The Militant (logo)  
   Vol.66/No.30           August 12, 2002  
 
 
Spanish government stages military
provocation against Morocco
 
BY PATRICK O’NEILL  
Helicopters of the Spanish army lifted several dozen soldiers off the island of Leila July 20, temporarily ending an imperialist military provocation against Morocco. The Spanish rulers claim the island as their own, even though it is located across the Strait of Gibraltar and 600 feet off the shores of the north African country.

Watching from the Moroccan mainland, hundreds of fishermen and other citizens of Morocco cheered the action and jeered the Spanish military. "They have lowered the flag!" one man shouted.

Morocco has long been a base of Spanish colonial and imperialist exploitation, and the island is called Isla del Perejil or Parsley Island by the Spanish government. Amidst nationalistic propaganda, Madrid sent an "armada" to "recapture" the island July 17 after the regime of King Mohamed VI sent a half dozen troops there to set up a base. The Moroccan government said the deployment was aimed at stopping drug smugglers and immigrants from making the 12-mile crossing to Spain. Madrid has been pressuring the Moroccan regime to clamp down on such activity.

The Spanish landing party stormed Leila on July 17, capturing the six Moroccan gendarmes. The 28 commandos were supplied by military helicopters and backed up by five warships and a submarine. The warships blocked access to the area by other vessels, including Moroccan fishing boats.

Other Spanish troops landed on Isla de Lobos, an uninhabited island off Morocco’s Atlantic coast, while 7,000 Foreign Legion troops were placed on military alert in Ceuta.

The Moroccan government denounced the "unjustified aggression" and demanded the "immediate and unconditional withdrawal" of the Spanish forces, stating that "the island is an integral part of Moroccan territory." The Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, representing a number of governments in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, backed Morocco’s stance.

Washington, which is seeking to expand its economic ties and political influence across north Africa to the detriment of its imperialist rivals in Europe, stepped in to broker the Spanish withdrawal and a meeting of the foreign ministers of Spain and Morocco for July 22.

"The two sides have agreed to restore the situation regarding the island that existed prior to July 2002," said U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell.

While the agenda of the negotiations has not been announced, the Moroccan government has indicated that it wants to discuss the status not just of Leila, but of the Spanish city-enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla located in northern Morocco, and of other Spanish-claimed islands that lie within Moroccan territory. Fishing rights in the area are also a point of contention. Moroccan fishermen described the waters around Leila as a "gold mine."

"Let’s be realistic," said Mohamed Benaissa, the foreign minister of Morocco. "Sooner or later, we must confront this subject. Spain says it has a treaty, but it is a treaty of occupation. You can change it."

To date, the Spanish government has refused to discuss these issues with its Moroccan counterpart.

Territorial disputes between the Spanish and Moroccan governments date back to the declaration of Moroccan independence in 1956. At that time, Madrid held onto several areas that had been part of a protectorate officially granted it under a 1912 treaty with France.

The treaty gave Paris the lion’s share of Moroccan territory but reserved an area in the north for the Spanish government. That situation was maintained by Spanish and French troops until after World War II, when independence struggles throughout the African continent, including in Morocco, forced a retreat by the European imperialist powers from a number of their colonial possessions.

The coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, with Spanish-speaking populations of 75,000 and 69,000 people respectively, are the most prosperous of the areas still held by Madrid. Separated from Morocco by barbed wire barriers, they are home to garrisons of the Spanish Foreign Legion.

Relations between the two governments have deteriorated over recent months. In October the Moroccan government withdrew its ambassador from Spain. Earlier this month it protested the deployment of Spanish warships just 600 yards off the Mediterranean port of Al Hoceima.

The regime of King Mohamed VI and his predecessors have served as a pro-imperialist bulwark in the region, opening the natural resources of the country to foreign exploitation and brutally suppressing the struggle for the independence of Western Sahara. In the 1960s it opened a military campaign against the victorious Algerian revolution, which had torn the country out of the grip of French imperialism.

Since the 1970s, Washington has provided more than $1 billion in funding to the Moroccan armed forces, which uses the aid to prosecute its ongoing campaign against the independence struggle by the people of Western Sahara.

Whatever the government’s stated reasons for the action, however, the assertion of Moroccan national rights to territory at land and sea clearly touched a chord among working people in the country, as evidenced by the many who gathered on their coastline to protest the Spanish action.  
 
 
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