Newspaper article 19, Contraband Modern in the Fes Medina

The phenomenon of smuggling undermining the national economy: what is the way out?

The foundation of a strategy for developing the Northern Provinces

(Alanbaa, Edition 7, 29 May 2000)

Once you set your feet into the province Alkasr Elkabir, while you are heading towards the north of Morocco, you feel that you are entering a new world, which is different from the one you have come from. Things start to change, starting from dialect to social and cultural customs to the economy.

The first thing that draws your attention is the existence of foreign goods and products in abundance in the cities you will visit in the North, starting from Alkasr Elkabir, Larache, and Assilah, into Berkane and Oujda, through Tangiers, Tetouan, Chefchaouen, Houcima and Nador. These goods and products are of all types and categories, from foodstuff like cheese and biscuits to electronic devices, car mechanical pieces, clothes, sports shoes…etc. If you want other goods and products depending on your mood and desire, all that you have to do is to ask, request and wait. You may not wait for long to get what you want.

In fact, there is nothing surprising. Border cities and villages all over the world are known for this phenomenon, and even worse things. It is smuggling.

If you visit other Moroccan cities, cities not in the Mediterranean shores, where the movement of smuggling is active and effective to a maximum extent, you will find small markets and street vendors displaying smuggled goods for sale with little difference in prices.

According to the document handed out for participants in the Regional Forum of Tangiers and Tetouan, which had its meeting last week, the National Budget of the State loses about 10 to 15 billion dirhams every year because of the phenomenon of smuggling.

Causes

Before independence, the major cities of the North (Tangiers, Tetouan, and Larache) had many industrial factories. They used to represent the pole of a progressive or developing industrial, commercial and agricultural movement taking into account their humble economic, social and demographic condition.

It was a hard luck for the Northern region that the colonising country-Spain - kept two Moroccan cities under its full administrative control. These are Sebta and Mellilia, in addition to some Islands. Few years after independence, the two occupied Moroccan cities became huge sites for smuggling. Day in, day out, the temptation of smuggling became intense in the region and turned out to be the sole source for people to earn a living. After 40 years, Morocco has found itself in front of a real and a complicated problem, indeed intensely complicated. It is the phenomenon of smuggling, whose treatment requires a lot of work, stuff, effort and planning.

The mirror of Morocco

In February, 1948, His Majesty, the late Hassan the Second, received a committee representing all sectors in the North. The commission was made of scholars, Sheriffs (people believed to be of saintly ancestry), tradesmen, craftsmen, farmers, workers, presidents of city councils and some associations. What he stated in the speech he gave to the representative committee of the Northern region was: “You are located, geographically speaking, in the North of Morocco and on the off shores of the Mediterranean Sea. You represent the window through which the foreign Europeans get to know about how Morocco is, what its health is like, and how the Moroccan mind functions. More clearly, as Morocco is like a house, you are the glass front of it. If it is good, people will see the good. If it is evil, people will see the evil.”

This was the first time in which the problem of the North was not approached from a political, economic, social and cultural perspective but neither the preceding nor the following governments were able to deal efficiently with the problem of the North from this comprehensive perspective.

The Northern cities, along the Mediterranean region which is 350 kilometres long, and which is inhabited by approximately 6 million, are not equipped with solid and appropriate infrastructure; nor are there sufficient ports for either tourist activity or trade or even maritime fishing, nor enough basic or secondary roads to link them to big and medium cities so as to break isolation of the rural world. And isolation in the Northern region is real, and it goes without saying that anyone who lives in the Northern region should feel that. Deep isolation from the urban environment, and the harsh geographical nature-mountains, difficult topography and rocky valleys has had a major role in the creation of this isolation, but such natural obstacles do not set free the national planners from the responsibility of attention and care about the condition of citizens in the Northern village….This does not also mean that urban areas are in a better state than that of the rural ones. Such emotions of exclusion, marginalisation, frustration and disappointment are still dominant in many citizens no matter what their social class, cultural background and economic status are.

The late Hassan the Second, set up, in 1984, a new mode of thinking to save the North from its miserable conditions in all sectors. In several occasions, he drew the lines for strategies to promote the Northern regions as an outlet from the locked tunnel founded by the policies, circumstances, attitudes and choices.

The Agency for the Animation of the North

The foundation of the Northern Development Agency by the late Hassan the Second was one of the tools which exerted full efforts to achieve real development in the region. But, the reality, after 10 years from its founding date, shows that the agency had ambitious programmes and long-term strategies, but scarce resources. It was expected during the first years of the agency that aids from the European Union would flow abundantly into the North in return for an effort made by Morocco to abolish the agriculture of hashish in the region, but the European Union did not keep its engagement in this regard and hence the interventions of the agency remained very limited.

Promising horizons

After Mohamed the Fifth’s ascension to the throne, he carried out many visits to the provinces of the North, and made strong allusions to the civilizational meaning represented by the region. He has also emphasised Morocco’s ability to face the challenges imposed by the situation of the Northern region: smuggling, clandestine immigration, the spread of unemployment, and many aspects of underdevelopment. In fact, more than one practical initiative have been started or will start to convert such allusions to real and concrete achievements: the highway between Tetouan and Fnidak, the partnership between the Mediterranean side of Morocco and the Andalusian government, and the expansion in the creation of new industrial zones in Tangiers, Tetouan, Nador and Larache, in addition to the strategies and ideas whose implementation will start in a few months. All that will definitely contribute to the abolishing of the phenomenon of smuggling. Although some other steps are still needed on the part of the government or the private sector, what is important is to start and put the train on its rails, especially since Morocco is on the edge of decisive and delicate political, economic and social challenges.

Translator: Layachi El Habbouch