The King and the Colonel

John Ralston Saul

he King of Morocco has just proved, 1 yet again, that he is the world cham- pion in creative political opportunism; whether measured by longevity or skill. The latest act in his performance came on 3 September, when 99.97 per cent of the 97.04 per cent voter turn-out ratified their king's decision to unify Morocco with Libya. Colonel Gaddafi — an amateur by comparison — managed a unanimous rati- fication on his side, but only by the 1,347 members of the Libyan General People's congress.

This- union came out of a secret meeting between the two men in mid-August at Oujda, on the Moroccan side of the border with Algeria. President Chadli of Algeria was invited but didn't come. The com- munique that announced the union said it woud 'reinforce the solid ties which exist already between the two countries.' If by solid they meant a decade of solid antagon- ism, then the sentiment is accurate. What- ever the words, the effect, were the union to succeed, would be a total reversal of the North African political map. In the mean- time the mere fact of it happening confirms the desperate straits into which both the Colonel and the King have got themselves. Specifically it means that the King's last series of manoeuvres, in January and February of this year, have come to no- thing.

Nineteen eighty-three opened with King Hassan still bogged down in his war against the Polisario for control of the ex-Spanish Sahara, where he was forced to maintain more than 100,000 soldiers at the reputed cost of two million dollars a day. His entire economy had ground to a halt as a result of this effort. His national debt had risen to 12.5 billion dollars or 97 per cent of the Moroccan GNP. The figure is remarkable. Brazil's debt, for example, is 41 per cent of GNP. A chronic drought went arm in arm with weak phosphates prices to kill whatev- er remaining hope there might have been.

These persistent military and economic problems created a silent opposition of a size not seen since the early Seventies when the King survived two attempted coups. This time there were two new dissatisfied elites — the young officers and the religious puritans. The officers are middle, if not lower middle class. They are ambitious, cut off from the spoils of power and they compensate through strong reli- gious beliefs. The puritans have gathered support from every direction because peo- ple do not believe in the official opposi- tion.

The first open sign of trouble came when the King had his own strong man, General Dlimi assassinated; the only possible ex- planation being that Dlimi, was about to do the same to the King. A month later, Hassan surprised and delighted his opposi- tion by meeting secretly with the Algerian president at Oujda and announcing the results as a fait accompli. His idea seemed to be that he could weaken the Polisario by befriending Mr Chadli, one of their two key supporters; the other being Libya. Chadli's interests in the new alliance were that he also had problems with religious extremists and a sagging economy. He wanted to edge Algeria towards a more moderate stance abroad and at home. Supporting the Polisario is expensive and it meant maintaining a semi-war footing along the whole length of the border with Morocco.

Before anything could come to fruition, the Moroccan opposition exploded. In early 1984 a series of major riots spread through the cities from the north of the country to the south. The King recently told Maurice Druon, member of the French Academy and, more to the point, of the Royal Moroccan Academy, that 29 people had been killed. 'If I tell you there were 29, it is neither 30 or 28.' As the Kings statistics on voter ratification of the Libyan treaty show, he is a stickler for numbers.

By February of this year, the King was therefore isolated and endangered as he had not been since the early Seventies. Six months have gone by since then and the King has been working very hard. First he clamped down on the puritans. An indica- tion of this came when he, the Commander of the Faithful, assumed personal control over the approval of building permits for mosques as a way of blocking the expan- sion of the extremist element. He also arrested some 300 citizens who were not

'I shall never come to another barbecue at Number 23'

involved in the riots but were suspected of strong religious views. Second, he redivided the power of the military. Nobody inherited General DII- mi's role as chief aide-de-camp to the king, commander-in-chief of the Sahara war, controller of internal security and domi- nant military officer. The most important result of this division is that the officer commanding the war now commands only that and he is more or less isolated down in the desert with his 100,000 dissatisfied officers and men. At the same time, the King pushed the construction of more defensive walls in the Sahara, cutting the desert up into pieces. These walls suffer from one weakness:' they end at the Mauritanian border. As Mauritania is gov- erned by men related to part of the Polisario leadership, all the guerrillas have to do is duck across the border to move around the exposed ends of the walls. Finally, the King began rebuilding his tattered image abroad. He has always ser great store by a selected group of fore- igners famous in their own countries and whom he seduces to his side. His Royal Moroccan Academy is central to this seduction, containing as it does, among others, an American astronaut and Maurice Druon, pillar of the French con- servative intellectual world. Hassan's great American friend — of 40 years standing -- is General Vernon Walters, confidant of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and of Dr Kissinger. Now he is President Reagan's roving ambassador. The King adds to this network of friends by insisting that the important ambassa- dors to his own court be actively suppnr" tive. A few years ago he forced Washing' ton to recall their man simply by pretend- ing that the poor ambassador, who had asked questions and raised doubts, did Or exist. Mr Biddle Duke, an ageing protocol expert, was sent into the breach. He knew exactly how the king expected to be tre- ated. Mr Joseph Reed Jr, the present ambassador, once worked for David Rock- efeller and now flies about Morocco in his American government plane — a special privilege allowed by the king, with whom he tries to keep up. All of Hassan's friends have now been marshalled and filled with corrective in- formation. 'Our only problem', he told Maurice Druon while they walked through the Rabat palace with guards shoutin, 'Long the live the King!' as they passed, is the lack of a strong currency. Otherwise cur economy would take off.' This was duly reported to Druon's enormous midi- All this time the economy, the war and the drought persisted. To make matters worse, his deal with President Chadli was going nowhere. It seemed that the pro-

Polisario forces in the Algerian leadership had won. The physical presence or more than 100,000 Saharan refugees, on Alge- rian soil near Tindouf certainly compli- cated the matter; dropping the Polisario would have meant dropping the refugees, which would have blackened the kind of international reputation Algeria likes to project. Probably the Hassan/Chadli alliance was doomed from the beginning. The two countries are divided by a whole series of problems, at the bottom of which is their rivalry for influence over all north-west Africa. The first signs that Hassan knew his horse wouldn't run came when he began withholding all criticism of Libya's role in Chad.

In July of this year, Morocco's hand was forced. The Polisario had been making weekly announcements of successful attacks behind the Moroccan defensive Walls. The King felt obliged to issue a warning — if Mauritania continued to allow the guerrillas back and forth across the border — that is, around the walls Morocco would exercise its right of pur- suit. Algeria immediately said that if this happened, they would physically support Mauritania. And sol-lassan was on his own again.

Suggesting union of their two countries to Colonel Gaddafi was a brilliant idea. With a sleight of the hand, it solved a

Whole series of problems. Gaddafi is known as a religious extremist. Suddenly the King's own extremists have been out- manoeuvred. The Colonel is viewed as Pure, hard and honest. Suddenly Hassan's Young officers find that their King is more revolutionary than they themselves. Of

course, a deal with Algeria would have been better for stopping the Polisario. Even so, Libyan funds will hopefully be cut °If, Perhaps Algeria, nervous about pro- voking enemies on both its east and west borders, will minimise its support for the guerrillas. The downside, from the King's point of

-view, is that his initiative could not have come at a better time for Colonel Gaddafi. Ever since the attempted coup in May of this year when fighting took place within his own headquarters inside the Bab El Azizia barracks, the Colonel has been surrounding himself with more extreme

groups who are not part of the Libyan Military or political elite. Between 80 and 120 people have been executed. Numbers on those arrested vary wildly between 2,000 and 20,000. , Gaddafi's insecurity at home is matched by his isolation abroad and King Hassan, DI' rescuing him from this, has upset his °Cn Principal backer, the United States. Safire, speaking for the conserva- tives in power in Washington, said, 'Amer- lea cannot be expected to smile at a kick in the teeth.' The kick hurt all the more in that the king doesn't seem to have let

President Reagan know what he was about tPo. do. Ambassador Reed, the King's

friend, was on holiday in Maine when the Oujda announcement came. General Wal- ters, made of surer stuff, was immediately sent across the Atlantic by the State Department to warn the King of the dan- gers he was running. What no one in Washington is willing to admit is that if the King was ready to run the risks of such an alliance, then he must be in such deep trouble that American disapproval is of secondary importance.

As if the union were not surprising enough, President Mitterrand of France managed to add a bizzare footnote to it all by arriving on a private visit to stay with King Hassan while the treaty was being ratified. Tremors went through Algiers and everyone wondered whether Mitterrand was trying to use the union, while it was hot, to negotiate a deal with Gaddafi over the Chad confrontation. A few days later it was announced that there was indeed an agreement between France and Libya for the mutual withdrawal of troops; however, King Hassan seems to have played no role in the negotiation. Part of Gaddafi's prob- lem today is that he is short of money. In the final stages of the negotiation over withdrawal, he said to Claude Cheysson the French foreign minister, `So you found it difficult to occupy Chad. So did we.'

The first important European repercus- sion has been to fuel the pro-NATO fight of the Spanish military. If the union suc- ceeds, they fear they will have the Libyans just a few miles away across the Gibraltar straits; a few miles as well from Gibraltar.

Of course, the union is not going to succeed. For both leaders it is an alliance of fear and of weakness; a way to buy time against internal and external enemies. The short term advantages within Morocco come from precisely this weakness. The union has meant an immediate 'liberalisa- tion' to go along with the King's new revolutionary friend. Political prisoners have been released. Others have stopped their hunger strike after being given what they wanted. There is talk of a government of national union which would include people normally in opposition. And for those Moroccans who live on the thin line between permissible and forbidden dis- sent, there will now be a period of good times. This will last until the military and religious opposition realise that the alliance is going nowhere. Then the King will have to find another brilliant twostep to save his throne again.

`We're over here to see your cute little currency'