Being a Paying Guest of King Muhammad

We post the following article with a bit of disturbed fascination. It comes from the Wall Street Journal and talks about a hotel built by M6, the current King of Morocco, near the royal palace in Marrakech. Prices range from 1,928 up to 38,552 per night. May the poor of Morocco forgive him. Ameen

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Being a Paying Guest of the King
Morocco's ruler builds a palace—with rooms starting at $1,928 a night



By TONI BENTLEY
Marrakech, Morocco

Once upon a time there was a young King of Morocco, who was said to be the seventh richest monarch in the world. King Mohammed VI ascended to the throne in 1999, descendant of more than a 1,000 years of sultans but, being a modern man, he drove his own car, championed women's rights and took only one wife.

Despite his many inherited palaces, he decided, a few years into his rule, to build yet another. For this magnificent place there was no budget, only the royal edict to make it the most beautiful example of Moroccan architecture in the world. It was handmade by 1,200 artisans using the best stones, marbles, tiles, silks, satins, beads, feathers and cedar. No one, to this day, knows how much it cost.


The Royal Mansour is finally finished, and this palace is for visitors—the kind that check in. In this hotel, Scheherazade would have found enough cozy corners in which to tell a different tale on a different divan every night.

The hotel doesn't plan to advertise and a Web site has yet to appear. It's a word-of-mouth hotel, and it is not cheap: Prices run from $1,928 a night for a one-bedroom riad (a traditional, three-story, Moroccan-style house), to $5,397 for a two-bedroom, or $38,552 for the almost 20,000-square-foot Riad d'Honneur.

The experience begins on the tarmac at the Marrakech airport when an arriving guest is whisked out of the line of weary travelers, led to a quiet room and offered sustenance while passports and baggage tags are collected. Within minutes one is escorted out of the airport into a discreet shiny black Mercedes. Well, fairly discreet. The bags are in the trunk and passports are returned inside the car. All this is done in reverse upon departure, bringing home the notion of what it really means to be staying, as it were, with a king.

A 15-minute ride brings into view the mammoth punctured walls of the old section of Marrakech in dark–orange ochre, the glorious color that is Morocco under an unsheltered sky. The Royal Mansour is just inside one of the gates, nestled up against the 13th-century city walls. The massive entry gate—a four-ton marvel of wood sculpted, then covered in bronze—opens like, well, Sesame.

During construction the king showed up one day at this gate, said "It's not big enough," and departed without entering. The gate is now about one-third bigger, and the hotel staff are still awaiting a first visit from the king. His extended family, however, have been frequent guests and are said to report to him daily by phone.


The hotel is designed like an old Moroccan city with winding paths lined with lily ponds and fountains that open suddenly into sunny squares of palm trees, brilliant bougainvillea and aromatic olive and lemon trees. The public spaces—lounges, bars, library, and restaurants—are built, as are the 53 accommodations, as riads with all rooms on all levels opening inwardly onto a courtyard and upwardly to an array of carved arches.

The reception is a place of both grand opulence and yet quiet understatement perfectly echoing the poetry of the entire place. The check-in desk looks like embroidered silver and behind it a towering wall of geometric arabesques in thick, double-layered white marble.

The rugs are woven suede and leather, the couches and chairs silk and velvet brocades, the crystal Lalique, Baccarat and Venetian, the swathed silk curtains harnessed by mother-of-pearl inlaid tiebacks. (My favorites are on the curtains framing the central entryway: huge, deep-red ostrich feathers flecked with gold silk tassels and red velvet—the history of the Folies Bergère in a single tassle.) The reception riad appears to float in the silence of the still water in the central fountains with the occasional chirp from a cage of pastel parakeets.

Each riad's ceramic tiling follows one of four color themes, including "vert-anis," a bright lime, the king's favorite color. The central courtyard's circular fountain is filled one morning with floating white roses and red carnations. The dining room, living room, small kitchen and another pillowy gathering area surround the courtyard. The second floor has the sumptuous bedrooms, live-in bathrooms (here marble really is king) and an enclosed glass Juliet balcony overlooking the courtyard.

The roof is a multileveled outdoor patio with dipping pool, shower with a whimsical stained-glass cupola, dining area (a lovely place for breakfast or dinner by candlelight), a fireplace, chaise longues and a brightly-colored couch corner with a Bedouin tent. Beyond the tops of the intricately carved cedar-paneled walls of the deck rise swaying palm trees, the glowing tower of the haunting nearby Koutoubia Mosque and, in the distance, the snow-caps on the Atlas mountains. The roof of the riad can be opened to the sky so that the sun's rays ricochet off the luscious, lime-plaster tadelakt walls, and the occasional bird descends to drink at the fountain below.

The riads are serviced by a vast staff—the hotel employs 500, a ratio of 10 per riad—who arrive, unseen, from beneath. The hotel has a parallel underground city where the staff drive golf carts and can enter each riad through hidden elevators. Each riad has two butlers, on alternating shifts, and they will simply do or arrange anything for you. Everyone is helpful and welcoming, and, perhaps most notable for such an elite hotel, entirely without disdain for their guests—no matter who, or what, you are wearing.

All this luxury is overseen by the debonair General Manager Jean Pierre Chaumard, a hotel-business veteran who's been decorated with the Légion d'Honneur for "representing the French savoir faire worldwide." (You've got to love the French for awarding a medal for being super-French!) A spunky septuagenarian with a twinkle in his eye, Mr. Chaumard likes riding his Harley-Davidson Road King Classic to explore Morocco.

The hotel has three restaurants all overseen by Yannick Alléno, the chef of Paris's Le Meurice hotel, where he earned—and has retained— three Michelin stars in 2007. The stars are much in evidence in the setting, service and food at two dinner restaurants, one French and one Moroccan. The "Pigeon in Crispy Pastille" in the Moroccan restaurant is a delicate patty of tender shredded pigeon in crispy layers of millefeuille, an edible work of art, while the "Orange Salad" dessert offers magical orbs of orange ambrosia that burst in your mouth like citrus caviar.

And yes, there is a spa, a 27,000-square-foot airy white lacework frame that is a kind of pale marble temple to the human body. Don't, under any circumstances, leave Marrakech without having a hamam—a classic Turkish bath—here with Abdelkader al Ibtikar. After he has washed, scrubbed, shined, dipped and stretched you (this last is a Moorish "dance" to remember—just breathe and go with it!) you will feel reborn not as you are but as the child you once were, like the child of a sultan perhaps. Now where is the beautiful Scheherazade? I am ready for my bedtime tale. I feel sure Mr. Chaumard will find her for me.

The Moroccan Jew has Become Fiction in the Jewish Consciousness: Interview with Moroccan-born Israeli poet Mois Benarroch

Here is an interview from the Poetry International Web with Moroccan/Israeli Poet Mois BenArroch. He makes some interesting points. There are still so many questions that we want to ask though, like about the significance of Morocco as a place,homeland, etc.
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Interview: Moroccan-born Israeli poet Mois Benarroch

On being different and writing a different poem

July 15, 2010
Moving from Morocco to Israel at the age of 13 was like moving from one planet to another. Israel was not only a different country, it was a different culture and these were completely different Jews and it was a completely different Judaism. It was September 1972 and within a year and a half of my arrival there was a war, the Yom Kippur war, and my little brother died; all this happened before the end of 1973. These traumas are the source of my writing, and perhaps the reason I started to write. I missed out completely on adolescence and was also very isolated from the Israeli community.

Can you tell me about your childhood in Morocco, your parents, your education?

We went to a Jewish school, called El Ittihad Maroc. That was the official name of the school but everybody called it La Alianza, in Spanish; it was the first school opened by the Alliance Israelite Universelle in 1862 and became the first of an international Jewish network of schools called the Alliance Française that spread all through the Muslim world and beyond. The level of education was very high and we were prepared for the French baccalauréat. We were also taught many languages and had classes in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Curiously, we were not taught Spanish, although this was the mother tongue of all the pupils and most teachers. So, when the bell rang everybody switched to Spanish. I find this miraculous. Back in class it was forbidden to say a word in Spanish.

My childhood was very Jewish and I still lived in a city that respected the fact that Jews did not work on the Sabbath [Saturday]; business was built around it since many Jews had businesses in my home town Tetouan. The school, as I said, was also a Jewish school. Although there were also some Christians and Muslims, the immediate surroundings were also very Jewish.

We were a family of four children; I was the second, after my sister. I remember very well that we were always on the point of emigrating. The feeling was that we were not staying in Morocco. There was talk of emigrating to Spain, to Venezuela, to Canada. And of course, Israel where we finally settled in 1972, when I was 13.

Have your views about Israel changed in the time you have been living there?

My views about Israel have changed a lot. Despite so many years here I think I see Israel from the outside, I live on the outside. Of course I didn’t have a complete concept or point of view when I was 13. I thought I was coming to a spiritual and religious country where Jews loved each other. This was the naive point of view of a Jewish boy.

What other work do you do besides writing poetry?

Nowadays I am a full-time writer and translator. I have just published a new novel in Spain, Amor y Exilios. I translate novels. I was a clerk-accountant for 12 years in the past with a steady salary. I also worked for a few years in hotels before that. And I studied natural medicine and pratised for time years as a part time job. I liked the idea but I don’t think I was such a good therapist.

How did you become a writer?

I started writing poetry when I was 15, because of feeling isolated and unable to connect with my surroundings. The first poems were love poems to a girl I couldn’t talk to. That seems pretty normal. Isn’t it?

Since then I have never stopped writing. I may be imagining it but I am pretty sure that after writing my first poem I knew deep inside that I was going to be a writer, and for some reason I also knew that it would take a long time for my writing to be accepted. But since then I have never stopped writing and have even done so obsessively at some periods of my life, writing 18 hours a days. It was like if I stopped writing I would die. Maybe it still is. I didn’t stop. I tried a few times but it didn’t work.

Which poets, or other artists, have influenced your work?

There are many. I think that two of the most influential writers are Charles Bukowski and Edmond Jabes, which may look like a complete contradiction. But the main art form that has influenced me beside writing is that of the singer-songwriter. I actually started writing my first poems after listening to the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Jackson Browne. I even tried to compose music to my poems for some time. I also like movies, and I think that has influenced my novels. Some critics have pointed out that I use cinematic techniques

I have been influenced by many authors in many languages. Let’s start with Hebrew: Natan Zach, David Avidan, Erez Bitton, Zelda, Yona Wallach, Moshe Sartel and many others. From the French, besides Jabes, Cocteau, Breton, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Blaise Cendrars and many others have influenced me. From the Spanish, mostly the Latin American poets like Neruda, Huidobro, Nicanor Parra and Gonzalo Rojas, all from Chile; then Borges, as poet and prose writer. The beatniks in general: Ginsberg, Burroughs, then Brautigan, Whitman, Ignatow. And as I said, Bukowski. I am probably forgetting many of them.

Your poems chosen for PIW focus on themes of belonging (e.g. ‘I went up to the Land of Israel’, ‘Suitcase’) and outsiderness (e.g. ‘Antipoetry’ and ‘Beans with Tabasco Sauce for Breakfast’). Can you comment on these motifs within your own poetry?

This is definitely the recurring theme in my writings. It spreads all over, from being an outsider as a Jew, or as a writer (and Edmond Jabes would say that every writer is a Jew) to feeling like a different kind of Jew and not really part of the mainstream of Judaism: that is being a Sephardic Jew. Maybe that’s what poetry is about: being outside, being different and writing a different poem.

Your work will be published on PIW alongside Esther Raab’s writings. Although Raab is considered to be the first female and Hebrew/native poet of (pre-state) Israel, she can also be viewed as somewhat of an outsider. What are your thoughts about this and about her writing? (Are all poets perhaps ‘outsiders’?)

I read Raab a long time ago and frankly she did not make much of an impression on me. I don’t think she is really an outsider; her books were in stores back in the 1980s. Maybe I was not impressed because I don’t like landscape poems. I also do not like early Israeli poetry before Zach, Avidan and Amichai. I think that in most cases the poets were trying to find a language, a Hebrew that they could hardly handle. That surely includes Bialik and Alterman. I consider Avidan to be the first great poet of the Modern Hebrew language, and the first sabra to write poetry. I am not saying Raab is not a good poet, but her influence was minimal. But this leads me to an interesting observation made by Professor Shlomo Elbaz, who noticed how many women poets there are in Israel. And although the boys play the big ego game, we have Lea Goldberg, great and important poets like Zelda, Yona Wallach, Amira Hess, Hedva Harkavi and countless other women poets in the first league of Israeli poetry. I don’t see that many in Spanish or French or British poetry; the USA fares better, but even a world leader in poetry like Chile has one Mistral compared with dozens of male major poets. I think this would be a good subject for a PhD. Compared to most countries I know the situation is unique.

As for outsiders: in Israel 20,000 poetry books are sold yearly. This means that poetry is the outsider. Not the poets. I don’t see myself as more of an outsider and I have had my share of recognition; 20,000 books is like one prose bestseller and many novels sell even more. So, a poet who has published a few books and has a hundred readers can consider himself recognized. More so if a dozen articles have been written about him. As a novelist I am marginalized, but that’s another story. And a long one.

What are your thoughts about the Josephus book, the history book written by Josephus in 70 AD? You recently wrote about a new Hebrew translation in the Haaretz newspaper.

I reread the book and wrote about it with the feeling that it was in fact completely irrelevant to our political reality of today. This must seem obvious to any European, but the problem is that in Israel there is a gap in political time; in every discussion someone tries to compare today’s political situation with something that happened 2000 or 3000 years ago in Judea or in this part of the world.

You are bilingual in Spanish and Hebrew, and very proficient in English. Do you feel some things are easier to write about in Hebrew and other things in Spanish? In other words, how does your multilingualism manifest itself in your life as a poet and in daily life?

I have written poetry in three languages and that’s not something I would recommend to anyone. It was a poetic need. It came out of the poems. I started writing poetry in English when I was 15, and did it for four years. Then I switched to Hebrew, for the next 20 years. Then I moved to Spanish because there were things that could not be written in Hebrew. Language not only describes or represents reality, it also creates it. And Modern Hebrew is a language that has created a totally different Jewish Moroccan from the one I know; there are many ways to describe the Moroccan in Modern Hebrew and almost all of them are negative. And I could not change the whole of the Hebrew language, or cope with it. So the need for Spanish was a linguistic need and also a social need. A line like “I am an exiled Moroccan poet” (from one of my poems) could not be written in Hebrew. It took me eight years to translate it, and even now I am attacked for writing something so obvious. A Moroccan in Israel has to thank Zionism for saving him from a terrible life and fate, so the question of being an exile outside the understanding of Israeli society. I should thank everyone every day for having been saved and converted to the new Zionist-Judaism, and to ultra new Judaeo-Christianity, which is the same thing.

So my poetry is definitely different or I am even a different poet when I write in different language. Spanish is my mother tongue and my historic tongue, since this language has been spoken by family over the last thousand years, Hebrew is the language of my oppression, and for the fight against this oppression; it’s a father tongue, a male phallic chauvinistic tongue, but it is also the sacred tongue, the tongue of the temple, somewhere deep inside. English is a kind of neutral tongue, and also the tongue of the empire, it’s all over and I often use it when the other two conflict with each other or for more philosophical poems.

In my everyday life I live in Hebrew, with some French too because my wife is French, and we have many French friends, although I speak Spanish with my mother, and with some of my family too. And in Israel there is always some English in everyday life, since there are many tourists in the city, as well as many American and English immigrants who don’t bother to learn Hebrew, because they don’t have to.

How do you reflect on your linguistic identity and how do you perceive your cultural identity?

I see myself as some kind of disappearing species. I see myself as a Karaite in the 18th or 19th century, like a member of a sect; the Karaites were the mainstream of Judaism in the 12th century and now there are may be 1000 of them left. Since the 16th century Ashkenazíc Judaism has dominated the Jewish world. Israel was an anomaly during the 1980s when there was a majority of Sephardic Jews, but now they are maybe 40% (since the big Russian emigration) and most are trying to be like the image of the new Jew that was imposed on them by Zionism. I think that the Sephardic Jew is disappearing from the world. Ruth Knafo-Setton sent a few stories to a Jewish magazine in the US and they told her that her stories were nice but that she should write about “real Jews”. Moroccan Jews are not “real” Jews; they are some kind of folklore. Since most of my novels are about Moroccan Jews, I guess they are not “real” Israeli or Jewish novels. The Moroccan Jew has become fiction in the Jewish consciousness.

How do you envisage the future of your children in terms of culture? Do you feel they fit into society in Israel?

I don’t really know. Israel is a country in a state of change. It’s very dynamic and it is hard to say where it will be in a year. I have tried to pass on part of my history and heritage to my children, although this is not very simple, since school texts contradict all that I say to them. I am only one against a big system, and it’s a battle I cannot win. Maybe I can lose it with some dignity and save something from my past that will go on in future generations. As it is, my descendants will probably think that I came to Israel from a cave in Africa. That’s more or less the concept of the Sephardic Jew.


By Lucy Pijnenburg

Moroccan Theatre School Opens Worlds for Poor Youth

Here is an article from Reuters by way of Arab News about a theater school in the "slums" of Rabat. There is the usual dichotomy of religious "extremist" vs secular "progressive." Life need not be so fragmented, young religious kids can have good healthy fun too.
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Morocco theater school wages battle for young minds


By ZAKIA ABDENNEBI & TOM PFEIFFER | REUTERS

Published: Jul 14, 2010 21:04 Updated: Jul 14, 2010 21:36

It seems hard to object to Mohamed El-Assouni's street theater school, set up on a patch of scrubland between a rail line and a huddle of slums on the outskirts of Morocco's capital Rabat.

But the idea of young boys and girls gathering to learn somersaults, dancing and walking a tightrope was too much to bear for some extremists living nearby, he said.

Assouni dug a 200-meter trench to bring water and power to the school's tent.

"They came and ripped out the pipe and cable in the night," he said. "Yes sir, we are in conflict with those people. We don't deliberately disturb them, but they say we corrupt the local children."

Judging by the numbers thronging the tent on a recent Sunday, the extremists seem to be losing the argument.

Learning to trampoline, make puppets and take part in street parades is a big draw for the children, many of whom already work to supplement their parents' meager income, leaving little time for play. More than 260 have enrolled but not all turn up.

Pupils who rebel against the workshop's quiet discipline are sent away and frustrations can boil over. Boys have thrown stones at the tent and one slashed it with a knife.

"Even when the school is shut you'll see lots of the kids nearby, practicing their dance moves or stilt walking," said 25-year-old dance instructor Khalid Haissi, who turned down a circus job in Europe to join the school.

Assouni and his wife Soumia founded their Nomad Theater Association in 2006 and set up their workshop with help from Morocco's National Human Development Initiative (INDH), Germany's Goethe Institut and the French government.

He says the self-control and talent of the workshop's young trainers, all from poor backgrounds, make them powerful role models for the children — and will hopefully encourage more of them to return to school.

"Our school headmaster always ordered me and the other lazy boys to pick up rubbish, so I fled," said 14-year-old Said Mustapha Khalfi. "Here they encourage us. I feel like an artist and I have something to show."



Walking a tightrope

Morocco has one of the worst school dropout rates in the Arab world, with only one child in 10 completing their education, according to UNICEF.

A 2007 World Bank report ranked Morocco 11th in the region in terms of access, equality, effectiveness and quality of its education, above only Yemen, Iraq and Djibouti.

The government designated the last 10 years the decade of education and training. Now it has embarked on an "Emergency Program for the Reform of Education", lasting to 2012.

The reforms need to start working if the kingdom is to find enough trained graduates to compete in world markets and overcome the youth unemployment that breeds despair and makes it easier for violent extremist groups to recruit new members.

Assouni points to a boy queuing up to learn cartwheels.

"You see that boy? Each weekend I have to go to the cafe where he works as a waiter to bring him down here. That other boy with the red soccer shirt doesn't go to school. He goes around with a donkey and cart collecting plastic for recycling."

The workshop is set in the neighborhood of Douar Mika — Plastic Village — so named because families who arrived over the years from the poverty-stricken countryside covered their makeshift shelters with sheets of polythene.

For Assouni, the local children are already walking a tightrope, in danger of falling for evils such as alcohol and drug abuse on one hand and religious extremism on the other.

"I tell myself that if I save four or five of these children with every residence we do, that's enough," he said. "Save? Yes, I mean that. They are at risk of being lost to the streets."

“This is a beautiful thing, when you shoot and hit your target:" US and Moroccan Troops in Arms Exercises in Morocco

Here is an article from the US Marines website about military exercises they are doing in Morocco in conjunction with the Moroccan army. This is serious stuff that should make one ponder the extent to which power is maintained by force, and it might make one begin to think about the nature of their fears and their plans.
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U.S. and Moroccan troops wrap up exercise African Lion 2010

6/15/2010 By Maj. Paul Greenberg , Marine Forces Reserve

CAP DRAA TRAINING AREA, Morocco — U.S. service members taking part in African Lion 2010 wrapped up their training here June 9 in a final combined arms exercise with the Royal Moroccan Army.

“African Lion in Morocco is very important for both the Marine Corps and the United States government. This is a strategic relationship with one of the United States’ oldest allies,” said Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Gordon Hilbun, assistant operations officer for Task Force African Lion. “This relationship maintains a strong collaborative training opportunity for both militaries and ensures that the Marine Corps maintains its expeditionary capabilities and mindset.

More than 1,000 Marines, sailors and U.S. Air and Army national guardsmen participated in African Lion this year, with the preponderance of troops coming from Marine Forces Reserve units throughout the United States.
This is the seventh year in a row that U.S. troops have come here for this exercise, which Marine Corps Forces Africa, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, has the lead on facilitating.

The final exercise was a culmination of more than four months of planning, mass logistical movements and detailed coordination between U.S. and Moroccan diplomatic and military leadership.
In the exercise scenario, several enemy mechanized units had intentionally crossed into Moroccan territory. A joint U.S. and Moroccan task force was formed to repulse the enemy with a combination of air and ground capabilities. These included helicopters, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, mortars, combat engineers and mobile assault platoons.

After Moroccan Kornet guided missiles initiated the attack, combat engineers from 4th Combat Engineer Battalion in Roanoake, Va., used their Bangalore torpedoes to blast a hole through the breach.

“It was excellent,” said Cpl. John Saunders, a reserve Marine with 4th CEB who helped to emplace the 33 pounds of high explosives and secured the fuse igniter systems. “Our goal from the time we dismounted, emplaced the charge and withdrew was 90 seconds, and we beat it. When that bunker buster went off, it was incredible.”

The Moroccan Army provided the air power with Gazelle helicopters strafing their targets with missiles.

U.S. and Moroccan tanks closed in, hammering old tank hulks with high-explosive rounds and machine gun fire.
The American M1A1 Abrams tanks came from Company F, 4th Tank Battalion headquartered at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“It was a good show, and great practice maneuvering and firing as a platoon,” said platoon commander 2nd Lt. Peter Heiman, who is on his first deployment as an officer in the Marine Corps Reserve. “The Moroccan tankers seem to really know their stuff.”

Heiman explained that earlier in the week, he and his Marines had the chance to meet with the Moroccan tankers, climb inside their tanks and shoot their weapons.

“It was really great training,” said Heiman, “One of their sergeants had been on the same tank for 26 years. One thing I can say is that they’re really experienced.”

Cpl. Matthew Ross, a 23-year-old vehicle commander with 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Quantico, Va., also had the chance to work with Moroccan troops prior to and during the final exercise.

“My initial impression is that they are very professional,” said Ross, a five-year reserve Marine who is a senior at Georgetown University. “They know what they need to be doing at all times. There is no laissez faire leadership. They’re like us; mission oriented. They always knew what was going on.”

A linguistics major with a focus on Arabic and Dari languages, the exercise gave a Ross both a chance to exert his leadership as a first-time vehicle command and to practice Arabic with the Moroccan soldiers.

“There are a lot of things you can take away from the exercise,” said Ross. “It proves to the Marines that you can work with a foreign military force in a (military to military) exercise and see that they can have an equal level of professionalism. We can integrate with foreign militaries if the mission dictates. The Marines at the (noncommissioned officer) level have confidence that they can work successfully with a foreign military that speaks another language, and with a culture that is really different. There is a very specific commonality between them and our Marines: military professionalism.”

While the tanks were blasting away at their targets, Marine Corps mortarmen from Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment fired their 81 millimeter mortar rounds.

“This was a very positive experience overall,” said Sgt. Timothy Gena a reserve Marine mortars section leader with Weapons Company, who also had the chance to train with his Moroccan counterparts prior to the final exercise.

“They have the French and Spanish versions of the weapons (81 millimeter mortars), but it’s the same concept. What was amazing is that we were able to work with them without an interpreter, and these guys, (the Moroccans) were really good. This kind of thing is very important, especially for the junior Marines, who may not have done this before, or who might have had a negative experience in the past. It’s great to come here for (annual reserve training) and come away with a respect for the Moroccans. I think we had a mutual respect here.”

While the troops on the ground put the pincers on the notional enemy forces, the U.S. and Moroccan senior leadership sat together watching the fiery show from a vantage point on a hill nearby.

After the successful completion of the live-fire, Moroccan Gen. Abdul Al Aziz Benani, General of the Royal Moroccan Army Corps, spoke to the American delegation, which included Samuel L. Kaplan, the U.S. ambassador to Morocco, and Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Gen. James M. Croley, the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing commanding general.

“This is a beautiful thing, when you shoot and hit your target,” said Benani. “I want to tell you how satisfied we are, and I want to thank you for your work to make this exercise successful.”

Although this year’s African Lion has come to a close, U.S. and Moroccan planners are already looking at next year’s exercise, which is expected to bring even more Marine Forces Reserve units here and involve a broader range of U.S. and Moroccan troops.

“The evolution of this exercise would entail an amphibious offload and a larger training force to include expanding our current combined training relationship with Moroccan forces,” said Hilbun. “Marine Forces Africa is becoming a focus of effort for the Marine Corps. This exercise provides us with continued access to one of our key strategic partners in Africa as the United States continues to maintain a national focus on expanding our involvement on the African continent.

European Union To Promote Dialogue in Morocco

Salaam! Here is a piece from Global Arab Network about the EU seeking proposals for dialogue promoting activities in Morocco. Is dialogue where people get to openly discuss how they feel about things without repercussions? Great idea.

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EU: Call for Cultural Activities to Strengthen Dialogue in Morocco
- Maha Karim
Sunday, 04 July 2010 20:54

The EU Delegation in Morocco has issued a Call for Proposals for Cultural Activities to be carried out within the country in 2010.

For the 2010 calls, the Delegation will give priority to projects that aim to strengthen:

* dialogue and exchange between cultures, access to culture of all sectors of the population;
* the promotion of mutual understanding
* the visibility of the cultural aspect of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership.

The call for proposals is open to projects including artistic cultural activities focused on oral communication, visual arts or music, and the promotion of tangible and intangible heritage towards educational or playful activities aimed at a young audience.

Activities should contribute to capacity building both at an artistic and technical level, and from the perspective of administration of the activity through the contribution of European experience.

Any grant awarded under this programme must fall between a minimum of €30,000 and a maximum of €50,000, with an indicative global allocation of €100,000. The programme is funded under the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI).

The initial planned duration of an action may not exceed 12 months. The deadline for the submission of applications is 1 September 2010.

An information session on this call for proposals will be held on 5 July 2010 at 5pm in the Delegation of the European Union's premises. Registration is compulsory at delegation-morocco-activites-culturelles@ec.europa.eu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Global Arab Network

The Last Pasha (Traitor) of Marrakech

Here is an article from the BBC on T'hami el-Glaoui, a Moroccan who worked with the French against Moroccan independence. It speaks about the state of his former palace and work that is being done to rehab it.

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Reviving the last Pasha of Marrakech


The fortunes of the once glamorous Telouet castle may be turning

The castle of the last Pasha of Marrakech in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco is finally getting a face-lift after more than 50 years of neglect, as the BBC's Bojan Kveder discovered.

The Kasbah of Telouet, built not more than 100 years ago, has been crumbling into the reddish dust of the valley since 1956, the year Morocco won independence from France and T'hami el-Glaoui fell from grace with the king.

He is considered a traitor to this day for siding with the French colonisers and helping to topple two sultans.

At the time of his death in 1956, the Lord of the Atlas was the most powerful man in Morocco and one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Now, the remote village of Telouet is only accessible by a side road branching off from the trans-Atlas highway running from Marrakech to Ouarzazate.

Getting there is a feat in itself. Before embarking on the journey from Marrakech, I combed the city for a travel agency organizing trips there, to no avail. Whoever I asked would respond with shrugging shoulders and a look of consternation mixed with embarrassment.

"Why Telouet? Tourists don't go there. You have so many attractive places to choose from," was the standard reaction.

Finally I managed to find a hole-in-the wall agency with two banged-up 4x4's through my hotel, but the bargaining went on for more than a day.


This castle entrance has seen better days
The road from Marrakech snakes through lush green valleys interspersed with brown mud-brick Berber villages that look exactly as they did centuries ago, except for a few satellite dishes on their flat roofs.

But as the altitude changes, the landscape becomes barren and forbidding - green is replaced by a uniform ochre and red. The ascent culminates in the Tizi-n-Tichka mountain pass, the highest in the Atlas at 2,500 metres, where the air is thin and people are nervous.

When you finally rattle to a stop in Telouet after innumerable hairpin bends, enormous potholes, and a mouthful of dust, what strikes you is the eerie stillness of the place, occasionally interrupted by the flapping of a vulture's wings.

The Kasbah still stands proudly, perched on top of hill like a latter-day Dracula's castle, exuding an air of both dilapidated elegance and deathly hopelessness.

Unclaimed skeletons

Gone are the days when the severed heads of foes of the Glaoua clan were displayed on spikes on the ramparts, or when the dungeon was brimming with real or imagined criminals waiting to be ransomed on barely life-sustaining rations.

But an air of faded glory, conspicuous wealth and savage brutality permeates the Kasbah's quarters like the incessant hot breeze blowing through their empty corridors.


Parts of the interior of the castle have already been restored
What I did not expect to find was a group of workmen renovating part of the interior that has miraculously survived the decades of decrepitude and disgrace.

The contrast between the near-rubble of one part of the castle and the elaborately renovated stucco pillars, mosaics, ceiling panels and Moorish doorways was stark. For the time-being only the central reception rooms have been refurbished, but the rest will soon follow.

I asked the guardian of the Kasbah who was footing the bill for the construction work. "T'hami's family", Hamid the guardian replied curtly, without wishing to delve into more detail.

I asked if I could visit the dungeon. "No, it's been filled with bricks and walled up," Hamid replied.

"Why? Too many unclaimed skeletons?"

"The ceiling might cave in," he answered dryly.

Others in the village outside were not willing to discuss the subject either.

"Oh yes, he was the great lord of this place," M'hamed the waiter at a nearby tea tent told me sarcastically. "Great lord of the south. But look at the place now, where's the great lord now? What's left?"

M'hamed, an indigo turban on his head, is dark skinned, like many people living in the little shanty town in the shadow of the Kasbah.


The Kasbah overlooks the village of Telouet
They are descendants of hundreds of el-Glaoui's slaves, who built their humble abodes around the castle after their master's fortunes declined.

I wondered what all this actually meant - is the Pasha of Marrakech being unofficially rehabilitated, more than 50 years since his demise and three kings later, by the grandson of the ruler he betrayed?

Because of T'hami el-Glaoui, French political jargon has become enriched by the verb Glaouise, which stands for "betrayed", and Moroccans know this all too well.

Red light district

Born in 1879 to the caid - or baron - of Telouet and his Ethiopian concubine, el-Glaoui's fortunes rose in 1893 when he and his brother saved the sultan from a blizzard and starvation after he got stuck in the mountains on a tax-gathering expedition.

As a token of appreciation the ruler presented the brothers with a 77-mm Krupp cannon, which was then used to subdue rival warlords in the area.

T'hami sided with the encroaching French at the start of the 20th Century, for which he was rewarded by being given a free hand in "pacifying" the south, as well as a sizable slice of the area's economic pie - the olive and saffron trade, salt and mineral mines.

He is also said to have had a cut in the income of Marrakech's "Quartier Reserve", or red light district.

El-Glaoui was Pasha of Marrakech from 1912, when the French protectorate was established, to 1956.

No Sir

He also had a sprawling palace in Marrakech, the Dar el-Glaoui, where he held lavish banquets and entertained the likes of Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin.

In 1953 he attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Churchill's invitation, hoping to be knighted. He presented the new queen with spectacular gifts, which were refused.

The knighthood never happened.


The once impressive ramparts have fallen into disrepair
That year el-Glaoui turned his attentions closer to home - he conspired with the French to overthrow Sultan Muhammad V and install an alternative less receptive to the growing independence movement.

The move cost him and his family dearly, as the sultan returned in 1955, when the French realized that Morocco was descending into chaos and granted it independence the next year.

The same year el-Glaoui died a broken man, betrayed by the French whose rule he propped up so meticulously.

Because of his opposition to the independence movement and role in overthrowing the reigning monarch, his property was seized by the state and his Kasbah fell into disrepair.

More than half a century later, I was followed around the Kasbah's terracotta paradise by the guardian's son Ahmed and his moth-eaten dog.

"Why did you bring the dog in?" I asked.

"Why not?"

I reminded him of the local saying: "When a dog enters a Moroccan house, the angels fly away."

"No angels here," Ahmed replied. "If ever there were any, they're long gone now".

Saving Moroccan Trees

Here is an article on an effort to save trees in Morocco from the National newspaper out of the UAE.
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Saving Moroccan trees for those who need them

John Thorne, Foreign Correspondent

* Last Updated: May 30. 2010 10:52AM UAE / May 30. 2010 6:52AM GMT


IDIKEL FOREST, MOROCCO // It was a damp, drizzly afternoon in the forest of Idikel, in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, and two men were counting the rings in the stump of a purloined cedar.

“One hundred … 110 … I make it at least 120 years old,” said Mustapha Hafid, a state forestry agent.

Beside him, Mustapha Allaoui, a conservationist campaigner from the nearby village of Tikajouine, sighed with frustration.

A war of sorts is raging in the Idikel forest. On one side are impoverished villagers, mainly from Tikajouine, who illegally harvest valuable cedar wood. On the other are their conservation-minded neighbours, who are struggling to stop the logging they say endangers the village’s future.

“Our lives are linked to the forest,” Mr Allaoui said. “If it disappears, we’ll have to move to the city.”

For decades, rural poor from across Morocco have fled to big cities from villages like Tikajouine, low on prospects and high on unemployment.

There are houses of pounded earth crowding a stream that rushes out of the mountains, a tangle of dirt roads, a mosque, a primary school and not much else.

Below the village are fields of wheat and potatoes. Towering above it are the mountainsides where Tikajouine’s 4,200 inhabitants graze sheep and collect firewood for cooking and heating.

They belong to the Ait Hnini, one of dozens of tribes of Amazigh, or Berbers, who have lived in North Africa since before the start of recorded history.

The Atlas Mountains were often part of the “bled siba”, or land of dissidence, a term for regions periodically outside the control of Morocco’s rulers until France colonised the country from 1912. The area around Tikajouine was not fully subjugated until the 1920s.

By then, Morocco’s forests had been placed under state management. Today, the law reserves 80 per cent of proceeds from state sales of timber for use by local municipalities, Mr Hafid, the forestry agent, said.

However, in recent years farmers from Tikajouine and other villages have begun stealing into the Idikel forest by night, sawing down cedar trees and selling the valuable wood to black market traffickers. In the morning there are only stumps, mule tracks and chips of red-blond wood.

Mr Hafid patrols the forest’s 4,700 hectares with a fellow forestry agent, a dog and a white 4 x 4.

“I can’t arrest people, but I can serve them with fines up to 10,000 Moroccan dirhams [Dh4,000],” he said. “Unfortunately, the courts don’t always follow through, and I can’t be everywhere at once.”

That is why some locals in Tikajouine have stepped into the gap.

“I was born in the forest,” said Said Ait Aziz, a member with Mr Allaoui of the conservationist Idikel Association. “I grew up leading my family’s sheep under the trees.”

For years Mr Ait Aziz has documented the theft of trees and campaigned for their protection. One night in 2008, he narrowly escaped a fire in his house he believes was set by vengeful woodsmen.

Last year, Mr Ait Aziz began working as a part-time night watchman in the forest through a pilot programme financed by the state forestry agency. Funding ended in February, but conservationists say the effort has already made a difference.

“A few years ago, the woodsmen were stealing 20 to 30 trees a day,” Mr Allaoui said. “The situation today is a clear improvement.”

According to Mr Hafid, only 79 trees were felled illegally last year. The Idikel Association has requested state permission to create a woodsmen’s collective to gather deadfall and dying trees for sale, which is legal.

“The municipality has done nothing for the community,” Ali Ouaadi, the group’s president, said. “With a collective, everyone benefits legally from the forest.”

But the proposal has drawn opposition from the municipality president, Said el Kortoubi, one of several officials whose approval is required. “The forest simply isn’t big enough to support a collective. It might work for a year or so, but it doesn’t have a future,” he said.

For many woodsmen, the main issue is money. “I make 10,000 dirhams a month,” said Bou Maksou, 27, a woodsman who asked to be identified only by the part of the forest where he often works. “I can’t earn that from a collective.”

Night was falling on Tikajouine, and Bou Maksou was sitting in a cafe with the chief of his logging crew at a meeting with The National arranged by human rights workers. A naked bulb cast a sickly light on the men.

“I worked as a shepherd in the forest and I saw what was going on there, and I fell into the trap,” said Bou Maksou, who began stealing trees eight years ago. “I don’t want to keep living like this, without a wife, without children, without normal employment.”

The crew chief glanced at his watch and the two men rose. “It’s getting late,” he said. “We need to get to the forest.”

Seven Moroccans Onboard the Gaza Flotilla

It seems that there were some Moroccans on the Flotilla that was taking humanitarian aid to Gaza and got attacked by Israel.
Here is a short article from the Moroccan state press. Viva Palestine!
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Israel's Attack against Humanitarian Fleet
Seven Moroccans to be Evacuated to Jordan

Rabat - Upon high instructions of HM King Mohammed VI, the Foreign Ministry conducted the necessary investigations and the appropriate contacts to identify and assist the Moroccan citizens who participated in the Gaza-bound humanitarian fleet which was attacked by the Israeli army, a statement of the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

This action has led to the identification of seven Moroccan citizens, among other nationalities. All of them will be evacuated to Amman very shortly, thanks to cooperation between the two kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan, the statement added.

Opening the Border [ between Morocco and Algeria ]

Here is an article from the Economist about likely prospects that the drawn out border-related issues between Morocco and Algeria may be ending insha'Allah.
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Algeria and Morocco

Open that border
Will the long stalemate between the Maghreb’s two big rivals ever end?

May 27th 2010 | RABAT | From The Economist print edition

MOROCCANS call the vast and arid region along their border with Algeria “the Oriental”. For centuries, trade bustled between their former capital, Fez, and cities on the western side of present-day Algeria, such as Oran. Pilgrims passed through on their way to the Middle East. Ibn Battuta, a great 14th-century Muslim explorer, set off from Tangier, on Morocco’s north-western tip, on his 30-year peregrinations that took him as far as China.

Alas, there are no Ibn Battutas today, if only because the border between Morocco and Algeria, which runs for 1,559km (969 miles), or 1,601km if you include a further stretch alongside the disputed Western Sahara, has been closed for nearly 16 years. In 1994 Algeria shut it after Morocco’s government imposed visas on Algerian travellers in the wake of a guerrilla attack on the Atlas Asni Hotel in Marrakech, in which the Moroccans suspected Algeria of having a hand. Thousands of Algerian residents and tourists were summarily expelled.

The Western Sahara row has made matters worse. For 35 years, since Spain’s departure, the territory has been disputed between the Polisario movement, which wants independence, and the Moroccan government, which has offered autonomy. The Algerians have doggedly backed Polisario. The conflict is barely closer to a resolution, though Morocco has managed to keep Polisario’s guerrillas militarily at bay.

Even leaving aside Western Sahara, the Atlas Asni incident is still a big barrier to better relations. It also impedes economic integration between the Maghreb countries in general. The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), a trade organisation created in 1989 to encourage free trade between Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, has failed to hold a summit meeting since 1994, in part because of the Algerian-Moroccan spat. Trade within the AMU quintet accounts for a paltry 2% of what the region conducts with the whole of the rest of the world.

Morocco’s King Muhammad VI began trying to break the logjam in 2004, when he let Algerians visit his country without a visa. Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, returned the favour the next year but refused to reopen the border, despite King Muhammad’s plea in 2008 and the urging of the United States and the European Union. Algeria may still feel bitter about the expulsion after the hotel attack of 1994 but it is also nervous lest Morocco use the border issue as a lever to get Algeria to back down over Western Sahara. Algeria still insists, to the irritation of Morocco, that there should be a referendum under an international agreement signed in 2003. The unresolved issue has fuelled rivalry for dominance of the wider Maghreb region, in which the two countries are by far the biggest in terms of population: Morocco has 32m people, Algeria 35m.
The benighted borderlands

Moroccan towns such as Oujda, a ten-minute drive from the border, have been hard hit. Despite efforts to reorient the region’s economy towards tourism and to draw the area into Morocco’s hub on the Atlantic, local unemployment is two-and-a-half times the official national rate of 10%. Remittances from Europe probably provide the region’s main source of income: nearly a third of the 3m-plus Moroccans working in the EU hail from the eastern area. Their king recently visited Oujda to launch plans for new factories and infrastructure, implying he could not wait for Algeria to open up. Yet opening the border to trade would plainly bring a boom.

Signs of softening between the two countries are, however, evident. Regardless of politics, businessmen are going their own way. More Algerians now take holidays in jollier Morocco, even if they have to go by air, and Moroccan companies are trying to bring their know-how to Algeria, which is rich in oil and gas but stubbornly hostile to markets and global business. Since 2007 the intelligence services of both countries have held regular meetings on counter-terrorism, in view of a shared threat from jihadists. And AMU officials have agreed to set up a Maghreb Customs Co-operation Council with headquarters in Algiers and a training centre in Morocco’s commercial capital, Casablanca. A UN man calls it “the most important move in years towards reconciliation.”