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The Makings of a Mass Crisis

Unless Morocco’s government provides better jobs, education, healthcare, and human rights to young people, the crisis we witnessed this last week will happen again.

During the last week of July, as a heat wave desiccated the Mediterranean basin and wildfires ravaged cities on both sides of the sea, an estimated 50,000 Moroccan migrants crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in northern Morocco, swimming the short distance around the border post. By July 31, more than 48,300 had already returned home, after finding a local immigration processing center packed, shops and restaurants closed, and nothing to eat or drink. What looked to be a massive humanitarian crisis was defused almost as soon as it had started.

Theories quickly circulated on social media. That thousands of young Moroccans had spontaneously crossed into Ceuta after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants arriving by sea could not be sent back immediately. That Morocco had enabled these crossings after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited its political rival Algeria, to remind the prime minister that Morocco can still exert control over migration flows into Europe. That Morocco had sent people to the border at the behest of the United States and/or Israel, because the Sánchez government had recognized Palestine as a state. That Morocco wanted to reassert its territorial claims over Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s last two outposts in Africa. Everyone was grasping for a sensible explanation to the crisis or some kind of strategy behind the madness.

The influx of migrants happened on Throne Day, when King Mohammed celebrated his 27 years in power at a series of ceremonies held in the north of Morocco. Dignitaries in suits, jellabas, and caftans streamed into the palace for celebrations, while just a few miles away young Moroccans were throwing themselves into the sea hoping to cross into Spain. The contrast was jarring. To add to the surreality, that evening the Moroccan Women’s National Team defeated its Algerian counterpart in the group stage of the Women’s African Cup of Nations, a qualifying event for the World Cup. Gianni Infantino, lately embroiled in a scandal over the privatization of FIFA, was present at the palace celebrations. You can’t write coincidences like this even in a work of fiction.

But it........

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