The Mauritanian Kadehine movement emerged in the late 1960s as a clandestine movement that confronted the one-party regime of the Mauritanian People’s Party (PPM) and its neocolonial dependence upon France. Together with an umbrella movement known as the National Democratic Movement (MND), the Kadehine included student and women’s branches that challenged social stratification and hierarchies in Saharan society, while also redefining Mauritanian nationalism beyond Arab/non-Arab Black divisions. Incorporating Maoist, Marxist-Leninist and Third World liberation concepts into their movement, the Kadehine enjoyed such widespread support and mobilization that several of its demands were met during the early 1970s. By the time the movement announced the formation of the Kadehine Party (PKM) in 1973, the state responded by offering to incorporate members of the PKM into the government. Those who accepted this offer were known as mithaqiyyin, or “chartists,” for signing an agreement with the PPM. This cooptation split the movement and by 1975 its momentum and influence had significantly diminished; the following year, the war over Western Sahara transformed regional politics. In recent years, a number of former Kadehine have published memoirs, and these accounts, along with interviews, shed light on both the making of a generation of “militant intellectuals,” such as Fadi Bardawil has explored in Lebanon (Bardawil 2020), as well as the “unmaking” of political militant subjectivity. Members seek to make sense of their involvement in this revolutionary movement, and their relationship to its legacies in the present. These sources provide a framework for asking how former members – many of whom subsequently remained involved in politics, sometimes as officials and representatives of the (nonrevolutionary) state – situate and temporalize their involvement in the politics of revolution and, later, of governing. How do the legacies of the Kadehine movement relate to ongoing projects of social change in Mauritania? Moving beyond the periodization of the movement itself, memoirs by and interviews with former Kadehine members foreground the project of cooptation and its role as conduit between revolutionary pasts in the present.

Muhammad Qashat was a Libyan poet, scholar, and diplomat whose work for the revolutionary Qaddafi regime straddled the line between ethnographer and political provocateur. As Director of the Tripoli-based Center for Saharan Affairs he travelled widely across the Sahara, Sahel, and the Arabian Peninsula interviewing and advising groups like the Polisario, Tuareg nationalists, and the Dhofar Liberation Front. His extensive body of political and scholarly writings articulate an anti-colonial ideology rooted in the landscapes of the Arab nation. This paper uses Qashat's publications like The Tuareg: Arabs of the Sahara and From Dhofar to Sagia Hamra to explore his revolutionary environmental imaginary, in which the desert (al-badia or al-sahara) both determined key elements of pan-Arab national identity and provided the necessary material platform for launching revolutionary armed struggle. These writings reflect a moment in the closing years of decolonization in which the Libyan state attempted to support and harness the global appeal of leftist activism. As scholars turn their attention to lost trajectories of the Maghrebi Left, Qashat's work reveals an anticolonial environmental imaginary which attempted to link various armed movements across the region to the Qaddafi regime. Long since discredited and forgotten, this Libyan vision of desert decolonization was nonetheless a possible future which held significant appeal in the 1970s and 80s.

In light of recent interest in the historical Arab Lefts (Leopardi 2020, Bardawil 2020, Guirguis 2020), where the Maghrebi radical experiences are receiving increasing attention (Guabli 2020, Bennani-Chraïbi 2022), and in consideration of the large lack of focus regarding women’s political participation in the Left, this paper aims to discuss the role of women in the Moroccan Marxist-Leninist movement in the Seventies and beyond. In her groundbreaking study on the case of the militant Arwa Salih, Hanan Hammad (2016) shed lights on how women’s militancy in the Egyptian radical Left was frequently undermined by various form of abuse. A similar, although not exclusive, reading can be applied in the Moroccan case. The gender perspective on the historical Left, which has yet to be undertaken in many other Maghrebi contests, constitutes indeed a viable approach to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the Arab Lefts. Drawing on memoirs, Marxist-Leninist documentation, and personal interviews, this contribution examines the female participation in the Moroccan Marxist-Leninist groups and the reasons of their later disengagement. It demonstrates how, on the one hand, the organizations conceptualized women’s contributions to the proletarian cause by negating gender identity, while on the other, women militants saw the need to integrate class struggle with the gender component of oppression. For this aim, the emergence of the first female cellule inside the Marxist-Leninist movement, which was entirely formed of women quite critical of the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, will be traced back to its inception. The history of the Moroccan radical Left is inextricably linked to the regime’s heavy political persecution during the Years of Lead. The contribution investigates how Marxist-Leninist cellules operated in clandestinely, revealing the peculiarity of women’s political imprisonment. Here a very strong intellectual output arose, sustaining the search for the gender question inside the class struggle (El Bouih, 2001; Menebhi, 1978). Finally, the contribution provides a reading of how women militants disengaged following the Marxist-Leninist movement’s collapse, only to reactivate their activism within the Moroccan women’s rights movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. It will be emphasized that, also in this new political context, continual confrontations, and negotiations with the successor factions of the Marxist-Leninist movement occurred, in the continuing effort to further the inclusion of women’s issues in the political agenda of the Moroccan Left.

This paper explores the ecological narratives and imaginaries of the Moroccan radical left, analyzing how environmental discourse is integrated into their broader ideological and political agendas. The radical left in Morocco, comprising several political parties and movements, has historically articulated a critique of neoliberal policies and their environmental impacts, advocating for alternative, sustainable models of development. This paper delves into the conceptual frameworks and narratives employed by these actors to mobilize support and articulate their visions for an ecologically sustainable future, rooted in social justice and equity. Adopting a qualitative approach, this paper draws on a range of sources, including party manifestos, publications, interviews, and analysis of protest movements. It situates the Moroccan case within the broader context of global environmental politics and (radical-) leftist ecological thought, offering a comparative lens through which to understand the specificity of Moroccan ecological imaginaries, and the linkages and influences that shape it. The research identifies key themes in the Moroccan Left's emerging ecological discourse, including critiques of capitalist exploitation of natural resources, food sovereignty goals, and the integration of indigenous knowledge systems in environmental stewardship. Moreover, the study highlights the role of ecological issues in shaping political activism and identity among the Moroccan left, demonstrating how environmental concerns are interwoven with demands for democratic governance, human rights, and socioeconomic change. This approach reveals the potential for ecological issues to serve as a catalyst for broader social and political transformations, challenging traditional narratives of environmentalism as a secondary concern to economic and political struggles. This study contributes to the emerging scholarship on “Green” politics in the MENA region, offering insights into the ways in which ecological concerns are mobilizing new forms of political engagement and discourse. By examining the ecological imaginaries and narratives of the Moroccan left, this study underscores the significance of environmental issues in contemporary political movements and highlights the potential for alliances in pursuit of more sustainable and equitable futures. In doing so, it not only enriches our understanding of leftist politics in Morocco, but also contributes to the broader debates on the intersections of environmentalism, politics, and social change in the MENA region.