Newspaper articles 28, Contraband Modern in the Fes Medina

It is not a mere commercial movement between Morocco and Spain. It is not a mere net commercial exchange. Rather, it is the other face of a future dominated by bribery that has its emperors and barons heralding the doom of the national economy and paralysing it. How then does it coincide with the prevalence of bribery and corruption deeply rooted in the national establishments?

Contraband is an Evil that Eats up our National Economy and Paralyses the Movement of Development …

Who Will Stop this Bleeding?

By Mohammed Faris
Annahar Daily, No.60, January 16, 204

In our conversation with a Spanish friend from occupied Ceuta, this friend literally told me that “Morocco is a very strong country. Were Spain, for instance, daily exposed to this looting and sabotage, it would collapse in less than a year. But your country Morocco and despite this bleeding, “HEMORRAGHIA”, it remains standing on its feet …”

That is how that Spaniard spoke of contraband that devours up our national economy and brings about the collapse of our establishments. It forces companies and factories to close down which leads to the displacement of families. It drives our national product to stagnation. The financial losses caused by this illegal activity surpass those brought about by natural disasters such as quakes, floods and drought. Yet, whereas such disasters are fated and predestined, the calamities of contraband are manmade. On this basis, it is avoidable and rescuing the land and people from its danger and tragedies is possible when there is the good will, when the true patriotic spirit is prevalent and when there exists a wise, rational policy to deal with this evil firmly and efficiently. Smuggling is a dangerous hole in the budget bag of our country. This hole is enlarged with time despite the seasonal solutions and media campaigns that have proved useless like the other campaigns on which are spent the millions.

Smuggling and the Bastard Capitalism ….

To be more objective and credible, we shall not grapple at this juncture with contraband nationally. We shall concentrate on the region of the North, given that we are eye-witnesses. We lived the phenomenon through seventeen years night and day. We witnessed a number of tragedies and shameful scenes related to this devastating activity that has produced a bastard capitalism. It has also paved the way for the emergence of a backward bourgeois class that has not gone through the stages of development the upper class usually passes through, especially in occupied Ceuta, Alahwash and the regions next to it. This has resulted in breeding corrupted morals, suspicious behaviour and institutions eaten up from within. In this context, the city of Fnidaq is considered an example of what smuggling may lead to and refutes the claims of those who try in vain to lend this devastating phenomenon some advantages. These regions lack economic locations, industrial zones and agricultural activities. Worse, they lack all that can symbolize any developmental signs or social improvement. However, you find these regions crowded with inhabitants, visitors and those coming from everywhere. What is then the reason behind this energetic movement? It is contraband and nothing but contraband which is practiced via Bab (the door of) Ceuta, Penyounch’s passage and other passages surrounding occupied Ceuta…

Bab Ceuta or the Door of Corruption

Every day, you are terrified by the queuing crowds waiting to pass to our occupied territory in a shameful scene. We find that all the Moroccan cities and regions are represented in these large crowds that number in the thousands. All have come to practice contraband, bring garbage to our country and destroy our national economy. Most of these crowds work for grand smugglers in most of the Moroccan cities. They are mere “carriers” of both sexes. Among them as well are the blind and the disabled and others who can attract the sympathy of those entrusted with protecting our national economy! Actually, the police were taken in time and again by the appearances of these people. It is difficult for us to exempt the police from accusation for among them are those who have become corrupt, unpatriotic and unconscientious under the weight of temptation and illegal, fast profit. 

Bab Ceuta witnesses the passing of 30 000 persons practising smuggling on a daily basis. We have excluded those who enter for other purposes such as prostitution consisting of girls who have sex with Spanish men, the old and the retired. We shall devote a file to this phenomenon. Add to this the beggars who get in together with their children and who spend the day on the pavement, which is not of relevance to our topic. Bab Ceuta witnesses the passing of more than 10 000 cars of all sizes every day. Knowing that every person returns laden with more than 500 dirhams of smuggled goods, the daily sum total will be horrible by dint of a simple calculating operation. But, if you multiply the sum total for a month, then the total for a year, the result will be disastrous by all measures. This is as concerns pedestrians. Concerning the passengers, some cars are loaded at least with 20 000 00 dirham worth of goods. Some of these cars go out at night for obvious reasons.

These statistics solely concern Bab Ceuta. As regards the passage of “Penyonach”, the disaster is no less critical. This passage, closed by the occupation authorities for three months because of chaos and the clash between citizens and border guards, witnesses the passage of 15 000 of pedestrians, the passage being for persons and not for cars.

Some smugglers have come from afar and reside there for the residence certificate enables the inhabitant to have access to Ceuta without any need to a visa. This accounts for the phenomenon of bribery given to the agents of colonialism who mediate with occupation authorities to provide those with “licences of passage” to occupied Ceuta. However, contraband that passes through this passage is lesser than that which comes through Bab Ceuta but it is higher in value. Besides, some houses nearby the imagined borders become stores for smuggled goods. These goods remain there until it is possible to transport them to their owners in different cities. Last year, the customs agents seized in these houses goods that amount to two billions and a half dirham. The transportation of these goods required a large number of huge trucks which shows the seriousness of the situation and how exhausted our national economy has been for years and still is.

It is needless to say that the region has other maritime passages mostly used by trained “carriers” who swim with goods of heavy weight. They work for grand smugglers. At one night there may arrive sixty people at the rocky beaches, every one of them swimming with smuggled goods that amount to more than four millions dirham brought in this way which is emblematic of professionalism and rare boldness. But, where is surveillance and control? That is a question which I call upon the reader to answer.

The Kind of Smuggled Goods

In addition to foodstuff, perfumes, soap and washing powders, what the customs usually seizes in taxis on roads especially between Fnidaq, Tangiers and Tetuan which are very easy operations, are highly expensive goods that we do not find in the customs stores, such as fashionable clothes including posh or leather garments, electronic commodities especially cell phones and its complements, digital cameras and car tyres. The sum total of these goods is estimated at 150 millions dirham every day, as a retired official has let out to us. To confirm the truthfulness of these concealed figures just visit shops in Tetuan and Tangiers (Funduq Ashajarah and Casa Barata market in particular) and wonder how these goods have passed through. This suggests that there is something wrong, that bribery is at work. Were these goods brought by means of parachutes in nightly operations? We are not the right persons to answer these questions. There are people that are professionally and legally qualified to provide answers.

Organised Smuggling and its Routes

Organized smuggling is practiced in various ways. Some of it passes through strenuous ways via mountains and valleys in convoys that usually make use of dense fog and dreary weather. These convoys are preceded by explorers, “éclaireurs”, to make sure that the way is safe, while customs agents engage in daily tourism in Toyota cars along the road, stopping some cars, inspecting them and seizing some bags to throw dust into the eyes. This is by no means an efficient method if we really want to combat this phenomenon.

Moreover, cars used for smuggling called “fighters” pass by night at certain hours. These are old but fast cars and with no lights or seats usually preceded by empty cars whose drivers communicate via cell phones to inform those driving the loaded cars of the condition of the route via an organised, flawless system till the fighters reach their destinations safe and wealthy. However, in the morning when the sun looms large, customs officers engage in combating “smuggling”. They collect goods from here and there, and then say “we are fighting contraband”. This is but a game that only the naïve believes. 

According to experts, this kind of smuggling will cost our country more than a billion dirhams on a daily basis. These are not random figures. They are selected from pronouncements made by some upright customs employees who are not satisfied with what happens to our national economy. We in the Nahar newspaper thank them, laud their collaboration with us and applaud their patriotism, unlike some who evaded giving us a hand while compiling this file. By the same token, we dare if those people can give out their possessions for the phenomenon of quickly and illegally rising to wealth is prevalent among some of these. A case in point is that employee who joined the province of Tetuan who in less than eight months became the owner of an apartment that is worth 45 million dirham. Are they courageous enough to declare their possessions let alone the posh cars which their colleagues of the like echelon do not possess in other cities in the kingdom? Can we talk of combating smuggling and this is the status quo? Is smuggling truly and genuinely being fought by like persons? In fact, I doubt that and my doubts are justifiable.

The Phenomenon of Smuggling Petrol …

This concerns cars which numbers in tens. These cars enter occupied Ceuta nearly empty of petrol and return with their tanks brimful of smuggled petrol. Once you know that a petrol-tank is capable of holding sixty litres of petrol, you will easily know the amount of money got out of this product when smuggled by one hundred cars. Each car makes ten journeys per day. Many a point for selling smuggled petrol exists in Fnidaq besides engine oils, spare parts and so on and so forth. The phenomenon of smuggling petrol is difficult to seize. However there is always a possible means that must be figured out to restore things to their natural course. With this exhaustion, our country cannot develop and progress and even the circumstances of war are a lot more merciful and less devastating.

The Development of Means of Smuggling in Bab Ceuta

When professional smugglers observed that national newspapers talk about an organised smuggling and another done for a living accounted for by dreary, economic conditions and unemployment among other things, they made use of this and wrapped their organised smuggling in the robes of that done for bread winning. Many a reporter has been fooled by the trick and among them is the writer of this report. Professional smugglers have exploited the trodden upon as widows, divorcees, children, beggars and the handicapped to transport smuggled goods through Bab Ceuta which daily becomes a spacious array of goods coming from occupied Ceuta. Eighty two per cent of divorced women come from every where to do this job for grand smugglers. Add to this thirty per cent of the handicapped who fill their wheel-chairs with expensive products, which makes it hard for customs officers to inspect these wheel-chairs. Concerning children, it is impossible to provide figures. Children go out laden with goods and run back to do other rounds, etc. However, the question that urgently poses itself is: is it lawful to solve social problems by means of devastating problems such as smuggling? Can a disease be cured by another less dangerous disease? The logic of reason answers in the negative. This is certain. But, the logic of justification responds with an untrue saying that “the ends justify the means”, but for how long?

Contraband and Human Rights

If in the minds Bab Ceuta is linked with daily smuggling operations, there is another facet to this door, no less hideous. Any government wherever it may exist that cannot solve the problem of a tiny square such as Bab Ceuta cannot, given the status quo, solve the problems of a large country called Morocco. All the successive governments closed their eyes to the problems and tragedies of Bab Ceuta despite its danger and sensitivity, located at the imagined borders with occupied Ceuta. Spanish media have already made use of what is happening there to discredit us. All of us remember what we saw once on the Spanish second

Channel in a program entitled “The Live Witness” which was presented by a journalist called Mary Carmen. The program’s hidden camera showed dishonourable scenes whose protagonists were some of the customs officers in Ceuta. They were taken unawares and with them of course were their complacent superiors in the honourable customs administration. We commented on the program back then and tried to defend the reputation of our country but the image taken by the camera remains more powerful and truer than the pen. Nothing, thus, can be done.

Besides bribery, the abuse of power and favouritism that smashed all records and besides the crimes, which in addition to thefts, reached epidemic rates, there are other aspects epitomised in legal encroachments associated with human rights. I do not think that combating contraband necessarily requires breaking the simplest of these rights for which we have established a ministry that monthly costs us millions to no avail very much like contraband itself which dramatically and constantly exhausts our resources. In more than one point in the region of the North some customs officers whom this stupid family is plagued with indulge in immorality and disrepute the country in Bab Ceuta, exhaust the people in roads in the name of combating contraband. Contraband they do not combat nor prevent but in a figment of their imagination and God bears witness over that. They wrong people and take the law-abiding for the law breaker, detain the weak instead of the powerful smuggler, arrest the needle and let go of the elephant for a couple of days. Yet, they provide ample data and visual scenes for those who intend to conduct research in the field of the trespassing of human rights, the abuse of power and the hampering of the law with the total lack of inspection and surveillance.

Bab Ceuta, considered an example in the smashing of teeth, has witnessed scenes that take us back to the dark period of colonization. Bitter beating, breaking the bones of men and women, the young and the old and aborting pregnant women and slapping young girls who have nothing to do with smuggling as happened to a female teacher last Wednesday 24th. We can give a detailed description of facts, names and dates in this regard. Yet, some cases were presented before the court but as always they are resolved through reconciliation or giving up the lawsuit. How is all this possible? I don’t know. They have become experts in such matters. Bab Ceuta has its own law, advocates that make their best to retain the status quo. As an intellectual has it, when there is a corrupted state of affairs, there are those who benefit thereof and endeavour to preserve it. Bab Ceuta is by no means an exception.

For instance, in 1997 a customs officer beat a pregnant woman and she aborted instantly. In 2001, a woman had a bone broken by a customs officer. Only a policewoman who was present in the place rescued her from his clutches. In 2002, another pregnant woman aborted as she was kicked and trodden upon but she gave up the law-suit and declined to reveal anything to reporters after having insisted on meeting them. In 2003, a citizen’s skull was smashed after which he was taken to hospital. In 2000, a citizen was shot in his thigh which all our national newspapers investigated. In 2001, a citizen poured petrol on his body and ignited himself in Bab Ceuta and was taken by Spanish authorities for treatment. Legal, non-governmental organizations in Morocco as in Spain condemned the accident. While we were preparing this file, an old woman let us see the traces of beating on her thigh and right side by a customs officer in Bab Ceuta. We can give many examples but we solely depicted the events we wrote about at the time of their happening. We can give names of victims and the names of the miscreants, which we will do in a special periodical on this issue.

Concerning newspaper reporters, they have also got their due lot of the violence customs officers enact in Bab Ceuta. Some reporters were beaten, some had their cameras broken, their films ruined and their documents seized in order not to reveal to the public opinion their secrets, bad intentions and unspeakable atrocities. But now their misdeeds lie bare to all, yet justice has not yet run its course. Bab Ceuta deserves par excellence to be called the door of corruption. The human construction of the crews working there must be reconsidered as long as they do not honour the country and as long as they incur on us the mockery of the colonizer who pokes fun at us and exploits these scenes to defame us besides the daily millions he accumulates at the expense of our national economy. It is noticed that some officials have remained there for long years. In fact, some are removed and after a short time return to Ceuta, which raises a number of questions over the reasons and circumstances of this cursed return. Meanwhile, others are moved and never brought back. What is the reason? Here, too, we can easily give out names of those lucky officials in the customs administration. For these and other reasons, we say that it is high time we did away with the past. It is the time of re-construction to protect the country from all the hideous aspects of contraband and the devastating effects it causes.

Believe it or Leave it. It is the Truth

The village of Fnidaq or sorry the city of Fnidaq whose council was promoted from rural to urban, a promotion whose criteria we do not know, there exists a huge market, called the market of “The Green March”. Citizens come to this market from every where. This market, however, suffers from some aspects of anomaly. The citizen shops and no sooner than he leaves Fnidaq, he finds customs officials, one kilometre and a half far, waiting for him to disinvest him of all that he has bought from the market of “The Green March” with Moroccan money and on Moroccan soil. Is that reasonable, knowing that the citizen has not at all entered occupied Ceuta? He has shopped from a market guarded by Moroccan authorities and managed by a provincial council and whose merchants pay taxes to Moroccan Treasury. Then, all that you buy is considered contraband. From where did contraband enter this market? Answer me please.

In the market, you see the MP together with his household buying Chinese house-hold utensils of the “peacock” kind and he is the same MP who calls for fighting contraband. Here, as well, we can give famous names. You also find high-ranking employees choosing and purchasing. They do not leave until the car is laden with different precious products. An MP’s car loaded with smuggled goods was seized by the customs of Alcazar Assaghir. The goods were seized and he was set free together with his car. When I made a report concerning the subject the newspaper apologised and refused to publish the report for partisan reasons. Furthermore, you find customs officers in their civil clothes buying the very goods they fight while on duty.

In Bab Ceuta, you find posh cars returning from occupied Ceuta laden with such expensive goods as mosaic, tubes, wines, evening dresses, silk and clothing reminiscent of the emperor of China, etc. You will hear whispers here and there and a posh car passes which is in the possession of the family of so and so. All there is in wait for its driver and its passengers is a greeting with added politeness and giving of a passable way. After the “peg” passes safe and wealthier, the operation of fighting contraband starts again interspersed with “you stop there” and “pass by, sir”.

Contraband Eats up the Economy as Worms Devour Wood

No doubt, smuggling devastates the abilities of the nation, aborts every reformative policy, economically and socially. It dooms our companies and factories to bankruptcy, displaces our families and eternises our unemployment. Meanwhile, factories and companies of Spaniards revive, create job opportunities for their youths, and increase the wages of their workers by means of the billions we give them through smuggling. Then, we call upon them to invest in our country according to their rules. They invest in our country with our money that has gone to their pockets as a result of our ignorance and naivety. Is that reasonable?

The Losses in Contraband Equal those of War

Morocco’s losses are yearly estimated at billions of dirhams which Morocco pays in hard currency in return for goods smuggled to our country and most of which we do not need and a large proportion of which is unhealthy. They destroy our economy and threaten the health of citizens. In the propagandistic campaign “Afaq”, we notice that it stressed foodstuff and forgot the smuggling of the recharge cards of cell phones and medicines, let alone other dangerous things such as “qarqoubi” (hand-made drug), narcotic pills, wines, beer and heroin. The police of Fnidaq have already seized a quantity of this latter substance estimated at a kilogram and a half in a Renault car the number plate of which indicated Ceuta. Smuggling poses a threat not only on economy but also on bodily health, on the mentality and on the morals of the entire nation. The smuggler is a corrupt person in society whose concern is profit though at the expense of the country and the future of the generations. He who is lenient with him is more corrupt than him. It is no wonder that people have become rich in so short a time and come to count among the rich. It is no wonder, as well, that some agents of the authorities who have come to rank among the richest despite the pettiness of their wages. It is not surprising if some of them decline to move from the Northern regions. What is the secret behind this phenomenon if it is not corruption, epitomised in smuggling, that helps achieve fast enrichment? 

Do not be taken in by the slogan “fighting contraband” for the real contraband is not fought. The goods they show as smuggled goods are all but contrived and easily collected from here and there. These goods are mostly seized in taxis which are easy to inspect in broad daylight. Besides, some taxi drivers bring these goods on purpose to show goodwill and win the sympathy of the men of the customs while passengers do not realize anything that the whole thing is already studied and the game well-knit. On this basis, we say that fighting contraband has not yet started and will not start in the near future unless there occurs a radical change in reality and restructuring of the administration of customs. Moreover, it can only start with the creation of a studied, logical, developmental policy capable of providing alternatives to make the citizen do without this dangerous plague. Public life is to be moralised and the level of the citizen’s consciousness is to be raised via media which ply the viewer instead with trivialities through useless programs. It is true that campaigns are organised in this regard but they do not amount to electoral campaigns, for example. Why is this? In addition, the discourse adopted during these campaigns is cold, unexciting and unmoving, which gives the impression that it is not serious especially as it is not delivered by psychologists, sociologists and expert politicians. That goes for all that we devote a campaign to. Huge amounts of money are spent in total discordance with the achieved results if any at all. He proves true who says that “where there is a pervasive corrupt condition and that cannot be reformed there are behind the scenes those who capitalise on and profit by it”. Smuggling is one of these corrupt conditions, but for how long such corruption will hinder our movement and retard our progress? I do not know. Hence, smuggling will continue and develop as long as we always deal with the disease using sedatives instead of using medicine. Medicine, yes. But, the doctors have not come yet.

Translated by Abdelmjid Kettioui