Poverty and Terrorism.

British-based North Africa analyst George Joffe has his say about the links between fundamentalism and poverty:

Aware of the risk of a violent backlash to tough security measures, Moroccan authorities have tried to improve conditions in the state of 30 million people where nearly 14 percent live below the poverty line and over 40 percent are illiterate.

In May, around the second anniversary of the Casablanca bombings, King Mohammed unveiled a national development plan expected to cost 1.0 billion dirhams ($114.3 million) a year, which initially targets the worst slums and is to extend to hundreds of rural councils and dilapidated urban areas.

"Morocco's problems relate to global poverty, not to global terrorism," said Joffe.

The main source of popular opposition in the kingdom, the Islamist group al-Adl wal-Ihsane (Justice and Charity), which shuns violence and has a strong following in universities and poor districts, is banned from politics but allowed to carry out charity and other work linked mainly to education.

Morocco's moderate Justice and Development Party, the only Islamist political grouping allowed to operate legally, surged in 2002 parliamentary polls to become the biggest opposition group in the assembly, trebling its seats.

Attending a European-Mediterranean summit in Barcelona this week on countering terrorism, Rabat's Minister-delegate for Foreign Affairs Taieb Fassi Fihri insisted each country should go at its own pace on democratic reforms.

"We are doing it for ourselves, by ourselves and because it matches a uniquely Moroccan vision," he told France's Liberation newspaper on Monday. "But in this area, just as with terrorism, we have a dialogue (with Europe). And it stops there."

The full article can be found here: Morocco sees poverty at root of Islamist militancy

Tags: Morocco, Fes, Jihad, Terrorism,