The invasion last week of the Spanish city of Ceuta by some 60,000 Moroccans, mostly young military-age men, was a useful demonstration of how mass migration and indeed entire populations can be weaponized and deployed in what amounts to hybrid warfare against sovereign nations.
In this particular case, the reason for the deployment likely has to do with the Moroccan state’s longstanding irredentist claims in North Africa, which include the coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla—the plazas de soberanía along the North African coast that have belonged to Spain for more than four centuries but which Morocco has claimed since its independence in 1956.
