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Infecting all Moroccan-French relations is the festering problem of Algeria. France is not disposed to contribute its usual aid until the Moroccans stop their support for the Algerian rebels. Mohammed, like Tunisia's moderate Premier Habib Bourguiba, is emotionally committed to "our Algerian brothers." The African war has provided a reason for the French to keep an 80,000-man army in Morocco, and its soldiers have on occasion knocked down villages and roughed up Moroccans while trying to track down Algerian fugitives. In addition, Morocco is sheltering an estimated 100,000 Algerian refugees. Lately, Moroccans have become almost as wary of the Algerian extremists as of the French, suspecting that the Algerians would like to see both Moroccans and Tunisians embroiled in their fight.
The French made things worse when last autumn they kidnaped five Algerian rebel leaders on an airplane flight from Rabat to Tunis. The Sultan was deeply shaken; under Moslem rules of hospitality the Algerians were his guests and therefore he was responsible. Mohammed V was so outraged that he withdrew his younger son from a Paris school, refused to fly home from Tunis in a French plane or land at a French base. But the Sultan ordered strict precautions to prevent bloody uprisings in sympathy. Typically, less than two weeks later, the Sultan was recognizing that bitterness would serve no one's purpose, made a speech urging the French to remain in Morocco and promising them protection. But the French broke off negotiations for $57 million in development aid and have not resumed them.
Fortnight ago, treading carefully to avoid the charge that it is trying to supplant France, the U.S. granted Morocco a carefully tailored $20 million in aid—as much as Morocco can handle at the moment but not so much that France could become alarmed. Last week the Moroccans reciprocated by opening negotiations on a new status for the air bases which France granted the U.S. (without bothering to ask Moroccan approval) back in 1950. The issue is one of pride rather than price, for the Moroccans want and welcome the bases—a fact confirmed last week when the Moroccans confidently ignored the Russian warning that Morocco was exposing itself to nuclear horror if it continued to allow U.S. bases on its soil.
The Beachhead. As a political leader, Sultan Mohammed is keenly conscious that his country fronts on the Atlantic as well as the Mediterranean, often talks of Morocco's "Atlantic vocation." An Arab, and no friend of colonialism, the Sultan has kept his distance from Egypt's Nasser, whose adherents proclaim him "leader of all the Arabs from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf." He has refused to join the Arab League on the ground that Morocco is not a Middle Eastern country, has notably failed to back the "holy war" on Israel.
Though he is too politic to say so in public, Mohammed V also considers Egypt's Nasser an irresponsible and dangerous demagogue and, since he is not of royal rank, somewhat of an inferior. The Sultan himself is convinced that Nasser could have negotiated a new status for the Suez Canal far less provocatively; he demonstrated his own method by negotiating Spain out of Spanish Morocco, more recently by obtaining a peaceful agreement to incorporate the once-international city of Tangier within his new kingdom.