In less than 72 hours, a devastating earthquake has killed almost 3,000 people in Morocco and biblical floods caused by Cyclone Daniel have killed more than 5,000 in eastern Libya, where thousands are missing. In other times, we would have left both tragedies to the whims of nature. Today we know that increasingly extreme weather phenomena have causes that have little to do with chance and that the damage caused by an earthquake has as much to do with the intensity of the earthquake as with the capacity to react after the catastrophe and the solidity and preparation of housing and infrastructure.
This was not the case with the houses in the Moroccan Atlas. Nor was it the case of the two dams that have given way in eastern Libya, taking with them a quarter of the city of Derna. We know the devastation that Cyclone Daniel caused in Greece, but the best preparation of this country prevented the catastrophe. In Morocco and Libya, the number of victims is attributable both to the hardly predictable shaking of the earth (in Morocco the northern area of the Rif is much more seismically active than the area hit by this last earthquake) and to the atmospheric phenomena that extreme the change climate as well as underdevelopment, the lack of foresight and the monstrous inequality that both countries suffer.
Both catastrophes also have exposed the limits of democracy in the Maghreb and have shown to what extent geopolitical commitments condition international aid and limit its effectiveness. That King Mohamed VI did not appear before his people until four days after the disaster is incomprehensible. A neglect of responsibilities that has also conditioned the attitude of all senior officials who were not authorized to intervene until the monarch had done so. Such an attitude is inappropriate for a country that aspires to move towards higher levels of democracy. As it is also incoherent authorize aid from only four countries, among them Spain, excluding two others as close as France and Algeria, when assistance efforts are falling far short of the needs of affected populations. With its inability to put aside geopolitical considerations to confront misfortune, Morocco shows signs of weakness, not strength.
As for Libya, it would be expected that the drama suffered would serve to overcome the ostracism and oblivion in which Europe and the West have left the country, since the fall of the dictator Gaddafi that they caused. It will not be easy, since Libya does not exist. It is divided between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, with governments that the international community has not been able to reconcile. Shortly before the flood, the strongman of the East, where the disaster occurred, Khalifa Haftar, received a Russian military delegation to address the situation of the Wagner militias that have helped him fight against the jihadists and ensure the extraction of oil. . In these circumstances, it is more than likely that the search for victims and reconstruction will also be conditioned by geopolitics and, in the case of Libya, by access to its oil.