Engineering Despair in Morocco: How the Makhzen Turns Its Own People into Bargaining Chips to Blackmail Europe – By Maamar Gani

Engineering Despair in Morocco: How the Makhzen Turns Its Own People into Bargaining Chips to Blackmail Europe 

By: Maamar Gani

It is no longer possible to conceal the fact that the governing doctrine of Morocco’s Makhzen regime is built upon a repugnant pragmatic principle: “exploiting crises and exporting misery.” Whenever the domestic sphere becomes suffocated by mounting social discontent, and the hollow slogans of development are shattered against the hard reality of poverty and marginalization, the Makhzen machinery immediately resorts to its weapon of choice: blackmailing its European neighbour by engineering and directing human flows.

The documented audio-visual testimonies that emerged from the mass exodus toward the city of Ceuta were not merely the spontaneous reaction of desperate young people. Rather, they constituted a new chapter in a farcical drama whose strings were being deliberately and premeditatedly pulled by the Moroccan security apparatus.

When Moroccan migrants themselves speak—from direct personal experience rather than through analysis—to confirm that Moroccan police officers opened the gates and border fences and allowed them to pass directly towards the Spanish side, without restriction or oversight, we are confronted with damning evidence of official involvement in managing this mass exodus.

Investigations and testimonies from the ground have exposed how the operation was promoted across social media through covert directives, with the aim of mobilizing the largest possible number of young people, families and minors. This was not spontaneous migration, but rather forced displacement disguised as social flight, cloaked in the appearance of helplessness while serving a sordid political purpose.

What these Moroccans are fleeing is not merely material deprivation, but the hell of a class-based system that entrenches stark inequality, strips citizens of even the most basic conditions for a dignified life, and suppresses every voice calling for change.

When entire families and children spend days on end in the open air and in the forests, refusing to return to their homeland, this reflects the sheer scale of the despair that the Makhzen regime has instilled in its subjects. For young Moroccans, death at sea or homelessness on the borders of Ceuta is far preferable to remaining in a homeland stripped of dignity, whose resources are plundered to finance normalization deals and the purchase of regional and international loyalties.

The Moroccan regime has grown accustomed to treating its own citizens as “geostrategic bargaining chips” rather than as human beings endowed with rights and citizenship. Whenever diplomatic pressure intensifies, or new positions are demanded on major issues of leverage—foremost among them the Western Sahara question—the human trigger is immediately pulled.

Flooding Europe’s borders with thousands of migrants through deliberate security acquiescence is nothing more than a veiled threat to Madrid and Brussels: either support our political agendas, or we will inundate you with the flood of misery we ourselves manufacture.

This is political depravity in its most complete form: the transformation of the bodies of children, women and innocent people into demographic explosives with which European decision-making capitals are blackmailed, while the head of the regime stands by as a spectator to the tragedy of his own people.

The testimonies surrounding the mass flight towards Ceuta are nothing more than a stark mirror exposing the true face of the Makhzen: an authoritarian regime that sees in its subjects nothing more than a bargaining commodity and a cheap pressure card in the marketplace of regional horse-trading.

When children are driven towards border fences under the protection of the security authorities, while young people are left wandering aimlessly through the forests, the mask finally falls from the alleged narrative of “stability.” For a homeland from which its own people flee en masse with the complicity of its authorities is a country destined for inevitable collapse from within, no matter how hard the Makhzen media may try to embellish its crumbling façade.