Smuggling in North Africa is not limited to the rural periphery. In its institutionalisation and regulation of informal cross-border trade, the procedures around the small Spanish enclave of Melilla41 rival that of the Ras Jedir crossing.
Covering less than 5 square miles of territory, Melilla borders the Mediterranean in the North, and Morocco in the South. Largely due to concerns about migration, its 6.8-mile border has been heavily securitised in recent years, including two parallel 9’10 feet fences topped with barbed wire, watch-posts and a buffer zone. As other scholars have noted (Andersson 2014; Andreas 2009, 135; Soto Bermant 2015a), Melilla’s border fortifications are characteristic of a recent trend in border fortification that seeks to be porous to the free movement of goods, but demonstrate a capacity to regulate the movement of people. What is particularly noteworthy about the case of Melilla is that this significant expansion of its border infrastructure has not just left it porous for the legal trade of goods, but also for a large wholesale smuggling trade. It
41 The discussions here focus on the border between Melilla and Morocco. However, it is worth noting that the procedures described here are in many ways mirrored in the second one of the larger Spanish enclaves in Northern Morocco, Ceuta, which lies in the North-West of the country, near the Strait of Gibraltar.
107 has been estimated that at least half of the goods that arrive in the port of Melilla are brought into Morocco illegally, with the trade being driven (and made illegal) through its bypassing of any official trade or tariff regulations on the Moroccan side (Alonso and Castro 2014). The most common goods traded this way are textiles and foodstuff, alongside a variety of European consumer goods.
On both sides of the border, there are significant economic interests in maintaining illegal trade across this border – wholesale merchants on the Spanish side, informal trade and distribution networks on the Moroccan side both are significant drivers of the local economy. While I will discuss these dynamics in more detail in Chapter 9, this section highlights the trade’s regulation. In another parallel to the Tunisia-Libya border, informal trade out of Melilla occurs primarily through the city’s official border crossings. This section focusses in the two most prominent crossings at Beni Ensar and Barrio Chino. Bustling with traders and transporters carrying goods through the narrow border crossings in defiance of any customs regulation, the crossings have been described as “a space of lawlessness” (McMurray 2001, 123). However, as in the case of Tunisia’s Ras Jedir crossing, upon closer observation and following conversations with local smugglers, clear rules and regulations emerge.
The Beni Ensar crossing is named after the Moroccan suburb that borders it. The crossing has three main lanes going into Morocco: one for cars, one for normal walking traffic, and one reserved for informal cross-border trade on foot. Especially since the construction at the Farrakanh crossing, it has been the main avenue for car-based informal cross-border trade between Melilla and Morocco. Late at night, Moroccan drivers can be seen lining up in a long queue of cars in the Moroccan town of Beni Ensar, to be let into Melilla early in the morning, and drive to one of the countless warehouses just on the other side of the border crossing. They fill their cars with clothes, tires, foodstuff or other imported products, and make their slow way back to Morocco, where the goods are being sold on markets in Nador or transported across the country. Most of the cars are ancient – standing in line at the border crossing most of the day does not require much horsepower.
The lines of cars on both sides of the borders are regulated so as not to interfere with local traffic. As the cars pass back into Morocco, their imports are let through unregistered and untaxed in exchange for a bribe to the Moroccan customs officers.
108 While the bribes are relatively standardised, they are dependent on the value of the goods, and typically range between 50 and 200Dh. Importantly, the cars are inspected by Moroccan customs officers. This not only allows some estimation of the goods value (and hence the level of the bribe), but also the enforcement of some restrictions on goods that are not allowed to be traded this way – alcohol, for example, medicine or drugs, cannot be traded in this fashion (M36). While there is no official restriction on how many cars can engage in this trade, they are limited through standardised and strictly enforced times during which the trade is allowed to occur – usually between 6am and 1pm Moroccan time, after which the trade shuts down and the traders offload their goods and get in line for the next day.
Car-based trading is only one of the two streams of informal cross-border trade through the Beni Ensar border crossing – trading on foot is even more common. At six in the morning, screams and chatter fill Beni Ensar, as traders are pushing against the small gate until it is opened and they are let into Melilla to buy their products.
Although the group of waiting traders has been separated by gender (women are let through first), the scramble still presents a serious health hazard for the traders – Spanish riot police that were manning the checkpoint have shown me videos on their phones that showed traders stepping on other traders that had tripped and fallen. Once they have bought their goods, traders make their way back to Morocco through the border crossing. Two lanes are open for foot-traffic. One is open for tourists, visitors and other travellers without a car. This one can also be used by small-time traders with only very few goods, usually one bag that can be carried in one hand. For all the other traders, there is a special lane. A member of the Spanish guarda civil directs people into the correct lane. The specialised lane for traders usually is significantly busier, and around half a dozen members of the Spanish police are typically involved in getting traders to line up on a large open space near the border crossing, and then walk through the narrow fenced-off path, through an iron turnstile, and then past the Moroccan customs officers and into Morocco.
The Spanish police, mainly riot police brought in from mainland Spain on two-week rotations, plays a crucial role in organising the procession of traders. They try to ensure that the onslaught of traders trying to get through the small turnstile doesn’t result in
109 injuries and at times mediate when conflicts break out (ML3).42 However, they are not directly involved in the central transaction of the trade: the payments made to avoid the application of Morocco’s customs law is made to Moroccan customs officers, on the Moroccan side of the border. These payments can be differentiated into three categories.
The first group are independent traders with very small amounts of goods, often elderly women from the Oriental region who are selling their products to local stores.
While they used to pay small bribes to Moroccan customs officials in order to pass, custom officials stopped systematically demanding bribes from them in 2010 and 2011 and have not done so ever since. There are still occasions in which bribes are demanded or goods are confiscated, but traders report that the systematic taking of bribes from very small-scale traders seems to have stopped, simultaneous with a similar development along the border between Morocco and Algeria that will be discussed below.
The second group are traders who also work independently but are carrying larger amounts of goods. They typically pay a bribe to the Moroccan customs officers, which, similar to the car traders, is very roughly proportional to the quantity and value of their goods, and usually ranges between 50 and 100Dh.
The third group are traders who work for a wholesaler. While many of the traders working in Beni Ensar work independently, there are also a significant number of traders who are employed by a wholesaler, picking up their goods either at nearby warehouses, or directly near the border crossing. Alongside their goods, they are usually supplied with a ‘ticket’, which carries their name, the name of their boss, and the goods that they are transporting. As they pass the Moroccan customs officers, they use the ticket to identify themselves as employees of a particular wholesaler. They would hence not have to pay a bribe, as the bribe to the customs officers would be part of a larger, regular arrangement between the wholesaler and the customs officials. The traders would then deliver their goods to a transporter working for the same boss on
42 It is worth noting that this frequently involves violent altercations among traders, and between traders and the police. As hundreds of transporters shuffle for access to small spaces, recent years have not only seen serious injuries and fatalities. “The Moroccans are making it easy, the Spanish authorities though, they are rude, they treat us badly, they hit us” traders commonly complain, usually indicating that this is a more serious issue at Barrio Chino than in Beni Ensar (M41, M42).
110 the other side of the border, with their ticket again identifying them as employees of a certain wholesaler, and specifying the goods that they have to deliver, as well as the payment that they are entitled to receiving (M55, M56).
As in the case of Tunisia, as well as the car-based trade through Beni Ensar, these procedures are not open to all types of goods. Medicine and alcohol, for example, even little sanitary wipes that contain alcohol, are not let through (M41, M42). After Morocco imposed restrictions on the use of plastic bags in convenience stores for environmental reasons, traders reported that these bags could also not be brought through the border crossing anymore (M41, M42). Some features of these procedures also limit the quantity coming through – as with the car-based trade, there are strict temporal restrictions on informal cross-border trade by foot, typically between 6am and 1pm Moroccan time.
Figure 12: Cars waiting at the Moroccan side of the Beni Ensar Crossing (Photo: author)
111 The procedures at the Beni Ensar crossing are largely replicated at the Barrio Chino crossing.
Located in the South-West of the city, this crossing is used almost exclusively by large-scale informal cross-border traders and their transporters. The routinisation of the process that can be observed here is even more striking than in Beni Ensar, especially as recent years have seen the construction of additional infrastructure on the Spanish side to organise the trade. Barrio Chino has three lanes that lead into Morocco, all of them are for foot traffic. Nothing signifies their purpose for informal cross-border trade more clearly than the three signs over the entrances to the cross-border crossing.
On top of the Spanish and Arabic words for ‘Entrance’, there are two silhouettes depicting portadores: one man, and one woman, carrying a large bundle of goods (see Figure 14).
Figure 13: Traders lining up at the Spanish side of the Beni Ensar Crossing (Photo: author)
112 Figure 14: Border crossing at Barrio Chino.
(Photo: Ultimocero.com)
Every morning, between 7am and 11am Moroccan time43, these three lanes are incredibly busy – Barrio Chino is the epicentre of the large-scale wholesale informal trade operations between Melilla and Morocco. Transporters, so-called “portadores”
or “hamala” wait in lines, under sheet-metal shelters on a large space near the crossing.
Trucks can be observed as they bring goods from the nearby warehouses, pre-packed in bundles wrapped in plastic sheets, and marked with numbers and symbols that mark them as the property of a particular owner. Organised by the Spanish Police, transporters then pick up the bundles and carry, push and roll them up the small passageway to the border crossing.
Here, three metal turnstiles present the key bottleneck of the border – the police let traders approach them in small groups, and local intermediaries, employed by the larger traders, stand at the turnstiles to facilitate a smooth flow of carriers through them (ML3). Similar to the Beni Ensar crossing, there are payments to the Moroccan customs officials, but they depend on the type of transporter. The large group of traders who work for one of the bigger wholesalers do not pay a bribe, as this is organised centrally by the wholesaler. While there are essentially no independent small-scale
43 Exact times can change according to season.
113 traders in Barrio Chino, there are groups of transporters who organise transport for smaller wholesalers, usually exploiting personal relationships to customs officials in order to negotiate low bribes.
On the Moroccan side, traders are quickly ushered to larger vans, in which the numbered bundles are stacked and then transported across Morocco. Contrary to Beni Ensar, there seems to be a lot less scrutiny of the content of the bundles at the moment they cross the border. This most likely relates to the absence of small independent traders – the traders operating here, as well as their goods, are well known to Moroccan customs and security services. Still, it appears that some goods that cannot be brought through Beni Ensar, such as alcohol, are being traded in Barrio Chino.
Figure 15: Shelter for traders, police surveillance tower and border fence at the Barrio Chino crossing
(Photo: author)
114 Even though the border between Melilla and Morocco is located in an urban setting, and contains a significantly higher level of infrastructure and surveillance capacity on both sides of the border than the border between Tunisia and Libya, the way in which smuggling is regulated at both borders shares important similarities. As in Tunisia, the procedures at the border between Morocco and Melilla are entirely illegal, and yet they are highly routinized and organised, regulated primarily by state officials. While no written version of these procedures exists in the Melilla case, they are widely known to everyone involved, and include some form of written documentation, such as the “tickets” at the Beni Ensar crossing.
As in the Tunisian case, these institutions also function as a regulation of the types of goods that can cross the border informally, and, through the combination of the temporal restrictions and the pace and size of the turnstiles, create a strict limitation of the number of goods that can pass through. As in Tunisia, large elements of this regulation are impersonal: anyone with a Nador residency card (that allows the free movement to Melilla without a passport) can work as a transporter, and no particular connections to customs officers are required. Even for people not from Nador, a Nador residency card is easily acquired – transporters from outside the area told me they were able to purchase residency cards for villages near Nador for around 2500Dh (M36).
Still, personal connections, as well as capital, have guaranteed larger traders advantageous positions within this system – a theme that later chapters will return to.
Figure 16: Marked truck at the Barrio Chino crossing.
(Photo: author).
115 5.4 Morocco – Algeria: Regulation at a Closed, Rural Border
As the sections above have outlined, formal border crossings play a crucial role in the organisation and regulation of smuggling at the Tunisia-Libya and the Melilla-Morocco borders. They provide crucial nodes at which the trade can be easily coordinated, surveyed, and where payments can be extracted. The border between Morocco and Algeria then provides an interesting case study to examine the regulation of smuggling in the absence of formal border crossings, as the land border between the two countries has been formally closed since 1994.44 As this section highlights, the regulation of smuggling at this border still exhibited significant similarities with the procedures at the border crossings of Melilla or Ras Jedir, as informal crossing points were quickly established by smugglers and security forces along the border.
While regulation along these points was not always uniform, they provided points of coordination, predictability and regulation.
The trade in gasoline, which for many years dominated the informal cross-border trade, is instructive here. Algerian gasoline, cheaper than Moroccan gasoline due to the Algerian subsidy regime, would be collected at Algerian gas stations by filling up tanks, and then re-filled into jerry-cans in large storage facilities in rural farms near the border. They would then be brought by Algerian traders to pre-agreed meeting points along the border. As former traders have recounted, there would usually be a set of about ten potential meeting points, the one that would be used would be pre-arranged by the Moroccan and Algerian networks on a day-to-day basis (M7, M102, M103, M104). At these points, the gasoline would be sold wholesale to Moroccan
‘first buyers’ who would transfer it to depots in rural Morocco, where it would typically be re-sold to ‘second buyers’ who would transport the gasoline across the country. These exchanges were exclusively conducted at night. However, Moroccan and Algerian traders would not be the only ones in attendance at these meetings: both Moroccan and Algerian soldiers were involved in the organisation of these exchanges, with the Algerian soldiers usually playing the dominant role. The soldiers would not only observe the procedure, but also act as mediators in the case of conflict between
44 The regulation discussed here ceased to be in effect with the construction of significant border fortifications by both Algeria and Morocco from about 2015 onward. This is discussed in detail in later chapters.
116 the traders, or as enforcers of a quiet and orderly exchange, if anyone was making too much noise (M7). Both Moroccan and Algerian soldiers would receive a payment from the traders – commonly the Algerian traders would pay the Algerian soldiers, and the Moroccan traders would pay the Moroccan soldiers. The level of these payments would typically be fixed, for example, Moroccan soldiers would receive 5Dh (GBP 0.4) for every 30-litre canister that a trader was buying that night. The rates for the Algerian soldiers would occasionally change when a new captain was assigned to the local force (M7).
Further crucial fix-points within the trade were ‘gates’ in the border fence on the Moroccan side that the Moroccan military would operate in order to organise and regulate cross-border informal trade. A variety of these points existed around the border near Oujda, along with specific times during which they were opened. One gate was opened every night between 7pm and 2am, another one between 8pm and midnight (M111, M35, M80). During this time, Moroccan soldiers would let traders pass across the border, as well as back into Morocco. These crossings did not appear to be operated in coordination with the Algerian soldiers and continued to operate even
Further crucial fix-points within the trade were ‘gates’ in the border fence on the Moroccan side that the Moroccan military would operate in order to organise and regulate cross-border informal trade. A variety of these points existed around the border near Oujda, along with specific times during which they were opened. One gate was opened every night between 7pm and 2am, another one between 8pm and midnight (M111, M35, M80). During this time, Moroccan soldiers would let traders pass across the border, as well as back into Morocco. These crossings did not appear to be operated in coordination with the Algerian soldiers and continued to operate even