National pride and a piece of desert – that’s why the King of Morocco proposes emergency aid. The number of victims in Morocco rises to at least 2,862 – the search for survivors continues

Mentally, France is closer than ever to Morocco: since the recent earthquake, Parisian television stations have been reporting live on the disaster, sometimes around the clock; All aid organizations, including cities, departments and regions, raise money for ‘solidarité Maroc’. The government in Paris has made five million euros available. She mobilized rescue teams with sniffer dogs and lots of medicine.

Only: they haven’t started yet. Morocco has accepted offers from Britain, Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – but not from France, with which the former protectorate shares history, language and to some extent culture. Rescue workers who left Paris in no time on Saturday are stuck in Marrakesh.

Brother countries in a clinch

Why this absurd situation? Politically, Morocco is now light years away from France. There has been talk of an ice age between the two ‘brother countries’, as the Maghreb-born Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin calls them, for months. French-Moroccan journalist Mustapha Tossa said France’s refusal to accept Western Sahara as Moroccan territory was primarily due to this.

Several countries, such as Spain, have accepted the desert area, which has been disputed for decades, as Moroccan. Paris is more aligned with Algeria, which disputes Western Sahara with Morocco. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron has relied even more than before on the Algerian map to guarantee the supply of oil and gas.

Macron had already angered Moroccans in 2022 when he halved the number of visas. This caused a lot of resentment in a country where the poor population usually only has one path to greater prosperity: France. French tourists, on the other hand, can still enter Morocco without a visa.

Moroccan King Mohamed VI. therefore recalled its ambassador in Paris in January. He was also reportedly annoyed by a video showing him drunk at night in Paris – even though as a good Muslim he was not allowed to drink alcohol. The Moroccan newspapers did not report a single word about it, but the king’s subjects found out about it via French social media.

They also heard from a Parisian newspaper on Saturday that their king had been treated in France for an immune disease, and then rushed back to Rabat after the earthquake and organized a televised crisis meeting there. Now the Moroccans know why their king did not comment on the earthquake for almost a day.

It is said that all this angered Mohamed so much that he deliberately tried to humiliate the French by not inviting them. The French government tries to hide its lack of understanding of the king’s attitude. Minister Darmanin denied, against his better judgement, that “political reasons” played a role in this case. For her part, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Morocco is a sovereign country. France remains available to provide assistance. The minister called it a “misplaced argument”.

Feelings of national pride and at the same time national humiliation play a role on both sides: in Morocco people are annoyed by the fact that France initially did not ask if their help was wanted. The French, on the other hand, are surprised because Rabat is not asking them for help, but rather the British, with whom Paris has had a deep rivalry since colonial times.

The result is certainly serious. In Morocco, tens of thousands of residents of remote, now closed villages have been without any help for three days. The first 72 hours after an earthquake are absolutely crucial; then help comes too late.