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One day, about a year ago, an aide from the Élysée Palace came to see Prince Moulay Hicham ben Abdallah Alaoui. He was to be informed that a memo concerning him, more than two decades old, had just been rescinded by Emmanuel Macron. It was an order, issued by “the Patriarch,” Jacques Chirac himself, forbidding state agents from having any contact with the enfant terrible of the Moroccan royal family.
“Jacques Chirac saw himself as the protector of Mohammed VI. And when I fell out of favor in Morocco, I also fell out of favor in France.” The rescission of this memo amused him greatly: Hicham el-Alaoui has very few ties to France. “Paris is just a suburb of Rabat, you know,” he says, a touch mischievously, at the end of lunch in a hotel in the 8th arrondissement, where he arranged to meet us. He came to the French capital to see us before heading off to Fontainebleau to be with his horses.
“I was practically born on a horse,” remarks the salt-and-pepper-haired man in his sixties. “There’s a saying in our culture that the throne of the Alaouite kings is located under the saddle of a horse.” On his official documents, his name is preceded by “His Royal Highness.” He is the grandson of the late King Mohammed V of Morocco, the nephew of Hassan II, and the first cousin of his successor, the current monarch Mohammed VI. Once second in line to the throne, Moulay (Prince) Hicham is now fifth. Above all, he has broken ranks, due to fundamental disagreements about the nature of the Moroccan monarchy.
“Necessary Clarification”
“My first questions were existential,” he recalls. In 1971 and 1972, he witnessed the two attempted coups against Hassan II from the inside. He was seven years old. Then came political reflection. “In 2011, in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring,’ Morocco failed to rise to the occasion and did not seize the opportunity to become a constitutional monarchy that fully empowers the individual.” Questions also arose regarding the kingdom’s diplomatic choices. “The normalization of relations with Israel in 2020 formalized very long-standing ties. But Morocco hadn’t foreseen what happened in Gaza. And this close relationship with the Jewish state now clashes with Moroccan public opinion.”
At the makhzen – the palace, the power network surrounding the king – his opinions were unsettling. In his youth, he was nicknamed “the Red Prince.” He rejected this moniker. He was more of an economic liberal, aspiring to a monarchy modeled on the British system. Seeing no sign of the promised winds of change arriving with Mohammed VI’s accession to the throne in 1999, he gradually became a dissident. He couldn’t stand the decrepit insularity of a self-centered monarchy. He asked to be stripped of his titles of nobility. His cousin refused, unwilling to undo what his grandfather, the nation’s founder, had done. “It was a necessary clarification, for him as well as for me. If it had to be done again, I would do it again.”
The surveillance and smear campaigns orchestrated in the palace-controlled press began. “I keep records of everything.” The prince isn’t banned from the country; he’s simply been removed from family photos. He still spends a third of his time in Morocco, primarily caring for his mother. But the cordon sanitaire is firmly in place: “When a state official crosses my path, they hug the walls.”
Coquetry
More than forty years after his father’s death, he doesn’t fully enjoy the family inheritance. “The palace appointed administrators to settle the estate, but they forgot to do it,” he says with amusement. Only his brother, closer to Mohammed VI, has managed to avoid the hassles of the royal inheritance. Hicham el-Alaoui also owns “a few” agricultural units and investments in renewable energy in Thailand and Singapore. This business occupies another third of his time.
The final third is spent across the Atlantic. About thirty years ago, he and his wife decided to place this ocean between themselves and Morocco, to shield their two daughters from smear campaigns. She is the daughter of a high-ranking government official, a child of the Makhzen, like him. They married at 30, but have known each other all their lives. In the United States, Hicham el-Alaoui teaches economics and political science at Stanford and Berkeley, two West Coast universities. He has served on the boards of organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the Carnegie Foundation. In a letter seen by Libération, former President Jimmy Carter dedicated his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize to “HRH Prince Moulay Hicham ben Abdallah” for the assistance he provided during his time at the Carter Foundation.
In writing, although perfectly fluent in French, Hicham el-Alaoui prefers English. “It’s not a whim,” he insists, “simply a work habit.” He would have liked to take American citizenship. The only other that might have tempted him. “But I would have had to withdraw my allegiance to a foreign prince, as required by the American Constitution. And I can’t withdraw my loyalty to the King of Morocco.”
Three-time champion
And therein lies the paradox of Hicham el-Alaoui. While he has turned his back on the monarchy, he embraces its codes. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave,” he quips, quoting the lyrics of “Hotel California” by the American rock band Eagles. “The monarchy is a unifying force for the Moroccan people, and as such, I think it’s still necessary.” He writes with a Cartier pen, “a gift from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.” He has never given up the luxury of horseback riding, either. It was a passion that he and Mohammed VI shared during their adolescence behind the high walls of the palace. “I was a three-time Moroccan equestrian champion,” he recalls.
At 62, he still rides. The second time we meet him is at the Fontainebleau equestrian center, for the spring equestrian event. It’s a stone’s throw from where, as a child, he was sent each summer for advanced training with the French national equestrian team. In April, he broke a rib in a fall. So, he watches the show jumping from the stands. Wearing a Princeton sweater and using a walking stick, he welcomes us to the VIP lounge of the equestrian center. There’s a table reserved in his name for the duration of the event. He shares it with his riding partner—the grandson of a former companion of Mohammed V—and their team.
For the portrait photo, he wanted to ride a horse. The doctor forbade it for the time being. They would have to meet again at the next stage of the tour, in Bourg-en-Bresse. In the meantime, he made a quick trip to Rabat to visit his mother.
March 4, 1964: Born in Rabat.
July 23, 1999: Death of Hassan II.
2011: New Moroccan Constitution.
Source : Libération
