Morocco News Board
Morocco’s Diplomacy In Latin America
Rabat past efforts to explain its positions and plans for the Western Sahara were short-lived, incoherent and ineffective. The Moroccan Monarch’s letter of condolence to the new Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is a good gesture, but far from sufficient to remedy past diplomatic shortcomings.
Washington / Morocco News Board-Morocco’s diplomatic ship in South America keeps floating without a captain. The death of the Bolivarian leader Hugo Chavez and the recent inauguration of Mexico’s new President are two major political events that the Moroccan Foreign Ministry should utilize to review and assess, once again, Morocco’s ailing and meek diplomatic efforts in Latin America.
For Moroccans living in North and South America, the presence of Polisario “embassies” and missions in influential capitals like Mexico City, Bogota and Caracas are incomprehensible and constant reminders of Morocco’s diplomatic failure in South America. Aside from Castro’s Cuba and Ortega s’ Nicaragua, the rest of the Latin countries should have a solid political and historic understanding for the Moroccan positions in the Western Sahara conflict. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
With few and far in between Ministerial missions to the region like Deputy Foreign Minsister Youssef Amrani visit to Aregntina, Moroccan diplomats have struggled to get a foothold in South America. With Algeria’s financial backing and Cuban expertise,
the Polisario separatists had a free reign in the Latino world. Morocco’s diplomatic nightmare started during the heydays of the –late Algerian President- Boumediene diplomacy when Fidel Castro decided to dopt the Algeria-backed Polisario Front as a “revolutionary’ movement. Havana offered the separatists expertise, means and more importantly access.
As Cuba opened an entry gate for the Polisario to promote its agenda, the Moroccans were either absent from certain regions, namely Central America, or overwhelmed by the separatists early successes. Morocco’s first and most significant mistake in Latin America was and remains its inability to capitalize on the connections of anti-Cuban governments in the region to counter the Cuban backed Polisario offensive.
In the seventies when countries in the region began to recognize the Polisario self-declared “Sahrawi In the seventies when countries in the region began to recognize the Polisario self-declared “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic” (SADR), Moroccan diplomats unable to decipher and thus counter-attack the Algerian-Polisario diplomatic onslaught “withdrew” to their Embassies.
It took years for Rabat to admit it past mistakes in South America and attempt to repair the diplomatic damage. Morocco’s recent limited success in reversing some of the SADR recognitions is an encouraging sign but not enough to restore the nations’ image.
My 1997 meeting with several Mexican Congressmen, part of my work at the Mexican Congress, was a revelation. In the 1990’s, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Known as the (PRI)) run Mexico and yet none of the PRI lawmakers I talked to you ever heard of the Western Sahara or the Polisario. In fact, some of the PRI leaders visited Morocco on personal business and yet were unfamiliar with the Sahara conflict and oblivious to the ramifications of “a SADR embassy” presence in Mexico City on the Moroccan-Mexican relations.
If Moroccan diplomats failed to lobby the leftist PRI legislators when their party was in power, Rabat was inexplicably absent while the conservative right wing Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) held the Mexican Presidency. The then Moroccan Foreign Minister lack of initiative in reaching out to Presidents Vincent Fox and Felipe Calderon is indefensible. Fox and Calderon, both from PAN, were more likely to sympathize with the Moroccan stance considering their positions toward the Zapatista movement.
Rabat’s timid activities in Colombia are more representative of Morocco’s current diplomatic approach in the region. In fact, Bogota should have been a launching pad for a Moroccan initiative in South and Central America. With consecutive conservative governments, including the one of the sitting President Juan Manuel Santos of Social Party of National Unity, a known anti-Chavez personality, Moroccan diplomats should have descended on Bogota to set up shop. Instead, Moroccan diplomats remain reactive and non-engaging.
With fully staffed Embassies active in major capitals in Latin America, Morocco’s should have a solid presence in the diplomatic circles. However, the absence of a comprehensive blue print on how to approach Latin governments and a lack of a culture that encourages individual Ambassadors to take-up initiatives keep Morocco’s message muffled and its plans and positions misunderstood throughout the continent. It is time for the Moroccan diplomacy to recalibrate its approach in South America by capitalizing on the geopolitical dynamics of the region.
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