At the recent commemoration, in New York, United States of America (USA), of the 50th Anniversary of the historic Green March embarked upon by 350, 000 Moroccan patriots, to lay claim to what was then known as the Spanish Sahara, memories of the unprecedented March, led by the then King of the Kingdom of Morocco, King Hassan II were powerfully evoked.
Held at the beautiful Mezzanine Event Space within the imposing building housing the Consulate General of Morocco on Broadway Street, on Saturday, November 8, 2025, speaker after speaker relived the noble and patriotic motivations that fired up the millions that lined up at different registration centers across the Kingdom 50 years ago to march, unarmed and fearless, to wrest from the grip of the colonialists their kith and kin in the Sahara.
The fire is still burning in the heart of Moroccans, 50 years after the great march and, as confirmed by the Consul General of Morocco in New York, Mr. Ait Bihi Mohamed, the world is still reaffirming the genuineness of the claim of Morocco to the Sahara, with the United Nations Security Council ‘s endorsement of the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative under Morocco’s sovereignty as “the only realistic and credible solution to the regional dispute over the Moroccan Sahara.”
This achievement of international endorsement, under the leadership of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, Consul General Ait Bihi Mohamed, stressed, is a revalidation of the success and justness of the Great Green March of 1975, which he said, was “one of the most inspiring and unifying moments in Morocco’s modern history, and an enduring symbol of national unity and collective determination,” as well as “a message to the world that the will of a united people can overcome any boundary, and that true sovereignty is rooted in unity, peace, and justice.”
At the event, which was put together by members of the civil society, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Morocco, there was besides the nationalist and patriotic fervor, a strong academic dimension to the celebration, with two renowned scholars, among the many others that were present, taking the stage, one, Moroccan-born Professor Abdeslem El Idrissi of the College of Staten Island (CSI), City University of New York (CUNY), to be celebrated for his recent listing among Stanford University’s 2025 World’s Top 2% Most Influential Scientists in the world, and the other, Prof. Emilio Spadola, of Colgate University, New York, to deliver the Keynote Speech.
Prof. El Idrissi, who was honored at the event by the Consulate General of Morocco for his academic exploits, in speech, noted that the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the great Green March coincided with the equally historic vote at the United Nations Security Council endorsing the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative under Morocco’s sovereignty.
He gave credit for his accomplishments as a scientist and his listing by Stanford University to the strength of Moroccan education, to the dedication of Moroccan teachers “and to the values instilled in us through public schools across Morocco.
“I am proud of my Moroccan identity and will always be grateful to my homeland, which instilled in me the fundamental values of hard work and perseverance. What I have achieved today is the fruit of those deep roots, and I am always ready to put my expertise at the service of my country whenever it needs it,” he pledged, and dedicated his recognition, “to every Moroccan student, teacher, and researcher who believes that knowledge can change lives and that excellence knows no borders.
Spadola, an Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, in his address, titled “A Community of Vision and Imagination: The Green March in the Hearts and Minds of the Moroccan People,” went down memory lane to recollect his relationship with Morocco and her people, especially as his research as a scholar has “centered on Morocco’s modernity, its fight for independence and modernization in the 20th century.”
He also recounted the first hand stories told him about a decade and half ago by some of the 350,000 patriots who participated in the great march of their motivation for involvement, and concluded that it is the story of the vision of one great man that was wholly embraced and unimaginably accomplished by the community.
Here is the full text of Professor Spadola’s address:
A Community of Vision and Imagination: The Green March in the Hearts and Minds of the Moroccan People
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am greatly honored to join you today to celebrate the event of a lifetime, al-Masira al-Khadra’, which unfolded in profound grandeur and significance a half-century ago, on Nov. 6, 1975. It is my honor to join you in love and admiration of your great Nation, the Kingdom of Morocco, its incomparable Sovereign and, you, its great People. I thank my new friend and compatriot Dr. Abdeslem El Idrissi for his generous invitation and I thank the honorable Consul General for his very kind welcome and hospitality. (Wa ba`d)
Today I speak to you as a Doctor of Cultural Anthropology and a Prof. of Anthropology and Islamic Studies at Colgate University in the great State of NY. Yet when I first set foot in Morocco 33 years ago I was just a 20-year-old young man from rural America venturing abroad for the first time on my own. Arriving in Tangier by ferry and traveling by bus and train to Chefchaouen and Fes and Marrakech, my horizons were opened and my heart was stamped with an indelible love for Morocco. I soon returned to Fes as graduate student of cultural anthropology and Islamic studies and then as a professor, scholar, and friend, and as an honorary son, brother, and uncle of Moroccan families. Over the past decades I have brought my wife and our two sons, my mother, my father, my beloved uncle, Allah yarhamhu, to meet my Moroccan kin.
As a scholar, my research has centered on Morocco’s modernity, its fight for independence and modernization in the 20th century and its leadership of the global Ummah as an exemplar of Islam’s great cosmopolitan, spiritual traditions of enlightening and cultivating humanity, encouraging Muslims, Christians, Jews, indeed all people to love what is human in each other. Inspired by your great nation’s example, my work poses a classical question: What makes “a Nation”? What makes “a People”—in Arabic, al-sha`b, at once dispersed and unified, diverse and singular, in the modern age?
Much social science dedicated to these questions seeks purely rational and mechanistic causes, enumerating the state strategies and social and economic indicators that predict, as if by natural law or computer program, the strength and weakness of a people’s national sentiment. In the view of British anthropologist Ernest Gellner, scholar and historian of Morocco’s High Atlas, nationalism results inevitably from the state’s modernization project—its organizational and ideological domination of the masses to produce a uniform industrial workforce. His fellow countryman and Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, held the complementary view that nationalism is merely an ideological construct foisted on ignorant masses in service of capitalist domination. We may sympathize with these scholars—worldly men who witnessed the devastating consequence of Nazism’s nationalist project—yet acknowledge their theoretical limits for understanding the Moroccan People’s unity, a nation and people not only beyond the European metropole but famously defiant of Vichy France’s search for Moroccan Jews. In the immortal words of His Majesty Mohammed al-Khamis, Rahimahu Allah, “you will find no Jews; only Moroccans.”
To answer this question as an anthropologist, I do not parse government policies and economic indicators alone, but spend days, weeks, months, and years with people, learning about their social and spiritual lives as Moroccans, learning from and with them in seeking a peaceful and prosperous future for humanity. To understand their national sentiments, I ask whom they love and admire, what they desire for themselves and their children, how they imagine the future of their fellow countrymen. In this regard I draw on the scientific thought of a fellow anthropologist, Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, whose groundbreaking theory of nationalism emphasized the deeply emotional power a nation may hold for people, whether educated elites or the rural and urban poor. Highlighting the modern spread and increasing reach of technological communications from print to radio and television, Anderson grasped the nation not as mere ideological constructs but as a community, indeed an “imagined community,” comprising tens and even hundreds of millions of souls whom we may never meet, but whose presence and kinship we assuredly feel through the daily experience of shared communications. To be clear, by “imagined” Anderson did not mean “fake” or “fictional”; imagination is the most human of faculties, uniting one’s heart with one’s mind, permitting the hearts and minds of many to resonate in profound harmony. In this sense, I propose, the Moroccan People do not merely imagine their unity but form a community of the imagination: a community unified by uniquely powerful and far-reaching shared imagination.
Which brings us to the fiftieth anniversary of al-Masira al-Khadra, to an almost—almost—unimaginable feat of national unity and to the 350,000 marchers who accomplished it. Among them are including 26 men and women from Fes and Sefrou and Taza who shared their stories of the March with me a decade and a half ago— Moroccan citizens for whom al-Masira was truly the event and experience of a lifetime. It is these courageous men and women whom I dedicate my talk.
- Nida’ Sidna
On the evening of October 16, 1975, the King of Morocco, His Majesty Hassan II addressed his People by television and radio. Announcing the International Court’s denial of Morocco’s territorial unity from Tangier to Tarfaya, His Majesty spoke not of loss but of possibility. In his exquisitely tailored suit before a bank of microphones, and speaking in classical Arabic at once poetic and precise, he presented the Moroccan People a challenge of unprecedented, indeed unimaginable, scope and scale: to make history and reunify what the Spanish colonial occupation had torn asunder. “Shaabi al-`aziz. It is now incumbent upon us”:
It is now incumbent upon us to carry out a green march, from the north of Morocco to the south, from the east of Morocco to the west. My dear people: We must stand as one man—with order and organization [bi-l-nidham w-al-intidham]—to rejoin and revive our sacred bond with our brothers in the Sahara [li naltahiq bi-l-sahara wa li-nasil al-rahim ma<ayn> ikhwanina fi-l-sahara].
Continuing, His Majesty painted an audacious picture of the Masira not merely to convey information but to inspire the imagination. Indeed, he stated,
Sha`bi al-`Aziz: you and the Throne have exchanged inspiration [tabadaltum al-wahi]. In taking a firm stand you have always inspired the Throne to rise up, and in sharing your feelings and values, your Kings have forever inspired you to action. Thus my Dear People, each [of us] traces the path for the other, the path of dignity, victory, and the reassertion of Moroccan pride. And now once again we will exchange inspiration and dreams.
While His Majesty’s speech informed his audience of the practicalities of participation, again and again he spoke to their hearts, in the language of inspiration and imagination, tying the events of coming days to the legacies of the Masira for generations to come to the infinite and eternal sight of God. “Shaabi al-`aziz,” he continued:
I have provided the means and ordered governors in each province to open offices from tomorrow on to register men and women volunteers. I will be among the first to put my name on the record of volunteers. With pride, I will file my application and claim my volunteer’s badge [bitaqa li-tatawa`] for the march to recover the Sahara. This bitaqa is the real crown, the true scepter, that will last for my children and my grandchildren: the Stamp of Nationalism [sibghat al-wataniyya]—no, the Stamp of God [sibghat Allah]! And whose stamp is better than God’s?
The People’s response was swift and overwhelming. Within 48 hours, an estimated 500,000 to two million citizens lined up at local government offices for one of the 350,000 spots, necessitating a lottery to choose marchers (Weiner 1979; Lamalif 1975, 6).5 When the Marchers I interviewed spoke of nida Sidna they hummed with a distinct energy and aura—with memories of the event, but more so, I felt, with previously unimaginable possibilities King Hassan’s call opened for them all. To be sure, every Marcher I interviewed remembered where they were when they heard and heeded His Majesty’s call to action, but they spoke of whom they were with as well, and how they felt, how nida Sidna sparked individual desire and courage to act as well as collective joy: Abdelhafid from Sefrou was a young man in 1975, working as the doorkeeper at the baladiyya: “I heard nida’ Sidna—nasruh Allah—and I felt courageous. For love of Allah, al-Watan, al-Malik I went [to register] as soon as I heard. I was the fourth or fifth to sign up.” Seated beside him, Kamal agreed: “We all got up and volunteered in the name of His Majesty, with firm determination.” “With determination,” he added, but also “with happiness and joy!” Mohamed from Fes too recalled the visceral response he shared with his friends: “When we heard the King’s call, we got goose bumps,” he said. And they were not alone, Kamal added, by the time his group arrived, a crowd of some 600 people (he estimated) had already lined up to volunteer.
For these young men Nida’ Sidna sparked a desire for adventure; for Naima, a girl of just sixteen years that autumn, volunteering meant defying her family’s expectations for girls. While they permitted her five brothers to sign up, they refused her plea. So, donning high heels and make-up to appear older, she invoked her love of country and King: “I saw others going and I had to go too. It made me so happy—to glorify Sidna!” Hussein, a teenager at that time, added: “King Hassan was dear to us, so we heeded his call [talbiyyat nida’ Sidna]. We volunteered all together, all excited, all one heart!”
Courage and determination, collective joy and unity: This unique mélange of emotions speaks to His Majesty Hassan II’s vision—his capacity to imagine a challenge and a feat which Marchers had not, and perhaps could not, imagine alone–an unprecedented, even mind-boggling vision of personal adventure as a unified People. His Majesty Hassan II is referred to in my experience as Morocco’s “State builder”—but his legacy resides in his intimate knowledge of and resonance with his People as a nation. For as much as he created the Masira as an image and idea of unity, the People responded not as cadres of programmed robots but as thoughtful and imaginative human beings. Indeed nida Sidna resonated fifty years ago, and continues to do so today, because Moroccans recognize his vision as their own: as then, so today, al-Masira al-Khadra inspires and resonates with the nation, not merely as a political unit, but as a Community of Vision, a Community of the Imagination.
