A wave of unsettling accounts has been spreading across Moroccan social media for several weeks now, as travelers describe, one after another, hours-long waits, questioning they call humiliating, and in some cases outright refusal of entry at Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunisia.
The stories share a striking resemblance. Moroccan tourists and businesspeople, holding valid plane tickets, confirmed hotel bookings and all required paperwork, say they were held for hours in cramped waiting areas with no clear explanation of why they were being screened. Others say they were simply put on the next available flight back to Morocco despite having fully compliant travel documents, absorbing real financial losses along the way: non-refundable tickets, forfeited hotel nights, and canceled business plans.
What stands out most in these accounts is a shared sense of unequal treatment. Several travelers say they noticed passengers of other nationalities, standing in the very same line, being processed with far more courtesy and speed. A kind of blanket suspicion, they say, appears to surround Moroccan passports specifically, with no authority bothering to explain why.
As these accounts pile up, more voices are now asking whether these incidents reflect ordinary, tightened border-control practices, or whether they point to a broader pattern that deserves an official clarification. The question has moved well beyond the travelers directly affected: it now touches on the quality of consular and human relations between two countries that have long described themselves as close, bound by a shared language, culture and history.
Calls are growing for Tunisian authorities to provide precise answers: what criteria are actually applied to Moroccan travelers on arrival? Is there a differentiated procedure based on nationality? And, perhaps most importantly, what steps will be taken to prevent similar cases from recurring in the weeks ahead?
Pending any official clarification, the unease keeps building, fed daily by fresh testimonies. For many Moroccan travelers, Tunis-Carthage Airport has come to carry an apprehension that simply did not exist before, one that, if left unaddressed, could weigh on exchanges between the two shores of the Mediterranean for some time to come.
