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The French protectorate had successfully developed communications, added modern quarters to the cities, and created a flourishing agriculture and a modern industry based on a colonial model. Most of these activities, however, were managed by Europeans. In the constitutional field there had been virtually no development. Though the government was in practice under French supervision, in theory the powers of the sultan were unrestrained. By French insistence, the first cabinet was composed of ministers representing the various groups of Moroccan society, including one from Morocco’s Jewish minority. Mubarak Bekkai, an army officer who was not affiliated with any party, was selected as prime minister. The sultan (who officially adopted the title of king in August 1957) selected the ministers personally and retained control of the army and the police; he did, however, nominate a Consultative Assembly of 60 members. His eldest son, Mawlāy Hassan, became chief of staff, and by degrees successfully integrated the irregular liberation forces into the military even after they had supported an uprising against the Spanish in Ifni and against the French in Mauritania.
In general, the changeover to Moroccan control, assisted by French advisers, took place smoothly. Because of the continuing war in Algeria, which Morocco tacitly supported, relations with France were strained; close ties were maintained, however, because Morocco still depended on French technology and financial aid.
A major political change occurred in 1959 when the Istiqlāl split into two sections. The main portion remained under the leadership of Muḥammad ʿAllāl al-Fāsī, while a smaller section, headed by Mehdi Ben Barka, ʿAbd Allāh Ibrāhīm, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Bouabid, and others, formed the National Union of Popular Forces (Union Nationale des Forces Populaires, or UNFP). Of these groupings the original Istiqlāl represented the more traditional elements, while the UNFP, formed from the younger intelligentsia, favoured socialism with republican leanings. Muḥammad V made use of these dissensions to assume the position of an arbiter above party strife. He nevertheless continued preparations for the creation of a parliament until his unexpected death in 1961, when his son succeeded him as Hassan II.
In 1963, when parliamentary elections were finally held, the two halves of the former Istiqlāl formed an opposition, while a party supporting the king was created out of miscellaneous elements and came to be known as the Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions. This included a new, predominantly Amazigh, rural group opposed to the Istiqlāl. The ensuing near deadlock caused the king to dissolve Parliament after only one year, and, with himself or his nominee as prime minister, a form of personal government was resumed. In 1970 a new constitution was promulgated that provided for a one-house legislature; yet this document did not survive an abortive coup by army elements against the monarchy in July 1971. The following year Hassan announced another constitution, but its implementation was largely suspended following another attempted military coup in August. The second coup was apparently led by Minister of Defense Gen. Muḥammad Oufkir; he had earlier been implicated in the kidnapping (1965) and disappearance in Paris of the exiled Moroccan UNFP leader Mehdi Ben Barka, who had been regarded as a likely candidate for the presidency of a Moroccan republic. Oufkir subsequently died at the royal palace, supposedly by his own hand, while hundreds of suspects, including members of his family, were imprisoned. Elections held in 1977, which were widely regarded as fraudulent, brought a landslide victory to the king’s supporters. King Hassan’s forceful policies to absorb Spanish (Western) Sahara gave him increased popularity in the mid-1970s. This, in addition to his method of mixing efforts to co-opt the political opposition with periods of political repression, served to maintain royal control.
By the early 1980s, however, several bad harvests, a sluggish economy, and the continued financial drain of the war in Western Sahara increased domestic strains, of which violent riots in Casablanca in June 1981 were symptomatic. The need for political reform became even more pressing when international lending agencies and human rights organizations turned their attention to Morocco’s troubled internal state of affairs.
The threat of an Algerian-style insurrection fueled by a radical Islamic opposition worried the political leadership throughout the 1990s and into the early 21st century. The government has continued to closely watch the most militant groups. Along with the disaffected urban youth who occasionally took to the streets, the Islamist sympathizers have tested the limits of a new political tolerance. Thus, the 1990s were marked by greater liberalization and a sense of personal freedom, although direct criticism of the king and the royal family were still prohibited. Amnesties for political prisoners long held in remote regions of the country signaled a new attention to human rights, while much publicized curbs on the power of the police and security forces suggested closer adherence to the rule of law.
Foreign policy
The foreign policy of independent Morocco has often differed from that of its Arab neighbours. Throughout the Cold War, Morocco generally sided with the western European powers and the United States rather than with the Eastern bloc, whereas other Arab states usually chose neutral or even pro-Soviet positions. King Hassan helped to prepare the way for the Camp David Accords (1978) between Israel and Egypt by opening up a political dialogue with Israel in the 1970s, well in advance of other Arab leaders, and by continually pressing both Palestinians and Israelis to seek a compromise solution. Morocco closely supported the United States in the Gulf War (1991) and its pursuit of peace in the Middle East. Unlike other Arab states, Morocco has maintained ties with its former Jewish citizens who now reside in Israel, Europe, and North and South America. In late 2020 Morocco became the first North African country to normalize relations with Israel.
Morocco’s relations with neighbouring North African states have not always been smooth, especially those with Libya and its leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi (1969–2011). Shunning the Libyan leader’s volatile political style, Hassan nevertheless tried, in the 1990s, to reintegrate Libya into the Maghribī fold.
Events in Western Sahara disrupted relations with Algeria beginning in the early 1970s, because Algeria generally opposed Morocco’s policies there. Renewed tensions in 2021 over Western Sahara and Morocco’s normalization of ties with Israel led Algeria to sever relations with Morocco.
Western Sahara
From the mid-1970s King Hassan actively campaigned to assert Morocco’s claim to Spanish Sahara, initially using this nationalist issue also to rally much-needed domestic support. In November 1975, after a UN mission reported that the majority of Sahrawis wanted independence and recommended self-determination for the region, Hassan responded with the “Green March,” in which some 200,000 volunteers were sent unarmed across the border to claim Spanish Sahara. To avoid a confrontation, Spain signed an agreement relinquishing its claim to the territory. The region, renamed Western Sahara, was to be administered jointly by Morocco and Mauritania. By early 1976 the last Spanish troops had departed, leaving Morocco to struggle with a growing Sahrawi guerrilla group named the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario Front), actively supported by Algeria and later by Libya.
Hassan offered to hold a referendum in the area in 1981, but it was rejected by the Polisario Front leadership as being too much on Moroccan terms. Fighting continued, and Morocco was able to secure some two-thirds of the territory within defensive walls by 1986. In the meantime, the territory’s government-in-exile, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, won recognition from an increasing number of foreign governments. Improving ties between Morocco and Algeria beginning in 1987–88, along with a UN-sponsored peace proposal accepted by Morocco in 1988, augured a solution to the problem, but military action by the Polisario Front the following year prompted King Hassan to cancel further talks.
In 1991 a UN Security Council resolution promised the most definitive solution to Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara in 15 years. The resolution called for a referendum on the future of the territory to decide whether it should be annexed to Morocco or become an independent state. The promise of a referendum allowed for a cease-fire to take hold, buffered by UN peacekeepers, but Morocco and the Polisario Front were unable to agree on the makeup of the voter lists for the referendum, fearful of entering into an electoral process they might lose. Although agreement on other issues, such as political detainees and prisoners of war, was reached through UN mediation, stalemate over the code of conduct of the referendum continued, leaving the issue unresolved. By 2001 Morocco was no longer open to holding a referendum.
Amid renewed tensions, the Polisario Front announced in November 2020 that it would no longer observe the cease-fire brokered in 1991. The following month, in exchange for Morocco’s agreement to formalize ties with Israel, the United States became the first country to formally recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara; Israel became the second in 2023.
Hassan’s last years
By the end of the 1990s, King Hassan II had the distinction of being the Arab world’s longest-surviving monarch. He actively promoted a program of liberalization in Morocco and managed to recast an image of an old-style autocrat, reshaping himself and his country to reflect more progressive values. New political freedoms and constitutional reforms enacted in the 1990s culminated in the election of the first opposition government in Morocco in more than 30 years. In 1997 opposition parties won the largest bloc of seats in the lower house, and in March 1998 Abderrahmane Youssoufi (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Yūsufī), a leader of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, was appointed as prime minister. Under pressure from human rights organizations, Hassan also directed a vigorous cleanup campaign that led to the ousting and even execution of corrupt officials as well as the release of more than a thousand political detainees, some of whom had been held for nearly 25 years. Despite these major political reforms, the king retained ultimate political authority, including the right to dismiss the government, veto laws, and rule by emergency decree.
Hassan also guarded his status as religious head of state and carefully nurtured those aspects of his public image that garnered widespread support in the countryside and among the urban poor. Using public donations, he oversaw the completion in August 1993 of a huge $600 million mosque built on the shoreline at Casablanca, which features a retractable roof and a powerful green laser beam aimed at Mecca from atop its towering minaret. Paradoxically, his main political foes were also found in the religious arena, among the Islamic militants, whom he tried to hold within strict limits. But even at this point of contention, he showed some flexibility: In 1994 a number of political prisoners with ties to religious groups critical of the monarchy were pardoned by Hassan, and in December 1995 Abdessalam Yassine (ʿAbd al-Salām Yāsīn), the leader of the outlawed Islamic organization The Justice and Charity Group (Jamāʿat al-ʿAdl wa al-Iḥsān), was released after spending six years under house arrest.
Nevill Barbour L. Carl Brown Susan Gilson Miller