The Casbah Connection
Why Morocco is producing some of the world's most feared terrorists
SIDI MOUMEN, MOROCCO--There is too much garbage around this shantytown outside central Casablanca, and too little hope. This squalid settlement was the home of 11 of the 12 suicide bombers who made their way into the city two years ago and detonated their deadly charges in five different places, killing 33 people, along with themselves. The attacks stunned this North African kingdom on the western edge of the Islamic world, a place that prides itself on showing a face of Islamic tolerance and moderation--and on welcoming western tourists who want to safely dip their toes into the exoticism of North Africa.
The attacks put that image at risk and raised alarms that Morocco was suddenly facing an extremist onslaught. In response, the government cracked down swiftly on suspected militants and accelerated political reforms and other moves to curb Morocco's grinding poverty. But despite official promises to yank out the roots of terror--eradicate the slums and ease the problems of joblessness and illiteracy--not much has improved for the 60,000 residents of Carriere Thomas, as this part of Sidi Moumen is known. Some replacement housing is under construction elsewhere, and the police maintain a heavier presence than before. Veiled women still lug 5-liter jugs of water away from the communal water tap. Sheep and the odd cow graze on rotting trash. Hunks of metal and bricks hold down the corrugated metal roofs, and no one has plumbing. Kids kick a soccer ball beside the small, green-and-white mosque where some of the bombers prayed; it is now shut for good.
Residents complain of having to pay baksheesh to government officials, of too little work and too much time on their hands. Nearby, the bustle of Casablanca, the country's commercial center, with its French-inspired architecture and chic nightspots, offers a jarring counterpoint to their grim life here. It's no wonder one Moroccan official calls Carriere Thomas and places like it "no man's land." Says Khaled Zerrouki, an unemployed 22-year-old man: "Nothing has changed. . . . They [high officials] know how to build their big villas but not housing for the poor. I'm boiling."
Zerrouki and several other young men gather under a mural of a Moroccan village with a picturesque casbah, the kind the tourists like to visit. Rashid, 36, works part time in a textile factory. Asked about his hopes, he laughs bitterly, referring to the thousands of his countrymen who have already left Morocco for Europe: "We all want to leave. If I have an opportunity to go, even illegally, I will."
Government officials concede that extremists still inhabit the slums, where some 10 percent of Morocco's 32 million people live. However, the young here, speaking with a visitor under the watchful eyes of police, say they haven't seen any of the terrorist recruiters who used to play soccer with the Casablanca bombers and who spun visions of paradise for the would-be martyrs. But not all of the answers from the shantytown are reassuring. Recruiters or not, the disillusionment is such that it's not hard to see a potential breeding ground for terrorists. "When the bad people came," says Abdelrazak Khoudri, 20, who is jobless, "they could have brainwashed any one of us."
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