An Amazigh woman. Photo Credit: Zarakibleach, Wikimedia Commons
Abstract
This essay examines the proposal by Rachid Raha, president of the World Amazigh Assembly (AMA), to dissolve the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) (Chtatou, 2022, February 1; Chtatou, 2022, January 18) in favor of a “Union of Tamazgha,” a political entity founded on the shared Amazigh civilizational identity of the North African peoples. By combining an analysis of the structural shortcomings of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) since its founding in 1989, the construction of Arab nationalism in the Maghreb (Chtatou, 2022, January 18), the dynamics of the contemporary Amazigh movement, the theoretical frameworks of ethnicity and regionalism, and the geopolitical challenges specific to the North African region, this essay argues that Raha’s proposal constitutes both a relevant diagnosis of the ideological impasses of Maghreb integration and a normative project whose feasibility faces considerable political, demographic, and geostrategic obstacles. It concludes by suggesting that the main value of the idea of a Union of Tamazgha lies less in its immediate applicability than in its capacity to destabilize official narratives and open up a space for reflection on the conditions for a genuinely pluralistic regional integration.
1. Introduction: An Explosive Proposal in a Crisis Context
Rachid Raha, President of the Assemblée mondiale amazighe (AMA)
In December 2011, at the sixth general assembly of the World Amazigh Congress held in Brussels, Berberist delegates proposed an ambitious political project, “The Tamazgha Manifesto,” which was endorsed by the seventh general assembly in December 2013 in the Moroccan city of Tiznit. The World Amazigh Congress, which was subsequently renamed the World Amazigh Assembly (AMA), launched a resounding appeal: to replace the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) (Chtatou, 2022, February 1; Chtatou, 2022, January 18) with a “Union of Tamazgha,” a political space founded not on the shared Arabic language or Islamic religion, but on the belonging of North African peoples to the same Amazigh civilizational matrix (Raha, 2023). The proposal is not entirely new in Berber activist circles, but its explicitly institutional formulation—dissolution of an existing intergovernmental organization, creation of an alternative structure based on a different identity principle—gives it unprecedented political significance in the history of the Amazigh movement (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011).
The Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), founded on February 17, 1989, in Marrakech by Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania, has for over three decades embodied a promise of regional integration that has been systematically disappointed. No summit of heads of state has been held since 1994; intra-regional trade represents no more than 3% of the member countries’ external trade, according to World Bank data (2020); The closure of the Algerian-Moroccan border since 1994 has transformed the area intended for integration into one of the least interconnected zones in the world (Piveteau & Farinelli, 2018; Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004). In this context of prolonged paralysis, Raha’s proposal resonates as a challenge not only to governments, but to the entire intellectual paradigm that has governed the construction of Maghreb identity since independence.
The analytical challenge is twofold. On the one hand, it is a matter of understanding why the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) has failed (Chtatou, 2022, January 7) and to what extent this failure is structural rather than circumstantial—linked to personal conflicts, regime rivalries, and the Western Sahara issue, or rooted in a questionable conception of the region’s identity foundations. On the other hand, it is necessary to evaluate the Amazigh proposal itself: its internal coherence, its historical resources, its normative ambitions, and its practical limitations. This essay proceeds in six parts: after this introduction, it examines the underlying causes of the failure of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) (Chtatou, 2022, January 7); it traces the history and construction of Amazigh nationalism as a political force; it analyzes Raha’s proposal in its conceptual and programmatic dimensions; it confronts this project with the geopolitical and social realities of the contemporary Maghreb (Chtatou, 2022, January 7; Chtatou, 2021, December 30; Chtatou, 2022, February 1; Chtatou, 2022, January 18); before concluding with the broader implications of this debate for political theory and regional studies.
2. The Arab Maghreb Union: Anatomy of a Structural Failure
2.1 The Promises of 1989 and Their Context
The founding of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) took place within a dual context of regional détente and Third Worldist fervor. In 1988, Morocco and Algeria had re-established diplomatic relations, which had been severed since 1976; the Iran-Iraq War was drawing to a close; and the fall of the Berlin Wall had not yet sounded the death knell for collective projects in the Global South. The Treaty of Marrakech, signed on February 17, 1989, was intended to be the Maghreb equivalent of the Treaty of Rome: an economic community destined to gradually merge its markets, harmonize its policies, and ultimately provide the region with a common voice on the international stage (Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004; Mortimer, 1999).
The initial objectives were ambitious: free movement of people and goods, coordination of economic and financial policies, establishment of a common external tariff, and ultimately, a customs union and then a common market (Piveteau & Farinelli, 2018). The institutional architecture included a Presidency Council (Heads of State), a Council of Foreign Ministers, an Advisory Council, a Monitoring Committee, and a Court of Justice. On paper, a coherent structure. In reality, an empty shell (Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004; Chtatou, 2022, January 7).
2.2 Factors of Paralysis
The academic literature identifies several sets of factors that explain the paralysis of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) (Chtatou, 2022, January 7). The first, and most immediately relevant, is the Western Sahara conflict. The question of the status of Western Sahara—claimed by Morocco as an integral part of its national territory since the 1975 “Green March,” and defended by the Polisario Front as a nascent state with the support of Algeria—has poisoned Algerian-Moroccan relations and made any lasting agreement within the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) impossible (Chtatou, 2022, January 7). The closure of the Algerian-Moroccan border in 1994, officially in response to a terrorist attack in Marrakech for which Rabat blamed Algerian nationals, materialized this geopolitical divide (Joffe, 2011; Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004). Despite recent diplomatic attempts—notably under American auspices in 2025–2026—the dispute remains fundamentally unresolved.
The second factor is the difference in development models and political regimes. Monarchical Morocco, military-presidential Algeria, post-Ben Ali Tunisia in a state of interrupted democratic transition, Libya embroiled in civil war since 2011, and semi-democratic Mauritania comprise a politically heterogeneous group whose leaders share few convergent interests in the short term (Mortimer, 1999). Unlike the European Union, from which it drew some inspiration, the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) has not benefited from a sufficiently binding supranational institutional architecture to overcome the divergent interests of its member states (Joffe, 2011).
The third factor, less frequently analyzed in mainstream literature but central from an Amazigh perspective, is the fragility of the Arabist identity foundation upon which the UMA rests. By choosing to base Maghreb identity on the Arabic language and belonging to the Arab-Islamic world, the architects of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) made an ideological selection that excluded or marginalized other components of North African identity—primarily Amazigh identity, but also sub-Saharan African, Mediterranean, and Jewish heritages (Chtatou, 2026, February 21; Chaker, 2022; Maddy-Weitzman, 2011). For Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (2011), this choice was not neutral: it reflected the hegemony of Arab nationalism among North African post-colonial elites and its deliberate use as an instrument of nation-building and legitimizing power.
The fourth factor is economic. The structure of the Maghreb economies—dominated by hydrocarbons in Algeria and Libya, by agriculture and services in Morocco, and by light industry in Tunisia—is more competitive than complementary (Piveteau & Farinelli, 2018). Intraregional trade flows, hampered by high tariffs, non-tariff barriers, a lack of regulatory harmonization, and physical border closures, have never reached the levels that could have created powerful regional interest groups capable of defending integration against political resistance (Joffe, 2011). The World Bank (2020) estimated that the costs of Maghreb non-integration amount to several percentage points of GDP annually for each member country.
The fifth factor is the question of regional hegemony. Neither Morocco nor Algeria has been willing to accept the other’s preeminence within the organization, and neither possesses sufficient economic and demographic power to impose its vision on the entire region in the manner of Germany in Europe or Brazil in South America (Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004). This leadership vacuum has condemned the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) to inaction (Chtatou, 2021, December 30).
3. The Contemporary Amazigh Movement: From Cultural Resistance to Political Demand
3.1 Genesis and Foundations of the Berber Demand
The contemporary Amazigh movement finds its origins in the profound contradictions of 20th-century Maghreb Arab nationalism. The independence movements—the FLN in Algeria, Istiqlal in Morocco, and Destour in Tunisia—all adopted Arabization as a priority political project to varying degrees, treating Amazigh culture either as a pre-modern relic destined to dissolve into Arab modernity or as an obstacle to national unity to be neutralized (Chaker, 2022; Silverstein, 2004). Arabic was imposed as the language of administration, education, and prestige; Berber languages were relegated to the domestic sphere and stigmatized as dialects without writing or literature—a description that Berber activists have spent decades refuting (Chaker, 2022). The first large-scale manifestation of Amazigh resistance was the Algerian “Berber Spring” of April 1980, when the authorities’ banning of a lecture by linguist Mouloud Mammeri at the University of Tizi Ouzou sparked massive demonstrations in Kabylia, which were severely repressed (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011; Silverstein, 2004). This pivotal event revealed two essential things: the depth of Amazigh resentment toward forced Arabization, and the willingness of the Maghreb states to repress any identity-based challenge deemed a threat to national cohesion. The Berber Spring (Tfsut Imazighen) of 1980 inaugurated a long sequence of mobilizations, punctuated by a second “Black Spring” in Kabylia in 2001 (the deadly repression of a revolt sparked by the gendarmerie’s killing of a high school student), by school strikes and electoral boycotts, and by the emergence of transnational pan-Berber organizations (Silverstein, 2004).
Tamazgha, the land of Imazighen (Wikimedia Commons)
In Morocco, the Amazigh movement has followed a distinct but convergent trajectory. The publication of the “Berber Manifesto” in 2000 by a group of Moroccan intellectuals, followed by the creation in 2001 of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) by Mohammed VI, marked a partial official recognition of Amazigh identity, before the 2011 constitution enshrined Tamazight as an official language for the first time, alongside Arabic (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011; Berdouzi, 2012). This constitutional development, achieved in the context of the Arab Spring, represents a major symbolic turning point—even if its practical implementation remains very limited, particularly in the fields of education and administration (Berdouzi, 2012).
3.2 The World Amazigh Assembly and Rachid Raha
The World Amazigh Assembly (AMA), formerly known as the World Amazigh Congress (CMA), founded in 1995 at a constituent congress in Saint Rome de Dolan, France, is one of the most representative transnational Amazigh organizations. It brings together associations and activists from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Niger, the Canary Islands, France, and other countries in Europe and North America, thus claiming to represent the entire Amazigh people across their geographical dispersion (AMA, 2020; Maddy-Weitzman, 2011). Its presence within United Nations institutions grants it international legitimacy, which North African governments have regularly attempted to challenge.
Rachid Raha, born in 1964 in the city of Nador (Rif region of Morocco) and a resident of Spain for several decades, holding dual Moroccan and Spanish nationality, presided over the AMA/CMA from 1999 to 2002, then again in 2018, and from 2013 to the present day. An anthropologist by training and a journalist by profession, he embodies a generation of Amazigh activists in the European diaspora who combine technical skills, strong ties to international civil society networks, and a radical identity-based discourse. Unlike some Amazigh activists who operate within a reformist framework (recognition of cultural rights within existing states), Raha espouses a more structurally subversive vision: questioning not only the cultural policies of North African states, but also their very foundations of identity and, consequently, their legitimacy to represent peoples whose Arab identity is a post-colonial construct.
The proposal for the Union of Tamazgha is part of this vision. Raha articulates an argument on several levels: a historical level (the Imazighen are the original and continuous inhabitants of North Africa for millennia, prior to any Arabization); a cultural level (the Amazigh language, arts, social practices, and value systems constitute a shared identity substrate for all North African peoples, regardless of their religion or current linguistic practice); a political level (the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) has failed because it is based on an Arab identity that does not reflect the true reality of the region); and an institutional level (a union founded on Amazigh identity could overcome the artificial divisions inherited from colonialism and post-colonial Arabism) (Raha, 2022).
4. The Union of Tamazgha: Analysis of a Political Project
4.1 The Notion of Tamazgha: Content and History
The term “Tamazgha” (from the Berber prefix *t-*, marking the feminine and the collective, and the root *Mazigh*/*Amazigh*, whose original meaning evokes the notion of “noble” or “free man”) designates, in contemporary Amazigh terminology, all the lands historically inhabited by the Imazighen: from the Canary Islands and western Morocco to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, from the Mediterranean coasts to the Saharan fringes of Niger and Mali (Chaker, 2022; Tilmatine, 1999). As a geographical and cultural concept, it covers a significantly larger area than that of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), including parts of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Egypt (Tilmatine, 1999).
The construction of Tamazgha as a political space of reference is relatively recent in militant Amazigh thought. While awareness of a cultural kinship among Berber speakers of North Africa had long existed in intellectual circles, it was in the 1970s and 1980s that the idea of an “Amazigh nation” with its own territory began to be articulated coherently in activist texts (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011; Tilmatine, 1999). The reference to the Tifinagh script (the traditional Berber alphabet, now officially recognized as the Tamazight alphabet in Morocco) as a unifying symbol, and to pan-Amazigh historical figures such as Jugurtha, Tacfarinas, Kahina, and Massinissa as a shared pantheon, contribute to this national construction (Chaker, 2022).
It is important, however, to highlight the internal tensions within this project of defining Tamazgha. “Berberness” is itself a construct, in the sense that not all contemporary North African populations identify with this identity, and the boundary between “Berber” and “Arabized” is more of a sociolinguistic continuum than a clear line (Silverstein, 2004). Millions of Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians who no longer speak Berber in their daily lives are nevertheless, in all likelihood, descended from Berber-speaking populations; their belonging to Tamazgha depends on the definition—genealogical, linguistic, cultural, or subjective—that is adopted. This definitional question is far from being resolved in the academic literature (Chaker, 2022; Silverstein, 2004; Hoffman, 2008).
4.2 The Institutional Project: Ambitions and Content
In his public statements and activist writings, Rachid Raha outlines the contours of a “Union of Tamazgha” founded on several distinctive principles. First, linguistic pluralism: unlike the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), which places Arabic at the center of regional identity, the Union of Tamazgha would recognize the plurality of Amazigh languages (Moroccan Tamazight, Kabyle, Shawiya, Tamasheq, etc.) as a common foundation of identity, without excluding the use of Arabic, French, or other languages (Raha, 2022). Second, the decolonization of institutions: by rejecting the borders inherited from French, Spanish, and Italian colonialism—which artificially carved out coherent Amazigh spaces—the Union of Tamazgha would aspire to a territorial reorganization more faithful to pre-colonial human and cultural realities (Tilmatine, 1999). Thirdly, decentralized governance: inspired in part by traditional Amazigh governance models (the council of elders, the jmaa, ait rab’îne or agraw), a Union of Tamazgha should, according to Raha, rely on local and regional bodies with real autonomy rather than on centralizing state apparatuses (Raha, 2022).
The dimension of political justice is also central to Raha’s project. The Union of Tamazgha aims to be a response to decades of marginalization of Amazigh populations within their respective states: exclusion of Amazigh languages from education and administration, persecution of cultural activists, and plundering of natural resources in Amazigh-populated regions (Kabylie in Algeria, the Rif in Morocco, and Tuareg regions in Mali and Niger) without equitable redistribution (Chaker, 2022; Maddy-Weitzman, 2011). From this perspective, the Union of Tamazgha is not merely a proposal for regional engineering but a project of historical redress—what could be described, borrowing from postcolonial theory, as an undertaking of “identity decolonization” (Fanon, 1961; Quijano, 2000).
4.3 Theoretical Frameworks: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Regionalism
From the perspective of political theory and regional studies, Raha’s proposition falls within several analytical currents that warrant further explanation. The first is the classic debate between primordialism and constructivism in the study of ethnic identities. Primordialist theories—associated with authors such as Clifford Geertz (1963) in his early works—consider ethnic affiliations as natural and irreducible givens preceding the formation of the state. Constructivist theories—represented notably by Benedict Anderson (1983) and Ernest Gellner (1983)—insist, on the contrary, on the historically situated and politically constructed nature of any national or ethnic identity. Raha’s discourse draws on both registers: it affirms the historical depth of Amazigh identity (primordialism) while implicitly recognizing that it must be actively cultivated and institutionalized to become the basis of a political project (constructivism) (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011; Silverstein, 2004).
The second relevant framework is that of the new regionalism developed notably by Björn Hettne and Fredrik Söderbaum (2000). In contrast to realist theories of regionalism, which reduce regional integration to interstate cooperation based on material interests, the new regionalism emphasizes the identity-based, normative, and societal dimensions of regional projects. A region, from this perspective, is not only a geographical and economic space but also a community of meaning and destiny that actors actively construct (Hettne & Söderbaum, 2000). The Union of Tamazgha fits perfectly within this framework: it seeks to base regional integration on a pre-existing shared identity rather than on intergovernmental institutions built from scratch.
The third framework is that of Indigenous peoples’ movements within contemporary international law. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted in 2007, recognizes the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, to the preservation and development of their cultural identity, and to the exercise of control over their lands, territories, and resources (UN, 2007). The Amazigh movement is increasingly making use of this normative framework, claiming the status of an Indigenous people of North Africa—a designation contested by the Algerian and Moroccan governments, which reject the application of this concept to their own populations (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011; Boukous, 2012).
5. Geopolitical, Social, and Institutional Challenges of the Union of Tamazgha
5.1 State Resistance and the Question of Sovereignty
The first and most immediate limitation of the Raha project is the predictable resistance of North African states. No government in the region—neither Rabat, nor Algiers, nor Tunis, nor Tripoli, nor Nouakchott—has shown the slightest interest in a proposal that would challenge both their identity-based legitimacy (founded on Arab identity), their territorial integrity (the Tamazgha project transgresses current state borders), and their sovereignty (a union based on Amazigh identity would imply forms of governance that go beyond existing state institutions) (Joffe, 2011; Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004). In Algeria, where the 2016 Constitution recognizes for the first time Tamazight as an official national language while maintaining the predominance of Arabic and repressing Mozabite communities and autonomy movements in Kabylia (notably the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia, MAK, classified as a terrorist organization by Algiers since 2021), the prospect of a Union of Tamazgha would immediately be equated with a secessionist threat (Silverstein, 2004; Human Rights Watch, 2021).
In Morocco, the situation is paradoxically more complex. The Alaouite monarchy has made the recognition of Amazigh identity one of the pillars of its discourse of national legitimation since the 2000s: the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM), the constitutionalization of Tamazight in 2011, and the official identity “triptych” (Amazigh, Arab, African) constitute real advances that differentiate Morocco from its neighbors (Berdouzi, 2012). But this recognition operates within the framework of the existing Moroccan nation-state and its project of territorial integrity—it in no way leads to sympathy for the idea of a transnational Amazigh political entity that would dissolve or compete with the Moroccan state (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011). Rabat accepts Amazigh identity as a component of Moroccan identity; it would not accept Amazigh identity as a principle of supranational political organization.
The situation in Libya and Mauritania adds further complications. Since the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, Libya has been divided among rival factions and lacks a central government capable of participating in any regional integration project (Lacher, 2020). Mauritania, a state straddling the Arab world, the Berber world, and sub-Saharan Africa, maintains an ambivalent relationship with the Amazigh claim—Mauritanian Berbers (particularly the Znaga) representing a minority within a population demographically dominated by Arab-Berber groups and Black African populations (Pazzanita, 2008).
5.2 Internal Diversity within the Amazigh World
A second set of challenges stems from the internal diversity of the Amazigh world itself. The notion of an “Amazigh people” as a unified political entity encompasses an extremely fragmented linguistic, cultural, and geographical reality. Linguists distinguish at least a dozen distinct Berber varieties, ranging from Moroccan Tashelhit (spoken by over 8 million people) to Tuareg Tamasheq (spoken by fewer than one million people spread across several Sahelian states), and including Algerian Kabyle, Shawiya of the Aurès Mountains, Rif Tamazight, Egyptian Siwi, and several Libyan varieties (Chaker, 2022; Tilmatine, 1999). These varieties are not mutually intelligible, and the idea of a unified “Amazigh language”—of which standardized Moroccan Tamazight represents an attempt at codification—remains as much a political project as a linguistic reality (Chaker, 2022).
Amazigh flag
The diversity extends beyond linguistics. The Imazighen of Morocco live in social, economic, and political contexts very different from those of the Algerian Kabyles, who themselves differ profoundly from the Tuareg of Mali or Niger (Hoffman, 2008). The political demands of Kabylia—primarily focused on independence—do not necessarily converge with those of the Tuareg of the Sahel, whose recurring armed conflicts with the Malian and Nigerien states have an economic dimension (control of mineral resources) and a security dimension as much as an identity dimension (Lacher, 2020). Building an Amazigh political solidarity that transcends these diversities is a project—not a given.
Paul Silverstein (2004), in his study of the Franco-Moroccan Berber diaspora, showed how contemporary Amazigh identity is largely constructed in European diasporic contexts, where distance from the country of origin fosters generalization and abstraction of identity. The “Berberism” expressed in Parisian or Barcelona-based associations is often more homogeneous and radical than the Amazigh identities experienced in Morocco or Algeria, where regional, tribal, religious, and class divisions are intertwined with the linguistic dimension in a more complex way (Silverstein, 2004). This observation does not invalidate the Amazigh claim, but it does suggest a degree of caution regarding the assumption that “the Amazighs” constitute a naturally cohesive political community ready to support the project of a Union of Tamazgha.
5.3 The Demographic Question and the Reality of Arabization
A third challenge is demographic. Estimates of the number of Berber speakers in North Africa vary considerably depending on the source—North African states tending to underestimate the proportion of their citizens who speak a Berber language, while Amazigh activists tend to overestimate it (Chaker, 2022). The most reliable figures suggest that Berber language speakers represent approximately 40 to 45% of the Moroccan population, 30 to 35% of the Algerian population, 1 to 2% of the Tunisian population, and varying proportions in Libya, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger (Ethnologue, 2023; Chaker, 2022). In other words, a majority of the inhabitants of North Africa do not speak a Berber language as their primary language, even though most are descended from Berber-speaking populations.
This demographic reality poses a fundamental challenge to Raha’s project: if the Union of Tamazgha is defined by language, it de facto excludes the majority of Tunisians, a large part of Algerians and Moroccans, and almost all Libyans. If it is defined by descent or “deep Berber identity” independently of language, it falls into a genealogical essentialism whose political implications are, to say the least, problematic (Silverstein, 2004; Hoffman, 2008). And if it is defined by voluntary adherence to an Amazigh identity project, we find ourselves in a radical constructivism whose mass base is difficult to assess but probably limited to activist circles.
The Arabization of North African populations, while partly the product of deliberate post-colonial policies, is also the result of a centuries-long historical process that began as early as the 7th century and produced deeply rooted cultural, linguistic, and identity realities that cannot be considered mere masks covering an original Amazigh identity (Lacoste, C. & Y., 2004; Silverstein, 2004). Millions of Maghrebi Arabic speakers do not perceive themselves, and do not wish to perceive themselves, as Arabized Amazighs; their identity is Arab-Islamic in a sense that is unique to them and cannot be reduced to colonial alienation (Lacoste, C. & Y., 2004).
5.4 Internal Contradictions of the Project and the Tuareg Question
A fourth set of challenges stems from the internal contradictions generated by extending the Tamazgha project to the Tuareg populations of the Sahel. The Tuareg—the Imazighen of the Sahara, whose political demands are primarily expressed in Mali and Niger—have been experiencing cycles of armed rebellion, negotiation, and renewed violence since the 1990s, profoundly destabilizing these states (Lacher, 2020). Including these populations in the Tamazgha project implies managing ongoing armed conflicts, territorial claims involving sovereign third-party states (Mali, Niger), and a Sahelian geopolitical dynamic dominated by multiple actors—former French colonizers, American and Russian military presences, and jihadists—that far transcends the Amazigh dimension alone (Lacher, 2020). Furthermore, the Tuareg themselves are deeply divided between those who favor integration into existing states, those who advocate for regional autonomy, and those who support independence projects like Azawad (unilaterally proclaimed in 2012 before being militarily crushed). Transnational Amazigh solidarity does not erase these divisions but rather masks them with an ideological veneer whose political coherence remains to be demonstrated (Lacher, 2020; Maddy-Weitzman, 2011).
6. Conclusion: The Heuristic Value of a Political Utopia
At the end of this analysis, it is important to distinguish several levels of appreciation for Rachid Raha’s proposal. In terms of diagnosis, his analysis of the causes of the Arab Maghreb Union’s (UMA) failure is substantially correct: the organization suffered not only from interstate rivalries and the Western Sahara conflict, but also from an Arabist identity-based foundation whose capacity to mobilize North African populations in all their diversity has always been limited and contested. In this sense, the Amazigh critique of the UMA makes a useful contribution to the discussion on the conditions for sustainable regional integration (Joffe, 2011; Zoubir & Benabdallah-Gambier, 2004; Maddy-Weitzman, 2011).
On the positive side, the assessment is more mixed. The Union of Tamazgha, as proposed by the World Amazigh Assembly and its president Rachid Raha, faces obstacles that cannot all be overcome by political will alone: the linguistic and cultural fragmentation of the Amazigh world, the reality of historical Arabization, the resistance of sovereign states, and internal contradictions within the project itself. These obstacles do not mean that the Amazigh claim is illegitimate—it is fully so, historically, morally, and legally (UNDPR, art. 3 and 11)—but they suggest that its institutional translation into a political entity alternative to the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) is, in the short and medium term, beyond our reach (UN, 2007; Maddy-Weitzman, 2011).
It is important, however, not to reduce Raha’s proposal to its degree of immediate applicability. Political utopias possess a unique heuristic value: they serve to destabilize assumptions, to question what seems self-evident, and to open up spaces for thought that realpolitik closes. By proposing the Union of Tamazgha, Raha raises questions that the architects of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) have always avoided: On what identity should North African regional integration be based? Who are the peoples of the Maghreb in their true diversity (Chtatou, 2022, February 1; Chtatou, 2022, January 18)? Is post-colonial Arab identity a sufficient foundation for lasting integration? These questions deserve to be asked—and they are being asked with increasing intensity, particularly since the democratic uprisings of the people, known as the Arab Spring of 2011, which revealed the fragility of national identities fabricated by decades of authoritarian nationalism (Silverstein, 2004; Lacoste, C. & Y., 2004).
A Moroccan Amazigh family. Photo Credit: Mr Masri, Wikimedia Commons
The debate on the Union of Tamazgha is part of a broader, underlying trend: the resurgence of subnational and transnational identities in a world where the Westphalian nation-state is under pressure everywhere—from globalization, migration, the demands of indigenous peoples, and the crisis of grand national narratives (Anderson, 1983; Hettne & Söderbaum, 2000). From this perspective, Raha’s proposal is less an anomaly than a symptom among others of a global reconfiguration of political identities affecting the Maghreb (Chtatou, 2021, December 30; Chtatou, 2022, February 1; Chtatou, 2022, January 18) as it is the rest of the world.
One possible synthesis, which deserves further development in future work, would be to conceive not of a Union of Tamazgha to replace the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), but rather a refounding of the UMA on pluralistic identity bases that explicitly recognize the Amazigh component of Maghreb identity, without establishing it as its exclusive foundation. Such an approach would follow in the footsteps of Amartya Sen’s (2006) work on the plurality of identities and their irreducibility to a single affiliation, and of Will Kymlicka’s (1995) work on minority rights within liberal democracies. It would allow us to treat the failure of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) not as a reason to dissolve it, but as an invitation to rethink its foundations to make them more faithful to the complexity of real North African societies—in all their Amazigh, Arab, African, Mediterranean, and human diversity.
Peace and regional integration in the Maghreb will undoubtedly come about (Chtatou, 2022, January 7; Chtatou, 2021, December 30; Chtatou, 2022, February 1; Chtatou, 2022, January 18), if they ever do, not through the homogenization of identity—whether Arabist or Amazigh—but through the recognition and valuing of plurality as the very foundation of the common project. In this sense, Rachid Raha, even if his proposed Union of Tamazgha is debatable in its modalities, deserves credit for having raised the question of identity with a frankness and radicalism that was lacking in the Maghreb debate on regional integration. That is already significant.
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Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.
