Morocco’s Military: Too Conventional For Today’s Asymmetric Threat

To enhance its air combat and air defense capabilities, the Moroccan Royal Air Force (RAF) had requested from and was approved by the United States Congress to purchase AIM-120C-7 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air missiles (AMRAAM) from Raytheon, a U.S. company specializing in Defense technology. Some sources reported that Morocco’s purchase request and commitment was for 96 missiles; other sources reported a much lower number. AMRAAM will allow RAF to maximize on the operational capabilities of its recently purchased F-16 Block 52+ aircraft.

AMRAAM costs $1.1 million each. It weighs 154.22 kilograms and has a range of 70 kilometers. Its air-to-air and surface launch dual application as well as its increased lethality makes it an attractive acquisition despite the fact that its precursors, AIM-7 and AIM-9, fared poorly in combat. Only 28% of the 88 AIM-7 fired during the 1991 Gulf War hit their targets. The combat tests of the AIM-9 Sidewinder, an improved version of the AIM-7, were even less impressive; of the 97 missiles fired, only 12.6% hit their targets. AMRAAM has been insufficiently tested. Only 13 missiles were fired in a combat environment. However, the results were positive; 77% hit their targets.

To increase interoperability with its European allies and U.S. military services and combatant commands – specifically AFRICOM and EUCOM, Morocco has made substantial military hardware and weapons upgrades in recent years. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) indicated in its 2009 report, “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,” that Morocco has signed $5.4 billion worth of arms contracts with U.S. companies. In the Arab World, it is surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to the AMRAAM and the 24 F-16 Block 52+ aircraft, Morocco has signed a $30 million contract with Lockheed Martin for the purchase of AN/AAQ-33 SNIPER Advanced Targeting Pods (ATPs) with Ground Stations. The SNIPER ATPs will provide the F-16 aircraft with non-traditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (NT-ISR) capabilities. The long range positive identification of targets will boost the accuracy of the AMRAAM and complement command and control functions. Previously, Morocco was approved for a procurement package worth $187 million which includes 16 Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation (ACMI) Pods with four Ground Stations, 28 AGM-65(D and H) Maverick missile, 60 enhanced Guided Bomb Unit-12 (GBU-12) Paveway II, 28 M-61 vulcan cannons, 28 AN/ARC-238 Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radios with HAVEQUICK I/II or SATURN I/II, eight Joint Mission Planning Systems, two Remote Operated Video Enhanced Receivers, 30 AN/ALR-93 Radar Warning Receivers, and 30 AN/AVS-9 Night Vision Goggles. Additionally, RAF bought 3 CH-47D Chinook helicopters equipped with AN/ARC-201E Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio Systems (SINCGARS); the Chinook helicopter package was estimated at $134 million. In 2007, to upgrade its artillery capabilities and enhance its armored combat support, Morocco bought 60 M109A5 155mm self-propelled howitzers in a “as-is-where-is” condition as well as associated equipment and services; the estimated cost of the package is $29 million, a discounted price.

Morocco has signed purchase contracts with European arms providers as well. In 2008, RAF bought 4 C-27J tactical transport aircraft from Alenia Aeronautica, a Finmeccanica company. Netherlands’ Schelde Naval Shipbuilding of the DAMEN Shipyards Group was contracted by the Moroccan Royal Navy to design, build, and delivery three SIGMA-class Multi-Mission Frigates equipped with state-of-the art Combat Systems including, but not limited to Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), Surface Warfare (SuW), Anti-Air Warefare (AAW), and Electronic Warefare (EW) capabilities. A multi-mission frigate (Frégate Multi-Missions – FREMM) was ordered from France’s Direction des Constructions Navales (DCNS).

To widen the spectrum of security cooperation initiatives and promote regional stability, Morocco has signed tactical memorandums of understanding (TMOUs) with its regional allies, NATO, and USAFRICOM. The agreements are designed to facilitate the coordination and de-confliction of military and law enforcement operations; the objectives of these operations are to interdict human and drug trafficking, counter illegal immigration, and eliminate transnational terrorist and organized crime threats. To that effect, every year, Morocco participates in and hosts numerous iterations such as Exercise Phoenix Express, Operation Active Endeavour, Exercise Jebel Sahara, Exercise African Lion, Operation Enduring Freedom Trans Sahara (OEF-TS), and others. These operations are opportunities for Morocco and its allies to review and update lessons learned and reinforce joint tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

General Ahmed Anejjar, CG of Moroccan Infantry, presenting Wissam Al Istihkak Al Askari’ on behalf of King Mohammed VI to Lieutenant Colonel John Perez, British Army, during Exercise Jebel Sahara 09

The International Institute for Strategic Studies, in its 2009 comprehensive assessment of military capabilities of 170 countries, ranked Morocco’s military third strongest force in Africa. Egypt’s is first and Algeria’s is a distant second. The assessment evaluated training, personnel, equipment, and defense economics. It is unconceivable that Maghreb countries will engage in a war. Despite the region’s low strategic value, the U.S. and Europe will not allow regional conflicts to escalate beyond diplomatic fracas. Morocco’s defense procurement binge – and Algeria’s as well – seems nonsensical. I believe that Morocco’s current strategy is one of deterrence rather than provocation. But such strategy is far removed from the reality of the security situation in the region.

It is my conviction that the conventional framework of Morocco’s military today is ineffective in addressing the asymmetric nature of today’s regional conflicts in which the enemy is decentralized, but highly symbiotic and the physical battlespace is irrelevant. The nature of unconventional warefare as conducted by terrorist and insurgency type elements like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is to alter the TTPs faster than operational templates can adapt. The Moroccan military will then be denied a specific operational template upon which to base a proactive response. The low operations tempo of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb today is not a reflection of the effective security measures implemented by local governments, the conventional strength of their militaries, or their regional interactions with western militaries. It is due to the fact that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is focused on providing support to insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reinforcing Islamic extremist groups in Somalia. It is only a matter of time before Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or any of its proxies, their ranks bolstered by battle-tested Moroccan extremists, refocused their operational effort to destabilize the region by conducting tactical and strategic assassinations of political and military leadership, extensive propaganda operations targeting military and security personnel, and large scale criminal activity targeting the civilian population to discredit the police force. Such methods have been tested in Chechnya, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan; they have been proven to seriously affect policy. They forced the U.S. in Iraq to make concessions to the Iraqi insurgency and seek dialogue with Taliban in Afghanistan.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

The Politics Of Silence

Even as Morocco’s Minister of Foreign affairs Taieb Fassi-Fihri, during his meetings in Marrakesh with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton within the framework of the Forum for the Future, continues to tout, in his usual saccharine tone, the country’s “soaring democracy,” his nepotistic government sustains its hypocritical and duplicitous campaign against freedom of political expression subjecting the independent media to convulsions capable, I fear, of decimating the country’s prospect to an unfeigned democracy. Its deliberate immolation of Akhbar Al Youm carried on this week when the Moroccan police, at the behest of the ministry of interior, extrajudicially seized the newspaper and prevented its dissemination. Last Friday, in a Casablanca circuit court, a judge sentenced the paper’s publishing director, Tawfik Bouachrine, and caricaturist Khalid Kadar to a suspended jail sentence of eight years, a combined forfeiture of $412,118.00, and ordered its offices sequestered indefinitely. Prior to the sentencing, the offices of Akhbar Al Youm had been summarily shut down for 36 days. Bouachrine and Kadar were sentenced in accordance with article 267 of the penal code and article 41 of the press law.

Khaled Naceri, during a press conference on Thursday 29th, 2009, delivered a sonorous encomium on Morocco’s continued efforts to foster a eudaemonia for Morocco’s palmy independent media. The unhampered circulation of 1200 foreign newspapers and magazines, Naceri stated, attests the country’s freedom of expression. In fact, in light of the recent publication of Femmes Du Maroc and Telquel, one would find it difficult to gainsay the government’s claim of freedom of expression. Personally, I encourage such publications; I am a proponent of a diverse erudition that expands one’s mind and furthers one’s horizon beyond religious panophobia and gratification as envisioned in hell and heaven. But I hardly consider those as a reflection of freedom of expression in Morocco. Neither should you.

A true measure of freedom of expression is when established ideas and institutions are intellectually and politically challenged by dissenting opinions that are afforded as much a platform as concordant ones. This has never been the case in Morocco where critics of the king, his entourage, and his government are often vilified and their ideas muted. The insidious ingenuity of our government has made it such that its contention there are no prisoners of opinion in its detention centers is actually true; there are only criminals who broke the law and were promptly judged and sentenced by a court of law. As Naceri is fond of averring, Morocco is a country of law and order.

There are laws that uphold democracy and protect the people. There are others specifically intended to protect the rulers and advance their agenda. The latter are what civil liberties lawyer and writer Harvey A. Silverglate describes as the “over-criminalization” laws. A fully loaded oppressive system creates its own panoptic laws and appoints obsequious judges to enforce them. Take the nebulous articles 41 and 42 of the press law. Both were implemented in 2002 and are designed to protect the royal family from calumny and criticism. They are invoked to impose penalties on a broad swath of journalistic activity. A journalist could be charged under article 42 if his article is deemed insulting to the royal family. If the journalist’s defense strategy is to demonstrate that the information published is indeed true and argues in favor of the people’s need to know, he/she could be prosecuted under article 41 – statement undermining the monarchic institution – which carries a stiffer sentence; whether the statement is true or false is irrelevant to the judge. For a case in point, consider Idriss Chahtane, Tawfik Bouachrine, Khalid Kadar, Noureddine Miftah, Meriem Moukrim, Ali Lmrabet, etc.

Clearly article 41 and 42 and other similar laws are deleterious to freedom of the press and the citizens’ right to political expression. Since the 2002 press law reform, the government has been straining information streamed to the public through a sieve. Increasingly more journalists and bloggers are being arrested and sentenced each year. Such practices by the authorities and the onerous laws they impose stand against the conscience of every Moroccan who believes in Justice and equality. A select few are put on a pedestal being unaccountable for their actions. Above the law. Deities. We all have heard stories of members of the Moroccan elite committing blatant transgressions and walk away with impunity and without as much as a whiff of an investigation being initiated by the authorities.

Historical and literary examples of established authorities unwilling to countenance challenges to their absolutism abound. Didn’t Quraysh have established laws protecting their idols? But we never think of the prophet Mohammed as a criminal for breaking them. If you were a Jerusalemite and you saw Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, would you have called the Romans? If you were Antigone, would you have left your brother’s body to rot on the battlefield in obedience to the edict of Creon the king?

A true democracy rectifies the laws that belie the people’s conscience and undermine the underlying principles of equality and freedom. In the U. S., a bill to protect journalists who refuse to divulge the identities of their sources is currently being discussed in the Senate. In Morocco, there are no laws protecting journalists from gratuitous actions by the government. Journalists are walking lightning rods in an eonian thunderstorm. The situation is made even more tragic by unnerving unassertiveness of the population, the absence of a true national debate over the government’s overboard harassment, and the elusiveness of a reformative structure to remedy the problem. I suspect more journalists will be charged with invidiousness and hauled off to jail, except those the government succeeded in domesticating such as Rachid Nini of Al Masae.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009

Don’t Blame Femmes Du Maroc

Some of the reactions sparked by the naked picture of Nadia Larguet on the November cover of Femmes Du Maroc (FDM) and the article I wrote about it are rather unsettling. Some make it sound as if Hustler or playboy is being conspicuously sold in newsstands Morocco over, as if FDM is of the same caliber as those magazines that commercialize a woman’s feminine parts as sexual toys for the mind. Our society thinks that all nakedness is immoral and all of today’s modern disposition is immodest and perversive.

Let’s consider FDM’s cover as a Rorschach test of sorts (no offense Nadia. I’m not saying you’re an inkblot.) Those who view the naked pregnant woman’s picture as pornography are, in my opinion, projecting their insecurities and frustrations. Those are the ones who seem incapable of controlling their thoughts and urges. They would rather see a woman clad in a burqa and sequestered at home. If those ideas had prevailed in the 14th century, there would never have been a renaissance; is the “Venus of Irbino” painting pornography? are Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel not art? Is Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia’s novels not literature because he is gay? Is Morocco’s Latrache Abderahmane a neopegan because of his “Nu au Hamam”?

I agree that Islam provided women with rights they were denied by pre-Islamic Arabian societies. However, many scholars agree that the status of woman, after the death of the prophet, slowly reverted back to what it was in pre-Islam era. Islamic women enjoyed more rights during the prophet’s life than they do today.

I respect the choice of some women to wear hijab. Unfortunately, for most women in Moslem countries, it is not a choice; it is a familial and/or societal imposition that is, if not physical, ideological. Western women that wear the hijab are latently aware that there is a set of nonreligious laws upholding their rights not just as women, but as wives. They are content in knowing that their pious husbands cannot possibly admonish and banish them – in accordance with the Holy Qur’an, Chapter 4, Verse 34 – without incurring the wrath of a divorce judge. They reckon their husbands cannot marry younger women as they grow older. It would be unconceivable for an educated woman to detach herself from the protection provided by the laws of modern societies and accept the subjugation exacted on women in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. And why go far? In rural Morocco today, thousands of bereaved women are battling an archaic system that deprives them of their land inheritance because they have no surviving male relatives.

Some argued that Nadia Larguet does not represent the Moroccan women suffering in our inner cities and remote villages, that she could care less about the plight of women. It may be so. However, Women’s rights advocacy was introduced in the Arab world not by illiterate and destitute women, but by educated, middle class and bourgeois ones. Do you think it would have made sense if FDM posted the photograph of an unknown, poor, and naked woman? A fellow blogger, Jillian C. York, asked me if it was necessary to use such a shocking strategy to convey a message. My answer is: “absolutely yes!”

Do you seriously believe that our problems are caused by the permissiveness adopted from the western world? Do you honestly think that outside of official channels, our kids do not have access to pornography, drugs, Alchohol…? The exposure of Moroccan teenagers to satellite porn channels is a tropism to the repressiveness of our societies; Women are accosted daily in the street of our Moslem cities by frustrated men who demand sex. The hijab and the niqab does not make a difference to them. We’d rather not see any immorality, but we know it is writhing behind our closed doors. We assign a death or life value to a woman’s hymen as if that shred of skin sums up her character and virtue. Teen pregnancy has much to do with sex-ed. A full awareness of the repercussions of unprotected and/or antenuptial sex – Islam calls for the mindless prohibition of the act – can mitigate much of the social problems Morocco is currently mired in.

Of course the king would rather allow naked women on magazine covers and Sex and the City to film in Morocco. It allows his government to proclaim before the world that indeed we have freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

It’s not about Nadia Larguet. She was hardly a household name. The cover of FDM touches the very heart of one of our main problems today not just in Morocco, but in the Arab and Islamic world. We tend to see a naked woman as a sex object only, even a pregnant or an old woman, or a pubescent girl. It speaks volumes of our mentality. It’s not magazines like FDM that are corrupting our morals. We are already driven by a repressed concupiscence hardly witnessed in western countries.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009