“I have . . . decided to open a new page in the ongoing reforms I am spearheading. Indeed, we shall soon be launching a gradual, sophisticated process of regionalization which will cover all parts of the kingdom, especially the Moroccan Sahara region.” — King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Nov. 6, 2008, 33rd anniversary of the Green March Introduction In a speech on Nov. 6, 2008, King Mohammed VI of Morocco announced his plan to decentralize the kingdom, including the Western Sahara. The date marked the 33rd anniversary of the Green March, when 350,000 unarmed Moroccans crossed into Spain’s former [...]
The leaders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) can look forward to the new decade with considerable optimism. Last year, the PRC celebrated its 60th anniversary, with the state-controlled media taking care to trumpet the regime’s major political, economic, and military achievements. In the eyes of its leaders, the country’s rapid increase in wealth, prosperity, and prestige has, by propelling China to the forefront of global players for the first time in centuries, vindicated its present model of government, both at home and abroad. Although one can challenge that assessment, China clearly remains the world’s most populous nation and [...]
In “The United States of Africa,” the Djibouti-born novelist Abdourahman Waberi imagines a topsy-turvy world where a sorry stream of refugees flows from the squalor of Europe and America to escape poverty in the prosperous United States of Africa. Like an African Voltaire, Waberi uses the weapon of satire to raze a Western myth that has come to imprison Africans: that of the eternal African victim. Ironically, this myth of African victimhood emerged in Western political thought at the same moment that Africa achieved political liberation. As the French writer Pascal Bruckner trenchantly described in “The Tears of the White [...]
