Ceuta, Morocco, Understanding the Situation

The Islamists have launched a new front

Since the Arab Spring, Morocco's Islamists have struggled to offer a credible governing agenda. Instead, they have spent years convincing young Moroccans that their country has no future. Through alliances with NGOs, partnerships with European activist networks, and relentless claims that Morocco's ties to Israel and the United States make it a conspirator or aggressor, they have pursued a single political objective: to delegitimize the state, deepen public disillusionment, and convert that resentment into votes in September.

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For a long time, Islamist rhetoric in Morocco has painted Europe as a kind of promised land, a place where welfare never runs out, chances are everywhere, and prosperity comes easily, with barely any effort required. The objective has always been to weaken trust in Morocco's own institutions and steer young people toward leaving.

But those very currents held power after the 2011 constitutional reforms tied to the Arab Spring. Their time in government produced a sluggish economy, unfulfilled promises, and a public that steadily lost faith. Since then, the pitch has barely changed. The same refrains keep coming back, while Morocco is framed as a failed state, not worth anyone’s loyalty, not worth building, not worth investing in.

In that narrative, Morocco is often branded a kafir state and the King is attacked as not Islamic enough. Young Moroccans are urged toward jihad and a permanent stance of confrontation with the West. Amazigh (Berber) identity, too, is mocked or dismissed as backward, even primitive. Year after year, the effort has been to drain the spirit out of an entire generation, to sell them on one bleak claim above all: their country has no future.

And whatever Morocco’s problems, the country is not collapsing. There is no war, no state failure, no institutional breakdown. Development is still moving through some of the biggest infrastructure and industrial efforts in modern Moroccan history: the extension of Africa’s first high-speed rail network, the expansion of Tanger Med into the continent’s leading port, and large commitments in renewables and desalination. Morocco has also built one of Africa’s most advanced aerospace sectors, with over 150 companies employing about 25,000 skilled workers and bringing in close to $3 billion a year in exports. Safran, Boeing, Airbus, and other international manufacturers run sites producing aircraft engines. Compared with many developing states, Morocco has put its emphasis on infrastructure first, on pulling in investment, and on laying the groundwork for long-term growth, then, after that, widening social benefits.

The same ideological current also pushes a claim that Morocco is trying to “reclaim Muslim land” via Ceuta and Melilla. In reality, no Moroccan government has expressed such a demand to the United Nations or any similar international body. Official diplomacy has kept those enclaves separate from Western Sahara, where Rabat has made a formal, explicit sovereignty claim for decades. That difference says a lot about the distance between Morocco’s actual foreign policy and the Islamist storyline built for ideological mobilization.

It’s also worth noting where the loudest demand has come from. A Moroccan Islamist leader has publicly argued that the country “must eventually regain control of Ceuta and Melilla.” By projecting that position onto the state while brushing aside official statements and practice, Islamist activists manufacture a thin appearance of legitimacy for a campaign that aims to weaken state authority, and amplify the message online for global support. Morocco’s ties with Israel and the United States then get turned into a weapon as well, presented as proof that the government itself lacks legitimacy.

Since October 7, this has sharpened, in part because Islamists now face a possible political rival in Fouzi Lekjaa, the highly capable president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation. Lekjaa is widely credited with driving Morocco’s historic run to the semi-finals in the 2022 World Cup and with turning the national team into a global force. Now he is using his key role in winning and preparing for the 2030 World Cup, co-hosted with Spain and Portugal, to bolster his profile as a potential prime minister, and to deepen his standing as one of the country’s most influential public figures.

Morocco remains a developing country. Real social and economic difficulties persist, and legitimate frustrations deserve to be taken seriously. Still, describing the country as hopeless helps no one, not Moroccans and not anyone interested in meaningful reform. In practice, that narrative mainly benefits two groups: people looking to justify illegal migration, and those trying to strip the Moroccan state of legitimacy.

Contrary to the conspiracy talk that spreads online, Morocco gains nothing from uncontrolled crossings. Some critics point to Algeria’s relationships with European governments, but every major European state keeps channels open with Algiers, Giorgia Meloni’s Italy has a notably strong relationship, while Morocco’s day-to-day cooperation has stayed consistently solid across the board. That includes strong migration frameworks with France and Germany, including a bilateral partnership signed with Berlin in 2024 that has driven higher returns, deportation arrangements with Hungary and Poland, and, most recently, close operational coordination with the United States.

What actually happened looked far less like state orchestration and far more like online coordination and crowd movement. Facebook groups coordinated mass pushes toward the border cities, while a curated stream of clips showed traffic police, whose authority extends only within narrow legal limits, alongside videos of cars and buses heading north. All of it was then repackaged into the claim that “Morocco is behind it.” Missing from that online narrative were images of Moroccan security forces actively pushing back, deploying in Nador, Tangier, and surrounding areas, and the fact that Morocco itself suspended train service to slow the flow. Criminal networks sought to overwhelm the response by bribing people and urging the largest possible numbers to move simultaneously. In the end, Morocco mobilized the army across multiple cities.

The truth is that Morocco is itself under heavy migration pressure coming from the Sahel. In 2025 alone, authorities intercepted 73,640 attempted irregular crossings, and sub-Saharan nationals now account for nearly 60% of foreign residents.

Last year, several thousand Sudanese and other Sahel-origin migrants also crossed the eastern border, adding to the strain already felt in Moroccan cities, it’s a pressure ordinary Moroccans regularly complain about. The chaos of the past two days only worsens Morocco’s position rather than helping it: once the impression of an open or uncontrolled border spreads, it draws in even more refugees and irregular migrants, piling additional weight onto a burden that is already substantial.

Islamist voices now invert reality and accuse the Moroccan government of orchestrating the entire episode. Many NGOs, including those in Europe with ties to Islamist groups, have amplified the falsehood by branding Morocco a “Zionist proxy.” This ignores the fact that Morocco’s position on Gaza does not favor Netanyahu: Rabat has repeatedly and firmly condemned Israeli military operations and ceasefire violations, called for an immediate and lasting halt to the fighting, demanded unrestricted humanitarian access, and insisted on a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

The timing is also interesting: general elections are set for 23 September, and Islamist operators understand that border chaos, magnified on social media, can destabilize the incumbent narrative before the vote.

Morocco is further constrained by Spanish policy choices under Pedro Sánchez. Effective migration management requires reciprocity. The security budget allocated to Ceuta has remained inadequate, particularly with a regional government led by the Partido Popular (whose president, Juan Jesús Vivas, belongs to a party long hostile to Sánchez).

Morocco shoulders the burden of physical presence, patrols, interceptions, and surveillance along the entire land and maritime perimeter. By contrast, Spain’s preventive spending is limited: Spain allocates roughly €60 million per year to measures aimed at preventing irregular arrivals (border technology, Frontex participation, and limited aid to North African partners), while spending more than €1.8 billion annually on reception and support for irregular migrants. A multi-year Spanish government plan of €711 million for Ceuta and Melilla through 2026, covered by El País in 2022, directed the bulk of funds to education, social services, and economic development not pure border security.

This structural imbalance renders Spanish policy unsustainable as it provides more incentives to illegal crossings, not less. Morocco has no legal prerogative to extract individuals once they are inside Spanish territory, including Ceuta. Spanish Supreme Court rulings that have extended asylum protections to certain “swimmers” which were published a few weeks ago only complicate the picture further.

This latest episode will primarily benefit Islamists who want Europe to fail and Morocco, denounced in their rhetoric as a "Zionist" state, to fail alongside it. Every crisis that deepens polarization, weakens European governments, and reinforces the narrative of a failing Morocco advances the ideological project they have pursued for years.