Strategic Report

Geopolitical Horizons Institute (IGH)

Emirati Cognitive Warfare Against Morocco

Introduction: Morocco in the Crosshairs

The Kingdom of Morocco, a rising diplomatic power and pivotal actor between Africa, Europe, and the Arab world, is today the target of cognitive warfare of unprecedented intensity. This war is waged neither through weapons nor treaties. It unfolds through narratives, perceptions, information flows, and collective emotions. It aims to undermine monarchical legitimacy, fragment national cohesion, and reconfigure the balance of influence in the Maghreb and African spheres.

Since 2024, several converging signals—massive data leaks, disinformation campaigns, hostile media narratives—indicate a coordinated, transnational strategy piloted from Abu Dhabi. The United Arab Emirates, under the impetus of Tahnoon bin Zayed, head of intelligence services, have structured an offensive cognitive warfare doctrine, with Morocco becoming its laboratory.

This warfare does not seek to conquer territory, but to occupy mental space. It does not aim to overthrow a regime, but to erode its legitimacy. It does not attack physical borders, but symbolic boundaries: trust, stability, loyalty. Morocco, as an established monarchy, proactive diplomacy, and emerging African power, represents a strategic target for Emirati ambitions.

The Mehdi Hijaouy Affair: Scripted Dissidence

The Mehdi Hijaouy affair constitutes a textbook case of manufactured dissidence. Presented as the persecuted former number two of external intelligence services, Hijaouy becomes the vehicle for a victimization narrative calibrated for Western sensibilities. This narrative relies on emotional staging, viral amplification, and algorithmic scripting that betrays external coordination.

The narrative unfolds in three phases: denunciation of Moroccan security practices, staging of individual suffering, and appeal for international solidarity. It is relayed by anonymous accounts, TikTok avatars, Telegram pseudonyms, and videos edited with Western visual codes (saturation, dramatic music, bilingual subtitles).

Behind this facade emerges a far more complex architecture. The provided documents reveal a sophisticated technical infrastructure: offshore servers, anonymized VPNs, generative AI for visuals, GMT+4 time coordination. This apparatus corresponds to Emirati operation standards already observed in Libya (support for Haftar), Sudan (backing RSF), Yemen (Southern fragmentation), and against Qatar (media campaigns).

Hijaouy is not an isolated dissident. He is a vector. A prototype. A tool. His figure is constructed, amplified, recycled. It serves to test European media receptivity, mobilize diaspora relays, and create a fracture between the monarchy and youth. He is the face of a cognitive war that dare not speak its name.

Jabaroot: The Digital Arm of Subversion

The Jabaroot Telegram channel constitutes the operational core of cognitive warfare against Morocco. Initially claimed as Algerian, it operates according to typically Emirati logics: nocturnal broadcasting (GMT+4), leak scripting, pseudonym usage, offshore infrastructure.

Since April 2024, Jabaroot has disseminated massive leaks on Moroccan institutions:

• 2 million CNSS files: identities, banking data, medical histories
• 4 terabytes of ANCFCC data: land titles, public figures’ properties
• 35,000 Ministry of Justice files: magistrates, judicial agents, internal procedures

These leaks are not raw. They are scripted. Each publication is accompanied by an emotional narrative, moral framing, and mobilization appeal. The channel presents itself as a truth activist but acts as a fragmentation agent. It does not seek to inform—it seeks to fracture.

Technical analysis shows sophisticated infrastructure: servers based in Cyprus, Seychelles, Latvia; anonymized VPNs; generative AI for visuals, avatars, narratives. This infrastructure corresponds to that used by the UAE in other operations. It allows source obfuscation, relay multiplication, and information space saturation.

Jabaroot is more than a channel. It is a warfare platform. A subversion interface. A destabilization laboratory. It does not target only institutions—it targets trust. It does not attack structures—it attacks symbols.

Le Monde: Media Synchronization and Decline Narrative

The series of articles published by Le Monde in August 2025 on the Moroccan monarchy cannot be interpreted as mere journalistic investigation. It fits within a coordinated information sequence, where media narratives join digital operations conducted by entities like Jabaroot. The timing, content, framing, and reactions it provokes reveal strategic convergence.

Le Monde deploys a monarchical decline narrative, articulated around three axes: King Mohammed VI’s health, internal struggles within the Makhzen, and succession enigma. The sovereign is presented as weakened, distant, surrounded by an opaque system. Reforms are characterized as incomplete, political transition as uncertain, and the general climate as that of an « end of reign. »

This narrative, while based on real elements, is decontextualized, dramatized, scripted, and amplified. It relies on anonymous sources, speculation, and emotional tension. It is picked up, recycled, and amplified by Emirati digital relays, notably Jabaroot, which simultaneously disseminates targeted leaks on institutions mentioned in the articles.

Moroccan reactions are unanimous: political parties, media, institutions denounce a hostile media campaign, orchestrated to delegitimize the monarchy. Several voices point to convergence between Le Monde and Emirati digital structures, suggesting strategic synchronization. The newspaper is accused of travestying the reign, transforming the monarchy into fictional spectacle, and fueling social tensions.

Mapping Emirati Influence Networks

The cognitive warfare waged against Morocco relies on a complex, segmented, modular architecture. It mobilizes human, digital, media, and diplomatic relays. Here is an analytical mapping of the main influence vectors:

Control Center

• Tahnoon bin Zayed: intelligence chief, architect of hybrid warfare
• ADNOC, DP World: logistic and financial arms, African port control
• Tawasun Media, VisionBridge: shell companies for content production, based in Dubai and London

Digital Infrastructure

• Jabaroot (Telegram): leak dissemination platform, emotional narratives, cognitive scripting
• TikTok, X, YouTube: viral amplification, anonymous avatars, pseudonyms
• Offshore VPNs: Cyprus, Seychelles, Latvia—source anonymization
• Generative AI: deepfake creation, avatars, emotional narratives

Media Relays

• Le Monde: monarchical decline narrative, dramatization
• Bussola Institute: pro-Gulf think tank, based in Brussels
• Euronews: formerly UAE-funded, favorable narrative dissemination

Human Relays

• Influencers: Hicham Jerando, TikTok avatars, X pseudonyms
• Diaspora: networks in France, Belgium, mobilized to recycle hostile narratives
• Shell associations: Tawasun Media Consulting, VisionBridge Media Ltd

This mapping reveals a modular strategy, where each relay plays a specific role: production, amplification, legitimization, recycling. It enables multi-level dissemination, information space saturation, and perception fragmentation.

Emirati Cognitive Warfare Doctrine: A Global Strategy

The cognitive warfare waged against Morocco is not exceptional. It fits within a global doctrine, structured by Tahnoon bin Zayed, and deployed across several sensitive geopolitical zones. This doctrine rests on three pillars:

Information Control

The UAE invests massively in media, think tanks, and digital platforms. They fund structures like Bussola Institute, sponsor events, and influence narratives disseminated in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Their objective is to shape perceptions, normalize their model, and delegitimize their competitors.

Cognitive Projection

Emirati doctrine relies on manufacturing dissidence, using deepfakes, creating avatars, and disseminating emotional narratives. It mobilizes generative AI, pseudonyms, VPNs, and viral platforms. It aims to saturate the information space, fragment loyalties, and create a climate of mistrust.

Parallel Diplomacy

The UAE conducts discrete diplomacy, based on bilateral agreements, economic partnerships, and parliamentary influence. They mobilize political relays, consultants, lobbyists, and influence networks. Their objective is to neutralize counterpowers, align decisions, and strengthen their strategic presence.

This doctrine has been observed in Libya (support for Haftar), Sudan (backing RSF), Yemen (Southern fragmentation), against Qatar (media campaigns), and now against Morocco. It is systemic, transnational, and adaptable. It does not seek to conquer—it seeks to control.

Why Morocco is Targeted

Morocco’s targeting by the UAE is neither opportunistic nor contingent. It fits within a precise geostrategic logic, based on influence rivalry, diplomatic competition, and cognitive projection. Three factors structure this hostility:

A Stable Monarchy in an Unstable Environment

Morocco embodies a form of monarchical stability rare in the Arab world. Its monarchy is rooted, legitimate, and supported by a popular majority. It combines tradition and modernity, authority and reform. This stability constitutes an anomaly in a regional environment marked by chaotic transitions, military regimes, and fragmented states.

For the UAE, seeking to impose their own authoritarian, technocratic, and centralized model, Morocco represents a competing alternative. A monarchy that succeeds without depending on Abu Dhabi is a symbolic threat.

Proactive African Diplomacy

Morocco has developed ambitious African diplomacy since 2016, based on economic partnerships, bilateral agreements, and institutional presence (return to the African Union, Sahel leadership, OCS, etc.). This diplomacy directly collides with Emirati ambitions in East Africa, the Sahel, and port corridors.

The UAE, via DP World, seeks to control African logistics flows. Morocco, via Tangier Med, Casablanca Finance City, and its regional alliances, offers an alternative. This rivalry translates into an influence war, where cognitive warfare becomes a neutralization tool.

Institutional Legitimacy Difficult to Attack Frontally

Unlike other Arab regimes, Morocco has institutional legitimacy based on history, religion, reform, and diplomacy. It is difficult to attack frontally without encountering popular, diplomatic, and media resistance. Hence the resort to cognitive warfare: delegitimize without confronting, fragment without overthrowing, undermine without declaring.

Converging Evidence of Cognitive Warfare

Cross-analysis of provided documents, Le Monde publications, Telegram leaks, and Moroccan political reactions establishes indisputable convergence. This convergence rests on four levels:

Narrative Synchronization

Le Monde’s narratives on the king’s health, internal struggles, and incomplete reforms are picked up, amplified, and scripted by Jabaroot. The same keywords, figures, and tensions are recycled in digital content.

Institution Targeting

Jabaroot’s leaks precisely target institutions mentioned in Le Monde articles: CNSS, ANCFCC, Justice, Makhzen. This targeting is not random—it is strategic. It aims to reinforce media narrative with digital evidence.

Viral Amplification

Digital relays disseminate the same narratives, with emotional, visual, and linguistic variations. TikTok, X, YouTube, Telegram are used to saturate information space, create resonance loops, and mobilize specific audiences (youth, diasporas, activists).

Political Reactions

Moroccan political parties, institutions, and media denounce a coordinated campaign, associating Le Monde and Jabaroot in destabilization logic. This denunciation is unanimous, structured, and based on factual elements.

Cognitive Attack Typology

Cognitive warfare waged against Morocco unfolds in successive waves, each targeting a specific dimension of national legitimacy. Here is an analytical typology:

Each wave is scripted, amplified, recycled. It relies on technical infrastructure, emotional strategy, and saturation logic. It aims to create a climate of mistrust, fragment loyalties, and weaken the Kingdom’s cognitive resilience.

Range of Possible Moroccan Responses

Facing systematic, transnational, and scripted cognitive warfare, Morocco has several strategic options to structure a response based on monitoring, modeling, counter-narration, and proactive diplomacy. Analysis of Moroccan institutional reactions reveals eight potential response axes:

Institutional Cognitive Monitoring

The Kingdom could consider creating a dedicated entity, attached to the National Security Council, tasked with mapping information attacks in real-time, identifying hostile relays (human, digital, media), and producing alert bulletins and strategic notes. This cell would integrate OSINT experts, social psychology, cybersecurity, and strategic communication specialists.

Legal Neutralization of Hostile Relays

An international legal approach could include establishing a database of structures, accounts, pseudonyms, and platforms involved in cognitive warfare. International legal procedures could target shell companies (VisionBridge, Tawasun Media), platforms disseminating leaks (Telegram, TikTok), and individuals identified as active relays, mobilizing international conventions on cybersecurity, data protection, and disinformation combat.

Training and Awareness

A national awareness program on cognitive warfare techniques could target national and regional newsrooms, Moroccan influencers on TikTok, YouTube, and X, as well as diaspora communities. The objective would be to strengthen information resilience, avoid involuntary viralization of hostile narratives, and create organic counter-narratives.

Counter-Narrative Production

Investment in creating narrative content valorizing monarchical stability, social and economic reforms, and proactive African diplomacy could use the same visual codes as adversaries: short videos, emotional music, bilingual subtitles, viral dissemination.

Cooperation with Digital Platforms

Partnerships with TikTok, X, and YouTube could enable identification of hostile content, requesting removal of illegal leaks, and proposing certified alternative content. A Moroccan reporting and moderation interface could be developed.

Transparent Institutional Communication

An institutional communication campaign could expose cognitive warfare mechanisms, name involved structures, and mobilize public opinion around information sovereignty. This campaign should be educational, not paranoid, and based on verifiable evidence.

International Legal Actions

Legal actions against leak authors (Jabaroot), hosts, and financiers could mobilize international law on data protection, cybercrime conventions, and judicial cooperation mechanisms.

Reinforced Proactive Diplomacy

Using diplomatic channels could inform African and European partners of ongoing cognitive warfare, propose an information sovereignty charter, and create a coalition of countries targeted by similar operations. Morocco could thus become a regional leader in combating cognitive warfare.

Strategic Cross-Analysis Conclusion

The cognitive warfare waged against Morocco reveals the emergence of a new conflict paradigm in the Mediterranean and African space. This war mobilizes neither tanks nor missiles, but algorithms and emotions. It seeks neither territorial conquest nor regime overthrow, but legitimacy erosion and loyalty fragmentation.

The Emirati infrastructure deployed against Rabat demonstrates unprecedented technical sophistication and strategic coordination. It transforms subversion into industry, disinformation into doctrine, manipulation into diplomacy. This transformation marks a geopolitical turning point: mental space becomes battlefield, information becomes weapon, perception becomes stakes.

For Morocco, this cognitive warfare simultaneously constitutes a threat and an opportunity. A threat because it targets the symbolic foundations of monarchy and national cohesion. An opportunity because it reveals the Kingdom’s strategic importance and validates its African diplomatic trajectory. By resisting this cognitive warfare, Morocco can assert its political model, strengthen its regional alliances, and consolidate its position as an emerging power.

Annexes

Chronology of Key Events

Cognitive Vulnerability Matrix

Operational Glossary

Cognitive warfare: strategy aimed at influencing perceptions, emotions, and behaviors of a target population.

Narrative: structured story, meaningful, used to guide opinions.

Offshore infrastructure: servers, VPNs, hosts located outside national territory.

Manufactured dissidence: artificially constructed opposition figure to serve a strategic objective.

Information saturation: multiplication of content to drown competing narratives.

Footnotes

¹ Ecofin Agency, « UAE plans to invest $6.5 billion in Angola’s economy, » April 2024.

² BNP Paribas Economic Research, « UAE: What strategy against transition risk?, » May 2024.

³ World Bank, « Global Economic Prospects Middle East and North Africa, » January 2025.

⁴ IGH internal documentation on Emirati hybrid warfare operations, compiled from OSINT sources, August 2025.

⁵ Technical analysis of offshore infrastructures used by Jabaroot channel, conducted by IGH in collaboration with independent cybersecurity experts, August 2025.