The historical context having created the green march of 1975 was told in a book by political scientist Mustapha Sehimi. The author details the historical, social and geopolitical implications of this “stroke of genius” of the late King Hassan II.
In an article devoted to the analysis of the book “The green march the epic God the fatherland” of the political scientist published on Atalayar, this major event which marked the Moroccan people and remains today one of the strong moments of nationalism in colonial period, is explained through the explanations of several speakers.
Mustapha Sehimi has cited eminent commentators and fine connoisseurs of the history of Morocco, having left their observations and testimonies of this complex phenomenon which remains today engraved in the collective memory.
Green walking is “an event that has represented both a break with a past past and a founding act of a new reality,” said Atalayar.
The author believes that this event has several dimensions, historical, cultural and geopolitical, socially constructed “as a rupture or a surprise which thwarts predictions”, explaining that he will “modify the power relations inherited from unfinished decolonization, twenty years after the independence of Morocco”.
The book recalls the speech of the late Hassan II “which reflected a calculated strategy of psychological and diplomatic pressure consisting in avoiding direct confrontations, maintaining the march as a peaceful civil act and putting pressure on Spain to negotiate the withdrawal of the Sahara” without bloodshed after only a few days of walking.
This event is described there as “a pragmatic movement of strategic scope, a lighthouse of national memory, a decisive moment for the conscience of the Moroccan people” recalling the importance of documenting this part of the history of Morocco.
“Living nations that celebrate significant events in their memory often go from memory to history to truly appropriate these events, in a balance between memorial fidelity and historical truth,” notes publication on this subject.
Quoted in Sehimi’s work, Omar El Hadrami, former leader and founder of the Polisario, estimated that the green march “reorganized the game, destroying the strategies of each”, stressing that on February 28, 1976, a few months after this peaceful national march “The national flag was hoisted for the first time in Laâyoune, in the heart of the Sahara, marking the end of the occupation of the South Provinces”.
For his part, historian Abdallah Laroui said that green march had caused a “convulsion” after the huge gap between the political appeal and the popular response. “A response which, overflowing all tactical consideration, transformed in a few days skeptical politicians, pragmatic bourgeois and cynical students into fervent walkers”, quits Atalayar.
This book, marks a “masterful reinterpretation of green march, perceived as an important historical event which unleashed the Moroccan people in an immense nationalist impulse, but also a symbol of the visionary leadership of Hassan II and the commitment of all of Morocco in other marches for development and peace”, adds the same source.
