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UN mobilizes to help disaster-stricken Libya and Morocco
First, there was the devastating earthquake in Morocco. And then, cataclysmic flooding in Libya. Recent natural disasters in northern Africa have shocked the world. They've also mobilized United Nations rescue and support teams, says UN Secretary-General António Guterres in an exclusive GZERO World interview.
“We have a central emergency response fund, and we mobilized $10 million to support the operation in Libya," Guterres tells Ian Bremmer. "We are discussing, with Moroccan authorities, our best way to support them...We'll be doing everything to mobilize international community to support these two countries in this very, very tragic situation."
What role can the United Nations play in these devastated zones, and how much is a warming planet contributing to recent climate catastrophes?
For the full interview, tune into GZERO World with Ian Bremmerat gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Is the Middle East becoming the "new Europe”?
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
First, will there be long-term regional consequences following the devastating Moroccan earthquake?
I hopefully I think the answer to that is, no. I mean, the response from the government was relatively, it wasn't immediate. And it wasn't great to begin with, in part, because the king, I guess, was in Paris. And it's very vertical. Nothing happens without the king. But now they're moving. There's a lot of international humanitarian aid going in. And as devastating as it is in terms of human lives, the ability to keep Marrakech going is pretty high. Even the IMF annual meeting in a few weeks’ time should still be there. So on balance, I think this is one where the consequences are borne by all of the families, but not on Morocco more broadly.
Secondly, is the Middle East on its way to becoming “the new Europe,” as Mohammed bin Salman recently said?
Yeah, no, I wouldn't go that far. But certainly, Mohammed bin Salman has done more in terms of reform and dramatic transformation of his country, and yes, with some downside, than anyone could have imagined before he came in. That's why he's so incredibly popular among the young people in Saudi Arabia, and certainly, it's why he's attracting a lot more attention to the region, including capital investment from a lot of different places.
And finally, Kim Jong Un is traveling to meet Putin. How concerned is the West?
Should be concerned in part because that's the only person out there that really supports Putin right now. It's like Belarus, it's North Korea, it's Iran, it's rogue states that the Americans and the Europeans cannot contain or constrain. And that's a serious problem.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you real soon.
- Why isn’t Morocco accepting more help? ›
- Killer quake strikes Morocco ›
- The Saudis want to be peacemakers in Ukraine ›
- Israel/Palestine one of the few Middle East areas getting less stable ›
- Putin toasts to “strengthening of cooperation” with Kim Jong Un ›
- Putin hosts Kim Jong Un at arms summit ›
- Kim Jong Un meets Vladimir Putin ›
A woman reacts near the rubble of a building in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Talat N'yaaqoub, Morocco, September 11, 2023.
Why isn’t Morocco accepting more help?
Rescue teams organized by the Moroccan government began reaching remote villages in the Atlas Mountains yesterday, three days after the most devastating earthquake to strike the region in a century. Hopes for survivors grow slimmer by the minute, and the death count is approaching 3,000 at time of writing.
Faced with criticism about the apparent sluggishness of the government’s response, Rabat has begun pushing back. Government spokesperson Mustapha Baitas said the government had deployed military and civilian assets in a “swift and effective intervention to rescue the victims and recover the bodies” following the “instructions of His Royal Majesty.”
Don’t overlook that last bit: King Mohammed VI has worked hard to establish an image of himself as connected to the Moroccan public, and has played a central role in managing the emergency response due to his command of the military and control of foreign policy. Officials reluctant to preempt any royal statements may have contributed to some of the perceptions of a mismanaged response, according to Eurasia Group senior analyst Omar Monieb.
Rabat also took flak for only accepting aid from four countries, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, even though more neighbors and partners offered to step in. Monieb said there is a pragmatic element – too many crews attempting to use damaged infrastructure can hamper rescue operations – but politics played a role as well.
“Spain is a close ally of Morocco, and relations have improved significantly over the past couple of years, especially with the position that Spain has taken recently on the Sahara,” he said, referring to Madrid’s recent recognition of Moroccan claims over the former Spanish colony known as Western Sahara. The U.A.E. and Qatar have both long recognized Rabat’s claims. While the U.K.’s position is more circumspect, a senior Conservative Party MP recently backed Morocco’s position as the “only possible option” after visiting the region.People react during the funeral of two victims of the deadly earthquake, in Moulay Brahim, Morocco.
Killer quake strikes Morocco
The North African nation of Morocco continues to deal with the effects of a catastrophic earthquake that struck on Saturday night, killing at least 2,100 people and injuring another 2,400.
The quake struck in the High Atlas Mountain range, 45 miles southwest of the city of Marrakech, home to 840,000 people. At 6.8 on the Richter scale, it was the country’s most powerful tremor in a century, impacting 300,000 residents in the surrounding area, with some towns totally demolished. Thousands of displaced people are now sleeping outside, in tents, parks and even on roadways.
Rescue workers are struggling to reach survivors in remote areas and the death toll is expected to rise. Many ancient buildings in the Medina, or old town, of Marrakech have been reduced to rubble, and other historic sites destroyed.
Leaders around the world, including American President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, sent condolences and many governments offered support.
Meanwhile, at the G20 summit in Delhi, President Emmanuel Macron of France, which remains Morocco’s main foreign investor, trade partner and creditor, announced the activation of a French government fund to support “solidarity actions”; as of Sunday evening, nearly 2 million euros ($2.14 million US) had been pledged. Many French companies have also offered assistance.
Turkey, which suffered its own devastating earthquake earlier this year, also offered emergency assistance, including tents and personnel, while Algeria, which severed diplomatic ties with Morocco in 2021 and closed its airspace to Moroccan aircraft, has reopened it for humanitarian aid and medical flights.
As of late Sunday, the Moroccan government declared that it had accepted emergency assistance from only four countries, the UK, Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, amid criticism about the length of time taken to approve assistance in the crucial hours after the disaster. King Mohammed VI also established a relief commission to distribute aid to survivors, including orphans and people who are now homeless, declared three days of national mourning, and indicated that the Moroccan government will consider other offers of assistance if it deems them necessary.Morocco line-up during the 2022 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match against Portugal in Doha, Qatar.
What’s it worth to crush it at the World Cup?
Whether or not underdog Morocco beats France in the World Cup semifinals on Wednesday, one thing is sure: Becoming the first African or Arab nation to get this far in the biggest sporting event on the planet stands to get Morocco more than on-field glory in Qatar.
The Atlas Lions probably didn't expect to have such an amazing run, but their overperformance is no coincidence. It’s the fruit of decades of heavy investment by the kingdom in developing its players as part of Morocco’s broader sports diplomacy.
Hold up. What is sports diplomacy? It’s “when the acts of diplomacy — communication, representation, and negotiation — intersect with the sports world, whether it's in the arena or outside of it," says Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, who knows a thing or two about sports diplomacy because she teaches it at NYU.
It can be formal, when carried out by governments or by an athlete representing a country, or informal — like the privately-run NBA’s push to make basketball a global game. But the objective is always the same: to get your country or sport noticed so you can "sell" it to the world.
Although success in sports ≠ success in politics, it does boost a national brand. A good example is Croatia, a country of less than 4 million that's only been independent for 30 years. Four years ago, it’s often said that France won the World Cup but Croatia won the hearts of fans around the world by making it all the way to the final of the tournament in Russia.
Its fairytale run put Croatia on everyone’s radar. According to one study, during the 2018 tournament visits to the tourism website soared by 250% — a big deal for a nation that makes 20% of its GDP from foreign visitors.
Symbolism matters, too. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Croatia's president at the time, went all in on showing her support for the national team in Russia. She won global praise for traveling in economy class with fans, gifting world leaders with customized jerseys, and braving a downpour to comfort the players after losing to France in Moscow. The president made her country look cool — exactly what you want to promote foreign investment and tourism.
(Unfortunately for Grabar-Kitarović, she became more famous abroad than popular with Croatian voters, narrowly losing re-election in 2020.)
Morocco is the Croatia of 2022. "It's fair to say there will be a marginal soft power benefit for Morocco. Their winning streak has generated a lot of excitement," says Eurasia Group analyst Sofia Meranto. "The Arab world and African spectators are united in backing them, and leaders across the region were quick to express their joy at the team making the semifinals. Many other fans now also see the Atlas Lions as the favored underdog."
The government is eager to cash in on the team's success to get the most bang for its sports diplomacy buck. A clear sign is the slick video from the Moroccan tourism board dominating halftime TV ads during the tournament across Europe.
This is a unique opportunity for Morocco to showcase itself to tourists. Before COVID, the country welcomed almost 20 million of them, with tourism accounting for more than 10% of GDP and 17% of the Moroccan workforce. The sector has recovered, but only at 80% of pre-pandemic levels — so Morocco would certainly appreciate a World Cup bump to get its tourism groove back ... and maybe even further develop its cash cow.
"It's great to make an imprint, but you want to do more than just enter the history books," Krasnoff explains. "You want to sustain that in order to get the maximum mileage out of your investment."
But investing in sports diplomacy can also backfire. Over a decade ago, Qatar not only spent big to secure the right to host the World Cup but also launched BeIN, a global sports channel under the Al-Jazeera network, and purchased French soccer club PSG.
Since then, the Qataris have gotten blowback over the alleged bribes involved in their bid as well as their dodgy human rights record. BeIN has lost the rights to air many top competitions, and traditional European fans have soured on PSG for being nouveau riche. Money might lure mega-stars like Leo Messi to Paris, but it won’t buy the respect of romantics who just love the Beautiful Game.
So, who'll win the sports diplomacy World Cup in 2022? The stakes are very different for the host country and Morocco.
Off the pitch, uber-rich and regional soft power heavyweight Qatar can claim credit for organizing the World Cup that featured the best-ever run for an Arab team. It’s too soon to say whether the tournament put a dent in the country’s global standing or rather delivered precisely what the Qataris hoped for: lots of attention and future partnerships.
But on the pitch, less affluent and influential Morocco has captured the imagination of Arab and non-Arab fans alike — with none of Qatar’s political baggage.
Badr Benoun celebrates after Morocco progress to the World Cup semi-finals in Qatar.
Morocco’s historic World Cup run transcends its borders
Eurasia Group's Strahinja Matejic is attending the Atlantic Dialogues conference in Marrakech, Morocco. But he decided to go a day early to join local fans who watched the Atlas Lions make World Cup history.
“Are we winning tonight?”
That was the first question a Moroccan immigration officer asked me at the Casablanca airport just hours before Morocco faced mighty Portugal in the quarter-finals of the men's soccer World Cup in Qatar.
Casablanca, the country’s bustling largest city, had ground to a halt by the time the teams were warming up. Bus drivers, roller skate hawkers in the Arab League Park, street vendors … all quickly found a chair or at least a wall to lean on. Everyone was at a watch party.
In a packed café near the King Hassan II Mosque, I gestured like a coach asking the ref for a free kick to procure a small plastic ottoman to sit on. When they realized I was a guest in Morocco — and supported their jeering of Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal’s past-his-prime GOAT — a group of students invited me to join them and promoted me to a full chair.
Leading the chants at the table is one of my new friends: Aarifa, from Sudan. She's in Morocco on an international scholarship — one of many ways the government is investing in its soft power.
That's also the primary reason I'm there, as I explained to the immigration officer after agreeing that yes, of course, Morocco will advance. I'm attending the Atlantic Dialogues conference in Marrakech, one of several policymaking events Morocco is hosting in the next few weeks for organizations like the African Union in Tangiers or the Alliance of Civilizations in Fez.
After Youssef En-Nesyri scored what would be the winning goal, I became part of the euphoric celebration. I hugged Naim, another member of the table, who took off his taqiyah (Muslim skullcap) embroidered with the Moroccan flag and put it on my head. As we awaited the final whistle in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, the Atlas Lions supporters in Casablanca were roaring as loud as those lucky enough to be cheering inside the Al Thumama Stadium in Qatar.
When it was all over, everyone stormed the streets. Bikes, cars, even food trucks full of fans in a frenzy waved flags of Morocco, the Arab League, and Palestine to mark the first time an African and an Arab team had reached the semi-finals at the World Cup.
An elderly woman in a wheelchair “told” me the the moment felt to her like 1956, when Morocco became fully independent from France. Meanwhile, I saw two military service members celebrating on the roof of the Royal Naval School.
It’s almost an axiom that success in sports boosts national unity and pride. But in Morocco, that transcends national borders — both real and imagined.
This victory converges with the goal of the conferences in Fez, Marrakech, and Tangiers: to show that Morocco — whose national soccer jerseys don’t have stars above the association crest like Brazil’s or Spain’s — may not have won a World Cup (yet) but it plays an active role in the global map.
Indeed, Morocco’s historic run truly echoes FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s famous but insufficient attempt to push back against critics of Qatar hosting the tournament. Morocco now plays for all Africans, for all Arabs, for all Muslims, for all underdogs — and for all of us who romantically believe in the Beautiful Game and cherish the virtues of the sport.
When I woke up at dawn, the city was silent. The Atlas Lions were resting before the Wednesday game with the Gallic roosters. If you ask me then if “we” are winning tonight , I’ll reply the same — inshallah.
Frenemy face-off at the World Cup: Morocco vs. Spain
It's just a soccer game. Or maybe there’s more to it.
On Tuesday, underdog Morocco takes on 2010 champion Spain at the Qatar World Cup in what one might frame as a battle between “neighbors” in Africa and Europe, separated by barely 9 miles of the Mediterranean Sea and with a long-fraught political relationship that’s seen some recent twists and turns.
And there’s a bigger geopolitical story that goes beyond the two kingdoms.
Territorial disputes have always made Morocco-Spain ties, to put it mildly, complicated. Morocco resents Spain for not handing over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, which Rabat claims as part of its territory and is rich in fish and minerals.
Morocco also has a beef with Spain over Ceuta and Melilla, two centuries-old Spanish enclaves inside Morocco and the last vestiges of European sovereignty in mainland Africa. (Fun fact: 20 years ago, the two sides almost went to war over a rock in the Strait of Gibraltar inhabited by … goats.)
The bilateral tensions have two major spillover effects with EU-wide implications.
First, Morocco has been accused of weaponizing sub-Saharan African migrants when it tells its border guards to stand by and "let" asylum-seekers try to scale the border fences of Ceuta and Melilla, which is EU sovereign territory. Rabat does this whenever Spain triggers it over Western Sahara: In May 2021, Madrid had to deploy the army to help defend the border from an influx of thousands of migrants after the Spanish government allowed a leader of the Polisario Front — a militant group that seeks independence for Western Sahara — to get medical treatment in Spain.
This is not just a Morocco-Spain problem. Once the asylum-seekers are on EU soil, they are free to travel to other EU countries — potentially unleashing a migration crisis across the entire bloc.
Second, whatever happens between Morocco and Spain is closely watched next door in natural-gas rich Algeria, which backs the Polisario Front and has kept the border with its western neighbor closed since 1994 to protest Morocco’s partial “occupation” of Western Sahara.
In late April, the Algerians first threatened to cut off gas supplies to the Spanish after Madrid announced it would resell some of that gas to Morocco. And when PM Pedro Sánchez went a step further by ending Spain's long-held neutrality on Western Sahara to ward off another migrant crisis, Algeria responded by selling more gas to Italy. Algerian gas deliveries to Spain are now down by half from a year ago and the US has become Madrid’s top seller.
Algeria's strong pushback to Spain's pro-Rabat gestures is a heads-up to the EU: Kicking the Russian gas habit is not risk-free. The more leverage an alternative supplier gets, the more inclined it'll be to turn on a dime and move to kill a contract if political feathers get ruffled.
So, what’s the current state of bilateral ties and what does the future hold? “Spain and Morocco are now on a honeymoon, but this is only a parenthesis before the next crisis, which Morocco will decide when to launch,” says Ignacio Cembrero, a veteran Spanish journalist and expert on Morocco-Spain relations.
The next big development will come, he adds, when the Spanish government follows the US in recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, as the Trump administration did in December 2020 in exchange for Rabat joining the US-brokered Abraham Accords. “That’s what Morocco wants.”
Back to the soccer ... on the pitch, Spain is the favorite.La Roja has a young squad led by FC Barcelona playmaker Pedri that excels at its signature tiki-taka passing game. Still, the Atlas Lions have plenty of talent too and will surely give their northern neighbors a run for their money.
Yet off the field, the stakes are higher for Morocco. If it wins and becomes the first Arab country to reach the World Cup quarter-finals, Moroccans will go crazy at home — and in Spain, where some 800,000 of them live.
Let’s just hope the celebrations don’t turn into the violent riots that erupted across Belgian and Dutch cities when Morroco upset Belgium in the first round.This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
Hard Numbers: Court denies Bolsonaro, Pelosi plans Taiwan trip, Morocco jails migrants, Ukrainian first lady visits US
20: Brazil’s top electoral court issued 20 rebuttals to President Jair Bolsonaro’s recent claim that the electronic voting system used since 1996 is vulnerable. Bolsonaro often implies he’ll dispute the result if he loses the October presidential election to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who's leading the polls by a wide margin.
25: Nancy Pelosi will reportedly visit Taiwan next month, the first US speaker of the House to do so since Newt Gingrich traveled to the self-governing island 25 years ago. Pelosi’s planned visit is the latest sign of US officials and lawmakers strengthening ties with Taiwan amid the broader US-China rivalry.
33: Morocco has sentenced 33 African migrants to jail terms for trying to scale the border wall with the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The episode in late June — the first such attempt since Morocco and Spain mended long-fraught ties over Western Sahara — claimed the lives of 25 other migrants.
1: Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska will address the US Congress on Wednesday, months after her husband did so virtually. This is Zelenska’s first visit to America, where she is trying to drum up support for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion by meeting with lawmakers, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and her counterpart, Jill Biden.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media, a subsidiary of Eurasia Group that offers balanced, nonpartisan reporting, and analysis of foreign affairs. Subscribe to Signal today.