Ahmed Balafrej

Ahmed Balafrej (Arabic: أحمد بلافريج; September 5, 1908 – April 14, 1990 ) was the second Prime Minister of Morocco between May 12, 1958, and December 2, 1958.

He was a significant figure in the struggle for the independence of Morocco.

Ahmed Balafrej was born in 1908 to a family in Rabat.

His family financed his primary studies at the school of Bab Laâlou, and his secondary studies at the Muslim College of Rabat, later known as the Moulay Youssef college.

The colonial system did not allow him to pass his college classes in Rabat, so he obtained his baccalaureate in Paris at the Lycée Henri-IV.

In August 1926, he created The Society of Friends of the Truth in Rabat, the first form of a Moroccan nationalist organization.

He completed his Arabic studies at the Fouad I University in Cairo during 1927, then back in Paris at the Faculty of the Sorbonne (degree in letters, diploma in political science) from 1928 to 1932.

He began his history studies at La Sorbonne in December 1927.

He helped create the Association of North African Muslim Students in France alongside Mohamed Hassan Ouazzani, his junior in Parisian studies, and Ahmed Ben Miled.

In the summer of 1930, he met with the Druze Amir Shakib Arslan, then a refugee in Lausanne.

They both shared the conviction that the offensive of de-Islamization of the Arab nation, in which the Berber Dahir participated, was a determining factor of the colonial occupation.

In return, he involved Chekib Arslan in the international protest against the Dahir and in the support of the Maghreb nationalist claim.

Extending a trip to Andalusia, Arslan met with Balafrej, El Fassi, and Benabdeljalil, in Tangier, on August 8, 1930.

He gave a series of conferences at the invitation of Haj Abdesslam Bennouna and Abdelkhaleq Torrès in Tetouan for ten days.

Through leaflets sent from cities, alms tours took place as a pretext for propaganda or gatherings on the return of pilgrims from holy places; links were forged between urban youth and tribal notables from the countryside.

In 1932, while police violence and arrests stifled internal protest against the Dahir, Balafrej developed protest from outside.

Meeting Chekib Arslan again in Madrid during his trip to Morocco, he supported the creation of the Hispano-Muslim Association in Tetouan created by Abdesslam Bennouna on the initiative of the deputy of the Spanish Republic, José Franchi Roca.

The protest against the Dahir was only one of Balafrej and his companions' commitments.

At the beginning of 1932, Balafrej, Ouazzani, and Ben Abdeljalil approached Robert-Jean Longuet—Parisian lawyer, anti-colonialist, and socialist—to secure the defence of the Moroccan nationalists harassed by the authorities.

Balafraj and Ouazzani established the journal Maghreb in 1932.

With Longuet in charge, Balafrej was the most prolific editor.

The journal was entirely funded by nationalist circles, and over a thousand copies were distributed in Morocco and France starting in July 1932; Balafrej's articles allowed him to make his first contacts with French liberal and socialist political circles, as well as the leading spheres of the young Spanish republic.

In 1933 and 1934, the Moroccan Action Committee (CAM) was established, with cells in multiple cities; Balafrej controlled its Rabat cell.

It was banned from distribution in Morocco in 1934, like all nationalist-inspired press.

In 1934, he participated in the drafting of the CAM platform known as the "Plan de Réforme".

His name does not appear in the document, because he was negotiating the authorization to open the M'hammed Guessous school in Rabat, the first non-colonial bilingual Moroccan school, which would become the crucible of the new Moroccan elite of post-independence.

In February 1937, he became the secretary-general of the CAM, replacing Mohamed Hassan El Ouazzani, who urged him to create his own organization, which would later become the PDI.

The prohibition of the CAM by colonial authorities led to the organization of the clandestine congress of the new National Party in Rabat in April 1937.

The incidents in October 1937 led to the arrests and exile of leading executives, including Allal El Fassi, who was exiled to Gabon for nine years.

While undergoing treatment in a sanatorium in Switzerland, Balafrej escaped the arrests.

In the summer of 1940, he moved to Tangier, which the Spanish authorities, profiting from the invasion of France by the German army, annexed on June 14, 1940.

The new colonial masters, heady from their military victories, declared intentions, if not unclear, at the very least obscure.

The entire Arab Maghreb, Morocco included, were annexed by fascist Italy, while Nazi Germany wanted to bring fascist Spain out of neutrality by granting it the annexation of all of Morocco.

At the same time, Radio Berlin or Radio Bari aired pro-nationalist propaganda including all the acts of nationalist resistance censored by the colonial administration.

Driven by Chekib Arslan, who arranged the meeting, Balafrej travelled from Switzerland to Berlin for a few days in October 1940, to signal to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the importance of acknowledging Moroccan independence without delay.

"I am trying to see what likely fate awaits us, but I can tell you right now: do not let yourself take part in the German siren call", he wrote in a letter addressed to his companions.

Balafrej secretly returned to northern Morocco at the end of 1940, only receiving official permission in December 1942, wallowing him freedom of movement amid Operation Torch, the landing of Anglo-American troops in Morocco.

At the end of 1942, the Moroccan population was in conditions of near starvation, aggravated by a typhus epidemic.

Food was rationed; the colonial administration, whose Pétainist bracket had strongly exacerbated anti-Arab racism; Muslims and Jews alike were taken over by the Free France government of General de Gaulle.

In 1943, Allal El Fassi was still in exile, and apart from timid approaches, quickly broken off, it was rather through the surveillance of military security that contact continued between nationalists and the new colonial authorities.