Morocco: The Cracked Facade

SLOWLY, the Moroccan television cameras panned across a parade ground of the Moulay Ismail military barracks near Rabat. The scene was chilling: ten tall stakes driven into the ground at intervals, firing squads at the ready, and detachments of the Moroccan armed forces on hand as witnesses. Ten ranking officers--four generals, five colonels and a commandant--marched into view. Each was tied to a stake, each had his epaulets and insignia ripped from his uniform. Just before the firing squads triggered their lethal volleys, home screens were deliberately blacked out. There were only sounds: the condemned men shouting "Yaish el Hassan el Thani!" (Long live King Hassan the Second) and chanting the Moslem act of faith, which begins "La lllaha ilia Allah" (There is no God but God) just before they died. Then the crack of rifle fire, the angry shouts of onlookers. Before the picture returned, the witnesses spat on the crumpled bodies of the rebels--the ultimate Arab insult.

In such electronic fashion did the current heir of Morocco's three-century-old Alouite dynasty bring home a chilling lesson to his subjects: any who rebel against him will be shot, perhaps without trial. Only two days before their deaths last week, the condemned officers had led 1,400 army cadets in an abortive coup while Hassan and 500 guests celebrated the King's 42nd birthday at a seaside party (see box). The coup was put down in a matter of hours, and life quickly returned to normal in Morocco under the strong hand of General Mohammed Oufkir, 51, a tough, uncompromising Berber who is Hassan's Interior Minister and most loyal general. By week's end, Oufkir's men had reportedly arrested some 900 cadets.

Bewildered Cadets. The planning of the coup was, at best, amateurish. The plotters used green, bewildered army cadets. They neglected to block roads, close airports or persuade other units in Algeria's 45,000-man army to join them. Said Hassan in his post-coup press conference: "They took over the Ministry of Interior, but they forgot about police headquarters. They occupied the radio station, but forgot about the telegraph and post office. They used the radio transmitter that covers Rabat, but forgot the one in Tangiers." What is more, both Colonel Mohammed Ababou, director of the Abermoumou military academy and a mastermind of the plot, and General Mohammed Medbouh, the ostensible leader, were killed during the Shootout at Skhirat, apparently by their own men.

When the coup attempt began and the rebels broadcast slogans like "Socialism has arrived--down with monarchy!" it appeared to be a standard, radical-inspired Arab upheaval. Certainly it had Libya's mercurial Colonel Muammar Gaddafi fooled. There is no evidence to indicate that Libya had any advance knowledge of the plot. Nonetheless, Gaddafi earned Hassan's enmity by immediately offering ground, armor and air support to what he thought were his ideological brothers in Morocco. They were hardly that. Medbouh, 44, was a wealthy satrap, not a struggling junior officer as Gaddafi had been before Libya's 1969 coup. General Mustapha Amehrach, 48, overall head of the military academies, kept a villa in Rabat, a beach house by the sea, an apartment in Paris and two farms.

The only logical reason given for their action was that they had become disgusted by corruption in high places. Pan American Airways, according to Moroccan reports, complained that $1,800,000 was demanded in payoffs before construction could begin on its Intercontinental Hotel in Casablanca. As a result of the airline's protest, the ministers of tourism, education, finance and commerce were sacked by the King. There have also been rumors of huge kickbacks in the sale of mineral concessions. Led by the rigidly upright Medbouh, the rebellious officers presumably hoped to end corruption by making Hassan their captive and establishing a Moroccan republic with the King a mere figurehead to lend them authority.

After the attempt was foiled, Hassan scornfully described it as "undeveloped in the worst sense of the term--a Libyan-style coup with all its imperfections." But the King also admitted that there had been "a certain number of errors of judgment, some of which were mine." Morocco is expected to lure 1,000,000 tourists this year for the first time, and the gross national product has risen by 26% in four years. But the population has grown by 13% in the same period, university and high school graduates cannot find jobs, and the average per capita income is still a hardscrabble $151. Since 1965, moreover, the King has dampened opposition and ruled the country as an absolute monarch. Ignoring criticism, Hassan lives in opulence in the midst of national poverty. At a party celebrating the circumcision of his eldest son, guests at the royal table discovered gold coins mixed into their food.

Fading Kings. Moroccans insist that Hassan, as a direct descendant of Mohammed, possesses baraka, or the indefinable charisma that brings blessings to others. But even that may not be enough in a changing Arab world where four other Kings--Farouk of Egypt, Feisal of Iraq, Badr of Yemen and Idris of Libya--have already been deposed. To many, the situation recalls Farouk's prediction before he fell in 1952: "Some day there will be only five Kings in the world--the King of England and the four in the deck of cards."

There are still three Kings in the Arab world alone, and the other two were quick to give Hassan moral support. Hussein of Jordan, who has survived at least nine assassination attempts, personally piloted a Royal Jordanian Airlines Boeing 707 to Rabat to participate in funeral services for 20 loyalist officers and men killed at Skhirat. Feisal of Saudi Arabia stayed home, but sent his Foreign Minister to Morocco.

Maghreb Neighbors. Hassan also received unaccustomed support from Arab socialist leaders, who might have been remembering an old Moroccan expression: "Kiss the hand that you cannot cut off." He was supported by Tunisia and even revolutionary Algeria, his neighbors in the Maghreb, the ancient Arab littoral of North Africa, whose members have formed associations for economic cooperation, tourism and culture. Algeria's President Houari Boumedienne not only telephoned the King but sent a delegate to express his good wishes.

But the persistent strains within the Arab world were also glaringly evident, and it is virtually certain that a summit meeting proposed for Algiers will have to be canceled. Observing angrily that Morocco and Libya were separated "by not only a desert of sand but by a desert of the intellect," Hassan placed a guard around the Libyan embassy. Gaddafi retaliated by breaking off diplomatic relations. Hassan, irritated by an early story in Cairo's Al Ahram supporting the rebels, kept an Egyptian emissary cooling his heels in Rabat for two days before seeing him.

Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, anxious to maintain a reasonably united Arab front as the threat grows of a renewed war of attrition with Israel, sent his congratulations to Hassan on surviving the mutiny. He also flew to the western Egyptian town of Mersa Matruh to try to calm the excitable Gaddafi, whose caches of oil money and revolutionary zeal have begun to worry other Arabs. Gaddafi reportedly bankrolled the successful campaign of Malta's leftist political leader Dom Mintoff, who ran on an anti-NATO, anti-West platform. If the Libyan leader would do that for Malta, others fear, he might send paid provocateurs into conservative Arab countries, especially since Gaddafi sees himself as the successor to Gamal Abdel Nasser as leader of the Arab world.

Sadat's hopes of maintaining at least the facade of unity suffered another blow when Hussein's army began a new drive on Palestinian guerrillas camped at Jerash, 30 miles north of Amman. With tanks and artillery the army drove the guerrillas out of their last town into barren, waterless territory in the Jordan Valley. Displeased by the King's action, Sadat asked him to cancel a scheduled visit to Cairo this week because, he explained, Egyptian officialdom would simply be too busy celebrating the 19th anniversary of Farouk's fall to give Hussein the sort of welcome he deserved.

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