Maghreb: the Weak and Vulnerable Wall of Europe
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MAGHREB: THE WEAK AND VULNERABLE WALL OF EUROPE A report by Javier Martín Added to this are elements of security that make it one of the main centers of world instability for the next two MAGHREB: decades: population growth, which is particularly worrying in a country with THE WEAK an excessive degree of political, economic and security uncertainty such as Algeria; the strengthening of AND jihadist movements, particularly in Libya, but also in southern Tunisia and in Algeria itself, the scene in the VULNERABLE last decade of the last century of an unfinished war between the state and WALL OF radical groups of Wahhabi ideology that left more than 300.000 dead, thousands of people disappeared and EUROPE many accounts pending in a collective memory that is still very much alive; and the proliferation of armed militias and transnational mafias, even connected with similar groups in 1.- Introduction southern Europe, which engage in all kinds of smuggling, from arms to people and food, but above all fuel, and which have turned the illicit trade The Maghreb region, which includes and the parallel economy into a Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia source of wealth and work for millions and Libya, has become one of the of citizens in Tunisia, Morocco, most unstable geopolitical borders of Algeria and Libya. the European Union in the last decade. A vast area inhabited by some In addition to the rampant criminality 95 million people - eighty percent of and the constant threat of terrorism, them in Algeria and Morocco -, there is also political fragility in a enclosed between the Mediterranean region predisposed to the neo- Sea and the Sahara desert, and caesarean trend that is sweeping the separating southern Europe from the Arab world due to the forced failure of Sahel, one of the most conflictive the so-called "Arab springs". In areas on the planet, with which it January 2011, tens of thousands of shares a wide range of structural Tunisians - mostly young - took to the problems: from poverty to corruption, streets crying out "freedom, rights, unemployment, economic and social and social justice". A protest inequalities, the technological deficit, movement that in just two weeks educational and infrastructure ended the exhausted dictatorship of underdevelopment, food insecurity the sick Zinedin el Abedin Ben Ali - and water stress which will be one of abandoned by an important part of his the largest in the world by 2040. regime- and that immediately spread to the rest of the nations of the MENA region for different reasons; In some administration, the government then of them, such as Egypt, the result of led by Prime Minister Yousef Chahed, the same disenchantment and the accepted a credit of some $2.8 billion same weakness of the system; In granted by the International Monetary others, such as Libya, driven by a Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in foreign agenda. exchange for a series of structural changes and austerity policies. In the Almost a time later, the libertarian terms of reference, both organizations movement only survives in Tunisia, demanded a reduction in the massive the scene of a democratic transition volume of the Tunisian administration, as exemplary as it is weak, supported changes in fiscal policy, opening of by very precarious pillars and full of markets, monetary stability, efficient chiaroscuro. The political reform - fight against corruption and other which concluded with the municipal measures including reductions. elections of 2018 - is considered a Requirements that the Tunisian success. However, none of the three government did not dare to implement demands that articulated the - fearful of social conflict - and which revolution have been accomplished: forced the IMF and the World Bank to the freedoms achieved after the turn off the tap of the promised revolts are in clear decline; the rule of credit. Cornered, Tunisia then turned law has progressed, but is still far to Arab money, lent on apparently from the standards of the most better terms. Saudi Arabia through developed countries in this area. And the ties established with the royal social justice is still a yearning that is family Al Saud by the late President not likely to be fulfilled: obsolete, Beji Caïd Essebsi, and Qatar through dependent on foreign aid and the relations between the monarchy in supported by the European powers, Doha and the Islamist movement the Tunisian economy suffers from the Ennahda, the first political force in same structural problems as in the the country. Even so, at the beginning t i m e s o f t h e d i c t a t o r s h i p of the third decade of the 21st - u n e m p l o y m e n t , c o r r u p t i o n , century, the economy - which remains governmental management errors and in the same parameters as before the lack of horizons-, and is immersed in revolution - is still too fragile a link an acute crisis, similar to the one that that threatens the stability of a triggered the uproar. political transition that has been Late in the first quarter of 2019, the successful. So do -to a lesser extent- concern and threats that had been the social advances, promoted and hanging over Tunisia since a chain of applauded during the revolution, and jihadist attacks in 2015 reaped the today in clear regression lives of 72 people - 60 of them One of the keys to the success of this foreign visitors - and ruined tourism, political transition is the ideological one of the pillars of its fragile and structural transformation carried economy, have become more acute. out by the "Ennahda" Islamist Harassed by creditors and the lack of movement, the main force in a liquidity, which even endangered the country that boasts a high degree of p a y m e n t o f s a l a r i e s t o t h e secularism. Caught in the dilemma that shakes all the groups emanating state, a victim of chaos and civil war from the "Nahda" - the Islamic revival in which two governments - both movement of the 19th century - and without democratic legitimacy - fight its main representative, the Muslim for control of territory and economic Brothers, forced to choose and resources supported by dozens of maintain the balance between the local militias and foreign private trends that pull towards radical military security companies (PSMCs) Salafism and those that opt for that profit from the first privatized war pragmatism, the movement founded in history. One, supported by the UN in Tunisia by Rachid Ghannouchi and in Tripoli, and the other under the Abdel Fatah Mouro chose the second tutelage of Marshal Jalifa Hafter, a one. In May 2015, after two years of former CIA-trained opposition exile, violence in which the most backward who from Tobruk dominates nearly forces in the group came close to eighty percent of the territory and the breaking up the transition, it exploitation of most of the oil separated preaching from political resources. Tripoli also has the action and became a conservative political, economic and military party with an Islamist leaning towards support of Qatar and, by extension, of like of the right in Europe. It did not Italy and Turkey, the latter being the abandon the Islamist agenda; it main defender of the city-state of simply chose to defend it and impose Misrata, with which it has maintained it from a more modern context, commercial and ethnic ties since the adapted to the new reality that times of the Ottoman Empire. Hafter, Tunisian society was experiencing. for his part, receives the same support Although he has lost the thrust of the from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and most radicals, who have shifted to the United Arab Emirates, which other parties, the gamble has brought provide him with weapons and air him positive results. In 2014 it superiority despite the arms embargo b e c a m e t h e s e c o n d f o r c e i n that has weighed on the country since Parliament - which was presided over the rebellion in 2011. It also receives b y M o u r o h i m s e l f - a n d t h e support from France, which has given fundamental pillar of the government it political stature, and from Russia led by the secular platform "Nidaa through PSMC as the Wagner Group, Tounis". Three years later, he won the owned by Yeugnei Prighozin, a municipal elections - the first in the Russian oligarch closely linked to country's democracy - and the President Vladimir Putin. The legislative elections in 2019, marshal, who has become the accumulating more power despite country's real strongman, has lifted a losing the presidency of the Republic siege on Tripoli in April 2019 with two and failing to form and lead the new clear objectives: to corner Misrata, his government. fiercest enemy; and to snatch from the UN-supported government its last center of power and resistance: Ten years after the rebellion that control of the National Oil Company overthrew Muammar al-Qadhafi's (NOC). From this division, from the dictatorship, Libya is still a failed anarchy and a war turned into a multinational pulse, diverse militias to the shipwreck of precarious boats and mafias take advantage, which leaving from North Africa. Thousands have turned Libya into the nucleus of more perished in the years following the great hypermarket of the Muammar's fall to Qadhafi. In 2019 a contraband that articulates the north total of 110,669 people managed to of Africa, from the lands of the Sahel reach the beaches of Spain, Italy and to the waters of the Mediterranean; Greece from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and in the bastion of heterogeneous and Libya on an irregular basis and jihadist groups, as much rooted 1,283 disappeared at sea.