A Surfeit of Holidays

                                                   

We have barely got over Eid -  the butcher's at the end of the street is still not open - when we are hit by another swathe of holidays. Yesterday was Islamic New Year, the banks were closed and many of the shops in Agadir and people were taking advantage of the lovely sunny day and light breeze to go to the beach where the icecream shop next to McDonald's was doing a brisk trade. 
Today is another holiday; the anniversary of the Green March in 1975 when Hassan II led a march largely of women to reclaim the Western Sahara. It is a most patriotic holiday and involves flagpoles being erected along the main roads and roundabouts  to display the red and green moroccan flags which will stay in place until after Independence Day on the 18th. In between Ashurrim is on the 13th this year so that's 4 holidays in 2 weeks.
Taroudant does not wholly stop work for holidays other than Eid but we were disturbed earlier by a patriotic march passing the end of the street shouting slogans. As all demonstrations here it was very well organised and there were police and army up the road to see it went all right and it was followed by a bright red ambulance and more police vehicles. It seemed to consist largely of middle school pupils from the school down the road. They had a couple of gigantic flags such as are passed over the crowds at football matches carried over the march and very many smaller handheld flags. They were heading towards town and were presumably going to meet up with others in the square.
The Green March is of course the root cause of the war in the Western Sahara / northern Mali region. At the time that the european powers were carving up Africa the Southern boundaries between the Moroccan and Mali Empires were somewhat vague and the area populated by largely nomadic tribes of changable and doubtful allegiance.  Certainly if R Cunningham-Greene had managed to get to Taroudant in the 1890s the British may well have been putting in a bid for this area. He was unsuccessful. Spain managed to claim the Western Sahara and the French managed to incorporate southern Morocco into the Protecorate largely due to the collaboration of the Glaoui who dominated the trade routes. Of course when the Protectorate ended in 1956 only the French Occupied area was given back, Franco held on. It was after his death that Hassan "reclaimed" the spanish territory. Unfortunately many of the local people did not consider themselves Moroccan or liberated. They went to live in Refugee camps where some hundreds of thousands still live 38 years on They call themselves Saharwis and want an Independant state. The UN has strangely decided that the occupation of the Western Sahara by Morocco is unlawful and that the territory properly belongs to Spain. Whoever should govern the territory and whatever the historical reality as to who if anybody controlled it prior to colonial invasions it cannot possibly belong to Spain. To continue to recognise colonial occupations into the 21st century is a nonsense.