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A gruesome
warning for Morocco
By B Raman
As in the case of many terrorist
strikes, those in Casablanca in Morocco on the night of May
16 have presently only a small kernel of facts surrounded
by considerable speculation.
First, the facts:
At least 41 civilians - three of them French, two
Spanish, one Italian and the rest believed to be mostly
Moroccan - were killed in five well-orchestrated
explosions carried out by suicide bombers on foot. The
blasts were directed at a hotel, a Spanish night club, a
Jewish center, a Jewish cemetery and a Jewish-owned
Italian restaurant. The explosion aimed at the
restaurant also caused damage to the Belgian consulate
building located nearby. According to Moroccan
authorities, 14 terrorists, divided into five groups,
are estimated to have participated in the strikes. If
the explosions were carried out by suicide bombers on
foot, it is not clear why so many terrorists were
required for this purpose.
The speculation relates to the identity of the terrorists,
their motive and the implications of the blasts. While
the Moroccan authorities themselves have
initially blamed "international terrorism" for the attacks
without naming any organization, media speculation has
blamed al-Qaeda and projected the blasts, coming so soon after
those in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a new
global offensive by Osama bin Laden's organization in retaliation
for the United States invasion and occupation of
Iraq. The targeting of Spanish interests is also
underlined in this connection. Spain was one of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries that strongly backed
the US invasion.
In explanation of their theory
that the Casablanca blasts were Iraq-related, some
analysts also refer to Morocco's close relations with
the West, the reported location of a US Air Force base
there and the alleged transfer of some of the captives
of the Iraqi war to that base for interrogation. They
see in the blasts ominous signs of more to come in the
coming weeks in different parts of the Islamic world,
directed at Christian, if not Western, and Jewish lives
and interests.
The blasts also bear some resemblance to the
explosions in Bali in Indonesia and in Mombasa in Kenya last
year in that some of the establishments
targeted were associated with the tourism industry and there was a
Jewish linkage. It is said that even though
the Indonesian authorities had not admitted it, the bombed
restaurant in Bali had Jewish ownership. The Mombasa explosion
and the failed attempt to hit at an Israeli
plane carrying tourists home from Mombasa were clearly
directed at Jewish lives (the bombed hotel catered to Israeli
tourists). The Casablanca blasts, too, seemed to have had
an anti-Jewish motive and an economic purpose to hit at
Morocco's tourism industry at the beginning of the
tourist season. It would, therefore, be incorrect to
look at them purely through the Iraqi prism and exclude
domestic factors, such as anger over the trial of some
al-Qaeda activists before a Moroccan court.
There is nevertheless a
strong possibility of some al-Qaeda involvement. Next to
the Saudis, the Yemenis, the Egyptians and
the Algerians, Moroccans constituted an important layer of the
hard core of al-Qaeda. About 100 Moroccans are
estimated to have participated in the jihad of the
1980s against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. About 40
of them returned to Morocco after the withdrawal of
the Soviet. Some of the remaining stayed in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, and some went around the world
participating in the jihads in Chechnya, Dagestan,
Bosnia and Kosovo. Many of these gravitated towards bin
Laden and his al-Qaeda. Some joined him even in Khartoum
in Sudan, where he was based until 1996, while others
joined him in Afghanistan after he shifted there from
Sudan in 1996.
The Moroccan component of al-Qaeda is
believed to have played an active part in the planning
and execution of the plot to kill Ahmed Shah Masoud,
the legendary Tajik leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance,
a few days before the September 11 terrorist strikes in
the US. A Moroccan trace could be seen across many of
the al-Qaeda-connected arrests in West Europe last year.
Among those undergoing interrogation in US custody at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are 17 Moroccans. They and Abu
Zubaida (a Palestinian), the then number 3 in al-Qaeda,
who was arrested in Pakistan in March last year, are
believed to have been the source of much of the
information relating to the al-Qaeda presence in
Morocco. Al-Qaeda's hardcore in Morocco consists not
only of Moroccans, but also of other Arabs.
The
dossier built up through these interrogations led to the
thwarting of a plot in May last year to strike at US and
British naval vessels in the Strait of Gibraltar. Three
Saudis - Hilal Jaber Aouad al-Assiri, Zuhair Hilal
Mohamed al-Tbaiti and Abdullah M'Sfer Ali al-Ghamdi -
were arrested in this connection. Two of them were
married to Moroccan women, who, too, were alleged to
have played a role in preparing the groundwork for the
plot as couriers of secret communications. Two other
Moroccan associates were also arrested.
The
three Saudis were reported to have told the Moroccan
authorities during their interrogation that they had
received instructions from the Yemeni Abd al-Rahim
Nashiri, alias Mollah Bilal, described as commander of
al-Qaeda operations in the Maghreb and the Middle East,
to carry out spectacular attacks in Morocco, including
an explosion directed at an American naval vessel. They
also reportedly stated that the plans for al-Qaeda
operations in Morocco were drawn up by the surviving
leaders of al-Qaeda from their sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Since the return of the Afghan-Moroccans after
having fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan,
Morocco - otherwise a pro-Western liberal society - has
been showing signs of a creeping fundamentalism and
anti-Americanism, though the fundamentalism is not yet
very widespread and not as extremist as seen in Algeria
and elsewhere in the Arab world. Among the organizations
stressing the need for an Islamic way of life are the
Justice and Development Party, the al-'Adl wa al-Ihsan
(Justice and Charity) headed by 76-year-old Sheik
Abdessalam Yassine, a former regional inspector in the
Ministry of National Education, and the Salafi Jihadi
movement.
While the first two organizations do
not propound resort to jihad to achieve their Islamist
objectives, the Salafi Jihadi projects bin Laden, the
blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the founder of the
Egyptian al-Gama al-Islamiya, now undergoing
imprisonment in the US in connection with the New York
World Trade Center explosion of February,1993, and the
London-based Islamist ideologue Omar Mahmoud Omar alias
Abu Qatada al-Filistini, as worthy of emulation.
The Salafi Jihadi is estimated to have
a membership of about 400 in Morocco organized into
a large number of autonomous cells each headed by an
amir. Like the Jemmah Islamiyah of Southeast Asia and
the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, it calls for
the creation of a number of region-wise Islamic
caliphates, one of them for the Maghreb. It is believed to have
a close association with al-Qaeda, but is not yet a
member of bin Laden's International Islamic Front. It is
headed by Ahmed Raffiki, a former male nurse of Casablanca.
In the 1980s and the 1990s, he was active as a recruiter
of volunteers from Morocco for the jihad in
Afghanistan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Bosnia and Kosovo. He plays the
same role in Morocco as Abu Bakr Bashir, now on trial,
does in Indonesia - as the venerated godfather of the
local Islamic extremists.(18-5-03)
B
Raman is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet
Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; former
member of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also
head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research
& Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence
agency, from 1988 to August, 1994.
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