Kevin Barrett: Moroccans are not desperate to flee to Algeria!

As an American resident of Saidia, Morocco, I spend a lot of time on the 14-kilometer beach, one of the best in Africa. In winter, I’m often the only one swimming. But throughout the summer Saidia’s beach is a nonstop carnival, jam-packed with happy holiday-makers and vendors selling mint tea, corn-on-the-cob, and other delicacies. There are often so many people one has to tiptoe through the cracks between beach towels to get to the water.

The thousands of people who crowd Saidia’s beaches are here to enjoy themselves. Holiday-makers from hot inland cities love to cool down in the sea, while ethnic Moroccans from Europe appreciate the lower prices and opportunities to expose their children to the local language and culture.

Instead of spreading fake news about the Moroccan economy to distract from your own economic problems, why not give both economies a huge boost by mending fences?

But Saidia’s beach apparently looks different from Algeria.  This morning I saw an X post in Arabic that translates as follows:

Reality Speaks🇲🇦🤐| The coastal city of Saidia, bordering Algeria🇩🇿, witnessed a mass migration attempt by Moroccans via the sea toward #Algeria, fleeing poverty and dire living conditions; confirming that the misery of reality left them no choice but to seek better prospects outside Morocco. At a time when we have never witnessed a #Algerian seeking asylum in Morocco.

The post includes a video showing a small Moroccan protest from 2018, when a group of Moroccans rallied at the beach in Saidia in favor of opening the Algerian border. None of them swam to Algeria! But apparently there are anti-Morocco Algerians who have been circulating the video and falsely claiming that Moroccans are lining the Saidia beaches not to enjoy the sunshine and sea, but to hurl themselves into the water in a desperate attempt to escape Morocco and splash their way to freedom and prosperity.

The post is not a one-off. The bizarre notion that Moroccans are desperate to flee to Algeria is a staple of Algerian propaganda. Distorted videos and fake news constantly circulate on all the major platforms claiming that Morocco is backwards and impoverished, with no food in the grocery stores and no products in the shops and everyone desperate to decamp to Algiers to enjoy the high life under the enlightened socialism of a wise, kind, and generous military regime.

If this kind of moronic propaganda is supposed to be inciting Moroccans against their government, it isn’t working. Everyone I’ve met here, whatever their political views, finds the Algiers-based anti-Morocco agitprop completely ridiculous.

Morocco has economic problems, but so do many other countries. The economy and infrastructure here are off-the-charts excellent by African standards, and people who have spent time in both Algeria and Morocco know that Morocco compares favorably to its eastern neighbor despite lacking the oil and gas endowments that give Algeria a slightly higher nominal GDP.

What’s more, the claim that Moroccans are lining the beaches of Saidia to swim to liberation in Algeria is not just absurd, it’s actually offensive, in light of the fact that the Algerian Coast Guard has murdered Moroccan vacationers whose jet skis ran out of gas and drifted into Algerian waters. Moroccan swimmers risk their lives if currents wash them anywhere near Algeria and its intrepid Coast Guard.

Memo to the Algerian Ministry of Propaganda: Stop shooting yourselves in the foot. Silly, preposterous lies may work for Donald Trump, but he’s the exception that proves the rule. If you want us to like Algeria, I’m sure you can find a better approach.

READ: Chris Doyle: Damascus is slowly rising from the war’s ashes

And honestly, I (and many Moroccans) are fully prepared to start liking Algeria. We cheer for you in international soccer, at least when you aren’t playing Morocco, even though you don’t cheer for us. And please, stop calling us Zionists. We don’t like the baby-killing genocide creeps any better than you do, and the two nations’ policies might converge in a more productive direction if you stopped waging proxy war against the Moroccan Sahara.

Instead of spreading fake news about the Moroccan economy to distract from your own economic problems, why not give both economies a huge boost by mending fences? A free trade zone in northwest Africa would turbo-charge both countries.  

I would love to be able to swim to Algeria—for a cup of coffee in one of your seaside cafés—and then swim back to Saidia. To make that happen, please work with Rabat to open the border, and tell your Coast Guard not to shoot us.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. Dr. Kevin Barrett (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison 2004) is an American Muslim writer, editor, radio host and TV commentator. He has authored or edited eight books and published hundreds of articles. Since leaving the University of Wisconsin in 2006 he has been exploring issues and perspectives that are banned from mainstream US outlets.

If you wish to pitch an opinion piece, please send your article to opinion@maghrebi.org.