MENA Crisis
what the numbers do not say about the human test

Strait of Hormuz Paralysed, Stock Markets in Free Fall

This Monday, 9 March, the war begun on 28 February enters its tenth day. The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil and LNG transited, is partially or totally paralysed. The consequences are immediate:

• The Brent barrel has surpassed 115 dollars, a rise of more than 30%.
• Tokyo's Nikkei index fell by 7% at the opening of trading.
• European stock markets opened sharply lower.

On the ground, strikes have spread across the entire region:

• Saudi Arabia: new drone attacks on the Shaybah oil field.
• United Arab Emirates: rockets on Abu Dhabi, two injured.
• Qatar: 313 people arrested for "false information" - but behind the informational crackdown, Doha is activating its mediation channels. Qatar, which has made strategic equidistance and the Al Jazeera lever its survival model as a micro-state, is probably the only regional actor positioned to speak to both sides. Its doctrine - influence without exposure, mediate without aligning - is a textbook case of decisional sovereignty at small scale.
• Bahrain: a desalination plant damaged.
• Kuwait: two border guards killed.

It would be imprudent to read this escalation without examining the strategic rationality of Tehran. Iran does not strike at random. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz follows an access denial doctrine - the capacity to render a strategic space unusable for the adversary without needing to control it. The Revolutionary Guards apply an asymmetric calculus: each tanker immobilised in the strait costs infinitely more to importing economies than to the Iranian forces that board it. For Gulf leaders engaged in diversification trajectories - Vision 2030 in Riyadh, global logistics hub in Abu Dhabi - this escalation poses an existential question: how to protect a post-oil development model when geography brings you back, within hours, to the status of a military target?

This crisis also cannot be read without the Israeli variable. The coordinated strikes against Iran fit within an escalation dynamic in which the Washington-Tel Aviv axis plays a catalyst role that every capital in the region evaluates in silence. For Gulf leaders, the question is not about taking sides - it is about preserving diplomatic room to manoeuvre in a conflict where the pressure to align is at its maximum. This capacity to refuse being trapped within a binary logic is, in itself, an exercise of decisional sovereignty.

The Four-Day Week, or the Art of Transforming a Constraint Into a Narrative

The Philippine government has made a decision that commands attention: transition to a four-day week for the public service, with an invitation to the private sector to do the same. Stated objective: reduce fossil energy consumption, cushion the impact of the price surge on households.

Analysts will debate the quantitative effectiveness of the measure. They will measure the barrels saved, the pesos preserved. That is their role.

What the coach sees is something else. I see a government that has understood that resilience is not merely a matter of stocks and ratios, but first of all a matter of collective narrative. By announcing a measure that touches the very organisation of life - work, time, family - this government says to its people: "We are traversing an ordeal together. We are asking you for an effort. But we start by applying it to ourselves."

This symmetry is crucial. A leader who demands sacrifices without sharing their weight loses, in silence, a portion of his legitimacy. A leader who sets the example creates a symbolic debt that the people recognise and, at the right moment, honours.

The question I put to the heads of state who read me is not: "What technical measure are you going to take?" It is: "What narrative will you offer your people so that they accept to walk with you through the night?"

Energy Dependence as a Mirror of Our Vulnerabilities

Morocco imports more than 90% of its energy needs. This dependence, the numbers state it bluntly. But the numbers do not say what it means in the daily lives of people.

It means that a decision taken in Tehran, a missile fired at a Saudi installation, a tanker boarded in the Strait of Hormuz ripples within weeks through the price of bread in Casablanca, the cost of transport in Marrakech, the electricity bill of a family in Tangier.

This near-instantaneous transmission of the shock, economists call it "imported inflation." The coach sees something else: the loss of sovereignty experienced from within. When what decides your daily life escapes those who have your trust, when the levers are elsewhere, held by actors you do not know, whom you have not elected, whom you cannot influence - then something breaks in the civic bond.

Moroccan leaders know this. They have engaged an ambitious energy transition, with the objective of bringing the share of renewables to more than 50% by 2030. But the transition takes time, and the crisis is here.

The question I put to leadership teams is not: "Do you have a plan?" It is: "Who in your entourage can tell you that you are tired without you taking it badly?"

The Solitude of Arbitration

Tunisia, a sister country, presents fragilities that economic analysis documents with precision: modest growth, persistent inflation, pressures on foreign exchange reserves, vulnerability to external shocks. But what IMF reports do not say is what those who must decide are experiencing.

They are living the solitude of arbitration.

No minister, no adviser, no cabinet can take in the president's place the decisions that displease. Should essential goods be subsidised to protect the most vulnerable, at the cost of widening the deficit? Or should price increases be passed on and risk social unrest? Should foreign exchange reserves be drawn upon to stabilise the currency, or should it be allowed to depreciate and import yet more inflation?

These questions, economists model. Technicians prepare scenarios. But at the end of the chain, there is a man or woman alone before his or her conscience, who must decide.

Beyond the immediate arbitrations, a quieter battle is being fought - that of mentalities. Structural reforms, even well designed, run up against a social fabric in which distrust of the state has been sedimenting over decades. The civil servant who slows down a file, the entrepreneur who circumvents the rule, the citizen who no longer believes in announcements - these are not irrational resistances. They are the scars of a social contract broken too many times. The Tunisian leader who wants to reform must therefore wage two simultaneous battles: one against the external crisis, the other against internal inertia. And the second is often more exhausting than the first, because it produces neither headlines nor international recognition.

This solitude, when it is not recognised and accompanied, can lead to paralysis or abandonment. The leader who no longer sleeps, who no longer confides his doubts to anyone, who carries alone the weight of the lives that depend on his choices - that man ends up making mistakes that nothing justified, save exhaustion.

The question I put to heads of state is not: "Do you have the right data?" It is: "To whom can you show your fatigue, on the day when you are too tired to hide it?"

The Silent Transmission of the Shock Toward the Continent

What analyses centred on the Gulf do not show is the speed at which the shock propagates toward West and Central Africa. The surge of the barrel to 115 dollars is not an abstract figure for Abidjan, Dakar, or Lagos. It translates into an immediate rise in fuel prices at the pump, into a costlier electricity supply for already fragile grids, into additional pressure on sovereign debts denominated in dollars.

Net oil-importing West African economies - Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ghana - do not have the foreign exchange reserves or the budgetary margins to absorb a shock of this magnitude without painful arbitrations. Ivory Coast devotes approximately 40% of its energy bill to hydrocarbon imports. Ghana, whose external debt has exceeded 70% of GDP since the 2023 restructuring, sees each additional dollar per barrel deepen an already critical deficit. At the ECOWAS scale, a barrel durably above 100 dollars represents an estimated annual additional cost of 12 to 15 billion dollars on the collective trade balance. For African "national champions" - enterprises in the structuring and internationalisation phase - the Hormuz crisis is a resilience test that puts the quality of their governance on trial.

Three Blind Spots of the Technocratic Reading

First blind spot - Reform fatigue. Leaders who have traversed the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine, then inflation, then this new crisis - these men and women are exhausted. Their energy is not infinite. The risk is that the most necessary reforms are postponed, that the most painful decisions are avoided, simply because no one has the strength to carry them anymore.

Second blind spot - The solitude of arbitration. Deciding alone wears one down. Deciding alone, without space to deposit doubts, without a compassionate gaze to receive one's fears - this ends up distorting judgment. The leader who has no one to talk to ends up talking only to himself. And what he tells himself is not always the truth.

Third blind spot - The symbolic dimension of the decision. Sobriety measures, calls for collective effort, gestures of solidarity - none of this is accessory. It is the cement without which no resilience policy holds. A president who reduces his own salary before asking for sacrifices, a minister who takes public transport, a central bank governor who explains in simple terms why the currency fluctuates - these gestures create a dynamic that no decree can equal.

Accompaniment of heads of state, ministers, and senior public officials - Africa, Arab World, International. ICF Compliance.

What Governance Coaching Can Learn From This Crisis

1. Create a space of strategic retreat. The temptation of "urgency-driven management" is the greatest enemy of quality decision-making. A leader who runs from one meeting to the next, who answers emails at midnight, who never takes time to breathe - that leader will end up making mistakes. There must be, in the organisation of governmental work, protected spaces where urgency is not addressed, but meaning is.

2. Share the psychological burden. No man, no woman is made to carry alone the weight of decisions that engage millions of lives. The psychological burden of power must be recognised for what it is: a reality, not a weakness. And this burden, to be sustainable, must be shared - in circles of trust, with peers, with practitioners for whom this is a profession.

3. Embody sobriety. Peoples are not naive. They know when their leaders demand sacrifices they do not apply to themselves. The credibility of a resilience policy rests first on example. A leader who embodies sobriety, who shows that he shares the effort, who communicates with transparency - that person creates a symbolic debt that the people recognises and, at the right moment, honours.