Abdeslam Khalafi Demands Complete Budgetary Parity Between Amazigh and Arabic
Speaking on behalf of the Left Alliance, Benjelloun sharply criticized the government’s allocation of two billion dirhams to support the Amazigh language, arguing that authorities had marginalized Arabic by failing to grant it an equivalent envelope. In response, some observers dismissed the fund as a mere political ploy intended to sidestep the Amazigh issue without delivering tangible outcomes, mirroring the fate of earlier funding initiatives.
Abdeslam Khalafi declared that he was prepared to forfeit the two billion dirhams on one non-negotiable condition: that the Amazigh language receive the exact same budget allocated to Arabic. In particular, he demanded an army of Amazigh-language instructors comparable to that deployed for Arabic, which numbers nearly 400,000 teachers. His demands also called for more than 3,000 media professionals, over 5,141 judges, and upwards of 17,000 lawyers pleading daily in Arabic before the nation’s courts.
These demands extend across the state apparatus, including the Ministry of the Interior, which mobilizes more than 171,000 civil servants operating exclusively in Arabic. Similarly, at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, roughly 7,000 civil servants alongside more than 27,000 preachers and religious advisers officiate in Arabic across mosques, radio, and television. Khalafi also demanded staffing levels equal to the 1,500 Ministry of Culture employees who work in Arabic and disburse millions of dirhams each year to Arab culture and artists, in addition to the more than 584,000 administrative personnel in national education and higher education.
In broadcasting, Abdeslam Khalafi urged the creation of 12 Amazigh-language television channels to match the country’s 12 Arabic-language networks, whose programming is more than 90 percent Arabic. This stands in sharp contrast to the Tamazight channel, which broadcasts for only six hours a day. He further called for the establishment of 39 radio stations broadcasting around the clock, rather than relying on a single Amazigh radio station created during the French Protectorate, which still struggles to secure nationwide coverage and produce programming on par with Arabic-language stations.
Examining demographic trends, Khalafi contrasted the historical trajectory of both languages. He noted that Arabic speakers numbered no more than one million in 1886, yet today represent 99 percent of the population. Conversely, Amazigh speakers fell from more than six million in 1886 to just 24 percent of the Moroccan population by October 24, 2026, a decline he attributed to systematic Arabization policies.
Khalafi asserted that the billions invested and the vast legions of public servants mobilized across all sectors over the past eight decades are what secured Arabic its dominant status while weakening the Amazigh language. He urged Benjelloun to calculate the actual state resources dedicated to each language, maintaining that any sincere advocacy requires the government to treat the Amazigh language as it has treated Arabic for decades, without treating its funding as excessive.
Arabic version | French version
