'Moroccans are desperate: Years of political crackdown and lack of economic opportunities'

François Picard is pleased to welcome Aida Alami, New York Times World contributor. Drawing on her own field reporting at the Moroccan border, Alami challenges attempts to explain the mass crossing primarily through a theory of deliberate state orchestration. While acknowledging both Morocco’s history of leveraging migration in its relations with Spain and the possibility that security forces made tactical decisions on the day, Alami insists on distinguishing evidence from inference. Her reporting instead points toward an interaction between online misinformation, overwhelmed security forces, and a population already primed to migrate by political repression and limited economic opportunity.