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On November 6, 2025, the Kingdom of Morocco will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Green March (Al-Massira Al-Khadrae), a national milestone that invites reflection on one of the most extraordinary and unifying moments in the country’s modern history. Half a century after hundreds of thousands of unarmed Moroccans advanced peacefully into the Sahara, the echoes of that march continue to shape the nation’s political culture, collective memory, and sense of belonging.
I was in the fifth grade in November 1975 when Morocco seemed to hold its breath. Every morning after the King’s call for the Green March, our classroom in a small village in southeast Morocco became a miniature echo of the nation. Before the lessons began, our teacher would ask, “What did you hear on the radio or see on the television last night?” or “What did your parents hear about the march?” We would burst with answers—each of us recounting fragments of news we had heard on the crackling transistor radio or seen on the black-and-white television that flickered to life at six in the evening and went dark again at midnight.
One classmate might recite a few lines of the King’s speech; another would report a rumor about who in the village had volunteered; another would hum the refrain of a new patriotic song broadcast on the national television station. For a few weeks, our arithmetic and reading lessons gave way to talk of the march. We were children, yet we sensed that something immense was happening—that the country was moving as one, and that somehow we, too, were part of it.
Yet beneath the exhilaration ran a quiet current of trepidation. Villagers whispered about what might happen once the marchers crossed into the Spanish-controlled Sahara. Would the Spanish army attack them? Would there be war between Morocco and Spain? In the evenings, as adults huddled around radios and kerosene lamps (lambas)—their faces flickering in the dim light of pressure lanterns (lkankiyat), since there was no electricity in the village—their silence told us what words did not. We sensed both pride and apprehension—the thrill of unity mingled with the dread of what a single gunshot might unleash. Even as children, we understood that the march carried not only the promise of peace but also the shadow of peril.
If the mornings belonged to the classroom, the evenings belonged to the entire village. Families gathered around those battery-powered televisions—their screens glowing like small moons—while adults sat close, faces illuminated by the pale light. The radio never stopped: its signal floated through courtyards and alleys, mingling with the smell of tea and the cool November air. Patriotic songs filled the night—“Sawt al-Hasssan yunadi, the voice of Hassan calls,” “Laayoune, ʿiniyya/my eyes; al-Saguia al-Hamra is mine; the river is my river, O my master; we will go in peace; God and the Prophet and the Qur’an with us,” and new anthems written almost daily to celebrate unity and destiny. We listened to the announcer’s solemn tone, to the chants of “Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest); the voice of Hassan calls out with your tongue, O Sahara; my joy, oh my country, your land has become free; … our desire must be fulfilled with the Green March; carrying the book of God and our path is straight; our brothers in the Sahara demand maintaining and strengthening family ties (silat ar-rahim); …without war, without weapons, the miracle of time…” from the desert, to the voice of the King—distant yet intimate.
When the broadcast ended near midnight, the village exhaled. The screen dimmed, but the sound remained inside us. I remember lying awake, hearing the faint crackle of the radio in the next room, and feeling that the whole country was awake together—teachers, farmers, soldiers, children—all listening to the same voice. We did not yet understand diplomacy or decolonization; we only knew that every evening, as the battery-powered television dimmed, Morocco became one family gathered around the same fragile light.
The Green March of November 1975 stands as one of the most audacious and innovative acts of postcolonial statecraft, a masterstroke of performative diplomacy that redefined the interplay of faith, sovereignty, and geopolitics. On November 6, 1975, at the call of King Hassan II, 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians advanced across the demarcation line into what was then the Spanish Sahara. Far from a spontaneous demonstration, the Green March was a meticulously orchestrated exercise in asymmetric power: a “peaceful march” designed to reclaim territory through moral force rather than arms. It fused religious symbolism, legal ingenuity, and political theater to challenge the colonial logic of borders and to rewrite the terms of decolonization in Morocco’s favor.
The legal and political backdrop to this moment unfolded amid the twilight of European colonial rule in Africa. As Spain prepared to relinquish one of its last possessions on the continent, the question of sovereignty over the Sahara ignited a complex contest among Morocco, Mauritania, and the emergent separatist Sahrawi movement, supported by Libya and Algeria. The dispute was brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), whose advisory opinion of October 16, 1975, would become the pivotal hinge upon which the Green March turned.
The ICJ acknowledged the existence of historical bayʿa ties—sacred bonds of allegiance—linking Saharan tribes to the Moroccan Sultan. King Hassan II deftly seized upon this acknowledgment, reinterpreting it not merely as a legal nuance but as a moral and civilizational vindication. He argued that the court had, perhaps unwittingly, affirmed an Islamic conception of sovereignty rooted in faith and allegiance—one that long preceded and transcended European notions of territorial possession. By reframing the ruling through Morocco’s own religious and historical lens, Hassan II transformed the court’s legal opinion into a national mandate. What began as a technical verdict in The Hague emerged, through his rhetoric, as both divine sanction and historical destiny.
Central to this achievement was the deliberate embedding of the march within an Islamic doctrinal and historical framework. Hassan II invoked foundational religious narratives—the Prophet Muhammad’s peaceful conquest of Mecca (Fath), the Hijra, and the Hajj—to sanctify the movement and elevate participation from a civic duty to an act of faith. The marchers were consistently described not as protestors but as pilgrims (hujjaj), their trek across the desert cast as a sacred journey comparable to the pilgrimage to Mecca. Even the language of ritual was invoked: the march was likened to a prayer (salat), requiring intention (niyyah), purity, obedience, and faith. As the King declared, “the first condition of the march is belief.” Through these carefully chosen parallels, Hassan II transformed a territorial recovery into a religious calling, aligning political ambition with divine providence. This sanctification granted the event moral legitimacy and spiritual fervor, mobilizing citizens not through coercion but conviction.
He also evoked silat ar-rahim, the Islamic principle of maintaining and strengthening family ties through compassion, generosity, and mutual care. Deeply praised in the Qur’an and Hadith, this obligation forbids the severing of kinship bonds. By invoking the Green March as a silat ar-rahim with Morocco’s “lost children” of the Sahara, Hassan II transposed a spiritual duty into political form—recasting decolonization as a familial reunion rather than a conquest. In this idiom, reclaiming the Sahara became not merely a matter of sovereignty, but of kinship restored and harmony renewed.
At the center of this transformation stood King Hassan II himself—both as monarch and as Amir al-Muʾminin, Commander of the Faithful. His dual authority, temporal and spiritual, allowed him to mobilize a nation with singular effectiveness. In his address on the very day of the ICJ ruling, he invoked not only national duty but divine will, declaring the recovery of the Sahara a sacred obligation. The march thus became an act of covenant renewal: the reuniting of a monarch and his loyal subjects, severed by colonial partition. By invoking bayʿa, he transformed a political campaign into a ritual of allegiance and redemption. The King’s mastery of political communication—his calm authority, religious gravitas, and direct appeals via radio and television—created a sense of intimacy and destiny. His command, “Tomorrow, God willing, you will cross the border and set foot on your land,” was both prophecy and decree, transforming civic obedience into spiritual pilgrimage.
The Green March was both a performance of national unity and a diplomatic masterstroke—an unprecedented act of nonviolent territorial reclamation in which King Hassan II transformed a geopolitical crisis into a triumphant affirmation of sovereignty. Rather than waging war, the monarchy orchestrated the peaceful advance of unarmed civilians into the disputed territory of the Sahara, demonstrating how national will could function as a decisive instrument of statecraft. The march was not born in the desert, but in the corridors of international law and diplomacy, where Morocco first outmaneuvered its colonial rival.
In November 1975, at the King’s call, the marchers assembled—farmers, teachers, and families carrying only two symbols: the Qur’an and the national flag. Their unarmed presence, disciplined and prayerful, embodied the fusion of nation and faith.
I remember the unmistakable fleets of old British-made red Bedford trucks and French-made yellow Berliets, packed to the brim with men and women wrapped in jellabas, turbans, and bright scarves, their red and green flags flapping wildly in the desert wind. The air itself seemed to tremble with sound—people shouting, singing, and waving Qurans and portraits of the King. The roads became rivers of color and faith, the roar of engines blending with chants of Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest); Long Live the King; and joyful yuyus. It was an astonishing mobilization—at once a festival and a pilgrimage, part sacred procession and part show float on the open road—a scene so vivid it seemed to rise out of legend itself: a living tableau of faith, spectacle, and the awakening of a nation.
This deliberate disarmament was Morocco’s greatest strategic weapon. To the world, the image of hundreds of thousands advancing peacefully across the desert rendered any military response politically and morally untenable. Spain, weakened by Franco’s illness and domestic uncertainty, found itself paralyzed. A violent reaction would have provoked global outrage; inaction conceded the field. By substituting nonviolence for aggression, Hassan II forced the confrontation onto moral and diplomatic terrain, where Morocco held the advantage.
Perhaps the most brilliant dimension of the Green March was its unwavering commitment to nonviolence. In an era when decolonization was often synonymous with armed struggle, Hassan II’s framing of a mass territorial reclamation as a peaceful march was a strategic and ethical masterstroke. The official rhetoric was explicit: “This march is not for war, nor for revenge, nor to stir up hatreds.” The marchers carried Qurans, not rifles—a visual and moral contrast that disarmed Spain both politically and symbolically. This nonviolent posture enabled mass participation—including women and the elderly—and created a diplomatic fait accompli that no foreign power could reverse without incurring moral condemnation. In this way, nonviolence became both a tactic and a weapon, transforming religious faith and demographic presence into instruments of sovereignty.
If The Hague gave Morocco the legal argument and faith gave it moral conviction, the airwaves provided the stage upon which the drama would unfold. In 1975, King Hassan II transformed the transistor and the black-and-white television into instruments of statecraft, composing what might be called the first great broadcast monarchy of the post-colonial world. Long before politicians learned to weaponize Twitter or perform power on TikTok, Hassan II understood that modern leadership depended not only on armies and decrees but on images, voices, and rhythms that could enter homes and imaginations.
By the mid-1970s, Morocco had undergone a communications revolution. In a decade, television sets had increased from fewer than ten thousand to nearly half a million; inexpensive transistor radios were everywhere buzzing in cafés, taxis, souks, and villages. The state monopoly of Radio-Télévision Marocaine (RTM) ensured that the royal voice dominated the national soundscape. Through the soft static of evening broadcasts, Hassan II became a constant presence—stern yet intimate, remote yet familiar.
For millions who did not have access to newspapers, the King’s voice was the nation itself: steady, articulate, and resonant with religious cadence. Every speech, every patriotic song, every nightly bulletin became a lesson in belonging. What emerged through these synchronized moments of listening was what Benedict Anderson would later call an imagined community—a collective forged not by direct interaction but by the simultaneous awareness of others participating in the same ritual of listening and belief. Each Moroccan who tuned in to the Green March broadcasts could sense, almost palpably, that countless others were hearing the same words at the same time, breathing in rhythm with the same cadence of the King’s voice. Radio and television collapsed geography into emotion, creating a form of national simultaneity: a Morocco that could imagine itself as one family dispersed yet united through shared soundwaves.
Hassan II’s Morocco became a nation that could hear itself before it could fully see itself. In the Green March, this imagined community took physical form. The hundreds of thousands advancing toward the desert embodied the millions who remained home—each marcher a visible proxy for those listening across the kingdom. The event thus completed a circuit of imagination: mediated unity became corporeal reality. Morocco had turned sound into sovereignty, transmission into territory.
On October 16, 1975, at 6:30 p.m., Hassan II appeared on television, his tone alternating between command and paternal warmth. “We must undertake a Green March,” he proclaimed, “from the north of Morocco to the south, from the east to the west.” It was not merely an announcement—it was revelation. He promised each volunteer a Participant’s Card, “the real crown, the real scepter, the stamp of God.” In this transformation of bayʿa into a document, Hassan II turned recognition into replication: each card became a miniature contract of loyalty, each listener a shareholder in sovereignty.
Within forty-eight hours, registration centers overflowed. The target of 350,000 marchers—roughly equal to Morocco’s annual birth rate—became both symbol and statistic, a numerical metaphor for national renewal. Enumeration itself was imagination: by counting bodies, the state conjured the idea of a single, synchronized body.
Behind the scenes, the Ministry of the Interior executed a logistical feat of staggering precision: trucks and trains ferried volunteers to Marrakech, convoys carried them south, and Radio Tarfaya—the “Radio of Liberation and Unity”—dueled Spanish National Radio from Laayoune. Where the Spanish broadcast empire projected colonial endurance, Tarfaya transmitted belonging. Patriotic anthems such as Jil Jilala’s “Laayoune, ʿiniyya” transformed legality into melody, law into chorus.
On the morning of November 6, 1975, Morocco awakened as a single body in motion. Radios crackled with the King’s command from Agadir:
“Tomorrow, God willing, you will cross the border.”
Three hundred fifty thousand civilians—men and women, farmers and students, workers and clerks—advanced toward the Spanish-controlled Sahara, waving Moroccan flags and raising Qurans high above their heads. Their chants of Allahu Akbar (“God is the greatest”) and Labbayk Allahumma Labbayk (“Here I am, O God, here I am”—a declaration of continual submission) transformed a territorial claim into a pilgrimage of nationhood. From loudspeakers rolled the King’s voice and patriotic hymns, merging faith and politics in a single resonant chorus where ritual devotion and state communication became indistinguishable.
More than a thousand journalists watched, yet the real audience was at home. Radios relayed the march live; televisions replayed its images nightly; families across the kingdom gathered around the same small screens and battery-powered sets, listening, weeping, chanting. Morocco became an imagined community realized in sound and motion—a nation performing itself for the world.
When Spanish reconnaissance aircraft flew low over the marchers, panic flickered until the royal voice returned through the loudspeakers:
“Do not be afraid. You are protected.”
Narrative control steadied bodies and restored rhythm.
Spain, caught in paralysis as Franco lay dying, could not act. To fire on civilians would be international suicide; to yield was inevitable. Hassan II had achieved moral asymmetry: sovereignty by choreography.
Three days later, he ordered the march to halt. “The march,” he announced, “has fulfilled its mission and achieved its goal.” Days later came the Madrid Accords—Spain’s withdrawal, Morocco’s triumph, and the symbolic completion of the march that had begun not in the sands, but in the soundwaves.
When the volunteers returned, villagers welcomed them as pilgrims of sovereignty. The radio replayed the songs of November; medals were distributed; the memory became ritual. Morocco had not merely reclaimed a territory—it had imagined itself into being.
The Green March was more than a political act; it was a blueprint for mediated rule. Hassan II transformed legality into emotion, emotion into movement, and movement into legitimacy. He built a new kind of monarchy—one that reigned not only through lineage and law, but through sound, image, and shared imagination.
Through law, he secured international recognition; through media, he cultivated intimacy. The ICJ opinion provided the scaffolding, but it was the transistor, the song, and the televised image that filled in the walls. The Green March was a living diagram of broadcast sovereignty, where faith, legality, and spectacle converged until the line between authority and affection dissolved.
Every listener became a participant, every participant, a witness. The monarchy did not merely represent the nation—it produced it, transmission by transmission. What began as a legal brief at The Hague evolved into a collective heartbeat that synchronized 350,000 marchers in the desert and millions more around radios in the kingdom’s farthest corners.
In the decades that followed, the Green March endured as Morocco’s civic scripture—its songs, imagery, and slogans revived annually as rites of remembrance. Celebrated every year on November 6 as a national holiday, the Green March continues to affirm Morocco’s unity and sovereign identity, reminding each generation that citizenship was first learned through listening, believing, and belonging. It remains a testament to the potency of narrative in shaping history—proof that when belief, law, and leadership converge, the most decisive victories may be won without a single shot fired, only the steady footsteps of a nation in motion.
Through the Green March, Hassan II built not just a legacy, but a nation united by sound before sight—by his voice before any border on a map. Morocco became one of the first postcolonial nations to turn radio and television into a new kind of frontier, where the broadcast was the flag, and the people themselves became the living signal of a united nation.
Source: Morocco word news
