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Democratic deficit in Maghreb

There, the North African leaders were to discuss the revival of the UMA — an economic and political union that has been planned for since 1989 but never realised. Unlike the GCC countries or the European Union, UMA has met enormous difficulties in taking off. Worse. It will probably never move forward because five head of states are not able to meet. The reason is the festering political crisis between Algeria and Morocco on Western Sahara.

Upon General Franco’s death in 1975, Spain left behind a time bomb in the Maghreb. Spain failed to implement the UN resolutions regarding the decolonisation of Western Sahara, and allowed the Moroccan and Mauritanian troops to invade what was then called the Rio de Oro. Leaders like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and Colonel Boumediene opposed the invasion and King Hassan II’s control of the former Spanish colony’s huge resources. They were worried that Western Sahara’s phosphate and offshore oil would economically reinforce the Moroccan monarchy. Therefore Boumediene armed the Polisario Front — the Sahrawi independence movement, and sheltered almost all of the Sahrawi autochthons in Algerian refugee camps.

Gaddafi and Boumediene’s strategic objective was to topple the Alaouite dynasty of Morocco and replace it with a military rule similar to theirs. They were after a "revolutionary regime" led by nationalist colonels with whom they would have built the UMA. For my generation, in the 1960s and 1970s, the picture was crystal clear. One of the objectives for Arab nationalists such as Boumediene, Gamal Abdu Nasser and Gaddafi, was to eliminate monarchies from the Arab world. They firmly believed that Arab "crowned heads" were antagonistic to their nationalist cause. Boumedienne had a dream. He wanted to be the Garibaldi or the Bismarck of the Maghreb.

The plan was that Moroccan armed forces would rise up against the king, and would join the Polisario Front to depose Hassan II. But events took an opposite direction. The Moroccan Royal Army backed up the monarch and justified the annexation of Western Sahara. The situation today is in a deadlock. Since 1975, Algeria and Morocco are on the brink of war. Both have wasted billions of dollars in a vain arms struggle.

Since 1991, Morocco and Polisario have observed a ceasefire that was to lead to a UN-monitored referendum over Western Sahara’s self-rule. But now Moroccan King Mohammed VI rejects any peace settlement that will lead to the territory’s independence. So the Algerian-Moroccan stalemate over Western Sahara is still hindering the progress of the Maghreb. And the recent popular uprising in the territory, which was brutally repressed by Moroccan security forces, has exasperated Polisario leader Mohamed Abdelaziz. He warned that Sahrawi people would not "stay inactive eternally."

Is the Western Sahara issue the real obstacle to the UMA? Well, the real problem is the democratic deficit of the Maghrebi states. Similarly to Libya, Mauritania, and Tunisia, both Algerian and Moroccan regimes suffer from a chronic legitimacy deficit. All of them have victimised their political opponents and resorted to the use of torture and abduction against their citizens. Many acclaimed political and historical figures have suffered imprisonment for years. Former President Ben Bella still bears the suffering of his detention in nearby Algiers.

Ever since their independence, the Maghrebi nation-states have waged a savage war against their own citizens. Voicing an "unauthorised opinion" can still earn years of arbitrary detention. Political dissidents in the Maghreb, many of them leftists or Islamists, are regularly "abducted" in the manner of dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. They are tortured and/or killed while in state custody. Security forces operate with total impunity. And journalists are jailed for their critical reporting on mismanagement and corruption.

Recently, in Algeria, Mohamed Benchicou, managing editor of Le Matin, was sentenced to prison. According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in Algiers, "This policy of repression was instigated by the [Algerian] President at the beginning of the year, when he encouraged the judges not to be intimidated by the writing of the ‘mercenaries of the pen’." In Libya, the assassination of journalist Dhaif al-Ghazzal is still yet to be explained. State security agents had arrested al-Ghazzal who denounced corruption in Libya. His mutilated body was found on June 2.

The Mauritanian reporter of the Nouakchott weekly L’Eveil Hebdo, Aïdahy Ould Saleck, has been detained over police abuse article. In Morocco, Ali L’mrabet, editor of the magazines Demain and Doumane, has been sentenced to three years in June 2003, and Nadia Yacine of the tolerated Islamist movement El-Adl-Wal-Ihssane has been persecuted last month. In Tunisia, Sihem Ben Sedrine, renowned journalist and human rights activist, has been under fire by the Tunisian authorities. Because of her human rights activities, she has been insulted in the state-controlled Press, threatened, arrested, and physically abused.

The Maghreb governments have to change their fundamental policies to promote good governance. There is no progress without democratisation and respect for human rights. The independence for the Maghreb is yet to come.

Abdul Qadeer Shareef is a humanities lecturer at Ajman University of Science & Technology.