Cold Snap Exposes Outrageous Indifference of Morocco’s Government

Doesn’t the Moroccan government know that it is generally very cold in the first months of the year, and that ours is a country with mountains and therefore a harsh climate during these winter months?

Every year, many of us look or read in astonishment as the government and local authorities agitate for great maneuvers over hills and dale, promising to come to the rescue of those in remote, “useless” parts of Morocco. We moan and ask for answers, while passively waiting for the following year’s cold snap to yet again vent our frustration and outrage.

Waiting for Royal Instructions

Last week, an audio message featuring the voice of a woman in distress circulated widely on social media. Many have been calling for the woman’s audio to be shared on a very large scale so that no one can look away or avert their ears to ignore… But ignore what? The answer, of course, is the disastrous situation of the populations in the Ouarzazate region, which has rarely experienced this much snowfall, as many photos recently shared online have documented.

Yet Morocco’s technical and administrative machine only sprang into action following instructions from King Mohammed VI. One can thus be surprised at this recurrence of royal messages to officials who, it seems, would not have taken it upon themselves to act without royal instructions.

And what makes this spectacle particularly outrageous is that it’s the same thing every year! In 2008, King Mohammed VI visited a place called Anfgou (province of Midelt), where around thirty children had died of cold the previous year. Let’s reread this sentence slowly so it can really sink in: about thirty children died of cold in Anfgou, in 21st century Morocco. The Head of State therefore had to make the trip, visiting the affected populations and distributing the missing food, blankets and medicines.

One can accept, or perhaps understand, that this can happen, that disasters are always possible and can strike anywhere. The problem, however, is that in 2018, the King again gave orders to set up a field hospital in the same village of Anfgou. What this means is that ten years after the death of these thirty children, nothing, or almost nothing, had been done to protect this place against the yearly cold snapt.

This, among other things, points to the need for and the use of accountability for various officials who have occupied administrative functions in the region over the past years, be it as elected officials and as other authorities representing the Moroccan state in the concerned villages and towns.

Either they asked for budgets that were never granted to them, or they did simply nothing — and in both cases there are those responsible who must be held accountable and punished for their murderous indifference to the plight of fellow Moroccans.

But Anfgou is only one example among so many others of many government officials’ failure to fulfill their duties, since the King always has to step in every year to instruct that humanitarian relief be sent to the affected populations. As soon as the King gives his instruction, the army becomes active, with its planes taking off from everywhere and its helicopters landing nowhere; the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity rallies behind efforts to intervene in the affected communities, all of which eventually inspires the Ministries of Health and the Interior who deploy their large means.

Morocco Is Not Limited to Major Cities Only

This is all very well, but where were these two ministries, while the weather forecast office issued its warning bulletins? Why always only come to the rescue after the disaster has hit, and only after the King tells them to do what they should have done of their own initiative months or years prior?

Above all, what were they doing between the months of March and September of last year, when it was still possible to avert many deaths and to avoid great suffering for the populations in the harsh winter season they knew would come? Morocco is not only Gueliz, Dar Bouazza, Hay Riyad!

It is always distressing, painful, poignant, to see these worthy but destitute fellow citizens show up with resigned looks and disaster-hit faces to take their bags of foodstuffs, sanitary products and blankets. It is as if the affected regions of Morocco were in a war-torn country, or a country devastated by floods, an earthquake, or any other natural or human cataclysm.

The King, of course, is in his role to give instructions since those who are supposed to be responsible for the wellbeing of the afflicted communities have been chronically failing to fulfill their duties.

But once these royal instructions are given, and as soon as the King’s orders are carried out and the much-needed products are distributed, everything falls into disarray… And then everyone including the governors, secretaries general, heads of departments, and the elected presidents of everything that needs a president — commune, province, region, professional chambers — can return home.

Before the King’s orders, they were all complacently and unconcernedly watching the suffering of their fellow citizens whose well-being they were elected or appointed to guarantee. But once they minimally help carry out the King’s orders, they go back to their homes with this pleasant, heart-warming feeling of having accomplished something worthwhile this time around, even if they know, deep down, that countless people still remain in the cold, and that the same excruciating scenario will unfold next year.

Is this a country that aspires to economic prosperity and seeks to emerge as a force to reckon with on both the economic and geopolitical fronts? A country where children are still dying of cold, where villages remain landlocked, where citizens record audios that they desperately ask to be circulated so that, in the absence or improbability of an effective administrative response, the King can step in to instruct that they be taken care of?

Is this how we hope to attract foreign filmmakers to Ouarzazate? Is this how the Head of Government and the Minister of Justice, natives of Tafraout and Taroudant, pay homage to the cities where they were born?

It doesn’t make sense to want to appear as big as an ox when you are only a frog, especially when there still exists this “useless Morocco” that no one wants to see in the country anymore but that those in power, whether they are technocrats or politicians, elected or appointed, refuse to see.

As soon as the king gives his instructions, civil society actors mobilize, while media professionals and social media users share stories or reports on the plight of these destitute citizens. But then nothing sustainable is or will be done without the decisive and radical action of the administration, either appointed executives or elected officials.

And as long as nothing is done, so long as whole populations live every year in the freezing cold and see their children suffer, even die, there is no point in presenting ourselves to the international community for what we are not yet.