For my column this week I decided to hit on some current events. Here’s the full length:
A month in to my second semester in Rabat, Morocco and I am already trying to figure out spring break destinations. I can tell you where I won’t be traveling for obvious reasons: Tunisia and Egypt.
Before returning to Rabat for the spring, I had been talking with one of my friends about regional places we need to visit while living in North Africa. For fall break we trekked into the Sahara desert, camped under the stars and rode camels, so we wanted to make sure our spring break would outdo or at least equal the previous one. Somehow the idea of venturing to Tunisia came up.
Spring break in Tunisia sounded intriguing because we have been studying Tunisia in our political science and history courses as it accompanies Morocco in the Arab North African world. Tunisia is a fascinating place. It has been characterized as one of the most progressive and forward-looking countries in the region, yet paradoxically has had an intensely authoritarian regime that has imposed such modernism. My friend and I were curious to see this in real life in a country that was, at the time, a relatively safe place for foreigners to visit. Also, Tunisia has a similar dialect of Arabic to Morocco, and French is prevalent so we would be able to get around using our developing language skills.
Tunisia just got a whole lot more intriguing since the former President Ben Ali has fled the country. I had not even been in Rabat for a week when my political science professor pulled me aside during the Amideast “Welcome new students” dinner and asked me, “Hey did you hear what just happened in Tunisia?” Looks like we’ll have a lot to discuss in my political systems of the Maghreb course.
Spring break Plan B: Cairo to see the pyramids and the Nile. That trip got cancelled too, and we are moving on to Plan C. I’m glad I waited to buy plane tickets.
But enough about spring break. The real question which I’ve been asked a lot lately has more to do with how these revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have or will affect Morocco.
My parents and some friends have sent a few panicked emails asking if Morocco is safe, inquiring about Morocco’s status in the midst of regional revolution. At first when I got these messages I almost laughed because at times Morocco feels so removed from these movements and I feel completely safe here.
If it were not for broadcast news feeds showing footage of demonstrations in the streets of Cairo, protestors taking the streets, Baradei’s return to Egypt and foreigners flying out of Cairo on the Arabic and Moroccan news stations, I would not even know that I am living in the same general region as Egypt and Tunisia. The streets of Rabat are calm, the Parliament is carrying on with its business, students are going to school and employees are going to work.
Things in Rabat are distinctly different from Tunis and Cairo. In fact, nine students who were evacuated from Amideast in Cairo will be joining me in Rabat next week, one of the most clear-cut ways of saying that Morocco is considered as a stable place for American students to come study.
Though there are certainly some shared characteristics among countries in the Arab world and the Moroccan political system is an interesting one to watch, the Arab world is so large and dynamic that it is not fair to just group all the Arab countries together in talk of revolution. I understand where concerned people are coming from, especially when the media in America is most likely depicting scene after scene of riots with headlines talking about Arab revolutions and uprising in the Middle East moving like wildfire, but please take these with a grain of salt.
The question of whether anything will spread to Morocco and take hold has been tossed around in day to day conversations amongst my friends and my host family, and it has been brought up in the local media—do not get me wrong, it is worth asking. Just realize that the scale of how things are portrayed is different and the Middle East North Africa region is not homogenous, especially when it comes to politics.
I knew my second semester in Rabat would inevitably be different than my first one because of the very nature of study abroad, but I can now say that confidently. Oh, and I’m glad I decided to wait until second semester to take the course on political systems of the Maghreb since the students from last semester have to scrap a lot of what they covered on Tunisian politics.
Julianne Cut 