Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State

Fairfield University DigitalCommons@Fairfield

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications Sociology & Anthropology Department

Winter 2004

Paul Silverstein

David Crawford Fairfield University, [email protected]

Peer Reviewed

Repository Citation Silverstein, Paul and Crawford, David, "Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State" (2004). Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications. 9. https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/sociologyandanthropology-facultypubs/9 Published Citation Crawford, David L. and Silverstein, Paul. (2004). "Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State" in The Middle East Report, issue 233. Ed. Chris Toensing. Pp. 44-48. Washington, D.C.: MERIP 2004.

This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights- holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SPECIALREPORT

Amazigh Activism an the Moroccan State

Paul Silverstein and David Crawford

W hen primary school students in the major Berber- of Amazigh activists, nor been recognized as anything other speaking regions of Morocco returned to class in than distant state "politics"by the mass of Berbers in the September 2004, for the first time ever they were re- countryside.Activists have challengedevery decision leading quired to study Berber(Tamazight) language. The mandatory up to curricularreform, as they suspect that the institute is language classes in the Rif, the Middle Atlas, the High Atlas simply a state attempt to coopt the Amazigh opposition and and the SousValley represent the firstsignificant policy change turn living Berberculture into static folklore. In spite of the implemented by the Royal Institute of the Amazigh [Berber] dahir, Amazigh militants have been detained repeatedlyby Culture,a governmentbody establishedby King Mohammed police and threatenedwith chargesof treason for taking part VI on October 17, o00I, following throughon a promisemade in streetdemonstrations for Berberland rightsand the naming in July of that year on the second anniversaryof his ascension ofTamazightas a constitutionallyrecognized national language to the Moroccan throne. of Morocco. Such a climateof perceivedrepression is accepted This royal edict, or dahir, representsa dramatic reversal with evident apathy by most Berbers,but has ironically radi- of legal discrimination against Imazighen (Berbers) and an calized some Amazigh militants into the ideal supportersof explicit attempt to reclaimBerberness as "aprincipal element GeorgeW. Bush'sglobal war on terror.Viewing the Moroccan of national culture, as a cultural heritage present across all state as a bastion of Arab nationalism, the latter have taken stagesof Moroccan history and civilization."Since Moroccan increasinglyanti-Arab positions that go so far as to deny the nationalist discourse has tended to emphasize links to the legitimacy of the Palestiniancause and support the US inva- high culture of Arab-Islamic civilization, and in particular sion of Iraq, positions that have led to conflict with Islamist the royal patriline leading back to the Prophet Muhammad, and Marxist opposition groups, as well as with elements of the dahir indicates a shift in, or at least an amendment to, the Moroccan state security.Rather than assuringnational unity, official national imaginary.Instead of posing Berberculture the establishment of IRCAM has arguablyexacerbated the as a challenge to national unity, the king promoted embrac- fragmentationof not only the Amazigh movement, but also ing it as a necessarystep in his project for a "democraticand Moroccan oppositional politics in general. modernist society." The dahir and subsequentestablishment of the Royal Insti- AmazighMilitancy and State Cooptation tute, known in Morocco by its French name, l'Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, or IRCAM, are partly the result of Berberspeakers are estimated to make up 40 percent of the domestic and international pressureto create a transparent Moroccanpopulation.1 In spite of the fact that Muslim Berber regime of social justice and human rights. These initiatives dynastiescontrolled Morocco at variouspoints since the arrival met many of the demands made over the last 20 years by of Islam, the conflation of Arabiclanguage, Islamic legitimacy the various cultural associations, student groups and politi- and Arab ethnicity has nonetheless proved to be an enduring cal movements associatedwith the diffuse Amazigh Cultural feature of Moroccan consciousness.Viewing Berbercultural Movement (MCA), and increasingly,the United States and identity as largely a colonial invention designed to fragment other allieshave heraldedMorocco's reform efforts as a success the Moroccannation, the I95osnationalist movement-under story. The shifts in the national imaginary also signal a cre- the direction of the IstiqlalParty, consisting primarilyof Fez- ative responseof the Moroccan state to transnationalIslamist basedFrancophone elites-sought to forgea univocalidentity politics, a response that weds the rhetoric of ethno-national for Moroccansalong the ideologicallines of an Arab national- identity to a universalistdiscourse of democracy.The dahir ism imported primarilyfrom Egypt and Lebanon. Until the thus serves to transformAmazigh militants into allies of the IRCAM dahir, the monarchy,deriving its temporalauthority state in Morocco'slocal "waron terror." from its religious lineage, had repeatedlyunderwritten such Nonetheless, the creation of IRCAM and its interventions an Arabo-Islamistideology that has entailed the adoption of to promote Berber art and culture in the spheres of media Arabic as the official and national languageof Morocco. and education have neither gone unopposed within the ranks This version of Moroccan nationalism has faced severeop- position, particularlyfrom the Berberophoneleft. Alreadyin PaulSilverstein, an editorofMiddle East Report, teaches anthropology at Reed College. David Crawfordteaches anthropology at FairfieldUniversity. the I96os, Berberstudents and intellectualsin Rabatand Paris,

EASTREPORT 233. WINIER2004 4444MiDDLE MIDDLEEAST REPORT 233 - WINTER2004 under the aegis of the Association Marocainede la Recherche et des Echanges Culturels (AMREC), began collecting and disseminatingBerber folklore and oral traditions.In the 1970s, these activities became more politicized, with the growth of severalcultural associations, the Universited'Ete d'Agadirand Tamaynunt, who actively promoted Berber identity.2 How- ever, it was the Algerian-Kabylestudent uprisings of April I980 (known internationallyas the Berber Spring) and the subsequent solidification of a transnationalBerber Cultural Movement (MCB) that galvanizedMoroccan Amazigh ethno- linguisticmilitancy into a public movement, with conferences and a publishedjournal, Amazigh. While this movementwas largelyrepressed during the I98os, therehas been an immense resurgencewithin the last ten years. In 1994, seven teachers,most of whom were members of the Amazigh associationTilelli (Freedom) from the southeastern oasis town of Goulmima, were arrestedafter their participation in a May Day parade in nearby Errachidiafor carrying bannerswritten in Tifinagh. Police held the seven for several weeks, after which the courts sentenced three of them to prison terms and large fines. The three were later releasedon appeal and the charges subsequently dropped after the case receivedwidespread international publicity and offers of aid. Responding to the outcry, the Moroccan government prom- ised reforms,with Prime Minister Abdellatif Fillali opening channels for Berber-languageprogramming in the national broadcastmedia and the late King Hassan II declaringin his uutismeme Hoyaimsmire oI me Amazlg0 August 1994 ThroneDay speech that Amazigh "dialects"were Cuture, "one of the components of the authenticity of our history" Riyadh and owned by the Group Ominum North Africa, the and in should theory be taught in state schools. Since this largest Moroccan enterprise controlled by the royal family. speech, Amazigh associationsand newspapers(now number- The IRCAM is building its own state-of-the-artfacility whose in double ing digits) have flourishedthroughout Morocco. In monumental design incorporates a number of recognizable a variety of chartersand internationaldeclarations, Amazigh Amazigh motifs. The administrativeand researchcenters are militants have promulgateda redefinitionof Morocco on the fabulouslyequipped with the latesttechnology, and the library basis of its pre-colonial and pre-IslamicBerber heritage, and has actively acquired printed and audiovisual materials. Re- have sought political change to preserveBerber culture and gardlessof any actual policies put in place by IRCAM, such as language a "human right." expenditures constitute a bold public relations gambit, per- To address these demands the state created IRCAM. The forming the commitment to transparentcultural qua human institute's 33-member administrative council was recruited rightsdemanded by US and Europeaninterlocutors who hold through the Amazigh associationalstructure, with an appar- the purse strings for development aid and could recommend ent to attempt garneran equal representationof activistsfrom admittance into the European Union. Morocco'srecent posi- the three major Berberophoneregions in the Rif, the Middle tive dialogues with the UN and the State Department attest Atlas and the Sous. Amazigh militants with technical training to the gambit'sinitial success.3 and advanced degrees have likewise been incorporated into the institute'sseven researchcenters charged with linguistic OppositionalPolitics standardization,pedagogical development, artisticexpression, anthropological analysis, historical preservation,translation The repercussions of the establishment of IRCAM for the and media promotion, and communication. Salariesoffered Amazigh movement and Moroccan oppositional politics to researchersare superior to what could be earnedin the state are harder to judge. On the one hand, the institute has suc- school system or even as a teacher in the burgeoning private ceeded in bringing togetherAmazigh militants from different education market. associationsand ideological factions. On the eve of the dahir, Boasting an estimated annual budget of $ioo million, the three distinct and opposed groups could be identified: the institute is temporarilyhoused in a hyper-modern commer- "royalist"Mouvement National Populaire and its allied asso- cial center located in the posh Rabat neighborhood of Hayy ciations, drawing their major support from the Middle Atlas; 45 MIDDLEEAST REPORT 233 *? WINTER2004 45 the "historical,""moderate" AMREC based in Rabat, whose been transformed into de facto representativesof the state membership is essentially the urban intelligentsia; and the (al-makhzen). Opponents are outspoken in their belief that "left-wing"Tamaynunt/Universite d'Ete d'Agadir,which drew the institute works in the interest of global forces of Arab its base primarilyfrom the Sous. Among militants employed nationalism, publicly declaiming that "IRCAM = IRCAN" in the researchcenters, these divisions proved untenable and ("filth"in the Tashelhit dialect). soon largelybroke down. Dissenters point to several recent institute decisions as On the other hand, the establishment of IRCAM has ef- evidence of IRCAM's hidden "divide and conquer" strategy fectively split the movement into two macro-factions:those with respect to the transnational Amazigh movement. In who support the institute's agenda, and those who oppose it, the first place, they object to the official adoption of the Ti- either on principle or out of resentment for not having been finagh script as the standardmeans to write Berberlanguage recruited into it. Activists who joined the institute attest to in Morocco. The 2003 decision was highly contested within the difficulty of the choice, of their foreknowledge that they IRCAM, decided by only a handful of votes according to one would lose credibility in the eyes of their peers, but in the of the members of the administrative council, and derived end they believed that they had a better chance of facilitat- in large part from members' fears of threatened Islamist re- ing change by working within the system. Today they are prisals should the Latin script have been adopted. Although often denounced by some of their former comrades as hav- officially couched in a language of cultural authenticity, the ing been makhzenise(or even ircamise), of literally having adoption ofTifinagh was, in the end, a political compromise. Nevertheless, many Amazigh militants view the decision as a thinly veiled ploy to separateMoroccan Berbers from those in Kabyliaor diasporaFrance where Ber- ber language (Tamazight) is written in the Latin alphabet.They also understand the production of separate textbooks in the three major Moroccan Berber dialects (Tarifit, Tamazight and Tashel- hit), instead of the standard e Tamazight $4 developed by Paris-based linguists, as part of an effort not only to divide the I ri international Berbercommunity, but to -I.^ fragment the national one as well. n w .^ -Q~ Although peripheral Amazigh activ- BEHIND THE IMPERIALISM ists are happy to benefit from IRCAM's INVASION OF WITHOUT COLONIES IRAQ I.. largesse (in terms of invitations to con- RESEARCH UNIT o HARRY MAGDOFF ferencesor offersto publish their poetry), FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY with an Introduction =1, they criticize it for monopolizing the Ib;s- by JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER "Thisbook contributessignifi '4 public expression of Berber culture at '. This is cantlyto the conversationseeki] ng "0 an indispensableguide the expense of smaller associations and to the basicforces at workin the efforts. With to understandthe internationa ., grassroots organizational of the 21st forcesat playin the threatening globalpolitics century. IRCAM's huge budget and ability to waron Iraq." attract additional militants to Rabat, -NELSON MANDELA $ "HarryMagdoff is a great public funds and activist support for teacherand an indomitable local efforts at social development and combatant.His contributionsto cultural have more "Synthesizesthe seemingly preservation proven socialist and more scarce, and Vprate threadsof the U.S. w; ar Ig theory-on imperialism many Amazigh associations are their doors. :ii.Ina blisteringindictmen Lt aandmonopolistic developments, as closing With their access to media i~A: n foreignpolicy.. well as on the vital role of planning privileged ? outlets, IRCAM and the Rabat-based Th~~ i'. of puzzlepieces for any viable society of the future- areof a Centre Tarik bin Zyad run by Hassan i!:}eo!.}:r:P$: : . s place. trulylasting importance." " -ISTVAN M_SZAROS Aourid, the king's official spokesman (porte-parole),have indeed become the _:i ;| ';Fs6- -48367-09 )3-9 $17.00 1-58367-094-7 i paper/l60pp/ISBN: primary centers for the representation n ^70n 9499 OR ,,,,2121 691-2555,,, of Berberness.A potent example of this monopolization is the Imilchil festival,

MIDDLEEAST RkI'OKI 233 * WINTER2004 46 MIDDLEEAST RtPOn I 233* WINTER2004 the annual High Atlas moussemwhere young Berbermen and women marry supposedly outside of familial negotiations. Promoted by the Moroccan state over the last ten years as a F- tourist destination, the festival had become an opportunity RABAT -' for local culturalassociations to support their yearlyactivities ;= by vending High Atlas Berber arts and crafts, or by being paid by the state for their musical and dance performances. In the moussemwas taken over Aourid's Ethnolinguistic Groups 2004, however, by E Arabic center, which promoted it as an "Amazigh"event, bringing I Berber in performancegroups from acrossMorocco, Algeria, France :3 Arabicand Berber and Canada. Local associations were excluded from the RIF Selectedtribal groupings j organization and enactment of the festival, a symbolic and financial blow that has elicited much criticism. FREE HAND PRESS In this sense, IRCAMand its sisterRabat organizations have furtherradicalized a number of Amazigh militants in the Mo- roccanhinterland and exacerbateda long-standingurban-rural and high-profile Rabat-basedhuman rights organizations to divide. In newspapereditorials, on e-mail list-serves,through lift the threat of legal repercussions. photocopied tractsand duringperiodic public demonstrations, these critics have adopted an increasinglyextremist discourse "Arabo-lslamicImperialism" in the face of what they see as a persistenceof the dominance of an ArabizedFez elite. They bemoan the lack of Berberrep- In addition to maintaining a state of low-intensity conflict resentationin the upperechelons of the governmentand claim between the Amazigh movement and the state, peripheral the right to create an Amazigh political party.They decry the Amazigh extremism has furthered a rift within Moroccan economic marginalizationof Berberophonerural areas and call oppositional politics that, ironically, has benefited the state. for sustainedstate investment in infrastructure.They demand While the Moroccan left-along with the vast majorityof the the protection of tribal lands from ongoing expropriationby Moroccan population, Arab- and Berberophone alike-has state agents and private speculators, identifying land, like been vehemently opposed to the US-led war on terror and language, as an essential part of Berberidentity. Finally,they occupation of Iraq, Amazigh militants tend to see Saddam promulgate the recognition of Tamazightin the constitution Hussein and Osama bin Laden as part of the same scourge as a national and official language of Morocco, and therefore of "Arabo-Islamicimperialism" that threatens their cultural a mandatory subject in all schools, not just those attended particularity.They are proud to have been among the first to by mostly Berberophone students. The current linguistic offer their public condolences to the US ambassadorin the educationalsituation, they insist, will only ensure the demise days immediately after the September II, 2001 attacks. They of Berber language and the further marginalizationof rural later came out strongly in favor of the invasion of Iraq and Berberophones. were beside themselveswith joy over news of the capture of The radical nature of these demands has brought these Saddam. In Goulmima, residentshave even joked that Bush Amazigh militants into occasional confrontation with state must be himself an Ait Murghad (the local Berbertribe), go- authorities. On August 29, 2001, Moroccan national security ing as far as creatinga fictive genealogy to incorporatehim as officials brought into custody two of the members of Tilelli their symbolic brother. Indeed, their only reproachfor Bush who had previouslybeen arrestedin I994 and informed them was why he had not alreadytaken the battleto Saddam's"Arabo- that they would be rearrestedand tried for treason for any Baathist"neighbors in Syria. future participation in demonstrations. In March 2004, five In like fashion, these peripheralAmazigh militants have other Tilelli members were similarly threatened with arrest increasinglyrefused to voice active support for the Palestin- for taking part in an unauthorizedsit-in to protest the state's ian struggle, viewing the hegemonic pro-Palestinianpolitics cession of five hectares of tribal land to a private investor. of the Moroccan left as a poignant example of imposed Arab More poignantly, on April 21, 2004, during a march orga- nationalism.This unwillingnessto criticizeIsraeli state actions nized to commemorate the twenty-fourth anniversaryof the stems in part from a largerphilo-Semitic discourse adopted Berber Spring, four student militants from the University of by many Amazigh activists.While by no means the agents of Agadir branch of the MCA were detained, interrogatedand the Israelistate that Islamistsoccasionally accuse them of be- severely beaten by police. In every case, association leading, some Amazigh militants have activelysought to reconcile ers used the Amazigh press and the virtual organization of Jewish and Berberpopulations, and have publicly advocateda Amazigh militancy on e-mail list-serves and websites to call normalizationof relationswith Israel.They generallysee in the rapid attention to the confrontations and elicit support. In Israelisa direct parallelfor the Amazigh struggle:a minority severalcases, militants used their ties to members ofIRCAM people who succeeded in codifying and saving a threatened

47 MIDDLEEAST REPORT 233 ?* WINTERWINIER2004 47 EDITOR'SPICKS

American Friends Service Committee. When TheStruggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Klare, Michael. Blood and Oil: TheDangers and the Rain Returns: TowardJustice and Recon- Aftermath of World War II (Monroe, ME: ConsequencesofAmerica's Growing Dependency ciliation in Palestineand Israel (Philadelphia: Common Courage Press, 2004). on ImportedPetroleum (New York:Metropoli- American Friends Service Committee, tan Books, 2004). Human Rights Watch, Morocco:Human Rightsat 2004). a Crossroads(New York, October 2004). Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Cohen, P. TheIdea Middle East: The and Politics Ori- Stephen ofPakistan (Washing- International Crisis Group, Iraq: Can Local History of DC: Institution entalism ton, Brookings Press,2004). GovernanceSave Central Government?(Am- (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Collins, John. Occupied by Memory: 7he Inti- man/Brussels,October 2004). Generationand the Palestinian State in the WesternSahara fada of International Crisis Group, Who Governs the Shelley, Toby. Endgame Emergency(New York:New York University WestBank? Palestinian Adminstration Under (London: Zed Books, 2004). Press, 2004). Israeli Occupation (Amman/Brussels, Sep- Swisher, Clayton. The TruthAbout Camp David Eppel, Michael. Iraqfrom Monarchyto Tyranny tember 2004). (New York:Nation Books, 2004). (Gainesville, FL: Press of Florida, University Al-Khafaji, Isam. TormentedBirths: Passagesto Warschawski,Michel. Towardan OpenTomb: The 2004). Modernity in Europe and the Middle East Crisis of Israeli Society (New York: Monthly Grodzinsky,Yosef. In the Shadowof the Holocaust: (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004). Review Press, 2004).

language, gained territorial autonomy nate some of the main forms of official Islamic laws for urban people (under- and is currently threatened by a sur- linguistic and cultural discrimination stood to be Arabs)and customary,"tribal" rounding Arab majority. in the Moroccan legal and educational laws for ruralpeople (understood to be Such pro-Americanism and philo- systems. It serves as a visible symbol Berbers),it does pave the way for differ- Semitism have brought many Amazigh of an emerging, state-sanctioned civil ent educationalformats in differentparts militants into direct conflict with the society intended to please international of the kingdom. The areaswhere Berber very leftist groups in which the majority observers.While a number of Amazigh is to be the language of instruction are of them cut their political teeth in the activists have embraced the institute's in largepart the countrysiderather than university student unions during the potentialto fostereducation in the native the city, making ruraland urban educa- 1970s and I98os. Accusing the Moroc- tongue for ruralchildren and to promote tion even more separate-and even less can left of latent Arab nationalism, a Berber art and culture in urban public equal. In protestingthese clearlydivisive numberofAmazigh associationsrefused spaces,others critiquethese overturesas policies, Moroccan Amazigh militants to participatein-and even actively op- culturalcooptation by the statedesigned have turned to their transnational in- posed-the various anti-war ralliesand ultimately to divide the transnational terlocutors, soliciting diaspora Berber May Day demonstrations organized in Amazigh movement. One recalls that associations and international bodies the past severalyears. The disagreement the late King Hassan II was skilled at supporting autochthonous peoples' over the Palestinian question has even manipulating ethnic politics, "playing rights. Rather than an imagined mod- occasionallybroken out into violent con- differentfactions off againstone another, ernist national unity, the establishment frontationsbetween the two movements. thereby gathering decisive power into of IRCAM may serve to underwritere- In what the Amazigh press decried as his own hands."4Perhaps, the Moroc- gional entrenchment and a form of op- "pseudo-Marxist terrorism" (al-irhab can monarchy requires divisive ethnic position politics that seeks to bypassthe al-mutamarks),on December 23, 2003 politics in order to function. nation-state, not strengthen it.m members of the Marxist Basistestudent But its effectson beyond fragmenting Endnotes movement brutallyknifed a handful of opposition politics, the establishmentof student union membersat the IRCAM underlines how, 1 This figure is likely decreasing given the progressive Amazigh increasingly, Arabizationof the previouslyFrancophone education system, Universityof Errachidiawhen the latter cultural and linguistic expression has and the increasein migrationto Arabophonecities in the north of the country.See Salem Chaker,Imazighen ass-a refusedto participatein an examstrike in been articulatedas a fundamentalhuman [Berberesdans le Maghrebcontemporain] (Algiers: Editions with the the in Morocco and If, Bouchene,1989) for statistics on estimatednumbers of Berber solidarity intifada.Although right internationally. speakersin North Africa. details of the attack remain contested- on an internationallevel, the protection 2 Forhistories of Amazighactivism in Morocco,see Chaker, with some that the conflict was of cultural has been as op cit.; David Crawford,"Morocco's Invisible Imazighen," claiming rights postulated Journal ofNorth African Studies 7/I (2002); and Bruce Maddy- as raciallyas ideologicallymotivated-it a precondition for entry into the ranks Weitzman,"Contested Identities: Berbers, 'Berberism' and the State in North Africa,"Journal of NorthAfrican Studies does point to the ways in which Moroc- of democracies,on a domesticlevel it has 6/3 (200I). can oppositional politics have become been upheld as a means of fostering na- 3 The StateDepartment country report (February 25, 2004) is onlineat http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003127934. violently fragmented in the years since tional unity. But, ironically,the IRCAM htm. See also Human RightsWatch's cautiously positive as- sessment,Morocco: Human Rights at a Crossroads(October the establishmentof IRCAM. dahir seems to fetishize Berbernessin a 2004). way that is reminiscentof the protector- 4 EdwardH. Thomas,"The Politics of Languagein Former ate-era"Berber dahir" that inflamedMo- Colonial Lands:A ComparativeLook at North Africaand UnintendedConsequences CentralAsia," Journal of NorthAfrican Studies 4/I (1999). roccannationalist in I930. While See also Abdallah Hammoudi, Masterand Disciple: The passion CulturalFoundations ofMoroccan Authoritaianism (Chicago: The creationof IRCAMhas helped elimi- the new dahir does not outline separate University of Chicago Press, I997).

MIDDLEEAST REPORT 233. WINIER2004 48 MIDDLEEAST REPORT 233 , WINTER2004