Moroccan tyrant fa mounting pressure

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Royal despots have always looked forward with confident anticipation to lavish hospitality from Hassan Il of Morocco. The latest to sample these extravagant pleasures has been Khalid, feudal monarch of Saudi Arabia.

The two kings met to find ways of buttressing their reactionary alliance against the gathering tides of revolution by the Arab masses which threaten to overwhelm the established imperialist order in the Middle East.

Hassan chose the occasion to make a 'moderate' statement on the spiritual duties of rulers and the proper uses of religion:

'I think we have no right to stir the faith of peoples or to light fires in the name of the Koran".

His talk of a "vast subversive conspiracy" at work within the Islamic sects was prompted, of course, by the Iranian revolution and the part played there by the Shiite leaders.

Real concern

Neither Hassa mor Knard however, will fing much dific. ulty in reaching a satisfacto relationship with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Their real concern is with the forces of opposition that have been spurred on by the overthrow of the Shah, and with the remaining threat that the proletariat may come to power in Iran through the still unfolding revolution.

The pattern of the Iranian revolution will not be reproduced in Morocco or Saudi Arabia. The political and economic history and conditions of these tyrannies are significantly different from Iran's for all the points of similarity.

Hassan has good reason to be alarmed at a certain revival of fundamentalist Islam in student tire es-not for the development iset, but because it is symptomatic of the impact made by events in Iran.

Within Morocco, Islam has a massive social weight that works for inertia; it does not represent a dynamic political force.

Hassan claims to be religious leader of 'his' people, and the Islamic clerics have not gained the political status which the ayatollahs acquired through the Shah's process of secularisation.

At the same time, the Moroccan proletariat is far more strongly organised than the Iranian workers who had experienced the far more brutally thorough repression of the White Revolution' Mass strikes Already this year mass strikes have broken out in every major sector of industry, and college students have taken their place alongside workers in a movement that almost reached general strike proportions.

The character of the students' participation-as allies in solidarity with the working class, rather than an isolated Hassan with Carter vanguard-has marked a new stage in the class struggle within Morocco.

The economic crisis, driven on more sharply by the continuing war in the Sahara, has also placed new burdens on the peasantry with limited, more extortionate credit and requisitions of food below market prices for the troops.

But at every turn the militancy of Moroccan workers confronts the barrier of the existing labour leadership.

Here, too, major developments have taken placerevolts within the opposition parties, and a split in the trade unions leading to the formation of a new national union confederation. the Moroccan proletariat lacks any revolutionary leadership and has not yet shown a fixed determination to overthrow Hassan's tyranny.

In many ways, therefore, the war in the Sahara presents the Moroccan king with a more immediate threat.

These days one eye of Hassan's troubled vision is fixed on the fate of Iran. But he does not have far to look at Portugal for the equally dreadful example of disastrous colonial wars which led to the overthrow of a dictatorship far more deeply entrenched than his own.

'In the past, sections of the armed forces have attempted various coups. Hassan's wellgrounded fears have placed restrictions on senior officers which obstruct effective military operations against the The whole army has become demoralised by the experience of steadily losing a war, while the discontent among rank and file soldiers and the junior officers grows daily.

So long as the Polisario sustains its successful offensive, the threat of a new and more serious military coup grows to alarming proportions.

As an unwelcome guest of his fellow despot, the Shah was greeted with hostile demonstrations, wherever he travelled in Morocco, before being forced to take his ticket to the Bahamas.

Hassan has a justified reputation for shrewdness and prudence.

No doubt preparations to follow his royal brother into an exile of luxury have been well made against the day which is drawing closer at an ever swifter pace.