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Morocco: Algeria mark II?
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| 06 September 2002 |
By Stephen Ulph
With typical reticence to 'expose family secrets' it was only after an article in the French magazine L'Express that the world knew that the Moroccan authorities had arrested three alleged al-Qaeda operatives in May, who had been planning a series of attacks against tourist-heavy targets in the country in addition to a potential suicide strike against US naval vessels of the 6th Fleet passing through the Strait of Gibraltar.
Hilal al-Asiri, Zubayr Tabiti and 'Abd Allah al-Ghamidi, three Saudi Qaidis arrested on 11 May in Casablanca, had reputedly received instructions from the Yemeni 'Abd al-Rahim Nashiri - alias Mollah Bilal, commander of al-Qaeda operations in the Maghreb and Middle East - to carry out spectacular attacks in Morocco.
Three targets were singled out for attack: tourist coaches pulling in on the route from Rabat to Casablanca; a grand café at Place Jemaa el-Fna in the centre of Marrakesh, traditionally a site with a high density of foreign tourists; and an American naval vessel.
Apparently planned at end of 2001 from Pakistan, where Mollah Bilal is still in hiding, the operation depended on the perfect merging of the Saudis into Moroccan society.
This they achieved by illegal temporary ('urfi) marriages with two Moroccan women, and by their renting inconspicuous apartments in poor areas of Casablanca and Rabat under the cover of fabric importers, furniture salesmen or Gulf employment agents. Communication was via frequently changed electronic addresses on the internet.
Despite their elaborate caution, they had been marked men for quite some time. Two years ago a Moroccan suspect was arrested by police in connection with the attacks on American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam.
His information, added to that from detainees in Pakistan and Guantanamo following the allied campaign in Afghanistan, allowed the Moroccan authorities to focus in on their activities.
However, even they were dismayed to discover how the network was able to operate 'like fish in the water' in an environment of hitherto underestimated Islamist extremism in the country. Moroccans have long considered themselves immune from the radical excesses of their eastern neighbour Algeria.
The received wisdom on Morocco was that the King, as Amir al-Mu'minin (commander of the faithful), effectively immunised the society from radical Islamist mobilisation, an immunity which his 'king of the poor' image was helping to secure, through depriving the Islamists of their social recruiting ground.
In Morocco there is an Islamist-leaning party represented in parliament, in the form of the Justice and Development Party, while the torch of ideological Islam is carried by al-'Adl wa al-Ihsan (Justice and Charity) headed by the elderly, scholarly Shaykh Abdessalam Yassine, who has openly declared the movement's disinterest in politics, in order to concentrate on the Moroccan social fabric.
Is a third column of Islamism emerging, one committed to political violence on the Algerian model?
Almost unremarked by the Western media, the security services in the country have been somewhat busy of late. Over the last few months, no fewer than 30 Moroccans have been killed in obscure circumstances.
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