The Arrest of Maduro Uncovers a Structural Flaw in Understanding the World from Within Morocco!
Najiba Jalal
When events repeat and positions align, history has the right to raise an eyebrow in astonishment rather than condemnation. What has occurred in recent days is not an isolated incident, but a new link in an old chain of alignments that remain constant despite changes in the world, as if they were outside of time.
As documents piled up, indictments were issued, and court proceedings were built page by page against Nicolás Maduro’s regime, along with the announcement of his arrest by U.S. President Donald Trump, certain Moroccan parties chose to live in a moment unrelated to what is happening in the world or what governs international relations today. They opted to align themselves once again against the current of history.
The indictment issued by the Southern District of New York, based on investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, does not speak the language of politics or slogans, but rather the language of law. It accuses Maduro of conspiring from 1999 to 2025 to traffic large quantities of cocaine internationally, knowingly and intentionally providing direct or indirect financial support to organizations classified as foreign terrorist groups. The charges include conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, manufacture, distribute, and possess it, aware that it would be smuggled into U.S. territory or its territorial waters, including the use of aircraft registered in the U.S. for this criminal activity.
The most alarming aspect is that the case does not stop at drugs. The indictment explicitly discusses the possession and use of automatic weapons and destructive devices during the commission of trafficking crimes or in support of them, in addition to conspiracy to possess and use these weapons in the context of transnational organized crime. We are dealing with a network, not mere rhetoric; with a legal procedure, not a political disagreement.
Yet, well-known Moroccan parties and institutions chose to ignore these facts. The Party of Progress and Socialism, in a public political meeting, opened its doors to discuss an internal draft law, but in its political background remained loyal to an old logic that views everything emanating from the United States as aggression, and anyone opposing Washington as a victim, forgetting that the issue at hand today is a documented judicial matter, not a political statement.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Left Federation, through its political office, issued a statement condemning what it termed blatant American aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela, discussing the kidnapping of a legitimate president and a flagrant violation of international law, ignoring that the individual in question is facing charges of international drug trafficking, financing terrorism, and possessing and using heavy weapons in the context of organized crime.
The Moroccan Democratic Network for Solidarity with Peoples announced a protest in front of Parliament, condemning American and Zionist imperialism, invoking a vocabulary that harkens back to the Cold War, as if the world had not changed, as if international law were no longer governed by documents and courts but by slogans and chants.
The paradox here is not in the right of these entities to express themselves; that is guaranteed. The paradox lies in the rigidity of alignment—same parties, same rhetoric against every transformation, against every reformative path, and against any logic of state, whether related to foreign policy or internal construction.
Here, the question is no longer who is with whom, but rather the deeper question of what era these people are living in.
The Moroccan state, in its major choices, is no longer operating on the basis of slogans but on the basis of interests, balances, and realities. The world no longer tolerates regimes accused of exporting drugs, financing terrorism, and using weapons outside of legitimacy, no matter how loudly they raise slogans of sovereignty and resistance.
Defending peoples cannot be achieved by whitewashing regimes, nor by denying truths, nor by escaping from documents to chants. True struggle does not happen by continually standing on the wrong side of history.
What we are witnessing today is not a political disagreement but a structural flaw in understanding the world. A flaw that leads its proponents to see in every organization chaos, in every state an adversary, and in every transformation a threat.
History does not pay much attention to those who scream outside of it. It moves on with calm and cruelty, leaving those who lag behind to enjoy repetition and the bitterness of isolation.
