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Peter Prengaman
San Francisco Chronicle, March
16, 2001
Rabat, Morocco -- A war of words over the Berber and
Arabic languages is heating up in Morocco, threatening to divide the kingdom
in much the same way the battle between French and English speakers divides
Canada.
Berbers were Morocco's first inhabitants, and today they are still the
majority, accounting for about 60 percent of Morocco's 30 million citizens.
But when it comes to speaking their views, they are treated like a
minority by the members of the dominant Arab culture.
"More than 40 years after independence (from France), the government
still doesn't want to teach the Berber language and preserve or promote the
culture, " says Ahmed Lachgar Agwilal, a Moroccan-born San Franciscan who is
a representative of the Amazigh (Berber) Commission for Development and
Human Rights in America.
"If you want to be Moroccan," he says, "you have to speak this language."
The government disagrees.
"Arabic is the official language of our identity, our Koran and our
nation. The Moroccan citizen is duty-bound to speak his national language,"
says Khalid Shebal of the government's Institute for Arabization.
At the police registries where Moroccans go to officially designate their
childrens' names, non-Arab names like Jurgurtha and Messina -- the names of
ancient Berber kings -- are blacklisted. Only Arabic names like Hassan and
Ahmed are allowed.
"To Berber militants, this is a case of trying to completely eradicate
any Berber heritage," Jalali Saib, a leading activist who teaches at Rabat
University, told the BBC earlier this year.
The first language of most Moroccans is some form of Berber, generally
called Tamazight, though there are a number of variants. But the
constitution recognizes only Arabic as the official language.
Arabic was imposed on the Berbers by the Muslims who conquered Morocco in
waves of invasions beginning in the seventh century. Its influence waned a
bit during the French colonial period, but after Morocco gained its
independence in 1956, it surged again. In the 1970s, the government
launched a campaign to impose stricter standards for the use of Arabic in
place of French in government and education.
Today, Berber activists say the "Arabization" of Morocco has led to
discrimination and has marginalized their people. But the government has
resisted calls for recognition of Tamazight as an official language of
Morocco,
fearing that the crusade will spawn a separatist movement.
Morocco's Berbers are "people in their own country who don't exist,"
complains Mahjoubi Aherdan, the charismatic leader of the National Popular
Movement, a political party that represents rural Moroccans, many of whom
are Berber.
Even in schools in predominantly Berber areas, lessons are not taught in
Tamazight but in Arabic. Government jobs are off-limits to those who speak
only Berber, and Tamazight is prohibited in the courts; all legal documents
must be translated into Arabic.
Television programming follows suit. One government-affiliated channel,
2M, broadcasts a mix of Arabic and French. The other, RTM, broadcasts
predominantly in Arabic, with only 5 to 10 minutes a day of news in Berber.
Berber activists blame Arabization for the high illiteracy rate in
Morocco - - 56 percent of its citizens cannot read -- because Berber
children often drop out when confronted with teachers who speak only Arabic.
They also blame it for the continued poverty of most Berbers. Fifty percent
of Moroccans live on less than $50 a month, and most of the poor are Berbers.
Language is all-important to Moroccan Berbers because it is the main
attribute that unites their pluralistic culture. Though most Berbers are
Muslim, some are Jewish and others are Christian. They are ethnically mixed
and spread over the country, from the Rif mountain range in the north to the
Atlas Mountains and the desert in the south.
In Algeria, where Berbers make up 25 percent of the population, tensions
have sometimes exploded into riots and bloody confrontations with police.
The "Tamazight Spring" uprising of 1980 mobilized Berber anti-government
sentiment,
and hundreds were killed in the "Black October" riots of 1988. More
recently, thousands of Berbers rioted in 1998 over a government decree
making Arabic the official language of Algeria and the subsequent
assassination of Matoub Lounes,
a well-known musician and Berber activist, reputedly by the Armed Islamic
Group, a fundamentalist insurgency.
Moroccan Berbers have been less violent in their resistance to
Arabization. But the controls on political expression have loosened since
Mohammed VI ascended to the throne in 1999 after the death of his father,
Hassan II, and Berber activist organizations have become better financed. As
a result, Berber calls to re-examine Moroccan society have grown louder.
Last March, Berber activists drafted and submitted to the government the
"Berber Manifesto." It called on the state to recognize Tamazight as a
national language, teach Tamazight in schools, license a Berber television
station, allot government money to speed up development in historically
neglected areas, and end restrictions on registering Berber names for their
children.
Soon afterward, a government commission issued a much-publicized
education charter calling for sweeping reforms of the Moroccan education
system. The charter was commissioned by the late King Hassan II, who raised
Berbers' hopes in 1994 when he said in a televised speech that Tamazight
should be taught in schools, a pledge that was never fulfilled.
Berber organizations denounced the education charter. They pointed out
that only two of its 100 articles deal with the question of Tamazight in
school. The first said Tamazight could be used in primary school only to "facilitate
the learning of the official language" -- Arabic. The second said that
beginning this year, certain universities would have the means to study
Tamazight and Berber culture.
The charter's provisions are "insufficient," says Lachgar. "The
government has to provide money for teaching Tamazight because it's our
language, it's our culture."
Not all Berbers agree. While the majority are poor, there is an entire
class of super-rich Berbers. Discriminated against in areas like education
and government, they have flourished as businessmen and have bought up
entire neighborhoods of Casablanca, such as the enclave known as California,
where mansions resemble those in Beverly Hills.
Some ardently support the Berber cause by funding activist groups, but
others resist it. Says Ahmed Lousoure, a 34-year-old factory manager in
Casablanca: "What good is Tamazight outside of Morocco? Our king is trying
to modernize the country, not take a step back."
And there are divisions even among Berber activists.
Some militants are pushing for a political party exclusively for Berbers,
while moderates worry that it would be interpreted as separatist, allowing
the Berber movement to be written off.
Lachgar, who will travel in August to a U.N. conference on racism and
indigenous peoples' rights in Durban, South Africa, to make the case for
official recognition of the Berber language, shrugs off the government's
suggestion that official recognition of Tamazight could lead to a separatist
movement.
"They just want to confuse people," he says. "Nobody wants to separate
because they consider all this land their land."
Who Are the Berbers?
Long before San Francisco's waterfront was known as the Barbary Coast,
the North African coast was known as Barbary (from the Latin word for
foreigners), and its inhabitants were the people now known as Berbers. Today,
they number about 20 million and call themselves Imazaghen, which means
"free and noble men."
Spread across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and, to a lesser extent, Libya
and Egypt, they were conquered during the Arab invasion that started in the
seventh century and, after fierce resistance over several centuries, were
converted to Islam.
Despite the conquest, Berbers retained their distinct culture, in which
women have more freedom than among Arabs, and decisions are made communally.
Two Berber tribes, the Almoravids and Almohads, built influential Islamic
empires in northwestern Africa and Spain in the 11th to 13th centuries.
The development of a written Berber language was suppressed by the waves
of Arab invasions as Arabic was adopted for all official documents. In the
10th century, the Bourghwata kingdom translated the Koran into Berber, but
the kingdom was vanquished by Sunni Muslim puritans, who burned the Berber
Koran. Now, 11 centuries later, a Berber version of the Koran is about to be
published.
In later centuries, Berbers stubbornly resisted domination but were
eventually pacified by the French, who ruled most of Morocco from 1912 to
1956.
In the post-colonial period, Berbers have been politically divided. Some
fought the king, including the plotters of several coup attempts on Hassan
II in the 1970s, but others, including much of the officers' corps, have
been loyal to the monarchy.
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