Pretty Face by Mark Dawson

Author:Mark Dawson [Dawson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unputdownable Thrillers
Published: 2025-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

52

Isabella went back to the riad, prepared a pot of coffee and took her laptop up to the terrace on the roof. She opened a VPN and began her research on the group of which she suspected Aicha and the others were members.

The movement had been dubbed the Dawn of Liberty and had begun as a small and secretive network of dissidents, intellectuals, and activists in the early 2010s. Isabella knew about the uprisings that had swept across the Arab world around then; local impetus in Morocco was provided by grievances over government corruption, police brutality, and economic inequality. The movement was said to have been founded by a mix of university students, human rights lawyers, and disillusioned former members of the ruling party. What started as peaceful protests and clandestine meetings quickly evolved into something more dangerous as the government cracked down, driving the movement underground.

Isabella searched again, and, after starting with the Wikipedia entry, followed links to more in-depth articles. The Dawn, as it was known, was focused on mobilising public sentiment through protests, speeches, and online campaigns. They advocated for democratic reform, transparency, and an end to the exploitation of the working class. But the government’s heavy-handed response—including arrests, forced disappearances, and the torture of activists—forced the group to reimagine its tactics. It fractured into cells, each operating independently to avoid infiltration by government spies.

A brutal government crackdown following a mass protest in Marrakesh led to the arrest of many of the group’s original leaders and marked a turning point in the movement’s history. With much of its leadership in prison or in exile, the younger, more radical wing of the group took control. They moved away from peaceful protest and began planning more direct, disruptive actions designed to undermine the state and expose its vulnerabilities.

Cells were scattered across the country. The movement no longer staged public protests, instead focusing on covert operations designed to embarrass the government, sow chaos, and bring attention to their cause. Membership was now reputed to be a mix of students, labour organisers, and disillusioned members of the military, all united by their opposition to the corrupt elite who controlled Morocco.

Isabella clicked again, following a link to a piece just published in the New York Times. The group’s activities were varied but all designed to disrupt the government’s grip on power. They relied on old-school methods of resistance: distributing underground newsletters, organising strikes in the city’s factories, graffitiing anti-government slogans in the medina. While the movement said that it would remain non-lethal, there was an increasing willingness to employ sabotage. Dawn of Liberty cells were responsible for small-scale attacks on government infrastructure; nothing deadly, but enough to create confusion and force the authorities to allocate more resources to internal security. These included targeted power outages in wealthy neighbourhoods, hacking traffic systems to cause gridlock, and disrupting government ceremonies with carefully timed explosions. They aimed not to kill but to inconvenience; their goal was to show Moroccans that the government could be embarrassed, its control shaken, and that their dissent could not be silenced.

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