Expulsion of Syrian refugees: Algeria's attempt to spur political tensions with Morocco

Dispatching a bunch of refugees from Algeria to Moroccan territories is an adventurous and irresponsible move from a country which has long sought to fuel tensions with its neighbors. Algeria must assume the full responsibility for the inhuman act it did.

Morocco doesn’t stand against Syrians moving to its land as long as it believes that it is compulsory to lend a hand to all refugees who walked out on their countries fleeing the devastating war and political turmoil in which their country has been bogging down for almost two years. Though it is not a rich country as one may assume, it still upholds a good sense of humanity, tolerance and cooperation toward Syrian refugees and makes its best to provide for their basic needs. It is not the first time it has done so; it has been doing this for quite a long time.

Throughout history, the kingdom of Morocco that spans over 12 decades has demonstrated a good sense of hospitality to the whole world. Long time ago it hosted many people, coming for different reasons, from East (Jews and Arabs), South (Sub-Saharan Africans) and North (Romans).

Jews with Berbers were the first to settle down in Morocco, and they have contributed much to its heritage. They gained approval from almost all the kings who reigned the country throughout history. King Hassan 2 used to say, “when a Jew leaves his country, Morocco loses a resident and wins an ambassador”. Of course the story of Moroccan Jews is one single example of a genius country which, despite going through ups and downs, has long endeavored to promote human rights, diversity, solidarity and tolerance.

It is also known that Morocco remains the gateway for Europe, a state that has long lured sub-Saharan and central Africans to swarm to the land. It annually receives an influx of refugees who arrive with the hope to move to the other shores no matter what the means are. Although the European Union is recurrently placing Morocco under unceasing pressure to put in place border control and deport any illegal alien who dares pop up on Moroccan land, the country remains creative and flexible in looking for ways to co-exist with these people.

1 April 2010, UN high commissioner of refugees reported that innovated steps had been taken toward refugee community, integrating, and voluntarily supporting them in partnership with the international organization for migration. The report also casted lights on the efforts Morocco is making and that it has an outstanding policy of welcoming refugees and migrants.

Morocco is not blamed for overlooking the issue of human rights simply because it has heeded every single amendment postulated by the UN with respect to the issue of human rights and refugees since a long time. The blame must be put rather on Algeria for violating these rights by the expulsion of refugees from its borders to Morocco’s. While these refugees should be welcome in both countries, and their issues shouldn’t transgress to the political state between two countries, Algeria is grabbing the chance to worsen the political instability in the region.

It is therefore an apt time for anyone who dares argue against Moroccan defense and implementation of human rights to pause at the efforts being made and perhaps the obstacles encountered to welcome, protect , and serve Syrian refugees in its land. It has long crossed the path of human rights. The whole blame must be put rather on Algeria, which tended to rocket Syrians in Moroccan territories with less cost.

 It is imperative that Algeria as well as Morocco should cater for these refugees but not seize the opportunity to deteriorate the political state between the two countries. 

The Art of Leadership

Since leadership is defined as “the process in which an individual influences the group of people to achieve a common goal”, an effective and inspiring leader must accordingly uphold a good sense of positivity and consequently elicit others to work zealously in order to achieve that goal. To meet this end, he or she should acquire certain unique traits identified by some researchers as intelligence, extraversion, adjustment, openness to experience and importantly an enamoring charisma that can induce others to shadow and model them.

It is axiomatically held that effective leaders, despite the hardships or circumstances in which they operate, share some fundamental traits with each other, such as autonomy, eloquence, charisma, social and emotional intelligence, ability to motivate, and a penetrating spirit toward a good change.

It goes without saying that one of the effective leaders history has ever known is Barak Obama. If I were to choose the best political leader history in general and USA in particular have ever seen, I would certainly find no weight against Obama’s leadership. He is presumably the right paradigm of an influencing, effective and inspiring leader in the eyes of a vast majority of Americans if not all.

Back to his early age, we find that the man stems from an African immigrant father who diligently worked to instill moral values in his son and prospective world leader. His childhood is still living with him till now. This grabs my attention to Williams Wordsworth saying which goes as “a child is the father of a man”. If anything to be inferred from this quote, it will certainly be that our traits, be they positive or negative, are installed and established from the get-go of our life and therefore early life experiences, such as  nutrition and childhood hobbies and practices inextricably shape the leadership style as the experience of the president Obama demonstrates. His Initial endowment has played a large and deterministic part in the triumph he is experiencing in his leadership of the American people.

 Beside the Initial endowment, leadership is also developed. Some would argue that leadership is genetic, innate, and a leader is born with leadership quality and there is no room for others to excel at it. Others would argue otherwise and say that leadership is developed through experience, education, and diligence to acquire it. However, the plausible definition, as Obama’s experience demonstrates, is that leadership is both innate and acquired. It is innate through physical and psychological traits, and acquired through experience and good education.

To put all in a nutshell, it is worth-saying that good leaders are those who, no matter how hard the circumstances are, have a vision and work diligently to bring this vision down to earth. They are those who manage to align people to line up with a change by exerting influence among them and be their model to follow. They are those who juxtapose their initial endowment with what they acquired throughout life as Obama’s experience demonstrated.

females' drop-out of school: a gendre discrimination and inequality

Dropping out of school, especially for girls, is almost a pervasive problem in all Moroccan rural areas. My community is not immune to such problems with which I have been raised bitterly dissatisfied for a long time. What saddens me most is when I see girls, who are cut off from school early in their life, pay the tax bills for their parents’ blind tradition and lack of education.

I have grown up in a countryside located 9 kilometers away from a village called Ain Dorij in Sidi Kacem province of Morocco. Throughout my school life, I have witnessed many cases of girls forced to stop going to school. This has long incited a feeling inside me and pushed me to look for any solution that would bring back the rights of females to resume their education.

The living conditions are poor indeed and some fathers can hardly fulfill their family’s basic needs, let alone providing for education. They therefore feel compelled to make their daughters stay home and try to send only boys to school, and most of the time even boys are unable to attend school. I recall the large proportion of my classmates who reluctantly deserted schools earlier on in their life and went instead to do hard labor, learn a craft or perform any job in nearby cities, whereby they can send their parents money monthly.

It sickens me indeed when I see that my mother doesn’t know how to read or write, unless when it comes to her name with which she has grown accustomed from her familiar scripts. She is one among a zillion others who have never been inside a classroom. She married at the age of 15 years. Ironically, it is the age that girls are supposed to move from secondary to high schools. The patriarchal society is perpetrating a crime against women. Uprooting them from school, sending them to perform hard labor in agricultural fields, and obliging them to marry at a very early age are morally and humanely unacceptable.

I am not against women who aid their parents for the simple reason that they are born and raised in a countryside and should therefore lend a hand to assist their parents. I am simply defending the rights of females to pursue their education. They must be educated to contribute to the welfare of the community and themselves so both can move forward.

If it were in my hands, I would encourage parents to send their children to school (both males and females), sensitize them to the paramount importance education plays in one’s life, and offer advantages for girls that would entice their parents to send them to school.

It is also incumbent on the government to solve this problem by looking for ways to grab parents’ attention to the importance of education. The government can, for example, provide a sum of money for female students in rural areas monthly, and make sure that all females who benefit from the fund are enrolled in school.