report | America adopts the royal vision in the Amazigh issue
Within the framework of its efforts to promote soft power and the supreme interests of the United States, the US administration has been preparing and publishing annual reports on the human rights situation in all countries that are members of the United Nations. These reports are based on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974.
In this context, the US State Department recently issued its general annual report on the state of human rights in the world for the year 2022, and it included a report on human rights in Morocco. The country is in close cooperation with the Moroccan government and other partners such as the National Council for Human Rights and civil society associations.
It appears, by comparing the annual report on Morocco for the year 2022 and the annual reports for our country for the past six years, that there has been a remarkable and qualitative development in the US State Department’s assessment of the situation of the Amazighs in Morocco, after years of “confusion” in dealing with the Amazigh issue in our country.
The American reports for the years from 2016 to 2020 include the Amazigh issue in the section on “discrimination and societal violations,” and exactly in the subsection on “members of national, racial and ethnic minority groups.” As for the report for the year 2021, it was included in the subsection on “Systematic racism or discrimination and ethnic violence,” while the latest report, drawing for the year 2022, abandoned the concept of “ethnic minorities” to replace it with the concept of “indigenous people,” which is considered a radical shift in the US administration’s position on the Amazigh issue.
What are the possible reasons for this shift in the American approach to the Amazigh issue in Morocco? What happened until the Amazighs became an indigenous people in the eyes of America, which had always dealt with them as an ethnic minority? Will this transformation have repercussions for the future of the Amazigh language in Morocco? Will it have geo-strategic repercussions in the countries of North Africa, the Sahel and the Sahara, where millions of Amazighs live?
It is not easy to encompass all the above questions in the space of an article whose author only wants to draw attention to what is going on and is going on. Rather, we will suffice to provide a few data that appear from above the iceberg of the interlocking data on which the US administration relies in writing its reports, so the US position shifted from The Amazighs of Morocco cannot happen without tremors in the mountain of US geo-strategic data and bets in all the countries of North Africa, the Sahel and the Sahara, where the Amazighs are present.
America and activists of the Amazigh movement
The American diplomatic mission is considered one of the most active missions in Morocco. It has its networks and partners who provide it with the data it needs about the most accurate details of the human rights issue. This is no secret. The American annual reports always confirm that it works closely with the Moroccan government, the concerned governing bodies and civil society activists, including Amazigh activists. We recall here the tumultuous controversy after the WikiLeaks leaks about Morocco and the accompanying media exchange between Islamists and Moroccan Amazighs, in 2011, after the two sides exchanged accusations of seeking help from the United States of America.
Those familiar with the WikiLeaks documents and the explanations of Counselor Kirik Karp, the editor of the secret document that documented the course of a meeting between the US ambassador and Amazigh activists in Morocco in 2007, will realize that the US administration is closely following the developments of the Amazigh file and believes that Amazigh issues must become clear in the Moroccan government's policies. In education and the media, but within the framework of what the International Bill of Human Rights allows for ethnic minorities, the Amazighs, in the view of the American administration, “must enjoy their rights as a minority.” This is how it classifies and describes them in its reports up to the year 2022, even though it knows that the new Moroccan constitution is considered Amazigh is a common asset for all Moroccans without exception, and although they know that Amazigh activists in Morocco refuse to consider the Amazighs a minority, and insist on this in the reports of their associations and in the international forums on human rights and peoples in which they participate.
Possible reasons behind the radical shift in America's position on the Amazighs of Morocco
America does not talk about its minds and does not write its reports on human rights in the world out of love for people and for the International Bill of Rights of Individuals and Groups. An article of hers published by the magazine “Foreing Affairs” in its January 2000 issue: “Those who believe that the national interest should be read through the strands of international law and organizations such as the United Nations are mistaken. The United States is not against the human interest, but it places it in the second row after its national interests.”
Therefore, we consumers of America's reports must realize, if we want to be active rather than passive, that there are fundamental reasons behind the shift from classifying the Amazighs as an ethnic group to classifying them as an indigenous population, for words have power.
American administration experts know very well that there is no internationally agreed definition of population groups that constitute minorities (refer in this regard to the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities), and they also know that the classification of Amazighs as a minority is necessary, according to international law. For human rights, the Amazighs define themselves as a minority, and despite all that, these experts have written in their reports, for many years, that the Amazighs are a minority.
America has its plans for the future of North Africa, the Sahel and the Sahara, and this is not a secret, and it knows that the Amazigh file can be a factor that enhances stability in some countries, such as Morocco, and it can also be a bomb capable of exploding in the face of other regimes in the region, as is the case in Mali. Libya and Algeria. The Amazigh file is present in the strategies of the major powers competing for spheres of influence in North Africa and the Sahel and Sahara, which cannot ignore the Tuareg weapons in Mali, the demands of the “Kabyle government in exile” to secede from the Algerian state, and the growing role of the Amazighs in western Libya.
The US administration’s reports on human rights have a role to play in the war of competition over areas of influence in North Africa and the Sahel and Sahara. Human rights files are often used to put pressure on some regimes to achieve geopolitical gains for America. Behind every “human rights” position is a package of measures, as the US administration confirms in Introduction to all her reports: “The defense of human rights includes not only clarity in the words we use to describe them, but also includes the actions we take to advocate for common freedoms wherever these freedoms are denied, and towards anyone who denies them, and the defense of human rights includes our commitment by addressing the devastating effects of oppression around the world.”
America's perception of the indigenous people of Morocco
Finally, the US State Department realized that the Amazighs are not a minority in Morocco and confirmed in its latest report that the Amazighs are an “indigenous people.” The experts of the American administration abandoned the semantic ambiguity (le flou sémantique) that helped them trench the Amazighs, for many years, among minorities in Morocco, along with sexual and religious minorities. and others.
The experts of the American administration finally realized that the Amazighs of Morocco are indigenous people, even if their situation differs from that of most indigenous peoples in the world. Therefore, they employed the concept of indigenous peoples in their report for the year 2022, coupled with some details that refer to the historical, political and social dimensions that frame the concept in the Moroccan case.
It seems that the American administration finally understood the contents of a press interview of King Mohammed VI with the French newspaper “Le Figaro”, on September 4, 2001, where he said in answer to a question about the comparison between the Amazigh issue in Morocco and Algeria: ((Their demands are not the same as those of the tribes, so we have sensitivity Amazigh - and not barbarism - is an assimilational sensitivity. I am Moroccan before I am Amazigh or Arab, and there are Amazigh Moroccans and others of Arab, African or Andalusian origin. My father was of Arab origin while my mother is Amazigh, and this fact expresses the Moroccan genius)).
The belated awareness that there is a Moroccan genius and peculiarity prompted - it seems - the US State Department to assign the indigenous character to the Amazighs of Morocco and to emphasize in the subsection on the indigenous population in its report on human rights in Morocco the following: “Most of the population, including the royal family, reported That they have some Amazigh heritage…” The silence of the US administration’s experts on the nature of the heritage referred to in their report opens the door to all interpretations, as this heritage may be genetic, cultural or civilizational.
In the subsection on the indigenous population of its report, the US administration expressed its concern about historical injustices to the Amazighs, which resulted from the marginalization of their language and culture and the exclusion of Amazigh regions from the fruits of growth in the country, and thus, preventing them in particular from exercising their right to advance their culture and language, and their right In development according to its own needs, especially in the Atlas Mountains and the countryside.
In conclusion: The Moroccan state is not disturbed by the American administration’s dealings with the Amazighs of Morocco as an indigenous people, as its ancient history has more than 33 centuries of the history of the Amazighs of Morocco. We all remember the response of the Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations, Professor Omar Hilale, to the provocations of the Algerian Foreign Minister at a meeting of Non-Aligned Countries in 2021, by saying: “The Algerian minister, who stands as a strong defender of the right to self-determination, denies this same right to the Kabyle people, one of The oldest people in Africa, who suffer the longest foreign occupation.
What should disturb the Moroccan state and be ashamed of it, far from the reports of America, the European Union and others, is the disturbing situation of the Amazigh language and culture and the rates of poverty and fragility in the country. The country and the rights of Moroccans to live decently.
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