Last year King Mohammed VI, Hassan's son, established the official Equity and Reconciliation Commission, to lay bare what Moroccans often call the terror of his father's rule and to establish reparations for some 13,000 victims. In Morocco, many reformers believe, an essential first step in the creation of a more democratic country is an open reckoning with the abuses that the system spawned in the past. That effort shows the profound limits that real change faces even among Arab nations that have taken tangible steps toward political openness.