21 Facts About Ahmed Balafrej

Ahmed Balafrej was the second Prime Minister of Morocco between May 12,1958, and December 2,1958.

Ahmed Balafrej was a significant figure in the struggle for the independence of Morocco.

Ahmed Balafrej was born in 1908 to a family in Rabat.

Ahmed Balafrej's family financed his primary studies at the school of Bab Laalou, and his secondary studies at the Muslim College of Rabat, later known as the Moulay Youssef college.

Ahmed Balafrej completed his Arabic studies at the Fouad I University in Cairo during 1927, then back in Paris at the Faculty of the Sorbonne from 1928 to 1932.

Ahmed Balafrej began his history studies at La Sorbonne in December 1927.

Ahmed Balafrej helped create the Association of North African Muslim Students in France alongside Mohamed Hassan Ouazzani, his junior in Parisian studies, and Ahmed Ben Miled.

Ahmed Balafrej gave a series of conferences at the invitation of Haj Abdesslam Bennouna and Abdelkhaleq Torres in Tetouan for ten days.

In 1932, while police violence and arrests stifled internal protest against the Dahir, Ahmed Balafrej developed protest from outside.

The journal was entirely funded by nationalist circles, and over a thousand copies were distributed in Morocco and France starting in July 1932; Ahmed Balafrej's articles allowed him to make his first contacts with French liberal and socialist political circles, as well as the leading spheres of the young Spanish republic.

In 1933 and 1934, the Moroccan Action Committee was established, with cells in multiple cities; Ahmed Balafrej controlled its Rabat cell.

Ahmed Balafrej secretly returned to northern Morocco at the end of 1940, only receiving official permission in December 1942, wallowing him freedom of movement amid Operation Torch, the landing of Anglo-American troops in Morocco.

In 1944, having anticipated the process of decolonization that the Anglo-French would inevitably initiate after their victory over Nazi Germany, Ahmed Balafrej is drafted the Manifesto of Independence of Morocco signed by 67 of his nationalist friends.

Ahmed Balafrej contributed to the founding of the Istiqlal party in 1944 and became the first secretary of the party.

In 1947, Ahmed Balafrej brought his family to safety in Tangier, and Madrid, from where he conducted a diplomatic campaign in the United States, Switzerland, France, and Spain in order to promote the Moroccan cause there.

Ahmed Balafrej gave priority to the internationalization of the national cause and pursued a diplomatic campaign aimed at increasing the recognition of Morocco's independence.

Aware of the risks of generalization of political violence, as well as of the possible hold-up of independence by some influential tribal notables, Ahmed Balafrej set the priorities of the Independence Party: the return of the Sultan from exile as a non-negotiable prerequisite, then constitution, under the authority of the Sultan, of a transitional government, finally abrogation of the colonial treaty of Fez of 1912.

Competition begins for the control of executive power where Ahmed Balafrej tried to get the sultan to compose the transitional government according to a program instead of as a balance of rivalries in which the royal cabinet would be the arbiter.

Ahmed Balafrej was allowed to return to Morocco on November 25,1955, and the extraordinary congress of the Istiqlal party that he organized in Rabat in December 1955 and which confirmed it in his post of secretary-general authorized the promulgation of the first Moroccan transitional government.

Ahmed Balafrej was reappointed to this post in the second government of M'barek Bekkai.

In 1962, Ahmed Balafrej was briefly re-appointed by Hassan II as Minister of Foreign Affairs, from 1963 to 1972, the personal representative of the King, a protocol function on the sidelines of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs controlled by the confidants of the Royal Cabinet.