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."
In the shadows. Morocco's shantytowns, or bidonvilles , seem to be producing terrorists who seek to wreak havoc across Europe--from the Netherlands and Belgium to France and Spain. Most Moroccans in Western Europe live peaceably, but their reputation as reliable workers and stout family men has lent cover to a lethal few to range across Europe's open borders. A shadowy group linked to al Qaeda operates disparate cells under the banner of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a network thought responsible for the bombings both in Casablanca on May 16, 2003, and at Madrid's Atocha Station on March 11, 2004. The Madrid attacks left 191 people dead and 1,500 wounded; most of the suspects are Moroccan. In France, 13 more Moroccans were arrested last year as alleged members of Islamic terrorist groups. In Belgium, most of the terror suspects nabbed in the past two years have come from that country's Moroccan community. In the Netherlands, men of Moroccan origin await trial for the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a descendant of the famed painter, and for plotting other attacks.
The problem is big--and may be getting bigger. Spain's leading antiterrorism judge, Baltasar Garzon, has declared the Morocco connection "the gravest problem Europe faces today with this kind of terrorism." As many as 1,000 al Qaeda followers and 100 terrorist cells may have burrowed into Morocco, Garzon estimates. Authorities in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, cannot locate 400 veterans of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and they have placed some 2,000 people under antiterror surveillance. A senior European counterterrorism official calls Morocco "the priority country" for sharing intelligence. Adds a senior Bush administration official, "Extremism has deep roots in Morocco."
This is the Moroccan conundrum: Why has such a hospitable society spawned so many jihadists willing to kill and die for an ideology almost universally condemned here as un-Moroccan?
The stakes in Morocco are high--and not only for the stability of a U.S. ally and a force for moderation in the Arab and Islamic worlds. President Bush's foreign policy emphasizes counterterrorism and democratization--and both roads run straight through Morocco. Moroccan and U.S. officials alike describe their counterterrorism coordination as superb--" among the best," in the words of one American expert. The Bush administration has singled out Morocco and its young monarch as exemplars of the reforms it is promoting in the Middle East and North Africa. In the past year, Washington picked Morocco for its first free-trade pact in Africa, elevated it to a major non-NATO ally, encouraged Rabat to host the first regional forum on democratic reform, and made it the only additional country eligible for a pot of aid called the Millennium Challenge Account. Says a senior U.S. official: "We put Rabat as a model."
Combustible mix. It is a model, however, that is at risk both from the small cells of violent extremists and from a larger segment of Moroccans now gravitating toward Islamist politics. Some outside analysts see a combustible mix in Morocco's poverty, its lack of full democracy, and the lure of Islamist ideas. "When you connect all these dots," says John Entelis, director of Middle East studies at Fordham University, "you see a picture of violence and possible terrorism." A senior U.S. official warns against complacency. He likens the Moroccan bidonvilles to "dry timber . . . where a match could light a conflagration," adding, "An uneducated, unemployed young male is a great recruiting ground for anyone with a radical message."
Moroccan officials are, by contrast, more sanguine. They have gutted most of the radicals' capacity for waging attacks, they say, but remain watchful. Annoyed by suggestions that Moroccans have been unusually active in terrorism, they emphasize the role of outsiders in provoking the Casablanca suicide bombings and funding extremist activities. Many of the Moroccan terror suspects arrested in Europe, these officials insist, are emigrants. "Islam in Morocco," says Justice Minister Mohamed Bouzoubaa, "stands for tolerance and dialogue." His colleague, Interior Minister El Mostafa Sahel, agrees. "Terrorism is global," he says. "It has no religion, no nationality."
That hasn't prevented American officials from keeping a close eye on Morocco, however. The FBI has opened an office in Rabat, and collaboration with Washington, Sahel says vaguely, "has probably prevented some things." Many officials play down the Moroccan connection with terrorism, but a certain frankness is spreading in Rabat. "Moroccans are involved in lots of attacks around the world. I'm not one who says there is nothing wrong," says Mohamed El Gahs, an outspoken Socialist who is the deputy youth minister. "There is a terrorist ideology that is here, and that does present a threat."
That, of course, is not the official view. Bouzoubaa says flatly, "According to our information, all extremist groups have been dismantled." Sahel confides that security forces recently "have not detected any threats or actions against any target." Such confidence may reflect the scope of the crackdown conducted here since the Casablanca bombings. Between 5,000 and 7,000 suspects were detained, and about 1,500 were convicted of terror-related offenses, according to outside experts and human rights groups. Officials cite lower figures: about 2,000 arrested, 700 convicted, and 300 or so still in prison. Certainly, the initial fears of a terrorist onslaught have passed. "Now, we are almost in a normal situation," assures Serge Berdugo, the leader of Morocco's Jewish community, as he shows off a refurbished Jewish club in Casablanca that was hit by three suicide bombers.
U.S. officials, however, believe terrorists are still hiding in Morocco. Last year, McDonald's restaurants in Morocco were considered possible targets, according to intelligence received by U.S. officials. Concern also centered on western hotels. A Moroccan security guard assigned to the U.S. Embassy was found to be reporting the movements of American diplomats to radical Muslim groups. One senior Moroccan police official recently confirmed that some of the arrested terror suspects possessed explosives. But the official added that 44 cells of radical Muslim fundamentalists, known as Salafists, have been dismantled.
Islamic rule. The Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group is an operational offshoot of a larger ideological movement known as Salafia Jihadia, say U.S. and European officials and Moroccan terrorism specialists. Salafia Jihadia's Moroccan branch was established in the mid-1990s, fueled by radical Islamist ideas and by money and manpower from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations. The organization seeks to bring down the monarchy in favor of a caliphate, or Islamic rule. Cells of the organization persist, though its leader is now in prison.
The Combatant Group had formed by 1995 around a nucleus of Moroccan veterans of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Some of its members are believed to have fought in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Morocco's government, ironically, may have fostered the radicalization of the group by facilitating the dispatch of volunteers to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviet occupation--and by encouraging certain fundamentalist activities at home to thwart the monarchy's foes on the left and in other Islamist organizations. The membership of the Combatant Group is believed to number in the dozens. European and U.S. officials say members speak multiple European languages and have probably concealed travel between Morocco and Europe by joining with other illegal migrants. Some have raised funds through petty criminal activity, including the sale of hashish.
The Combatant Group didn't start out as part of al Qaeda, but officials say there has been coordination, and Combatant Group members are believed to view Osama bin Laden as an inspirational leader. Al Qaeda representatives took part in a planning session in Istanbul in February 2002 that may have paved the way for the Casablanca bombings. In February 2003, three months before those attacks, bin Laden vowed to punish Morocco for helping Washington against al Qaeda. The previous year, an al Qaeda sleeper cell of Saudis was unearthed in Morocco. The Saudis were convicted of plotting to strike NATO warships transiting the Strait of Gibraltar.
Disillusioned. Morocco's efforts in the aftermath of the Casablanca bombings to diminish poverty, tighten state oversight of Islam, and speed up political and social reforms suggest what officials here believe are the triggers for militancy. Contrary to the impression a tourist gets from glam-packed Marrakech and the Atlantic and Mediterranean seascapes, Morocco is a seriously underdeveloped country. Urban unemployment is well above 20 percent, with one third of the burgeoning population of young men jobless. In Marrakech, a college economics major discusses his bleak job prospects. "The future," says Adil Nasser, 23, "looks ever more gloomy." In Rabat, several unemployed activists have threatened to immolate themselves. In Casablanca, the view of impoverished enclaves is obscured by "walls of shame," as some call them. Not far away, the wealthy live in walled compounds of their own in a district called Anfa, where the million-dollar homes would fit comfortably in, say, Beverly Hills.
Bidonville s sprout up along the edges of many Moroccan cities. One, called Oulad M'Taa, lies along the train tracks linking Rabat and Casablanca. There, chickens peck at the fetid garbage strewn near the tightly clustered hovels. Rail commuters roar by with barely a glance. In the arid countryside, jobs are even scarcer. In the oasis towns of the northern reaches of the Sahara, young men linger by the roadside in the hope that motorists will stop and buy a box of dates. Few do.
Illiteracy is a scourge, affecting half of adults. Less than 20 percent of rural women can read. Social indicators like infant mortality and education rank among the lowest in the region. Government officials in Rabat say they're making progress, but poverty and joblessness still drive migration to the bigger cities and to Europe. By the Strait of Gibraltar, Moroccans have been known to mark time just gazing at Spain, 8 miles away and tantalizingly visible on a clear day. "There are many young people ready to commit suicide around the Mediterranean," says Nadia Yassine, an organizer of a leading Islamist movement. She is referring both to those chancing the hazardous boat trip to Europe and those intent on joining terrorist groups. "You know the profile of our young people: no future, no prospects, no hope."
Not so, counters Abderrahim Harouchi, the minister of social development. The Casablanca bombings, he says, were "a real wake-up call." The government, he points out, now channels more money into welfare and slum clearance. A goal is to build 100,000 new housing units every year. Many who live in the bidonvilles, however, say they can't afford the new apartments--when they are available--even with their heavily subsidized prices.
_ Moroccan officials say the new housing and other improvements are already undercutting the appeal of extremism. In a slum called Al Qaria, a few miles from Rabat, the government has begun neighborhood cleanup efforts, brought in electricity, opened a community center, and increased the number of literacy and health programs. A day after visiting Al Qaria, a former hotbed of militancy, Harouchi told U.S. News , "We've seen a very, very big change. . . . Government has regained the trust of the people."
Rejection. The government's efforts to lift the poor--and boost its own credibility with them--are complicated by a revival of Moroccans' Islamic faith. After centuries of engagement with the West, Morocco has earned a reputation as a haven for a live-and-let-live approach to Islam. Liquor is sold. Betting is legal. In Rabat, women in stylish European dresses stroll with female friends covered nearly head to toe in abayas. In Marrakech, Club Med lies just down the street from the revered Koutoubia mosque, where nonbelievers are barred from entering. This is where the casbah--or at least parts of it--really does rock.
Exposure to western lifestyles, however, seems to be stirring a conservative reaction among many Moroccans: A modernity so visible and yet unattainable breeds frustration. In some parts of Tangier, a port city long accustomed to Europeans, women in western-style dress can expect to be hassled; before the Casablanca bombings, some residents dubbed the self-appointed enforcers of proper attire "the Taliban." "The attitude is, 'If modernity is rejecting me,' " says El Gahs, the deputy youth minister, " 'I'll reject it.' "
The sense of alienation reaches even Moroccans living in Europe, where, having escaped Morocco's punishing poverty, many complain of feeling like cultural outcasts in their new homes. William Zartman of Johns Hopkins University, the dean of Morocco watchers in the United States, refers to this as the "double-rejection phenomenon." In Europe or back home, resentment generates conservatism in many--and a will to kill in a few. Says Mustapha Ramid, the parliamentary leader for the only legal Islamist opposition in Morocco, the Party of Justice and Development, "Part of society is coming back to Islamic values, some in moderation, some with extremism."
Signs of conservative Islamic values, including the use of the veil, are growing. At one French-owned textile factory, more than 95 percent of the 2,500 female workers cover up; 10 years ago, only 20 percent did. Young women in high school and college are opting for the veil more than in the past, dismaying their feminist instructors. The reasons, though, are complex. A few use the veil as a form of teenage rebellion. But Islam experts say many women don the veil to maneuver more freely in a male-dominated society. Explains Mohamed Tozy, a political scientist: "It's a means to make men accept the proximity of women."
All this cultural ferment, unsurprisingly, has been a boon for Morocco's Islamists. The Party of Justice and Development promotes what it calls Islamic values but insists that it is not a religious party. Rather, the party cultivates an image as corruption fighters who speak for ordinary Moroccans. It has avoided closure by accepting the king's formal roles as "Commander of the Faithful" and as sovereign. Many of its members favor the adoption of sharia , or Islamic law. Most political analysts believe that if the party is allowed to freely vie for legislative seats, it will prevail in the next elections, in 2007, and they worry about what would happen then. "If they gain power, they'll implement whatever they want," says sociologist Mohammed El Ayadi of Hassan II University in Casablanca. "They're not democrats."
"A true enemy." Another leading Islamist force is tolerated by the government but barred from politics. Justice and Spirituality, a movement that doles out fundamentalism along with largess to the poor, has a large following. The movement's founder, Abdessalam Yassine, spent years in jail and remains under surveillance. His daughter, Nadia Yassine, is an urbane author and movement activist who says Justice and Spirituality wants Morocco to become a republic with freely competing parties--without a king. "The power sees in us a true enemy," Yassine says. "The monarchy is not legitimate. . . . Islam is the nearest system to democracy."
Like Islamist movements elsewhere in the Middle East, those in Morocco have drawn succor from the groundswell of anger over the Bush administration's policies and actions. The invasion of Iraq and U.S. support for Israel are as deeply unpopular here as they are elsewhere in the region. Last year, the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that only 27 percent of Moroccans viewed the United States favorably. More worrisome, 66 percent felt suicide bombings against Americans and westerners in Iraq were justifiable. Jews were viewed unfavorably by 92 percent. And 45 percent of Moroccans saw Osama bin Laden in a favorable light. An important Wahhabi figure in Marrakech, Sheik Abderrahmane Maghraoui, wrote a manifesto condemning the Casablanca bombings as un-Islamic. During a conversation in his spartan prayer room, however, he was asked his opinion of bin Laden and responded by saying only that the al Qaeda leader lacked religious credentials.
_ Islamist groups here have connected with the poor by providing material help where the government has proved ineffectual. Food is handed out to break the Ramadan fast, and access to lawyers is arranged at little or no cost. An Islamist fixer presents a Rabat eye doctor with a list of people whose medical bills will be covered, no questions asked. The costs of a funeral and food for grieving guests are paid for. The Islamists sponsor women's sports clubs and extra classes in science and English for high school boys--a hard-line dose of religious and political perspective included.
Many Moroccans, however, blanch at more ominous encounters--vigilantes stopping couples holding hands and demanding to know whether they are married; acid splattered on unveiled women; drunks beaten; vandalism against liquor outlets. Islamist CD s and cassette tapes in Casablanca's black market spew hate-filled sermons about Americans and Jews. In the city of Fez, a man authorities described as a deranged former drug user jumped a family of French tourists by a mosque in the medina in February, knifing to death a teenage boy and wounding his mother. Just five days earlier, U.S. News has learned, the same man visited the home of an American Arabic-language student to do carpentry work. The man tried to convert the student to Islam, and the anxious student played along by pretending to convert. Even as an isolated incident, the Fez murder sent jitters through Morocco's tourism sector.
Resistance. Since the Casablanca bombings, the government's tough stance has emboldened some Moroccans to confront overly assertive Islamists. In Fez, a woman now styles her hair flamboyantly just to taunt conservative men in the medina. Says her friend, who describes herself as devout: "It's good they're suppressing these fundamentalists. They're trying to take away our religion." Another woman in Fez quit a literacy class run by Islamists to take one offered by the government. After the bombings, explained the woman's daughter, Majida Satori, 26, "that school had a bad reputation. They teach hate and intolerance."
As police continue to search for militants, the king has been squeezing broader groups of Islamists--at the ballot box, in their homes, and at the mosques. "He has managed to pin down the Islamists," says Moha Ennaji, a university professor in Fez. "We don't feel stifled by the threat now. After [the bombings], we were scared." After Morocco conducted what were deemed as free and fair parliamentary elections in 2002, the Party of Justice and Democracy was told by the Interior Ministry to tone down inflammatory rhetoric and to limit its participation in local races in 2003. Interior officials deny that. The talks, party leaders say, were not unfriendly, but the message was firm. "We know that behind this courtesy," says Mohamed Yatim, a party lawmaker, "is the baton."
Perhaps the greatest weapon the government has in curbing the Islamists is the king, Mohammed VI. In successfully pushing for a law bolstering women's rights, for instance, he trumped Islamist opposition by exactingly justifying each and every change with the Koran or the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. The new code grants women near equality in divorce and child custody. Women under age 18 are generally barred from marrying, and polygamy is now nearly impossible. The king's break from the repressive rule of his father, King Hassan II, was formalized with the creation of a reconciliation commission, which broadcast cathartic testimony from people whose family members had "disappeared" under the old regime. It is the first such public reckoning in the Arab world, but some fear the fallout from the current war on terrorism. Many of those jailed are innocent, say human rights activists, and allegations of torture--though officially denied--have been given credence by Human Rights Watch and the U.S. government. Mohamed Darif, a specialist on Islamist movements at Hassan II University, predicts a backlash, saying many detainees "will come out very radicalized and dangerous."
The king has also tapped his religious authority to rein in Morocco's preachers. Dozens of informal "garage mosques," where extremists met, have been closed. The king revamped the "Ulema Councils" of religious authorities to clamp down on what is taught--and reverse some of the radical Wahhabist inroads made over the years. "One of our priorities," explains Andre Azoulay, a royal adviser, "is to fill the ideological gap, to reoccupy the ground taken by the fundamentalists."
That sort of thinking offers hope. Defeating terrorism will demand much more than scouring the dark corners of Moroccan society for militants. Morocco's discontents run too deep, and, for now, the ticking goes on. Despite some progress in the slums, concedes Azoulay, "we are running against the clock." The question is whether the Moroccans have enough time to stop the next wave of angry young men.
[Map of Morocco]
[Map labels]
MOROCCO
Rabat
Casablanca
Tangier
Fez
Marrakesh
SPAIN
ALGERIA
_ MALI
MAURITANIA
Western Sahara (disputed territory)
MILES
0
300
USN&WR
This story appears in the May 9, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.