Newspaper articles 26, Contraband Modern in the Fes Medina

Smuggling is a dangerous economic and social evil.

Smuggled, decayed products are the main reason behind the spread of cancer in the North.

The Revenues out of Smuggled Commodities from the Occupied Ceuta Daily Amount to 75 Million Dirhams.

By Mohammed Alasri
Alyassar Almowahad, No. 39, March 12-18, 2004

Smuggling is a forbidden commercial activity. It is prohibited and punished by the law. It hugely contributes to the hindrance of the economic and social development of Morocco. It hinders the process of the country’s economic progress in as much as it is symptomatic of a sickly state of affairs with which the commercial activity has been inflicted for a long time. And it causes huge financial losses. Despite the huge losses it causes the Moroccan economic and social surroundings it is practiced with freedom under the gaze of the officials and with the help of the vigilance and protection of some of them sometimes.

Smuggling in Morocco is multi-faceted and of many sorts. This has to do with its many sources, locations and regions. Its impact on the social and economic fields is disparate according to the disparity of its scope and the number of people working therein and to the degree of saleability and the demand for goods and the amount of capital invested therein. Likewise, the persons associated with it are of multiple affiliations and those working in it vary and differ according to the methods followed in their work and the size of operations they carry out in this domain.

Since smuggling is of different kinds and levels and occurs at numerous crossing points (ports, airports, borders) and since the degree of its impact on economy differs according to its size, we will today try to see how smuggling affects Moroccan commercial activity as well as the sanitary dangers it poses from the door of occupied Cueta. It must be mentioned that the figures issued on the subject are not official, given that most smugglers do not pass through the surveillance posts and customs. Besides, in our approach to the phenomenon we have drawn on the opinions of people concerned with the subject.

Negligence and Marginalization

The Northern regions are well-known for trading in smuggling. Working in this kind of forbidden activity entails insuring ways of making a living in the face of the locked doors to life and the lack of job opportunities. The Northern region has suffered throughout many a decade from negligence and marginalization as it has not been since Independence given the care it deserves that would enable it to transcend the critical situation that characterized it during the hideous, backward Spanish colonization whose sole end was to appropriate the riches and wealth of the region. It was not provided with the basic infrastructure be that in urban or rural areas. All the cities and villages of the North during the protectorate lacked the basic infrastructures and the social and economic institutions that can provide for society’s needs. The citizens in the North during Independence expected to be looked after through the development of the region to take it out of the indifference it has been plied with for a long time. Nothing of this happened. The status quo remains as it was before and even worsens after the departure of the colonizers who owned some industrial and commercial projects that employed a number of citizens.

The crisis prevalent in the region made citizens look for ways to make a living, especially those who became jobless after work stopped in the institutions the Spanish colonizers and foreign residents (Europeans, Indians, Jews, etc.) possessed, in the city of Tangiers in particular that witnessed an active economic movement given that it was an international zone. It was quite privileged alongside Tetuan since it was the headquarters of the vice-Sultan of Morocco and a base for the military and administrative leadership of the Spanish colonization. Thereafter, citizens found no way out apart from working in forbidden activities. Farmers cultivated Indian Cord (kif) as the demand for its derivatives increased in the national as well as the international market. Workers fired from closed down factories and economic institutions fell back upon smuggling for a living.

The Appearance of Smuggling Activities

We have seen how trading in smuggling has become an urgent living necessity dictated by the difficulty to earn a living via lawful ways. It is a matter that forced a number of the inhabitants of the Northern region to trade in smuggling. Work in this domain began since the early years of Independence. But it was simple and ordinary in its beginning as the circulation of all the Spanish and international goods that were available throughout all the regions of the North continued before the closing of the borders between the occupied Ceuta and the rest of the emancipated lands of the North. As time passed by, the scope of its spread widened and the number of those working in it grew. Thereby, all the goods smuggled from occupied Ceuta started to invade all Moroccan cities and villages and the demand for it grew due to the fact that the national market lacked a number of various consumer goods of quality. Interest in professing smuggling began in a remarkable way in the early 1960s as the international character of Tangiers was annulled and the borders with occupied Cueta were totally closed. Today, smuggling has become a basic activity for a large number of Moroccans throughout the whole country where ways, types and styles of dealing in it has varied. It has reached an advanced level of specialised professionalism and the bases and the stations of its entry have grown with the variety of the country’s borders. Products and goods traded in have varied and there appeared organised lobbies specializing in the field that have their organizations, structures and systems with profitable relations with many parties that benefit from the movement.

Professing smuggling has become a societal phenomenon that greatly contributes to minimizing the effects of poverty and beggary and provides the possibility of making a living for a great number of unemployed men and women. Smuggling, simultaneously, hinders the progress and development of national economic projects. Besides, the mechanisms of smugglers’ work and the size of their activities differ. For a huge number of ordinary citizens, the trade is a necessity forced upon them by poverty and the need to provide the necessities of everyday life. Yet, for the organisations specialised therein it is a great investment that yields unimaginable profits that enables them to amass huge riches at the expense of the public interest. The national economy is done harm because the competition between Moroccan and smuggled products is unequal. The size of trading in smuggling has grown in recent years and it is not restricted to Northerners anymore. It has become every jobless’s job all over Morocco. A huge number of people profess to it in many regions of the country. It is no longer the concern of those who daily make for Ceuta so as to bring out different smuggled goods. Yet, it has been practiced by grand “emperors” who invest huge amounts of money and benefit from an administrative support that helps them continue their activities with reassurance and regularity.

The impact of smuggling on the national economy

We have shown in what preceded the circumstances that compelled a large number of the inhabitants of the North to resort to smuggling. We have investigated the conditions it came to in the present as ways of practicing it developed and the parties concerned with it varied. We have seen how its range enlarged and how the size of its traders have increased until the existence of the products and goods smuggled from the two Northern, occupied cities Ceuta and Melilla in Moroccan markets, in their variety, has become a matter of a natural order and a truism that does not capture in the least the attention of citizens and those responsible for the economic and commercial sector. It is not considered a problem to seriously reckon with or for which to find out viable solutions. On the one hand, such solutions are to contribute to the protection of the national economy and, on the other hand, provide an alternative for those working in it, especially those who take it as the source of their daily living. The question of curing “smuggling cancer” has become an inevitable, economic priority to protect the national enterprise, provide the conditions for its thriving and success and shut the way in the face of smuggling mafias that accumulate wealth at the cost of the national interest. If the growing demand for smuggled products is owing to the latter’s decent prices and variety, smuggling can be combated only through efficient economic strategies that tend to provide alternative products of quality at affordable prices for the not well-paid Moroccan consumer. These are unavoidable conditions if we really want to found a solid, flexible, economic and commercial basis that is capable of supplying the national markets with products of quality capable of competing with their smuggled counterparts.

It is impossible to try to define the size of smuggled goods that enter Morocco through occupied Ceuta per se. Equally impossible is to enumerate and sort out the products grand smugglers transport to the different markets spread all over the country, given the super-colossal size of smuggled goods that daily cross the imagined borders and the abundance and variety of these goods; they are unaccountable and hard to seize. Stroll into one of the Northern markets specialised in circulating smuggled goods or in other markets spread all over Morocco and you will be struck by the huge amount of goods and smuggled products of various kinds and sizes, of different specifications, traits and uses. You can find in these markets all the consumer goods and foodstuff you need. The markets that circulate smuggled goods contain all the products and materials of agricultural and animal origin derived from grains and beans – varied pastries, sweets, vegetable and canned meats, milk derivativse, products of hygiene and cosmetic, perfumes of various kinds, household utensils, furniture in hundreds of displays, multi-function electric electronic machines, clothes, clothing, covers, shoes, toys, books, paper, copy-books, medicine, cars and different machine spare parts.
In short, the smuggled goods sold in national markets comprise all the products and goods a person needs in everyday life alongside other goods a particular kind of customers purchases. These goods are secretly sold to those who demand them. The traffickers of these goods are of a special type. What are alluded to here is beer and drugs and fuels. Therefore, smuggling in our country has become a towering economic and social predicament inflicted upon Morocco. Morocco has become incapable of combating it after it has crept into the heart of society especially when the parties involved therein are numerous and among them are those whom society has entrusted with fighting this dangerous phenomenon. Smuggling has become an evil that destroys the national economy and contributes to hindering its progress. It ruins the Moroccan young enterprise that cannot thrive and prosper as long as smuggled goods and products are freely circulating in the national market. They have dominated the field and forced themselves upon the consumer depending for that on the open connivance of some of those entrusted with protecting the national economy. If we reconsider the way the operation of getting smuggled goods into Morocco takes place, we will find it as multiple as the parties concerned with it are. It goes without saying that all these smuggled goods, even the heavy sort, enter across the national borders along the occupied territories by land as by the sea. Traders in smuggling are grouped variously. Among them are ordinary smugglers who regard this forbidden commercial activity as a means by which to make a living no matter how meagre the income may be in order to survive. These are huge in number. They are an army of poor people who belong to the different parts of the country and who can not make a living otherwise. More than a half of them are women.

The number of people working in smuggling in Ceuta per se are estimated at 30 000. This number remains approximate in the absence of official data to rely on concerning the subject, especially when it comes to building on the information that circulates around the rate of entering the occupied city. Of course, this information does not include those who smuggle different goods from Fnidaq, Tetuan and other Northern regions towards different regions of the country, smugglers who number in the thousands. Noteworthy is that smugglers have grown in number as the colonizer closed the imagined borders in the face of the inhabitants of regions nearby Ceuta. In the past they used to enter the city without passports or visas - it’s worth mentioning that a large proportion of those working in smuggling are in fact hired. Their role is restricted to carrying smuggled goods from the colonised Moroccan city to places their employers define for a known daily low wage. This fact has been discovered only lately and it demonstrates that the revenues and the profits of smuggling are not beneficial in the first place for those commoners who labour and face insurmountable difficulties and dangers. They jeopardise themselves carrying smuggled goods from Ceuta to the defined place. Those huge profits go to those organizing the activity who control the field whereby they invest huge sums of money out of which they make immense profits. If we try to investigate the amount of money daily smuggled to Ceuta, we shall surely be thunder-struck when we discover that it amounts to 27 million dirhams according to the estimates of some well-informed persons in such matters. These are but approximate and not official estimates. Furthermore, smuggling affects the field of employment in Morocco as it deprives the country of a number of job opportunities. In relation to this, a former minister of commerce has declared that every work position in smuggling deprives the country of ten work positions.

If we contemplate these facts, the amounts of money lost to the country and the number of job opportunities the country is deprived of, we will come to a full understanding of the losses smuggling brings about for the national economy. These losses deprive us of the opportunity to build a strong economy capable of pushing forward the wheel of societal rehabilitation to found an independent economic edifice answerable to the expectations of the large public.

Smuggled Goods are Harmful to the Health

Citizens extensively purchase a wide variety of smuggled products from the markets spread all over Morocco’s cities and villages. If circulating certain products does not prove dangerous for the health of the Moroccan consumer then eating most smuggled foodstuff as well as applying smuggled cosmetics and hygiene products does. Lots of products entering our country by means of smuggling are inedible as their expiry date is over. These products are sold at low prices which make them in demand as they tempt citizens by their cheapness. Thereby, the consumption of these products grows and their danger intensifies. In this context, numerous cases of poisoning have been recorded as a result of eating a number of smuggled decayed food items whose effect can go beyond poisoning and lead to some undesired results.

If the many smuggled products are tempting by dint of their low prices they are the more harmful to the health of citizens. Despite that, the responsible parties do not assume their responsibility in preventing smuggled goods from entering the country or at least preventing the likely harms they may bring about their consumers. Many smuggled products circulating in Moroccan markets, coming from the two Moroccan cities, Ceuta and Melilla, do not circulate in the Iberian Peninsula. This means that they are made to be exported to Morocco and they lack the simplest specifications of quality and safety. Besides, the expiry date of a number of circulating smuggled products directed at Morocco through the two afore-mentioned cities is changed after they are over. All this puts people’s health at stake and ought to be strictly and courageously dealt with.

There is no doubt that it is possible to control the phenomenon if there is the good will and mobilization. This entails finding an alternative that ensures a livelihood for common people working therein and combating organised networks practising it including some employees of the State. Suffice it to say that smuggling electronic, electric apparatuses - T.V. sets, refrigerators, washing-machines, cooking devices and so on and so forth - has hugely decreased as their prices have become affordable in the national market. Their prices do not differ remarkably from the prices of those smuggled. Moreover, providing the different smuggled goods at decent prices and guaranteed quality can minimize the circulation of smuggled products. In addition, public as well as private media and civil society in all their various institutions are required to assume their responsibility in sensitising citizens to the threat smuggling poses to the national economy and the health of the citizens.

Opinions of some of those concerned with the subject

Saida Aroudani (student researcher in economic sciences): smuggling is a dangerous economic, social evil. It has negative effects on national economic development. Despite the efforts specialised authorities make to root out this evil such efforts are to no avail. The drawbacks of smuggling can be divided into two parts. The first is economic and the second social. 

At the economic level, smuggling does not contribute to the net national production. Most of the merchandises that illegally enter the markets, that is, without paying the taxes due to the customs, are sold in the black-markets and are in great demand in the Northern regions, given their proximity to the places where financing takes place. These products are sold without bills which negatively affects the national trade balance. The only one who benefits from this operation is the producer of smuggled goods and not the country where they are consumed as they are not taxed.

Socially speaking, if we limit solving the problem to the smuggler and the inspector, is it possible to fight the penetration of smuggled goods into the realms of the consumer? Despite the sanitary problems that may result from eating these products, especially the decayed and the expired ones, the consumer of low wage and weak purchasing power remains. He finds these products affordable and tempting due to their low prices.

Yes, smuggling is a phenomenon that ought to be eradicated. But before that alternative solutions to smuggled goods and products have to be found out so that the consumer will not find himself in front of two products of differing quality and prices showing up the smuggled product as the better one.

Hence, national companies have to enhance the quality of their products and enable them to compete with smuggled goods and also create job opportunities for those working in smuggling. By 2010 there will be no smuggled goods as the markets will be opened to the products of multinationals. Will the national small and average companies be able to stand in the face of the international large scale companies?

Mohammed Sbaai (an economist): When we speak about smuggling we may not cover all its different aspects. It is advantageous for some but the harms it brings to society are countless because it entices the big smugglers who invest huge sums of money in this illegal domain which in turn excites the mediators and small traders. Smuggling is a gnawing blow directed at the national economy, especially given that its effects have so worsened that it is difficult to control in the near or far future. Smuggling in the Northern region has become an influential factor in the continuation of the colonisation of Ceuta and Mellila and Aljaafaria Islands. It is because these regions basically rely for their overall economy on the revenues and profits smuggling brings forth. They also depend on the revenues of their Mediterranean ports gained from the operations of smuggling through these ports. This also enables the European Union to extend its control over the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. The smuggling of agricultural products is a real nightmare concerning the consumer with regard to their low prices on the one hand and poor quality on the other hand.

Some would ask the question: How come that these products lack quality though they are made in a country belonging to the European Union? The answer for this question is simple. All the goods stored in the Spanish depots whose expiry date is over or nearly over are carried to Morocco through the imagined borders after which their expiry date is changed. Thereby, a number of Spanish commercial institutions and their likes in the heart of the two occupied cities avoid loss at the expense of the health of Moroccan citizens. Thus we realize the danger these products pose for the health of the duped Moroccan consumers. This forces responsible parties to seek means of public safety and the media is expected to sensitize citizens to what dangers such consumption leads to. It has been found out that these products cause mortal diseases or diseases whose cure costs huge sums of money.

Researchers in the national institute of ecology are nearly certain that one of the causes of cancer in our country is decayed smuggled products. This likelihood grows the stronger when we learn that more that 25% of the inmates of this institute belong to the Northern regions. The effects of chemical toxic gases dumped on the regions of the North, especially the Rif region, are also responsible for that.

Smuggling, hence, is a critical predicament. Its effect on the health of citizens is destructive. It is also a real obstacle for the development of the Moroccan economy, given that its products tempt by dint of their low prices while Moroccan products are considered to be expensive. Hence, Moroccan products are in poor demand which at the very onset leads to a reduction in their production. Later, the production totally stops resulting in complete bankruptcy leading to the increase of unemployment and the collapse of the Moroccan economy.

All in all, smuggling is an evil that must be resisted courageously and daringly to ensure conditions for strengthening the national economy and protecting the safety of citizens. 

Translated by Abdelmjid Kettioui