Ah Yes Casablanca.

As I'm sure most of you know there is this really famous black & white film from the 1940's called Casablanca which stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and is set in Morocco. Now I've never seen this film but every time I mention that fact to someone who has they all say the same thing; "Oh you really should." So while I was out doing my Christmas shopping at the end of 2010 and I saw a DVD copy on sale for about £2 I picked it up thinking I could watch it over the Christmas break. Unfortunately while making conversation on Christmas day I mentioned this to my family, all of whom have already seen it so they said; "Oh you really should watch it" before telling me everything that happens in it. So obviously I couldn't watch it until I'd forgotten everything they'd told me and by that time the Arab Spring and caused most of north Africa to catch fire so I couldn't possibly watch it then without it being weird. Since then the word Casablanca has hung ominously in the air.

Along with the Arab Spring this has made the King of Morocco very nervous leading to false flag terror attacks and a crackdown on protesters and anyone who might possibly become a protester. Although I'm not aware of any plots to overthrow the Moroccan Monarchy you can see their point. As the Arab Spring began in December in Tunisia you would have thought it's natural direction of travel would have been from Tunisia to Algeria and then from Algeria to Morocco. Done properly this would have taken up until about September 2011 by which time the Egyptians would have been able to organise themselves to more neatly overthrow Mubarak when he tried to steal the election. With all this swirling around it's borders the pressure would have forced Muammer Qaddafi to hand over power to his son Saif al-Islam bringing to fruition a peaceful transfer to democracy which had been nearly ten years in the making.

It's a shame then that Egypt went off early and the UN decided to declare war on Libya. So instead we have a civil war in Libya that is destabilising the newly free Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen is sinking further into chaos and unrest in Syria is threatening to ignite a wider middle eastern war.