In the Western Sahara file, one of the most dangerous functions of Ali El Himma within the ruling system is revealed. The issue that is officially presented as a “national cause” is in reality nothing but a postponed decolonization file, concerning a people who possess a fixed right to self-determination according to United Nations resolutions, not a sovereignty card as the Makhzen promotes.
Tags : Morocco, Mohammed VI, Fouad Ali El Himma, Makhzen, Western Sahara,
By Qandyl Mohamed – Moroccan blogger, independent human rights and political activist
In Morocco, it is not easy to find a clear boundary between the state and the person, nor between the institution and the network, nor between public decision and private interest. All political, security and economic roads seem to lead to a single point called Ali El Himma, popularly known as “Weld Chouafa” — not because he is the most visible, but because he is the most present in what is unseen: in decision-making mechanisms, in engineering balances, in redistributing influence, and in drawing the limits of what is permitted and what is forbidden inside a country that is supposedly governed by a constitution and institutions.
The Africa Intelligence report did not present El Himma as a royal adviser in the protocol sense, but rather as a node of an extended network, where intelligence, media, diplomacy, economy and sports intersect. This network is not merely a set of relations, but a parallel structure of governance that penetrates every strategic file — from Western Sahara to normalization, from restructuring the media to organizing major sporting events. When the network becomes the state, the entire the people becomes, in practice, hostage to its balances.
What is striking in El Himma’s model is not only the scale of influence, but its nature: an influence that does not need an official signature or a public speech, because it operates through the logic of the “green light.”
Here, the green light is not a written decision, but a political climate that produces general silence and creates a shadow zone where no one dares to say “no” or “enough.” Thus, institutions are domesticated, elites become façades, loyalties are reproduced instead of holding policies accountable, and forty million Moroccans live in a country that has a constitution but is ruled by network logic, where decisions are not debated but simply passed.
In the Western Sahara file, one of the most dangerous functions of Ali El Himma within the ruling system is revealed. The issue that is officially presented as a “national cause” is in reality nothing but a postponed decolonization file, concerning a people who possess a fixed right to self-determination according to United Nations resolutions, not a sovereignty card as the Makhzen promotes.
El Himma’s role in engineering the so-called “Autonomy Proposal” was not a quest for a just or lasting solution, but an attempt to repackage political occupation in soft negotiating language, marketed abroad as “realistic,” while used domestically to silence any debate about the essence of the issue. Here Western Sahara, as a territory subject to decolonization, is transformed into a bargaining chip in the bazaar of international interests, and the right of an entire people to self-determination is reduced to a pressure card in the hands of a ruling network that sees land only as a field to expand influence, and humans only as numbers within a security equation.
In the media, when the audiovisual landscape was rearranged and central channels were placed under the supervision of the National Radio and Television Company, this was not merely an “administrative reform,” but a step to re-engineer public consciousness: plurality is reduced, discourse is unified, criticism is besieged in the name of professionalism. The result is not public media, but a single narrative that is repeated until it becomes an official truth, while questions are pushed to the margins.
Economically, the picture is even darker: the sale of educational and health institutions, the opening of vital sectors to specific investment networks, and the circulation of money within narrow circles — all done in the name of “modernization” and “attracting investment.” Yet modernization here does not mean expanding opportunities, but redistributing them within a network that knows very well who profits and who pays the price.
Education and health, instead of being public rights, become commodities, and the state turns into an intermediary between the market and the network.
In foreign policy, the most sensitive face appears: pushing normalization to its farthest limits. The issue here is not the principle of international relations, but the way major choices are imposed without real public debate and without genuine political accountability. When geopolitical transformations are managed from behind the scenes, society becomes a receiver rather than a partner, and sovereignty turns into a top-down decision rather than a collective will.
When Moroccans speak of “Weld Chouafa,” they are not using an innocent folkloric nickname, but describing — in heavy symbolic language — the nature of the power this man represents. “Chouafa” here is not a woman who reads palms, but a model of governance based on ambiguity, on manufacturing awe, and on managing the state with a mentality of “talismans” rather than law. Ali El Himma does not rule by appearance but by shadow, does not decide by decree but by signal, does not impose influence by law but by the climate he creates — a climate of fear, ambiguity, and unwritten messages where everyone understands without anything being said.
Thus politics becomes a ritual, institutions become tools, and the state becomes a space dominated by the “talismans of power” instead of the clarity of accountability. When it is said that the man rules “by the spells of the Chouafa,” what is meant is that Morocco today is governed by a political magical logic: ambiguity instead of transparency, loyalty instead of law, and awe instead of legitimacy.
Ali El Himma is not merely a “powerful person,” but a symbol of a governance model that prefers the network or mafia over the state, shadow over light, and closed management over public debate. The danger is not in the name, but in the rule that allows one name to stamp the destiny of an entire country. Here “stability” becomes a word used to justify silence, “reforms” become a façade to rearrange influence, and “soft power” becomes a mask to re-market a politically ailing regime.
In the end, the issue is not that this man is “destructive” or an “engineer of destruction,” but that the governance model he embodies empties politics of its meaning, turns the homeland into a file, the file into a deal, and the citizen into a number inside an equation whose keys he does not possess. When a country reaches this stage, the real question is not who rules, but why are we not allowed to know how he rules or controls?
#Morocco #ElHimma #Makhzen #MohammedVI #WesternSahara
