France's Highest Administrative Court Hands Algeria, Polisario Another Setback
The Council of State, France's highest administrative court, has stunned the Polisario Front and its supporter Algeria by rejecting a Morocco-bashing request by the pro-Polisario Confederation Paysanne that sought to undermine agriculture cooperation between France and Morocco.
The confederation, a pro-Polisario group, had urged the French government to ban the importation of cherry tomatoes and Charentais melons from Moroccan southern provinces in Western Sahara .
In its complaint, the pro-Polisario confederation cited the hostile verdict of the European Court of Justice, which accused the European Commission of 'violating' the 'right of self-determination' to 'the people of Western Sahara' and called for invalidating the fisheries and agriculture agreements between EU and Morocco.
In response, the council said it had no legitimacy to order a ban on the importation of Moroccan products. This is because the EU court had 'clarified' in its verdict 'that a Member State of the European Union cannot unilaterally ban the import of agricultural products whose labeling does not comply with EU legislation regarding the indication of the country of origin,' explained the council.
This means that only European authorities are competent to make the decision to ban or allow the import of products from a third country, the council. It noted that even EU ministers responsible for their respective countries' economy and agriculture 'could not legally ban the import' of the cherry tomatoes and melons harvested in Morocco's southern provinces.
Read also: Analyst: European Commission Aviation Announcement Will Unlikely Affect EU-Morocco Ties
The council's rejection of the pro-Polisario group's hostile appeal comes at a time when some pro-Polisario lobbying forces, including within the French government and Spain, are pushing to shift the EU and some European countries' Sahara stances in favor of claims challenging Morocco's territorial integrity.
Another recent pro-Polisario maneuver is a report that French television channel M6 published on January 26.
In it, M6 made serious allegations about Moroccan fertilizers being harmful. The French channel notably claimed that Moroccan fertilizers contain high levels of cadmium, a harmful substance that carries heavy metals that can cause irreversible damage to the human organism.
Observers have stressed that the main reason behind these claims was to undermine the rapidly deepening France-Morocco ties.
Since President Macron announced his country's support for Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, Paris, and Rabat have repeatedly signaled their shared determination to further cement their booming bilateral cooperation in a wide range of strategic sectors.
For observers, both this evolving friendship and France's support for Morocco's Sahara stance constitute an unacceptable development for Algeria. Tags: France and AlgeriaPolisario
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Morocco World
2 hours ago
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At the Edge of the Fabric of Moroccan Identity: The Limits and Promise of Tamaghrabit
In the global tapestry of nations, the Kingdom of Morocco occupies a remarkable position—not as the result of historical disjunction, but as a global culture formed by deep and layered encounters. Positioned on the Atlantic, linked to the interior of Africa, and historically enmeshed with the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, Morocco has long crafted its identity from a mosaic of plural traditions. At the heart of this national distinctiveness lies a concept both vernacular and cultural: Tamaghrabit (or Tamghribīt ), a term that conveys the affective texture and ethical grammar of 'Moroccanness.' In recent years, Tamaghrabit has gained renewed prominence in Moroccan public discourse. From state institutions to civil society, and from intellectuals to policymakers, the term is increasingly embraced as a homegrown civic ethos—a way of being Moroccan that affirms pluralism, historical continuity, and strategic autonomy in a region often marked by fragmentation and ideological disarray (Bennis 2012; Boussouf 2023; Hashas 2024). Rooted in Morocco's deep historical entanglements—Arab, Amazigh, Andalusian, African, Islamic, Jewish, and Mediterranean— Tamaghrabit is invoked both as a cultural inheritance and as a forward-looking identity project. But is it? Beneath this confident narrative lies a set of unresolved questions. Is Tamaghrabit a genuine civic ethos grounded in lived diversity, or a normative framework that seeks to defuse dissent without addressing deeper structural inequalities and historical omissions? Can a discourse founded on pluralism and exceptionalism avoid the pitfalls of ideological reification? To what extent does invoking Tamaghrabit as a 'civilization' risk lapsing into essentialism? And might Tamaghrabit instead evolve as a generative, critical, and open-ended space of identity-making, rather than a finalized narrative of cultural uniqueness? More than a casual signifier of national identity, Tamaghrabit is framed as a 'civilizational' ethos—a cultivated mode of cultural and political being. It represents an orientation to the world shaped by centuries of entanglement among Amazigh, Arab, African, Andalusian, Islamic, Jewish, and Mediterranean influences. This complex identity found legal and symbolic expression in Morocco's 2011 Constitution, which articulates the nation as forged through the convergence of Arab-Islamic, Amazigh, and Saharan-Hassania roots, nourished by African, Andalusian, Hebraic, and Mediterranean tributaries. At the center of this national tapestry is Islam, whose Moroccan iteration emphasizes openness, moderation, and dialogue—a spiritual and ethical compass that informs both private piety and public life. Yet Tamaghrabit is more than constitutional text; it is a lived practice and cultural grammar, expressed through architecture, cuisine, music, ritual, and the multilingualism of Moroccan society. Arabic and Tamazight share official status, while French, Hebrew, Spanish, Hassania, and Moroccan Arabic ( dārija ) course through everyday life, governance, and intellectual production. This polyphony is not a problem to be solved but a defining feature of Morocco's civilizational grammar—a historical strategy of managing cultural difference not through homogenization, but through what Moroccan thinkers term 'unity in diversity.' This ethos is deeply rooted in Morocco's long-standing state tradition. Since the establishment of the Idrissid dynasty in the late 8th century, Morocco has maintained political autonomy from the great caliphal centers of the Islamic world—the Umayyads in Damascus, the Abbasids in Baghdad, and later the Ottomans. This autonomy gave rise to a distinct model of statecraft, centered on the figure of the Amīr al-Muʾminīn (Commander of the Faithful), which tied political authority to sacred lineage and communal legitimacy. Across successive dynasties—from the Almoravids and Marinids to the Saadians and ʿAlawites—this sovereignty became a cornerstone of Moroccan identity. The process of civilizational fusion matured significantly during the Marinid period (13th–15th centuries), when Moroccan territorial, linguistic, and legal boundaries began to crystallize. Scholars such as Mohammed al-Manouni have shown how institutions of language, law, creed, and scholarship were consolidated during this era, laying the groundwork for what would become the Moroccan personality. Crucially, this identity never rested on exclusionary ethnic foundations. As contemporary scholars affirm, the Arab and Amazigh elements of Moroccan identity are not oppositional but mutually constitutive. Arabness is primarily understood as cultural and linguistic, not ethnic, while Amazighness refers to the indigenous historical and cultural stratum of North Africa, which continues to flourish through cultural revitalization and official recognition (Hashas 2024). The modern articulation of Amazigh identity—evident in the 2011 constitutional recognition of Tamazight and the adoption of the neo-Tifinagh script in 2003—has not undermined national cohesion but rather enriched Morocco's pluralistic ethos. Scholars such as Mohamed Chafik and Hassan Aourid argue that Arabs and Amazighs are not discrete or antagonistic communities, but co-founders of the Moroccan nation and its Islamic civilizational path. This marks a significant epistemic shift from colonial binaries that sought to fragment Moroccan society, toward a postcolonial paradigm that affirms pluralism as foundational. Still, while Tamaghrabit is often celebrated as a framework of cultural pluralism and historical depth, it risks being reified as a coherent and finalized construct. This conceptual closure—reinforced by state narratives and nationalist historiography—can obscure the tensions, hierarchies, and contestations that animate Moroccan plurality. Rather than treating Moroccanness as a stable essence, it is more productive to view it as a site of ongoing negotiation—a dynamic space where cultural, linguistic, political, and epistemic forces interact and reshape one another. This perspective aligns with Lawrence Rosen's Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew (2015), which argues that identity in the Moroccan context is not inherited but negotiated—shaped by social adjudication, situational belonging, and interpretive practice. Rosen reveals that Moroccan life is marked by enduring tensions—between Arab and Amazigh identities, Islamic and Jewish legacies, modern and traditional authorities. These are not peripheral but foundational. Despite Morocco's proud motto of 'unity in diversity,' linguistic and religious hierarchies persist. Tamazight still struggles for full institutional parity; Jewish heritage is symbolically acknowledged but politically marginal; and Christian and non-Sunni communities remain largely invisible. Moroccanness , then, is not seamless—it is marked by dissonance between symbolic pluralism and structural inequalities. The late Moroccan sociologist Paul Pascon's concept of the 'composite society' ( société composite ) offers a powerful analytic for these contradictions. Pascon rejected binary models—tribe versus state, tradition versus modernity—that flatten Morocco's complexity. He saw Moroccan society as an overlapping set of social orders—tribal, colonial, capitalist, Islamic—each shaped by historical forces and coexisting in tension. These entanglements produce not harmony but uneven development and contested spaces. Pascon's insights complement Rosen's: identity in Morocco is not fixed but enacted through a continual process of negotiation. It draws on multiple, often conflicting sources—Islamic law, tribal custom, colonial bureaucracy, revolutionary ideologies. The result is not a finished pluralism but a dynamic and fragmented field of becoming, where Moroccanness is continually reshaped and reimagined. These frameworks resonate with Hashas's (2024) tripartite typology of contemporary Moroccan thought— the near , the far , and the other —tracing how Moroccan thinkers engage local traditions, regional connections, and universal values. Rosen's interlocutors live this complexity daily. Their identities draw from Islamic jurisprudence, tribal affiliations, and postcolonial modernity, always negotiated and never settled. In this context, Pascon's société composite provides the structural lens through which these lived negotiations unfold. This ethos of critical dynamism underpins the intellectual tradition of the so-called Rabat School of Thought—a constellation of thinkers who emerged during the French Protectorate and rose to prominence in post-independence Morocco. They articulated a pluralist, reformist, and autonomous epistemology. 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Morocco's history offers rich resources for reimagining identity today: the migrations of Andalusian refugees and expellees; deep Jewish-Muslim ties; trans-Saharan caravans; Sufi cosmopolitanism; centuries of encounter with Ottoman, European, and American actors. These crossings shaped a Moroccan identity forged in connection, not isolation. If Tamaghrabit is to retain meaning, it must embrace these complexities. Tamaghrabit should not be reduced to a national brand. It should be seen as an ethical compass—a way of being that values pluralism, embraces contradiction, and cultivates reflection. Its power lies not in resolving complexity, but in naming it. To acknowledge the cracks in our society is not to weaken Tamaghrabit —it is to humanize and strengthen it. To speak of Tamaghrabit in the spirit of Edward Said is to reject cultural essentialism. Identity is not timeless essence; it is struggle, memory, and practice. Moroccan pluralism is not a completed project—it is an ongoing labor. Sustaining it requires dialogue, critique, and imagination. The stories of Estevanico of Azemmour—the African explorer who crossed continents and cultures—and Ibn Battuta of Tangier—the indefatigable traveler—remind us that identity is not a destination but a journey. To honor them is not to claim national heroes, but to embrace the labor of border-crossing, tension-holding, and narrative-making. In this light, Tamaghrabit is best seen as a living formation—an evolving bundle of meanings and practices shaped by history, memory, and everyday negotiation. It is not a static identity, but a dynamic process: open-ended, contested, and generative. Its strength lies in its capacity for openness—to hold contradiction, resist closure, and invite continual reinterpretation. As such, Tamaghrabit offers Moroccans a framework for navigating pluralism, questioning orthodoxies, and imagining more inclusive futures. 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Cote d'Ivoire's President Ouattara Bans Opposition to Consolidate Power
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