I would love to declare my house an independent kingdom. But my wife has a different idea, my extended family as well, my friends too, plus the neighbors would like to have the opportunity to stick their nose in our private business. It’s not as straightforward as you might think.
The highest level of open-minded and tolerant nationalism in the world today is what is happening in Scotland. You have a civilized nationalist party, which is in power, and it has set 2014 as a date for a referendum on independence or status quo as part of the United Kingdom. They are going about it today arguing which option is best for the people. The Scottish will decide very soon. Watch this space.
In Northern Ireland, however, it’s a different ball game altogether. You have parties who want to resurrect a united Ireland, and on the other side, you have some fiercely unionist parties who want to stay under the British flag and monarch. They found a medium which is an assembly where they can sit down and voice their opinions, sometimes shout out loud, and ask for more power from London without the bullet.
While in Moroccoland, we already have pro-independence parties mainly from the radical left (Annahj Dimoucrati) and other affiliate human rights NGOs. That’s their raison-d’etre. Power to the people or the proletariat if you like!
Let’s not forget that all the [Western Sahara separatist] Polisario leaders started their separatist activism from inside the radical Moroccan left inside Moroccan universities in the seventies of the last century?
They were anti-monarchy, pro-Communist, pro-Cuba, pro-USSR and pro-Eastern Bloc in general.
In short, they want a Stalinist republic in all Morocco. But some wise souls thought: if we can’t convince all Moroccans of the merits of a Soviet-style republic, let’s do it just in the Sahara province knowing well that if they had succeeded there, the whole Moroccan monarchic regime would have crumbled like a house of cards.
As to [Western Sahara Separatist activist] Aminatou Haider and her likes, she is far from independent. She likes what she sees in [Algeria based separatists camps] in Tindouf and, hence, you never hear her say a bad thing about the dear leader camping there for decades with no free and fair elections.
It is Gaddafi Jr up there. Otherwise, if Haider was really fair, just and democratically minded, she would vigorously object to what [Separatist leader] El Merrakchi and his gang stand for: a corrupt regime with brutal gangsters domesticated by the Algerian military junta.
What’s more, the Amazigh tribes will never ever allow the Arab nomads with no deep-rooted affiliation to Moroccan Sahara beyond two centuries to take ownership of the land and what’s under it and above it.
An Arab state in north African!!!! No thank you very much. We have enough of them already across the MENA region and most of them are in a pretty bad state.
