Moroccan Terrorism - The view from Lebanon.

The Dar Al Hayat from Lebanon has an article today on terrorism in Morocco. The piece is by Mohamed Ashab.

Three years have passed and Morocco still stands on the 'square of anxiety' caused by the suicide attacks in Casablanca and the consequent arrests, prosecutions, death sentences, and generations of reforms that touched on everything, from religious and social judiciary fields to security approaches.

Despite these facts, information surfaces every now and then regarding the dismantling of a terror cell here or there. It is likely that just as authorities try to track down the sources of blind terrorism in the phase of planning and recruiting followers inside the nation or in its near vicinity, these organizations are racing with space and time to announce their existence.

The Moroccan situation is not the target. Misleading and dangerous convictions may coincide with the exploitation of the religious dimension in sanctioning a moral reaction against the appearance of openness that contradicts the concept of 'Islamization' of society, a concept that is considered to be the umbrella for the neo-fanatics, like it was for the ancient apostates or the 'Khawarej'. They may also use it as an outlet for their bottled-up emotions in rejection of the values of modernization, mutual co-existence and acceptance of the 'other'. But they are still influenced by events and conflicts in other areas, the most recent indications of which was the fact that the majority of the cells dismantled in Morocco over the past three years focused on recruiting volunteers who wanted to join the Iraqi resistance in light of the continued US occupation.

These cells took up training positions in buffer zones on a triangle near the southern Sahara coast, taking advantage of terrain that is similar to that of Afghanistan, in the depth of the desert which shields these areas from border surveillance of movement, arms trade and smuggling, and illegal immigration.

While some of these cells succeeded in penetrating Iraq through efficient organization that extended across European countries, recruiting angry civilized youth of Moroccan origin, others substituted the concept of Holy War or 'Jihad' in Iraq with domestic Jihad. This means there is one source behind the hatching of terrorism that is capable of striking Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Madrid, London or anywhere else equally, as long as there are continually increasing hotspots that feed a sense of despair and increase animosities.

No Arab State, east or west, has ever been subject to a clash of this sort: the clash surpasses movements of rebellion and protest, and so does the reactions to it, that vary according to social, political and cultural settings.

The deterioration of security occurred with justifications of limited time and place. But it was not of the same quality as it is at present where the slogan of the 'war on terror' transcends all other wars and priorities.

Contrary to logic and common sense, which says that the more severe and direct pre-emptive strikes become, the more this phenomenon should recede; the opposite continues to hold true.

Not because the war on terror differs from tangible confrontations in pursuit of a tangible enemy, nor because the scope of this war is beyond the strategies recognized in any military or economic confrontation, but because these wars have branched and acquired new and different goals, and as a result, their consequences were reflected on different fronts.


It seems that the Arab States, as a result of setbacks in this war of universal dimensions, are the more likely candidate to pay the price. For at any rate, internal affairs in any given Arab country were not worse than they had always been, considering the increasing penetration of awareness of reform, the rising winds of democratic change, and the strengthened belief in the ability to realize the appropriate changes in line with individual needs.

Therefore, if such conditions were the main reason for growing radicalism, there would have been previous terrorist adventures trying to penetrate the Arab fabric in ways more dangerous than the current onslaught.

This means that the effect of this war will remain limited unless accompanied by other wars of a different kind against occupation and against the violation of dignity, feelings and the right for citizenship. On the Arab side, wars against poverty and discrimination become as important as the rest of the universal wars.

Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news