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Monday, June 01, 2026

Deciphering The History Of Morocco: Continuity, Rupture, And The Making Of A North African Civilization – Analysis



May 30, 2026 

By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

Abstract

This essay offers a comprehensive historiographical examination of Morocco from prehistoric settlement to the post-independence era. Drawing on archaeological evidence, medieval Arabic chronicles, colonial archives, and contemporary scholarship, the essay traces Morocco’s development as a distinct political and cultural entity at the intersection of Amazigh, Arab, African, Andalusian, and European civilizations. Particular attention is paid to the founding and succession of dynastic states—Idrisid, Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, Saadian, and Alaoui—as well as to the processes by which Moroccan society negotiated Islamic identity, imperial ambition, and colonial penetration. The analysis situates Morocco within broader global and regional frameworks while foregrounding the agency of indigenous populations. The essay concludes by assessing Morocco’s post-1956 trajectory and the historiographical debates that continue to animate scholarly enquiry.

1. Introduction: The Challenge of Moroccan Historiography

Morocco occupies a singular position in global historical consciousness: it is at once the westernmost extension of the Arab world, the heartland of Amazigh (Berber) civilization, a conduit of trans-Saharan commerce, and a society shaped by successive waves of Andalusian, sub-Saharan African, and European influence without losing a recognizable core identity (Laroui, 1977). Yet precisely because of this complexity, Moroccan history has long resisted easy narration. Colonial-era scholars, most prominently those operating within the intellectual framework of the French Protectorate (1912–1956), produced accounts that systematically undervalued indigenous agency, projected racial and civilizational hierarchies onto the historical record, and privileged rupture over continuity (Burke, 1972). Postcolonial historians, Moroccan nationalists, and Anglophone social scientists have collectively worked to dismantle these distortions, though the field remains marked by productive methodological tensions.

This essay undertakes a synthetic reading of Moroccan history from the earliest documented human settlement through the consolidation of the post-independence state. It does not claim exhaustiveness but aims instead for analytical density: to identify the structural forces, key transitions, and recurring themes that give Moroccan history its distinctive shape. Following the influential framework proposed by Laroui (1977), the essay treats Moroccan history not as a series of discrete episodes but as a long-run dialectic between centripetal forces—Islamic universalism, makhzen authority, and urban scholarly culture—and centrifugal pressures—tribal autonomy, regional particularism, and external conquest. This dialectic, it will be argued, is the master key to deciphering Morocco’s past and anticipating its future.

2. Prehistoric and Protohistoric Morocco: The Amazigh Substratum

Any serious account of Moroccan history must begin not with the Arab conquest of the seventh century CE, as colonial historiography frequently implied, but with the Paleolithic populations whose material culture has been recovered from sites across the Maghreb. Fossil evidence from the Jebel Irhoud site in western Morocco, dramatically reanalyzed by Hublin et al. (2017), places anatomically modern Homo sapiens in this region approximately 300,000 years ago, predating previously accepted chronologies by a substantial margin and positioning Morocco as one of the probable zones of human cognitive emergence. This discovery carries profound implications for the self-understanding of the region’s indigenous inhabitants, the Imazighen (singular: Amazigh), whose ancestors populated North Africa long before the first historical civilizations of the Mediterranean littoral established themselves.


By the first millennium BCE, Berber-speaking populations had established complex agropastoral societies across the Maghreb, engaging in trade with Phoenician colonies on the northern Moroccan coast—most notably Lixus (near present-day Larache) and Tingis (Tangier). These contacts introduced literacy, coinage, and Mediterranean commodity networks but did not fundamentally alter the Berber social structure organized around lineage groups, transhumant pastoralism, and confederal political authority (Camps, 1987). The Mauretanian kingdoms that emerged in the last centuries BCE—particularly that of Juba II (c. 25 BCE–23 CE), a Romanized client king whose court at Caesarea blended Hellenistic, Roman, and Berber cultural elements—demonstrated the capacity of Amazigh elites to selectively appropriate external cultural frameworks while maintaining indigenous political forms (Roller, 2003). Rome’s incorporation of Mauretania Tingitana as a province in 40 CE extended imperial administration into northern Morocco but never achieved effective penetration of the mountainous interior, a pattern of partial external control that would recur throughout Moroccan history.

The Amazigh substratum is not merely an archaeological or prehistoric phenomenon; it is a continuous living presence in Moroccan history. Tamazight languages—Tachelhit in the Anti-Atlas and Souss, Central Atlas Tamazight, and Tarifit in the Rif—remained spoken by substantial majorities of the Moroccan population throughout the Islamic period and into the twenty-first century. The cultural practices, customary law (izerf), and social organization associated with Amazigh communities shaped the texture of Moroccan life in ways that Arabic chronicles systematically obscured (Gellner, 1969; Hammoudi, 1997). Acknowledging this substratum is therefore not an act of romantic primordialism but a historiographical corrective essential to any accurate account of what Morocco is and how it came to be.

3. The Arab Conquest and the Islamization of Morocco (647–788 CE)


The Arab Muslim conquest of North Africa, launched from Egypt in the mid-seventh century, reached the Moroccan interior only after decades of fierce Berber resistance. ʿUqba ibn Nafiʿ’s celebrated raid to the Atlantic shore (c. 682 CE) was less a conquest than an extended razzia; effective Islamic administration in Morocco was not established until the campaigns of Musa ibn Nusayr in the first decade of the eighth century (Brett & Fentress, 1996). The resistance of the Berber warrior leader known in Arabic sources as al-Kahina—whose identification, historicity, and significance remain subjects of scholarly debate—has become a potent symbol of Amazigh agency against Arab imperialism, though contemporary historians caution against reading modern nationalist categories into early medieval social conflicts (Modéran, 2003).

The process of Islamization was gradual, uneven, and deeply conditioned by Berber social structures. Islam spread not primarily through military coercion but through the activities of traveling scholars, Sufi orders (turuq), and the prestige associated with Arabic literacy and Islamic law. Crucially, the Kharijite movement—a puritanical Islamic tendency emphasizing the equality of all Muslims regardless of ethnic origin—found enormous resonance among Berber populations resentful of Arab fiscal exploitation and social condescension (Savage, 1997). The Kharijite revolts of 739–743 CE were among the most serious challenges ever faced by the Umayyad caliphate and effectively ended Arab imperial control over the Maghreb, opening the political space in which the first distinctly Moroccan Islamic dynasty would emerge.


That dynasty was the Idrisid, founded by Idris ibn Abdallah, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who fled the Abbasid massacre of Alid partisans and found refuge among the Berber Awraba confederation of northern Morocco in 789 CE (Terrasse, 1949–1950). His son Idris II (r. 804–828 CE) founded the city of Fez, which would become the intellectual and spiritual capital of Morocco for twelve subsequent centuries. The Idrisid state was politically fragile—fragmenting rapidly after Idris II’s death among competing princely lines—but its symbolic legacy was immense: it established the template of a Morocco governed by a sharif (descendant of the Prophet) who derived legitimacy simultaneously from Islamic genealogy, Berber tribal alliance, and urban scholarly endorsement. This tripartite legitimation formula would underpin Moroccan political culture down to the present day (Waterbury, 1970).

4. The Berber Imperial Dynasties: Almoravids, Almohads, and Marinids (1040–1465)


The eleventh century inaugurated what many historians regard as Morocco’s most consequential contribution to world history: the rise of the Almoravid and Almohad movements, which projected Moroccan power across the entire western Mediterranean world. The Almoravid (al-Murabitun) movement originated among the Sanhaja Berbers of the western Sahara, inspired by the reformist teaching of Abdallah ibn Yasin, who had studied with the Maliki jurists of Kairouan and returned determined to impose orthodox Islamic practice on the lax religious environment of the Saharan confederation (Messier, 2010). The movement combined military discipline, puritan religious reform, and shrewd political organization: by the 1060s the Almoravids had conquered Morocco and founded Marrakech (1070) as their imperial capital; by 1086 they had crossed into the Iberian Peninsula in response to appeals from Andalusian Muslim rulers threatened by the Christian Reconquista, decisively defeating Alfonso VI of Castile at the Battle of Sagrajas (Bosch Vilá, 1956).


The Almoravid empire at its height encompassed Morocco, western Algeria, much of West Africa, and al-Andalus, making it one of the largest Islamic states of its era. Yet it proved institutionally fragile. The second generation of rulers, acculturated to the luxury of Andalusian court life, lost the austere reforming energy of the founders, and the movement was ultimately overthrown by an even more radical reformation emerging from the High Atlas Mountains: the Almohad (al-Muwahhidun) movement, founded by Ibn Tumart, an Amazigh scholar from the Masmuda confederation who had studied in the Islamic East and returned convinced that the Almoravids had lapsed into anthropomorphism and juridical rigidity (Fierro, 2011). The Almohad caliphate (1121–1269) represents the apogee of medieval Moroccan imperial power, reuniting the Almoravid domains under Abd al-Mumin and his successors and briefly controlling the entire Maghreb.

The cultural achievement of the Almohad courts of Marrakech and Seville was equally remarkable. These courts patronized Ibn Rushd (Averroes), whose Aristotelian commentaries shaped the entire trajectory of European scholasticism; Ibn Tufayl, the philosopher-novelist; and Maimonides, the Jewish theologian born in Cordoba, whose intellectual formation occurred in part within Almohad cultural orbit (Urvoy, 1991). This efflorescence—the product of precisely the multi-civilizational confluence that characterizes Moroccan history—has sometimes been overshadowed by scholarly emphasis on Almohad religious intolerance, but it represents a genuine intellectual achievement of world-historical significance. The Almohad collapse, precipitated by military defeats in Iberia (Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212) and by internal tribal rebellions, eventually produced the Marinid dynasty (1244–1465), another Berber confederation that established its capital at Fez, rebuilt the great madrasas of that city, and struggled perpetually to maintain control of al-Andalus and fend off internal challenges (Shatzmiller, 1976).

5. Sharifi Dynasties and the Consolidation of the Moroccan State (1465–1664)


The decline of the Marinids inaugurated a prolonged political crisis in which religious legitimacy increasingly displaced genealogical Berber identity as the primary currency of political authority. The Wattasid regents who displaced the Marinids lacked effective control over the countryside, and their inability to resist Portuguese expansion along the Atlantic littoral—Ceuta fell in 1415, Arzila and Tangier in 1471—created a legitimacy crisis that sharifi religious movements were well positioned to exploit (Cour, 1920). The Saadian dynasty (1509–1659), originating in the Draa Valley of southern Morocco and claiming Prophetic descent, built its power on a combination of religious prestige, anti-Portuguese jihad, and control of the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade.

The Saadian victory at the Battle of the Three Kings (Wadi al-Makhazin, 1578)—in which the Portuguese king Sebastian I, a Moroccan pretender backed by Portugal, and the reigning Saadian sultan Abd al-Malik all perished—became one of the most celebrated military episodes in Moroccan national memory and definitively ended Portuguese ambitions of territorial conquest in Morocco (Bovill, 1958). The subsequent reign of Ahmad al-Mansur (1578–1603) marked the summit of Saadian power: his conquest of the Songhai Empire in 1591, deploying a Moroccan army across the Sahara to seize the Niger Bend, projected Moroccan influence deep into sub-Saharan Africa and temporarily monopolized the gold trade that had for centuries underpinned North African commercial prosperity (Hunwick, 1999).


The Alaoui dynasty, which traces its lineage to the Prophet through the Hasanid line and has governed Morocco continuously from the mid-seventeenth century to the present, emerged from the chaos of Saadian collapse. The founder Moulay al-Rashid (r. 1664–1672), and especially his successor Moulay Ismail (r. 1672–1727), reconstructed the Moroccan state on foundations of extraordinary durability: a professional army composed largely of sub-Saharan African soldiers (abid al-Bukhari), a network of royal residences and garrisons across the country, and a sophisticated manipulation of religious symbolism that made the sultan simultaneously Commander of the Faithful, protector of Islamic scholars, and cosmic mediator between the divine and the Moroccan community (Ennaji, 1999; Laroui, 1977). The Alaoui state thus institutionalized the legitimation formula first articulated by the Idrisids—Islamic genealogy, tribal alliance, and scholarly endorsement—in a durable administrative form.

6. Morocco in the Age of European Imperialism (1800–1912)


The nineteenth century subjected the Moroccan state to pressures of a qualitatively different order from anything previously experienced. The expansion of European industrial capitalism, backed by overwhelming military force, systematically dismantled the political and economic autonomy of non-European polities across the globe. Morocco’s experience of this process was mediated by its geostrategic position—its Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines made it a focal point of European imperial rivalry—and by the relative sophistication of its diplomatic class, which skillfully played European powers against one another for several decades before the logic of informal and then formal empire became irresistible (Burke, 1976).


The French conquest of Algeria (1830) immediately transformed Morocco’s strategic situation, creating a land frontier with a European imperial power and generating a flow of Algerian refugees—most notably the resistance leader Abd al-Qadir—that repeatedly dragged Morocco into conflict with France. The Battle of Isly (1844), in which a French force routed a Moroccan army that had been supporting Algerian resistance, demonstrated the disparity of military capability and forced Morocco into a humiliating treaty (Julien, 1964). The simultaneous Spanish bombardment and occupation of Tetouan during the First Moroccan-Spanish War (1859–1860) compounded this lesson in strategic vulnerability, as did the growing penetration of the Moroccan economy by European commercial interests backed by extraterritorial legal privileges.

The Moroccan sultans of the second half of the nineteenth century—Muhammad IV, Hassan I, and Abd al-Aziz—pursued contradictory strategies of reform and resistance. Hassan I (r. 1873–1894) undertook the most sustained modernization effort of the pre-Protectorate era, reorganizing the army on European lines, reforming the tax system, and dispatching diplomatic and military missions to Europe, but his reforms were consistently undermined by fiscal exhaustion produced by the indemnities and commercial concessions extracted by European creditors (Burke, 1976). The Algeciras Conference of 1906, at which the major European powers effectively decided Morocco’s fate without Moroccan participation, crystallized the structural logic of colonial partition: Morocco was too weak to defend its sovereignty, too wealthy and strategically positioned to be left independent (Andrew & Kanya-Forstner, 1981).

The Treaty of Fez (1912), by which Sultan Abd al-Hafid accepted French and Spanish protectorates over Morocco, formally ended Moroccan sovereignty. It did not, however, end Moroccan resistance. The rural insurrection of Ahmad al-Hiba briefly seized Marrakech in August 1912 before being suppressed by French forces under Hubert Lyautey. More sustained resistance came from the Rif and Atlas Mountains, where Amazigh tribal confederations mounted military campaigns that taxed colonial resources for decades. The Republic of the Rif, established by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi (1921–1926), was the most remarkable of these formations: a proto-state with its own constitution, diplomatic apparatus, and military force that inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the Spanish Army of Africa at Annual (1921) before being suppressed by a combined Franco-Spanish force employing chemical weapons (Woolman, 1968; Pennell, 2000).

7. The French Protectorate: Colonial Transformation and Nationalist Response (1912–1956)

The French Protectorate in Morocco is conventionally divided between the architectonic phase associated with Resident-General Lyautey (1912–1925) and the subsequent period of more conventional colonial exploitation. Lyautey’s ideology of respectful domination (politique des égards) involved preserving the formal apparatus of the Moroccan sultanate, maintaining the medinas as living urban heritage, and governing through existing social hierarchies—a strategy that differed rhetorically, if not always practically, from the assimilationist model pursued in Algeria (Rivet, 1996). The physical separation of colonial villes nouvelles from preexisting medinas—visible today in Fez, Marrakech, Casablanca, and Rabat—embodied this philosophy in stone and brick while simultaneously revealing its underlying spatial logic of racial segregation.


Economically, the Protectorate transformed Morocco in ways that were profound and largely asymmetrical. The construction of modern infrastructure—railways, ports, roads, telegraph networks—integrated Morocco into the circuits of the world economy primarily as an exporter of phosphates (discovered at Khouribga in 1920 and developed into the world’s largest known reserve), agricultural products, and labor. The colonization of agricultural land by European settlers dispossessed thousands of rural families and contributed to the explosive growth of Casablanca, which expanded from a small coastal town of approximately 20,000 inhabitants in 1907 to a metropolis of over 600,000 by 1952 (Adam, 1968). This urbanization created the social conditions—literate young men displaced from rural communities, exposed to egalitarian ideologies through both Islamic reformism and secular nationalism—in which the independence movement would be forged.

The Istiqlal (Independence) Party, founded in 1943, articulated a nationalism that fused Islamic modernism, Arabism, and constitutional liberalism. Its founding manifesto simultaneously presented to the Allies, Sultan Muhammad V, and the French authorities demanded Moroccan independence under the sultan’s leadership. The French decision to depose and exile Sultan Muhammad V to Madagascar in August 1953 galvanized Moroccan public opinion in ways the colonial administration had catastrophically failed to anticipate (Halstead, 1967). The sultan’s exile transformed him from a cautious constitutional monarch into a symbol of national resistance, fusing religious, dynastic, and nationalist legitimacies into a single powerful identity. His return in November 1955 and Morocco’s formal independence on March 2, 1956 represented the triumph of this fusion and set the terms of the political settlement that would govern independent Morocco for generations.

8. Independent Morocco: Authoritarianism, Reform, and Contested Liberalization (1956–Present)

The trajectory of independent Morocco under Muhammad V (r. 1956–1961) and Hassan II (r. 1961–1999) was shaped by three fundamental tensions: between monarchical authority and pluralist political aspiration; between Islamic identity and secular modernization; and between national sovereignty and continued economic dependency on former colonial powers. Hassan II, who possessed formidable political intelligence and ruthless pragmatism, navigated these tensions through constitutional manipulation, selective repression, and strategic deployment of religious symbolism. The so-called Years of Lead (années de plomb)—the period from the late 1960s through the 1980s during which political opponents, leftists, Islamists, and Amazigh activists were imprisoned, tortured, and disappeared—represent the most serious indictment of the Alaoui monarchy’s postcolonial record (Slyomovics, 2005; Amnesty International, 1991).

The same period nonetheless witnessed substantial economic development, the consolidation of national institutions, and Morocco’s contested claim to the Western Sahara following the Green March of November 1975—a masterstroke of political theater in which Hassan II led 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians across the border into the Spanish-controlled territory (Hodges, 1983). The Western Sahara conflict, which pitted Morocco against the Polisario Front backed by Algeria, remains unresolved and constitutes the most consequential open question in contemporary Moroccan geopolitics, with the United Nations peace process deadlocked and tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees still living in camps near Tindouf, Algeria (Shelley, 2004).


The accession of King Muhammad VI in 1999 inaugurated a carefully managed political liberalization. The Equity and Reconciliation Commission (Instance Équité et Réconciliation, IER), established in 2004, investigated past human rights abuses, acknowledged state responsibility, and awarded compensation to thousands of victims—an unprecedented exercise in transitional justice for the Arab world, though critics noted its circumspect treatment of individual accountability (Slyomovics, 2005; Human Rights Watch, 2005). The Mudawwana reform of 2004, which substantially expanded women’s rights within the family code, and the constitutionalization of Tamazight as an official language in 2011 represented significant departures from the ethnic and gender hierarchies of previous reigns.

The Arab Spring of 2011 tested Morocco’s model of managed liberalization under democratic pressure. Nationwide protests organized by the February 20 Movement demanded deeper structural reform; the king responded with constitutional amendments—ratified by referendum in July 2011—that formally reduced royal prerogatives, strengthened the prime minister’s powers, and recognized Morocco’s plural cultural identity. Scholars remain divided on the significance of these reforms: optimists point to Morocco’s relative political stability by comparison with post-2011 Egypt, Libya, and Syria; critics argue that the fundamental architecture of royal predominance remained intact and that reforms were designed to co-opt rather than genuinely transform (Maghraoui, 2011; Kausch, 2015). The question of whether managed liberalization can deliver sustainable democratic governance remains one of the defining challenges of contemporary Moroccan politics.

9. Thematic Synthesis: Interpreting the Longue Durée

Several overarching themes emerge from this survey that merit explicit analytical attention. First is the durability of Morocco’s political institutions by comparison with other postcolonial states. The Alaoui monarchy has governed continuously since the seventeenth century, survived the colonial period with its legitimacy enhanced rather than destroyed, and navigated postcolonial transitions without the coups, civil wars, or state collapse that have destabilized many comparable polities. Scholars have explained this institutional resilience variously in terms of the sultan’s religious authority as Commander of the Faithful, the patrimonial character of the Moroccan state in which distinctions between royal patrimony and public treasury were systematically blurred (Waterbury, 1970), and the political acuity of individual Alaoui rulers (Hammoudi, 1997).

A second theme is the persistent tension between urban-literate Islamic orthodoxy and rural-tribal customary practice—a tension that Gellner (1969) famously theorized in terms of high and low Islam but that subsequent anthropological research has considerably complicated by demonstrating the fluidity and contextual character of these categories in practice (Eickelman, 1976; Combs-Schilling, 1989). The periodic renewal movements that have animated Moroccan religious life—from Almoravid puritanism to twentieth-century Salafi modernism—can be read as attempts to resolve this tension by projecting urban scholarly standards into the countryside, but these attempts have repeatedly encountered the resilience of Sufi brotherhoods, saint veneration (maraboutism), and local customary law as competing sources of religious authority.


A third theme is Morocco’s distinctive relationship with the African continent south of the Sahara. Colonial and postcolonial scholarship has frequently treated Morocco as part of a Mediterranean or Middle Eastern cultural zone, implicitly detaching it from sub-Saharan Africa. Recent historiography has forcefully challenged this assumption by emphasizing the trans-Saharan commercial networks, slave trades, and cultural exchanges that connected Morocco to Mali, Songhai, Hausaland, and the Saharan oasis communities for over a millennium (McDougall & Scheele, 2012; Lydon, 2009). The substantial Haratin and sub-Saharan African communities within Morocco, the Arabic-language manuscript tradition of Timbuktu, and Morocco’s active twenty-first-century diplomacy toward sub-Saharan Africa are all legacies of this deep continental entanglement.

Finally, the question of Amazigh identity and its relationship to Moroccan national identity demands sustained attention. The decades-long suppression of Tamazight language and culture under the pressures of Arab nationalist ideology, and the more recent official embrace of Amazigh heritage—embodied in the creation of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) and the 2011 constitutional provision making Tamazight an official language—represent a fundamental shift in official Moroccan self-understanding. Whether this shift represents genuine pluralistic recognition or a strategic de-radicalization of Amazigh political claims remains contested (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011). What is certain is that any account of Moroccan history treating the Amazigh dimension as a pre-Islamic prologue rather than a continuous and central thread is fundamentally incomplete.

10. Conclusion


Morocco’s history cannot be deciphered through any single interpretive framework. It is neither a simple story of Islamic civilization nor a narrative of Berber resistance, neither a tale of colonial victimhood nor a celebration of unbroken dynastic continuity. It is, rather, a history of complex entanglement: between the sedentary and the nomadic, the literate and the oral, the orthodox and the mystical, the cosmopolitan and the local, the imperial and the tribal. The historians who have illuminated this complexity most powerfully—from Ibn Khaldun, whose theory of the cyclical dynamics of tribal power and urban civilization was derived in large part from his observation of Maghrebi history, to Laroui (1977), Burke (1976), and the current generation of Moroccan and international scholars—have been those willing to hold multiple analytical frames in simultaneous tension.

Morocco in the twenty-first century faces challenges that are continuous with the longue durée of its history: the governance of ethnic and regional diversity, the negotiation of Islamic tradition and liberal modernity, the management of economic inequality in a society undergoing rapid urbanization, and the assertion of sovereignty in a global order still structured by post-colonial asymmetries of power and knowledge production. The history traced in this essay is not merely background context for these challenges; it is constitutive of them. To decipher Morocco’s history is to illuminate the choices and constraints that face one of the world’s most historically layered and consequential societies—and to appreciate that those choices remain genuinely open.


References
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Sunday, May 31, 2026

 

How Alaska Native communities navigate a potential $170 billion gold mine



Japanese researchers find that simple ‘support’ or ‘opposition’ cannot capture the full complexity of Alaska Native communities’ decision-making



Kyushu University

How Alaska Native communities navigate a potential $170 billion gold mine 

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Japanese researchers find that simple ‘support’ or ‘opposition’ cannot capture the full complexity of Alaska Native communities’ decision-making

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Credit: Hiroko Ikuta/ Kyushu University





Fukuoka, Japan—Sitting at the northwestern edge of North America, Alaska stretches across a vast Arctic land of wilderness, culture, and wealth beneath the surface. Among its resources is the Donlin Gold deposit, located in southwestern Alaska’s Kuskokwim River basin. As one of the world’s largest undeveloped gold mines, it holds an estimated 39 million ounces worth more than $170 billion at today’s prices.

A study recently published in the Journal of Anthropological Research analyzes the region’s complex debates surrounding resource development and cultural survival. It finds that Alaska Native communities hold multiple, often conflicting roles in the mine’s development.

“To understand the situation today, we have to go back to 1971,” says Hiroko Ikuta, Associate Professor at Kyushu University’s International Student Center and the study’s first author. That year, the U.S. Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), transferring 11% of land and resource rights to Alaska Native peoples. The law, however, required them to organize as for-profit corporations, turning Indigenous individuals into shareholders.

With gold prices surging and most permits approved, the Donlin project is now closer to a final decision than ever. If the mine proceeds, Native corporations would receive billions in revenue while local residents gain priority access to jobs.

Yet alongside the cash economy runs a parallel system of culture and survival.

“Subsistence activities such as hunting and fishing are not hobbies in this region,” explains Ikuta, drawing on two decades of living in Alaska. In Western Alaska, these practices are essential to daily life, with annual harvests exceeding 172 kilograms per person—roughly three times the average annual meat and seafood consumption in Japan. “For them, salmon, moose, and other wild foods are as important as rice is across East Asia.”

One of the major concerns surrounding the Donlin project is its impact on this subsistence system. With limited road access, transportation would rely on barges along the Kuskokwim River, potentially disturbing salmon spawning grounds.

The extraction method adds another layer of risk. Cyanide leaching, used to separate gold from rock, leaves behind toxic waste stored in large tailing dams. Such dams have failed at mines elsewhere, and some residents fear the environmental risks are being understated. Several local communities have filed lawsuits demanding further review.

Yet community opinions cannot be easily divided into “support” or “opposition”, as they experience the risks differently. For example, downstream Yup’ik communities, who rely heavily on salmon for winter food storage, are most concerned about water contamination, while upstream Northern Dene communities focus more on land-based ecological impacts. Shareholders living in cities like Anchorage, meanwhile, stand to benefit from corporate dividends while relying little on subsistence practices.

These divisions can even run through a single person. “The same person can be a corporate shareholder, a subsistence harvester, and a parent worrying for future generations,” says Ikuta. “These identities do not cancel each other out. They collide and coexist.”

Ikuta is currently continuing her research on how mine tailings affect subsistence hunting and fishing, hoping to provide communities with more objective data for future decision-making.

As resource development and environmental pressures, including climate change, mount on traditional lands, Indigenous communities worldwide must increasingly navigate the tension between economic opportunity, sovereignty, and responsibility.

“In Alaska, there have been cases where communities successfully balanced development, cultural survival, and environmental stewardship,” says Ikuta. “I don’t have an answer on what sustainable development should look like for Indigenous peoples. However, any approach may need to consider the diversity of Indigenous communities, their perspectives on well-being, and how externally imposed frameworks shape outcomes.”

###

For more information about this research, see “Donlin Gold and the Politics of Extraction: Navigating Indigenous Sovereignty, Native Corporations, and Subsistence in Southwestern Alaska,” Hiroko Ikuta, Ryo Kubota, Journal of Anthropological Research, https://doi.org/10.1086/740858

About Kyushu University 
Founded in 1911, Kyushu University is one of Japan's leading research-oriented institutions of higher education, consistently ranking as one of the top ten Japanese universities in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World Rankings. Located in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu—the most southwestern of Japan’s four main islands—Kyushu U sits in a coastal metropolis frequently ranked among the world’s most livable cities and historically known as Japan’s gateway to Asia. Its multiple campuses are home to around 19,000 students and 8,000 faculty and staff. Through its VISION 2030, Kyushu U will “drive social change with integrative knowledge.” By fusing the spectrum of knowledge, from the humanities and arts to engineering and medical sciences, Kyushu U will strengthen its research in the key areas of decarbonization, medicine and health, and environment and food, to tackle society’s most pressing issues.

Sunday, May 24, 2026

 

Belfast Outlines Ambitious 25-Year Growth Plan with $1.75B Investment

Belfast, Northern Ireland
Belfast Harbor looks to meet future growth needs with its Masterplan (Belfast Harbour Trust)

Published May 20, 2026 7:17 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Northern Ireland’s premier port, Belfast, has launched an ambitious 25?year Masterplan setting out £1.3 billion ($1.75 billion) of planned investment to ensure that the port remains resilient, efficient, and competitive.  The plan entitled Horizons of Opportunity sets out how the Trust Port will expand and adapt to meet rising demand for trade, providing critical additional capacity and further strengthening Belfast’s position as a leading maritime gateway.  

External forecasts prepared by port master?planning experts Haskoning indicate that trade volumes through Belfast Harbour could increase from around 24 million tonnes today to over 30 million tonnes by 2050 under steady growth, and to between 40 million and 50 million tonnes under higher?growth scenarios. Under every scenario other than decline or stagnation, growth will outpace current infrastructure without planned investment.  

The Masterplan was developed against the backdrop of clear evidence that capacity at ports along Ireland’s east coast will tighten over the next 20 years. As demand for trade continues to grow and space becomes constrained elsewhere, Belfast Harbour is planning ahead – putting the scale of its estate to work to secure the island’s future port capacity. 

Port officials highlight that it has approximately 2,000 acres of land and 1,000 acres of water. Large parts were developed from the space previously occupied by the famed Harland & Wolff Shipyard. The shipbuilder remains a cornerstone of the port under its new ownership, Navantia UK, and has resumed construction work. 

 

One project would create a new container terminal (Blefast Harbour Trust)

 

Large parts of the area, however, were also reclaimed and redeveloped as the city emerged from the years of internal conflict in Northern Ireland. The plan calls for the first new land reclamation in 25 years, which will be used to build a new container terminal.

The Masterplan identifies a program of investment in critical port infrastructure to support growth. It also sets out how the Harbour Estate can continue to integrate port operations, logistics, clean energy, and regeneration within a single, connected environment. 

Projects include completion of the £90 million D3 deepwater cruise terminal; Belfast’s first land reclamation project in 25 years to create a new freight terminal at West Bank Road; redevelopment of the island’s longest deep water quay – Stormont Wharf; a berth extension to its container terminal for next generation vessels; the first shore power for docked vessels; construction of a new logistics park and a clean energy hub; and creation of a new maritime skills academy to support jobs in the sector.  The Masterplan also identifies housing and other real estate regeneration opportunities requiring additional investment of between £500 million and £750 million.

Port officials highlight that together, these plans position Belfast Harbour as the principal maritime gateway on the Dublin–Belfast Economic Corridor. They believe it strengthens the port’s role as a critical hub for Irish Sea trade and a primary link with Great Britain. 

Friday, May 22, 2026

Mines, Blockades, And Coercion: Iran’s Strategy In The Strait Of Hormuz – Analysis

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) prepares to seize the Epaminondas ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

May 20, 2026 
Observer Research Foundation
By Sayantan Haldar and Tuneer Mukherjee


The Strait of Hormuz currently sits at the heart of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which began with the launch of air campaigns by the US and Israel against Iran. Tehran’s strategic decision to partially close the Strait in response aims to pressure the US and its partners involved in the conflict to stand down, and has brought to the fore several dimensions of maritime security that continue to shape the war’s trajectory. As part of this effort to partially close the Strait, Iran has effectively blocked most vessel movement through the maritime corridor, with the exception of ships from a handful of countries that Tehran deems friendly.

Tehran’s reported use of naval mines is central to operationalising this selective blockade. The deployment of mines by Iran underscores their enduring value as a strategic tool to deny access to the Strait. While the United States has launched operations to locate and remove the mines, these efforts have faced multiple challenges to date. The episode has reaffirmed the importance of mines as a critical instrument of modern warfare. The unfolding events at sea amid the Middle East conflict have also raised urgent questions about access to and control of maritime corridors and chokepoints. These developments have not only disrupted supply chains of goods, commodities, and resources, but have also rendered the letter and spirit of a rules-based order at sea, which guarantees freedom of navigation, vulnerable to unilateral coercive tactics.

The Strait of Hormuz is a strategically significant maritime passage for oil and energy, and its selective closure has triggered a major upheaval in the global energy market, described as the world’s largest oil supply disruption. In response to Iran’s actions, the US threatened to take sweeping measures to reopen the Strait to all countries and restore stability in global energy supplies. First, President Trump announced that the US would close the Strait to ships transiting to and from Iranian ports, ostensibly to build tactical and economic pressure on Tehran. Washington then briefly launched a naval mission to escort traffic through the mined waterway, before pausing the operation to allow diplomacy with Tehran another chance. Officials from both sides have met in Pakistan on multiple occasions to negotiate an end to the conflict, but have yet to reach an agreement. Amid these developments, Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz remain in place — a unilateral closure that raises several pressing questions about maritime security.


How did Iran enforce coercive control over the Strait of Hormuz? Tehran’s strategy to close the Strait combines several tactics. Alongside naval deployments and patrols, there have been reported incidents of gunboat fire to keep vessel movement through the Strait minimal and restricted to only those ships Iran selectively approves. Central to sustaining this closure is Iran’s use of naval mines, which can be tactically placed across the narrow maritime corridor to deter and deny the movement of ships.

Naval mines have a long history of use across conflicts worldwide, playing a critical role in shaping the course of warfare during the First and Second World Wars. However, given that much of the discourse on maritime security has long bent normatively towards freedom of navigation and a rules-based order at sea, the use of naval mines — which are typically deployed to curtail free movement across the oceans — has emerged as a flashpoint in the conversation around maritime security and a potent naval strategy in the context of the Middle East conflict. Iran’s reported use of naval mines should therefore be understood as more than a straightforward attempt to deny passage through the Strait; it reflects Tehran’s broader strategy to cultivate an atmosphere of uncertainty and instability as a means of achieving deterrence.


The threat of Iranian naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz has been a long-established concern in US national security thinking. During the Tanker Wars of the 1980s, both Iran and Iraq mined the Persian Gulf to deter each other, prompting the US to conduct escort missions. During the First Gulf War, Iraq again mined the Persian Gulf to deter US naval operations, necessitating a protracted clearance mission involving eight nations. In the context of the current conflict, not only is the precise number of mines deployed by Iran unknown, but the situation is further complicated by Tehran’s claim that it cannot locate all the mines it has deployed and lacks the capability to clear them. Such ambiguity deepens the risk premium facing international shipping transiting the waterway and places the onus squarely on the US to restore freedom of navigation.

Figure 1. Naval Mines: Types and Trigger Mechanisms

Source: Authors’ illustration, generated with AI assistance. 
Conceptual reference drawn from a Wall Street Journal infographic on naval mines.


Historically, mines have been the US Navy’s greatest vulnerability, damaging more ships than any other armament since World War II. The US therefore faces one of its most serious operational challenges in recent history, as any mine-clearing mission in the Strait of Hormuz carries significant risk. Iran has deployed various multi-domain assets along the waterway to enforce its selective blockade and deter any concerted attempt to clear the mines. Mine-clearing operations generally take weeks to complete even in the absence of active threats; given that Iran is likely to counter any such mission before a diplomatic solution is reached, a low-risk clearance operation in the current environment is virtually impossible. Tehran is believed to possess a mix of seabed, moored, limpet, and floating mines, including variants equipped with magnetic and acoustic sensors that trigger detonation when a vessel comes within range. Figure 1 illustrates how some of these mines are deployed. Adding to the challenge, certain mines in Iran’s arsenal — such as the Maham 7 — are specifically designed to evade sonar detection.

The US has traditionally relied on dedicated minesweeping assets but has largely retired that fleet in recent years, and its current minesweeping protocols are undergoing transition. The US Navy’s principal assets for this mission are its Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which employ the AN/AQS-20 mine-hunting system. US Central Command has also reported deploying two destroyers to the region to support mine-clearing operations. However, given the operational risks involved, these efforts have yielded limited results. Should the diplomatic impasse continue, the US is likely to deploy uncrewed systems to carry out this precarious mission in such a saturated battlespace. Alternatively, Washington may look to NATO allies with specialised minesweeping capabilities to assist in clearing the Strait.

More than two months have passed since Operation Epic Fury was launched with the stated aim of regime change in Tehran. The situation today is best described as a stalemate: a selective Iranian blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, a US counter-blockade in the Gulf of Oman to restrict Iranian oil exports, and a rudderless diplomatic back-and-forth mediated by Islamabad. All the while, Iran has successfully weaponised the chokepoint to advance its strategic goals — deploying naval mines to heighten navigational risk and, in turn, driving up global energy prices. For Iran, the physical denial of passage matters less than maintaining a minefield credible enough to make commercial transit seem prohibitively risky. For the rules-based maritime order, the deeper danger is that freedom of navigation may remain intact on paper while, in practice, being held hostage by deliberate ambiguity beneath the seas.

About the authors:

Sayantan Haldar is an Associate Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

Tuneer Mukherjee is a Non-Resident Associate Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.


Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.


The Strait of Hormuz: A Constant in Iranian History

by | May 22, 2026

The strategic and spiritual resonance of the Strait of Hormuz is deeply woven into Iran’s identity. It represents a profound geographic constant in Iranian history. This narrow waterway has served as a central artery for Persian political and economic power, historical consciousness and culture across millennia.

Whether safeguarding Zoroastrian trade routes under the Sassanids, expelling European powers in the Safavid era, or commanding energy routes today, Iran’s geopolitical identity is fused with this narrow stretch of water.  It is a physical manifestation of sovereignty, insuring that the “Passage of the Palm Groves” and its divine namesake “Ahura Mazda” remains a focal point of global history.

Linguists and historians trace the etymology of “Hormuz” to “Ohrmazd,” the Middle Persian derivation of “Ahura Mazda” (the supreme deity of Zoroastrianism). To ancient Persian monarchs, this body of water was more than a trade route; it was an extension of the imperial cosmic divine order.

In the ancient dialect of southern Iran, the name is believed to have evolved from “Hur-Mogh.”  In the local tongue of Hormozgan, Hur means waterway and Mogh refers to palm trees.  For people who lived there for millennia, the strait was not a military chokepoint, it was simply, “The Passage of the Palm Groves.”

The Strait of Hormuz presents a profound historical paradox. Its name honors the Zoroastrian source of cosmic harmony, Ahura Mazda. Yet today, this narrow chokepoint whose foundational ethos, “humata, hukhta, and huvarshta” (good thoughts, good words, and good deeds), is now the epicenter of severe international geopolitical friction and trade instability.

Long before it became the jugular vein of the modern global economy, the Strait of Hormuz was the sacred and strategic maritime gateway to the Persian empire.

The Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC, was the first imperial power to recognize the strait as a strategic artery to be owned.  Its name is tied to the Sassanian dynasty (224-651 CE), the last great pre-Islamic Persian empire and initiator of Zoroastrianism as a state religion.

During the Sassanian era, its Zoroastrian rulers expanded outward from the Iranian plateau to dominate both the northern and southern shores of the strait.

By commanding the entrance to the Persian Gulf by constructing forts and coastal infrastructure, these ancient kings secured their control over the lucrative maritime trade routes, linking Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent and the broader world.

Control over the Strait of Hormuz – the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean – has long been a linchpin of imperial power in West Asia.  Its control has shifted across empires, passing from Sassanian Persian rulers and the Abbasid Caliphate to the formidable Kingdom of Hormuz, and eventually into the hands of expanding European colonial powers.

When the Safavid Empire (1501-1736) recaptured the region from the Portuguese in the 17th century, the strait was reestablished as an Iranian geopolitical asset. In the modern era, the reality of the waterway has been magnified on a global scale due to the discovery of petroleum in Iran in 1908.

The impact of the Strait of Hormuz extends far beyond the physical movement of petroleum, liquified natural gas and global commerce.  Historically, this narrow sea passage became a natural crossroads connecting civilizations, diffusing and blending Persian, Arab and Indian art, philosophy and belief systems.  Also, the prosperity generated by taxing trade through the chokepoint allowed for port cities like old Hormuz to build grand mosques and complex architecture.

In the modern era, particularly following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran’s political geography has become inextricably tied to the strait’s unique topographical realities.  Its main navigational corridors are incredibly constrained, forcing commercial and military vessels to travel through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.

The once-open international thoroughfare, is now at the center of conflict because of the 28 February 2026 U.S.-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic of Iran. For Tehran, control of the natural chokepoint serves as an asymmetric strategy to counterbalance foreign military power.  Iran has successfully relied on its geographical proximity, utilizing coastal missiles, fast-attack boats and strategic islands to assert control over the strait.

Today, the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a fifth of the world’s daily energy sources flow, remains the ultimate trump card in Iranian political geography.  The passage grants Iran undeniable economic and strategic leverage.

From the divine association of Zoroastrian antiquity to the modern age of energy diplomacy, the Strait of Hormuz remains a defining feature of Iranian political geography.  It continues to be the narrow gate through the geopolitical ambitions, economic lifeline and historic legacy of Iran intersecting with the wider world.

© 2026, M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D.

Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia. 


Iran Continues to Assert Hormuz Transits Are Increasing Under Its Control

Iranian IRGC speedboats
IRGC Navy claims to have permitted 35 vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours (Mehr file photo)

Published May 22, 2026 1:32 PM by The Maritime Executive


Iran continues to make unsubstantiated claims that under its control, transits are increasing in the Strait of Hormuz. It cites the “coordination and security provided by the IRGC Navy.”

“The Revolutionary Guard Navy has established a safe route for the continuity of international trade,” the public relations office of the IRGC said in a statement posted by media channels linked to the command. It is part of its ongoing effort to claim that it is providing stability as Iran also seeks to formalize its control of the waterway and establish its tolling system.

According to the IRGC Navy statement released on Friday, a total of 35 oil tankers, container vessels, and commercial ships had made the transit in the past 24 hours. This would be an increase from the 31 ships it reported on Thursday and 26 on Wednesday.

It says all of these ships had “permission to pass” and received security safety on a coordinated route. However, no details or substantiation were provided for the claims. There have been incidental reports of a few Chinese vessels making the transit, and the one South Korean tanker, but India, for example, continues to call for the release of vessels.

Maritime intelligence group Kpler posted a new tracking video showing only a handful of ships making the transit. It says on May 20, it confirmed 10 vessels, up from four the prior day. Most of the traffic observed was west to east, and it did not identify any new Iranian export loadings.

Iran’s Mehr News Agency, however, released a report claiming that Iran was exporting 1.4 million barrels of oil per day despite the U.S. blockade. In the same report, it cited data from the International Energy Agency reporting production was down a further 620,000 barrels per day in April to 20.18 million barrels per day from OPEC. It said this was after a 9.57 million barrel per day decrease in March. It highlighted that OPEC’s production was down by a third (32 percent) while writing that “other OPEC members outside the Persian Gulf region have not been able to effectively compensate for the drop in oil production from the region.”

U.S. Central Command, however, asserts that it remains vigilant in its enforcement of the blockade. As of Friday, CENTCOM is saying 97 commercial vessels have been redirected, and four were disabled.

Iran released its new boundaries for control of the area around the Hormuz Strait as it launched the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. At the same time, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Iran was having talks with Oman about control of the strait. It was reported to be proposing its scheme for charging fees, possibly sharing revenue with Oman.

France’s Foreign Ministry on Friday confirmed it has drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution as part of an international mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, reports Reuters. It says that France is prepared to launch a joint effort with Britain when conditions permit. 

A separate U.S. resolution drafted with Bahrain, Reuters reports, remains bogged down after more than two weeks. China and Russia vetoed a U.S. effort in April and are believed to be opposed to the US-Bahrain draft. Reuters reports the United States has secured almost 140 countries as co-sponsors in hopes of avoiding a second veto.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday reiterated the U.S. position that the Strait needs to be open. He said it is not acceptable for Iran to be charging a fee, but said the talks were showing “slight progress.” Donald Trump has said he has no timeline and that the deal must be the right deal to end the conflict.

Erratic Traffic Poses Real Risks for Strait of Hormuz Transits

Iran's view of its area of military control, bounded by twin red lines (IRGC)
Iran's view of its area of military control, bounded by twin red lines (IRGC)

Published May 21, 2026 11:59 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

A new industry-written guide to transiting the Strait of Hormuz paints a picture of exceptional risk, and not just from the missile and drone attacks launched by Iran. While the shipping industry's leading associations think that transits are a responsible choice under the right circumstances, the navigational hazards on the route are real, and the consequences of a collision or grounding are elevated. 

The new official guidance was released this week by ICS, BIMCO, Intertanko, IMCA, Intercargo and OCIMF, and it reflects the full spectrum of industry concerns. The kinetic threat is the headline risk factor in any discussion of the strait, and the guide's advice is to stay clear of the waterway for at least 12 hours after a confirmed attack and avoid mined areas.

But the other risk is the traffic situation that may develop during an opening of the waterway. The guidance advises operators to prepare for a rush, and to expect little regard for COLREGS. Conditions may include simultaneous, uncoordinated transits; erratic, nonstandard vessel maneuvers; close-quarters situations in confined waters, with limited sea room; a wide mix of vessel sizes and maneuvering characteristics; and elevated crew stress. 

"During extreme traffic congestion periods, collision and grounding risks may materially increase. Both dimensions must be appropriately addressed in the pre-transit planning," the associations recommended. 

In the event of a casualty, masters are advised that any oil spill control efforts should be secondary to ensuring crew life and safety. Given the hazards, a spill response vessel or a salvage tug might not be coming quickly; the industry consensus suggests that masters and vessels should be prepared to be self-reliant for the transit, and should not expect assistance from military forces. 

The details of the preparations required are revealing. Before instructing the crew to make the run, owners should ensure that insurance is in order, contingency plans are in place, the crew is well-rested, and the ship is in top technical condition and well-provisioned. It may be best to disembark supernumeraries (like cadets or riding gangs) in advance, minimizing the number of personnel exposed to risk on board. Watertight doors and hatches should be kept closed to aid in damage control.

On the bridge, operators are advised to make sure that their officers are truly ready to navigate in a GPS-denied environment, ideally using radar range and bearing plotted on physical paper charts (a practice which has fallen out of use). "The planning assumption must be total unavailability – or unreliability – of the GNSS signal for the entirety of the transit," the guide advises. For the same reason, radar and visual monitoring should be used as primary tools for collision avoidiance, not just AIS. An enhanced bridge team should be standing watch, with the master or chief officer, one additional officer, a lookout and a helmsman present.

Transmitting AIS position data is up to the operator, but the guidance recommends taking measures to shut down crew cell phone transmissions. Mobile devices capture GPS positioning for a variety of reasons and this data can be hacked and exploited by a capable actor to track the ship. Phones should be in airplane mode, and nonessential positioning & networking services on the device should be turned off. 

While waiting for a chance to transit, the associations recommend that operators pick lower-risk anchorage areas. For vessels that have an elevated risk of attracting an Iranian attack, like ships owned by American or Israeli interests, periodic repositioning from one spot to another is recommended in order to make targeting more difficult.

 

Iran War Prompts GCC Countries to Reduce Regional Trade Barriers

Saudi Route 10, the world's longest continuously straight road (Slayym / CC BY SA 4.0)
Saudi Route 10, the world's longest continuously straight road (Slayym / CC BY SA 4.0)

Published May 20, 2026 4:02 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Faced with the urgent demands of their customers, logistics operators are not waiting for a political settlement to the war in the Gulf to solve their problems and the interruption of supply through the Strait of Hormuz.

Customs procedures within the GCC have always been an impediment to truck movements, but the lack of external, direct shipments into the Gulf has forced traffic onto the roads linking markets with the ports where there is still free access. These customs delays remain a significant problem on most of the important routes loaded with additional traffic:

- The Northern International Highway 85 which stretches from Bahrain and Dammam, through Riyadh, and then follows the course of the old Trans-Arabian Pipeline to Al Hadithah on the Jordanian border and thence to Syria and the Mediterranean.

- Highway 40, 850 miles long, stretches from what is now Saudi Arabia’s busiest port in Jeddah on the Red Sea, continuing through Riyadh to Bahrain and Dammam, the petro-chemical heart of Saudi Arabia.

- Highway 10, branching off from Riyadh direct to the UAE.

- Routes from Abu Dhabi and Dubai both to Fujairah and Khor Fakkan on the Gulf of Oman, taking the bulk of the container traffic which used to be moved through Kizad and Jebel Ali, but also being used for traffic to ports in Oman, principally Sohar.

- Finally, Highway 95, from the Saudi-Qatari border crossing at Salwa, passing through the Shaybah oilfield and the Empty Quarter and into Oman at the Ramlet Khelah border crossing point which was opened in January 2023, then linking up through Ibri with the Gulf of Oman ports of Sohar and Muscat, or the Arabian Sea ports of Duqm and Salalah. The value of goods crossing through Ramlet Khelah nearly trebled to $830m in March, from $300m in February. The opening of Highway 95 has been popular: not only is it shorter, but it also cuts out often 24-hour delays at UAE-Saudi border crossings which no longer need to be traversed.

 

Road routes within KSA (black), from KSA to Omani ports (green), Etihad Rail to Fujairah (red) and Hafeet Rail nearing completion (purple) (Google Earth/CJRC)

With the need to keep traffic moving and reduce delays, the war has been a catalyst for the removal of customs barriers. The Emirates of Dubai and Sharjah have agreed new customs procedures with Oman to speed movement through the Hatta, Khatmat Malaha and Al Madam checkpoints by loads originating in Omani ports. Through Dubai’s Hatta checkpoint alone, the value of customs declarations rose from $270 million in March to $2.16 billion in April.

The Hafeet Rail route from Sohar into the Emirati network, now 40% complete and due to come into service in 2028, will feature a one-stop customs system for containers with no delays at the border.

But perhaps of most significance, after some last minute cliff-hanger delays, the GCC signed a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the United Kingdom on May 20, removing a further raft of customs duties and tariffs. The UK resisted the temptation to do bilateral deals with individual GCC countries, as the UAE had urged, in the hope that an all-GCC deal would boost the GCC as an integrated trading entity, as much as to benefit trade between the GCC and the UK. The deal will help British luxury car exports and financial services in particular, but it should also lead to an easing of tariff barriers within the GCC.

The UK-GCC agreement is the first that the GCC has signed collectively with a G7 country. The UK was part of the EU team when negotiations began with the GCC in 1990, and whilst the EU negotiations have stalled, the UK has used its independent sovereign status to quickly complete its own deal, Kemi Badenoch having opened negotiations in 2022. But undoubtedly, the desire on the part of the GCC to strengthen alliances with those who have supported it in times of trouble has contributed to a renewed impetus to complete the deal.