almost a matter of common sense. It enshrines the idea that every hectare matters, every drop of water matters, every gram of input matters. In a country emerging from seven years of drought while projecting itself toward the ambitious horizon of 2030, this culture of precision becomes a vector of success.

Especially since the livestock equation — the very issue structuring SIAM 2026 — is one of relentless logic. The quality of animal feed depends on the quality of fodder. The quality of fodder depends on soil fertility. Soil fertility depends on precision in nutrient application and water availability. And water, the energy required to mobilize it, the fertilizers needed to enrich the soil, and the industrial capacities necessary to produce those fertilizers locally all form a single chain, none of whose links can any longer be outsourced remotely without exposing the entire system to systemic risk.

Last year’s suspension of the sacrifice ritual was, whether one likes it or not, the brutal revelation of this equation. Not because there were no animals left to slaughter, but because there was no longer enough to feed them properly and sustainably. And no one wishes to relive that reality — neither breeders, nor households, nor the authorities who had to make the difficult decision to suspend a millennia-old rite.

In that respect, the Salon International de l’Agriculture au Maroc 2026 is far more than a trade fair; it is an annual exercise in collective truth. It measures the distance between stated intentions and actual trajectories. It reveals the country’s capacity to coordinate its sectors, institutions, foundations, researchers, cooperatives, and farmers around a shared vision. And this year more than any other, it will measure Morocco’s maturity in not confusing calm with stability.

Because soil, like sovereignty, never regenerates as quickly as it deteriorates. And between a good season and a sustainable trajectory lies precisely the difference between luck and strategy.

Zouhair Yata

The post SIAM 2026: From Soil to Plate, Morocco Faces Its Reflection appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

The paradox must be fully understood. Since February 28, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of the world’s oil supply transits — has been operating under near paralysis. Oil prices surged to a record $110 per barrel, while Morocco’s national budget had been built on the assumption of a maximum of $65. The government of Aziz Akhannouch established an emergency ministerial commission. And in this same Morocco, under energy pressure and inflationary strain, Marrakech welcomed 1,450 technology companies from 130 countries to debate Africa’s digital future.

This is not an inconsistency; it is a structural response to the vulnerability that the war in Iran has suddenly made impossible to ignore. A country that imports its energy, its equipment, and its technologies is a country that does not fully determine its own destiny. Digital sovereignty is not an abstract public policy concept. In the world now being reshaped before our eyes, it is the very condition of strategic autonomy.

Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni understands this clearly when she warns that “the world’s cards are being reshuffled.” Artificial intelligence, she argues, has become “a lever of competitiveness, an issue of sovereignty, an object of regulation, and a new way of governing.” The statement deserves to be weighed word by word. Because behind the event-driven gloss of GITEX — the booths, startup pitches, and plenary conferences — something much deeper is at stake. Who will write the rules of African AI? Washington? Beijing? Brussels? Or Marrakech?

The competition is well documented. The United States has invested more than $300 billion in AI in recent years. China is pursuing its industrial strategy with more than $100 billion in combined public and private investment. The European Union is preparing a €200 billion plan of its own. Three blocs, three visions, three models of technological governance. And where does Africa stand in all this? A continent of 1.4 billion people, where AI could generate $1.2 trillion in value by 2030, yet one that risks becoming nothing more than a consumer market if it fails to secure a seat at the table where standards are defined. Chakib Alj summarized it bluntly at the opening of the exhibition: “If Africa does not participate in shaping the rules of AI, others will define them in its place.”

This is where Morocco is playing a unique — and perilous — role. The Kingdom is navigating a world in which every technological choice has now become a geopolitical choice. The simultaneous presence at GITEX of global actors openly promoting their ambitions for “digital sovereignty in Africa” says everything about the complexity of the great game now unfolding.

In this context, GITEX Africa Morocco 2026 matters less for what it displays than for what it symbolizes. It symbolizes Morocco’s decision to become a platform rather than a spectator. It signals that digital sovereignty is not the luxury of post-crisis prosperity, but rather the investment that makes crises bearable in the first place.

The data centers emerging in Casablanca, Dakhla, and Settat, the RamadanIA hackathon that mobilized 4,000 young people across all regions of the Kingdom, and the Morocco 300 program aimed at internationalizing national startups are all bricks in a larger structure whose essential utility has just been reinforced by global tensions.

The world emerging from this sequence will be one in which nations are either sovereign or dependent. Morocco has chosen its side. It now falls upon the country to fulfill the promise embodied by this exhibition.

Zouhair Yata

The post GITEX in Marrakech: Defining the World After appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

Before rushing to comment on these findings, however, they deserve at least a brief methodological examination.

The sample of 1,056 respondents, interviewed face-to-face between June 16 and June 30, 2025, is presented as representative of the Moroccan population aged 15 to 30. The announced margin of error is ±3%. Fair enough.

But what the study does not reveal at all is the breakdown of respondents by gender, education level, or socio-economic background for each question. In other words, all responses are presented as absolute truths, with men and women blended together. Yet that is precisely where the key to interpreting this kind of study usually lies. “Normally,” girls and boys may hold divergent views, as might residents of large cities versus smaller towns or rural areas. The same goes for young people with access to higher education or employment compared to those without such opportunities.

Since none of these nuances appear in the study, several observations and comments immediately emerge, even without passing judgment.

It is difficult, for instance, to accept without verification that 77% of the women surveyed would oppose their own equal inheritance rights. Likewise, the claim that 76% of respondents support the wearing of the hijab immediately raises questions when compared to what is visibly observable in the streets, universities, or shopping malls of the country. If women are indeed represented proportionally, why are two-thirds of young women not visibly veiled?

Similarly, the 51% of young people supporting the criminalization of sex outside marriage appear hard to reconcile with the observable behavior of this same generation. Add to that the 37% favoring polygamy, and one again wonders which youth exactly are being described. In a country where the practice, though still legal under restrictive conditions, survives only marginally within very particular socio-economic contexts, are that many young people truly aspiring to generalize such an approach to marriage? Are young Moroccans no longer concerned with education, healthcare, employment opportunities, and future prospects — issues loudly voiced by members of Generation Z in recent protests — but instead eager to embrace social norms that even their own parents no longer practice?

These figures might correspond to a representative sample of Moroccans as a whole — predominantly male, expressing a rather conservative vision of society — and that may indeed reflect part of reality. But if it turns out that our tattooed, K-pop-loving, Toto-fan, English-speaking youth, the same youth seen on Welovebuzz, TikTok, or at the L’Boulevard festival, truly hold such strongly conservative positions, then the conclusion is nothing short of astonishing.

Of course, we will be told that we must stop imposing a progressive, “woke,” and decadent Western vision on our beautiful country with its Islamic and Muslim reference framework. But that is not the issue here at all. The question is whether the behaviors and cultural markers of Moroccan youth as we encounter them daily actually correspond to the results of this survey, presented as representative of such a broad age group and such a large segment of citizens.

Likewise, regarding women and family issues, while His Majesty the King has set in motion a long-awaited reform of the Family Code, is the debate really about excessive feminism and diminishing women’s traditional role as guardians of the home? Or is it about ensuring at least minimal legal protection for women who now, by force of circumstance, work, contribute financially to households they often manage almost alone, and yet continue to face a practical patriarchy justified under theological legitimacy?

All of this suggests that a second interpretation of these findings is possible — namely, that there exists a gap between what people declare and how they actually live, assuming of course that the surveyed sample truly represents Moroccan youth. Morocco is not immune to what sociologists call the “social desirability bias,” the phenomenon whereby respondents adapt their answers to what they perceive as socially expected rather than to what they genuinely practice. A distinctly Moroccan trait, one might say.

“Hchouma,” that structuring form of social shame deeply embedded in Moroccan interactions, seems to play a central role here. People often answer for appearances, for their future children, for social conventions — not necessarily for themselves. One could almost imagine that the young respondents were questioned in the presence of their fathers or mothers, which would perhaps better explain this excess of moral zeal that even their elders no longer genuinely uphold. In short: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Last but not least, one cannot help but ponder the final question posed to these young respondents in a survey otherwise heavily focused on social norms: “Would you say that the time change disrupts your studies or your work?” What exactly is this question doing alongside topics such as abortion and polygamy? No satisfactory explanation readily comes to mind — unless, of course, the time change alone explains why these young people answered like old people.

Zouhair Yata

The post Youth Survey: Are Young People Worse Than the Old? appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

Just as during the First Crusade in 1095, one phrase summarizes the commitment of the belligerents: “Deus lo volt” — God wills it. For decades now, and with renewed intensity since October 7, 2023, following Hamas’s attack against an Israel remarkably blind and deaf for the occasion, events have resembled almost exactly what historiography tells us about the crusades of the past. Faith justifies violence, the enemy becomes incarnate evil, and every death is portrayed as martyrdom by the camp concerned.

Today’s Templars may be Rangers or soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces facing members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the ideological mechanisms remain identical and have not evolved by a single inch.

On the side of the Iran, the Islamic Republic carries within its very structure a messianic construction. Twelver Shiism, the dominant branch of Islam in Iran, is founded on the belief in twelve Imams, the last of whom mysteriously disappeared in 874 AD. His return — that of the Mahdi — is awaited to restore justice on earth. Until that return, Ali Khamenei and the Ayatollahs exercise political power in the name of the absent Imam. Iran’s Constitution states this explicitly in Article 5: “During the occultation of the Master of Time, may God hasten his reappearance, governance belongs to the just and pious faqih.” From that point onward, war becomes a theological act, while death in battle for the cause becomes a shortcut to paradise.

In Israel, while leaders relentlessly invoke and pursue the specter of anti-Zionism, it has long been clear that the original foundations of Zionism no longer define the politics of the Jewish state. It is worth recalling that Zionism was originally a secular and nationalist movement. Theodor Herzl was a Viennese journalist, not a prophet, and David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the nation, was a socialist.

Today, it is a form of messianic religious nationalism — Gush Emunim, the “Bloc of the Faithful” — that increasingly guides political action. The rabbis have overtaken the secularists, and the Messiah is awaited under conditions that can only send chills down the spine. According to certain currents within Orthodox Jewish messianism, the coming of the Messiah is not merely conditioned upon the return of the Jewish people to their land. It must also be preceded by a period of maximal hatred and persecution by other nations against Israel, known as the “birth pangs of the Messiah,” or “Chevlei Mashiach.” In this reading, the hatred of the enemy is not a catastrophe to avoid; it is a painful necessity confirming the prophecy to come. Thus, where some see genocide, others interpret prophetic confirmation. Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition are driven by these profound convictions, and Palestine — from Gaza to the West Bank, as well as southern Lebanon — stands as evidence of it.

Finally, what is perhaps most neglected is the third actor in this deadly religious triangle: American Christian Zionism. In the United States, historic strategic support for Israel has been reinforced by the growing weight of the evangelical movement, which counts millions of followers and for whom, once again, the return of Christ can only occur if biblical prophecies are fulfilled. According to evangelical interpretations, Jesus cannot return until the Temple of Jerusalem has been restored — on the current Temple Mount, home to the Al-Aqsa compound — and Israel controls the entirety of the Holy Land. This clearly helps explain Benjamin Netanyahu’s numerous visits to the United States since the beginning of Donald Trump’s term, as well as the recent statements by Marco Rubio explaining that the White House “was dragged into this war.”

For all these actors — from Tehran to Tel Aviv, passing through Washington — the horsemen of the Apocalypse are approaching. And it is civilian populations who are seeing the horses head-on.

Zouhair Yata

The post War in the Middle East: In the Name of God appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

In this emerging technological order, a central question confronts developing nations: endure or shape. Morocco has chosen to enter this transformation with clear ambition. The Maroc Digital 2030 strategy, the structuring of a national AI architecture, the AI Made in Morocco program, the deployment of the JAZARI Institutes across the Kingdom’s twelve regions, the strategic partnership surrounding the “Mistral AI & MTNRA” laboratory, and the establishment of a sovereign digital wallet through IDARATI X.0 are not isolated announcements. Together, these initiatives outline a coherent backbone.

In the interview she granted us for this special edition, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni reiterates a fundamental conviction: Morocco cannot simply import digital models designed elsewhere. It must invent its own, because the issues at stake go far beyond technology; they concern sovereignty itself. Yet digital sovereignty cannot simply be decreed. It is built through governance, education, investment, regulation, and above all through the capacity to execute.

Artificial intelligence, if left unchecked, can deepen inequalities rather than reduce them. The technological revolution is not neutral. It reflects existing structures of power. This is where the meaning of this March 8 Special Edition takes on its full depth. Because at the heart of these global transformations, the question is not solely technological. It is social, political, and civilizational. Who designs the systems? Who finances them? Who regulates them? Who benefits from them?

For a long time, women have been absent from the spaces where major technological directions are decided. Absent from funding tables, underrepresented in research, marginalized in the design of technological tools. The consequences are measurable: algorithmic biases, blind spots in healthcare, and chronic underinvestment in issues specifically affecting women.

In a world where AI is redefining employment, where offshoring is mutating under the pressure of automation, and where data is becoming the foremost strategic resource, the issue is no longer simply women’s access to digital technologies. It is their place in defining the very rules of the game.

Today, Morocco is positioning itself as an Arab-African digital hub. The country is investing in talent, multiplying doctoral programs, and launching initiatives such as JobInTech, AI Master Junior, and Génération IA & IoT Maroc. But the battle is also cultural. It is fought through representation, early education, access to capital, and the legitimacy granted to women developing technological solutions.

This March 8, 2026 Special Edition does not celebrate individual journeys merely for their exceptional nature. It examines them for what they reveal about an ongoing transformation. The world has entered a new industrial revolution in which artificial intelligence serves as the accelerator and data as the fuel. But governance will be the ultimate arbiter.

And if Morocco hopes to capitalize on this momentum and transform opportunity into a lever for sustainable development, it will need to reconcile three imperatives: technological sovereignty, genuine inclusion, and assertive leadership. Yet such leadership cannot be complete without the full participation of women in the structural decisions shaping the digital economy, tomorrow’s healthcare systems, intelligent public services, and sovereign data architectures.

Once again, these challenges demonstrate that March 8 is not merely a symbolic, commercial, or marketing ritual, but rather a defining marker of the societies of tomorrow.

Zouhair Yata

The post At the Heart of Global Technological Transformations: Morocco and Its Women appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.

To understand what is unfolding, one must begin where the map is easiest to read: the Strait of Hormuz. This tiny corridor, barely twenty-one kilometers wide at its narrowest point, alone concentrates nearly 20% of global oil production, including that of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Above all, no less than 45% of China’s energy consumption passes through it.

Iran, a coastal state, is both its natural guardian and potentially its gatekeeper. After the Venezuelan episode, one need not be a grand strategist to grasp that Washington is engaged in a systematic effort to secure the world’s strategic resources. Gulf oil, much like that of Latin America, is considered far too valuable to remain in the hands of actors Uncle Sam deems unreliable.

It must also be said that the American domestic calendar was far from insignificant. The Epstein affair, which the administration had been trying to downplay, continued to poison the media agenda with a persistence that White House communicators struggled to contain. Congressional hearings, including the almost caricatural appearance of the Attorney General, the highly publicized appearances of the Clinton couple, Bill Gates’ “apologies,” the arrest of Prince Andrew, and the spectacular resignation of the head of the Davos Forum all shook public opinion without, curiously enough, triggering the cascade of indictments that revelations of such magnitude would normally have produced. In such a context, a large-scale military operation offers the immediate advantage of recalibrating the agenda. That is never a coincidence.

For Israel, however, the story is different — much older and far more existential. Iran has made the destruction of the Jewish state a matter of doctrine, from Khomeini to Khamenei, without ever wavering. But beyond the rhetoric, Tel Aviv’s objective in striking Tehran through this understanding with Washington is not merely to neutralize a direct adversary. It is to cut off the head of the snake in order to decapitate the entire ecosystem it finances. Hezbollah, Iran’s principal armed proxy in the region, thus finds itself orphaned from its patron, at least temporarily. In Lebanon as in Gaza, this repositioning offers Israel room for maneuver it has not enjoyed in years.

Moreover, cracks within Iran’s domestic front were already visible. The targeted attacks of recent months, combined with apparent support for protest movements bloodily repressed at the end of 2025, had considerably weakened a regime that, like all dictatorships, projected an extravagant image of unity against external enemies while steadily eroding from within.

Within the great fracture between the Sunni and Shia worlds that has structured the region’s geopolitics for centuries, Tehran’s humiliation provokes no anguish among Arab capitals allied with the United States. Quite the opposite: it elicits discreet approval. Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo all had their own disputes with Iran, its proxies, and its regional hegemonic ambitions. For these countries, the American-Israeli operation accomplishes part of the work they either could not or would not undertake themselves.

Some denounce this unilateralism, rightly so. But unilateralism died long ago; it merely lingered on life support in a handful of multilateral speeches and conference halls. When Russia denounces violations of international law, one is tempted to recall what it has been doing in Ukraine for years. When China pleads for respect for sovereignty, thoughts immediately turn to Taiwan and the South China Sea. As for the UN Security Council, paralyzed by veto powers, it has become little more than a theatrical stage where great powers proclaim their noble intentions before proceeding to do exactly what they had already decided to do. The Iraq War and Russian annexations in the Caucasus and the Black Sea demonstrated this before. The Iranian episode confirms it today.

For Morocco, the context is far from neutral as well. In 2018, Rabat severed diplomatic relations with Tehran after documenting explicit Iranian support for the SADR and the Polisario Front, facilitated through Hezbollah and with the overt complicity of Algeria’s Mouradia establishment. Iran, jointly with Morocco’s neighbors, described the Kingdom as an “occupying power” on its own Saharan territory. The weakening of the Iranian regime is therefore not, for Rabat, some abstract geopolitical development.

Yet one question remains unavoidable: what comes next? Military interventions in this region of the world have a long and painful tradition of disastrous aftermaths. Iraq in 2003 remains the harshest lesson. Destroying a regime is infinitely easier than ensuring the transition that follows. What one must hope now is that the regional escalation remains contained and that, amid this turmoil, the Iranian people finally emerge as the true beneficiaries of the equation.

After more than fifty years of theocratic dictatorship, deprivation, repression, and Western sanctions that have impoverished and suffocated one of humanity’s oldest civilizations, Iranians deserve better than to serve merely as the playground for others’ ambitions. May Iranian women regain their freedom. May the imprisoned, the executed, and the exiled finally be rehabilitated. May this great people rediscover themselves beyond the grip of their jailers.

There is a cruel irony in all this, one history may well remember. Chess was invented in Persia, and from there came the expression “Sheikh Mat” — “the king is dead” — which traveled through the centuries to become the “checkmate” the entire world now knows. With the death of Ali Khamenei, the board has been overturned. What remains to be seen is who will pick up the pieces, and in what order.

Zouhair Yata

The post War in Iran, “Sheikh Mat” appeared first on La Nouvelle Tribune.