Khalil Asmar
The revelations of Chris Coleman don’t seem to let any details escape away. The Moroccan Snowden has unveiled the shadowy zones that cover the lobbying taking place in the land of uncle Sam, the United States of America. Following the publication of one of his confidential documents, the curse has fallen this time on the head of the Moroccan American Center (MAC). The indiscretion was committed by Chris Coleman on DROPOX site and then relayed through his twitter account. Caught in its own trap, the center hectically sent an email to claim property rights, forcing the DROPOX site to delete the document.
Story of a disguised lobbying:
Morocco plunged into the world of lobbying through organization carrying anodyne names, such as the ‘Moroccan American Cultural Center’, ‘Moroccan American Trade and Investment Council’, and the ‘Moroccan American Center for Policy’ but in effect, they are no more than offshoots of the Moroccan American Center (MAC). While pretending to display the image of cultural organizations or independent NGOs, they are actually a vehicle to embellish the image of the medieval Moroccan regime and gain support for its occupation of Western Sahara. The company « The Gabriel Company » had the Moroccan government as a customer since 2002 with a turnover of $ 3.7 million.
However, the MAC hasn’t been registered in the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) until 2004, and since then it started using all means to garner support to the most delicate issue for the Moroccan kingdom, the occupied Western Sahara. After being registered, Morocco began immediately a lavish funding on lobbyists so as to stay in the good graces of the American administration. According to FARA records, Morocco has employed nine lobbying firms since 2007 and spent about 20 million dollars not counting the stuffed envelops handed under the tables as the case of Ahmed Charai. The sum that Rabat regime pays to lobbying offices ranks it in the top of the countries soliciting such service respectively surpassing the petrodollar countries.
The MAC: defending the occupation at all costs:
In the document classified confidential, we clearly understand why Morocco uses nine different lobbying firms. It is, in effect, to target a certain goal that a certain firm is considered its point of strength. This tactic as it appears in the document is a recommendation of a certain lobbying agency with expertise in the stakes of lobbyism taking place in Washington DC.
Western Sahara was at the heart of the strategy of MAC in 2012 which subsequently had to be implemented through four campaigns. The first campaign was ‘the campaign of facts on the ground’ which aimed at the implementation of the financial assistance that the USAID provided the Moroccan government including the occupied territory of Western Sahara. However, that campaign was premature because the US State Department was tasked to validate this decision after 90 days.
The second campaign took the name of ‘Close the Camps campaign’ setting as expected results to generate momentum in Washington to close the Saharawi refugee camps for security reasons and to condition US funds to UNHCR and WFP. Lobbying should be applied in a large-scale propaganda to slander the Polisario Front in the press, through some members of the American Congress sticking the label of lethal terrorist links between the Polisario and the Jihadist terrorism. Notwithstanding, Daniel Benjamin, the coordinator of the US State Department for Counterterrorism belied these allegations and described the reports stating links of the Polisario with AQMI as “spurious”
The third campaign was to continue to position Morocco as a model in the region in all spheres ranging from human rights to cooperation in security and peaceful democratic reform. In other words, transmuting the disgusting face of a dictatorial regime into a haven of democracy to hide its heinous crimes committed in Morocco and Western Sahara. Meanwhile, the fourth campaign “the Ambassadors Rollout” was set to pave the way to the new Moroccan ambassador to address important audiences and, thus, promote whichever campaigns are relevant to the different groups so that they can support Morocco’s expansionist thesis.
Viewing these campaigns, it can be concluded that the Moroccan strategy of lobbyism in the USA is primarily aimed at defending its occupation of Western Sahara; a pain in the ass of Rabat regime. The strategy of the MAC in 2012 put in evidence the centralized and pathological obsession of Morocco foreign policy that seeks to maintain at all costs an occupation that has proven costly and counterproductive. In the meantime, the millions of dollars that Morocco regime is frittering away still raise doubts of their suspicious sources.