|
|
|
|
Answering the call for
jihad
By Ilhem Rachidi
RABAT - Abu Usama al-Maghribi was a
self-made jihadi. The owner of a fancy restaurant
in Tangiers, in the north of Morocco, the
26-year-old left his country and wandered on his
way to jihad until he was asked by Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization to
launch the second attack on the United Nations
headquarters in Baghdad in September 2003.
In a published letter, his accomplice
described Maghribi as having the "highest degree
of martyrdom" for fully organizing his mission,
and even paying for the car used in the suicide
attack, which killed an Iraqi policeman and
wounded 12 people.
"He went out soul and
money, did not come back with any, and that is the
highest degree of martyrdom," the accomplice said.
Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad has widely publicized
its attacks in Iraq on the Internet, displaying
heroic profiles of foreign militants, most of whom
come from Saudi Arabia, but dozens of North
Africans have enrolled in the insurgency. Even
before the fall of Baghdad, Moroccan, Algerian,
Tunisian as well as Libyan youngsters volunteered
to fight in what they saw as a new land for jihad.
Mimoun Belhaj and Abdelhay Assias, two
suspected Moroccan combatants arrested last
February by Syrian authorities allegedly on their
way to Iraq to join the Zarqawi network, have been
sent for trial to Morocco.
In neighboring
Mauritania, several recruits have reportedly left
for Iraq. Last week, authorities claimed the
al-Qaeda-linked Salafist Group for Preaching and
Combat (GSPC) had trained Mauritanian jihadis at
camps in Algeria and Mali, potentially to enroll
in the insurgency in Iraq. They also accused
al-Qaeda of financing mosques as well as religious
leaders.
While the Iraqi conflict may seem
distant from a geographical and local political
viewpoint, the eagerness of some to answer
Zarqawi's call for jihad is hardly surprising in a
region where anti-US sentiment has increased since
the war on Iraq. In a tense international context,
many simply see Zarqawi's followers as "martyrs".
"They have faith," says a Moroccan
traditionalist political figure who supports the
participation of foreign youngsters in the
resistance against US occupying forces. "They are
doing their jihad. They'd rather die than live
under Zionist occupation."
"The conflict
in Iraq is important because they have a chance to
fight the evil USA directly," argues Michael
Taarnby Jensen, a Danish researcher who works on
extremism. "There are many other jihads - Kashmir,
Chechnya, that they could have gone to. If you
look at the propaganda of Zarqawi, these
mujahideen really believe that they are fighting
for the freedom of every Muslim in the world."
The recent upsurge in violence in Iraq,
mostly blamed on the insurgency, has left hundreds
of civilians dead in only a few days. According to
a former Iraqi diplomat, too many Iraqi civilians
have paid the price for the involvement of
foreigners in the ongoing conflict.
The
former Iraqi consul in Morocco, Farid Alhashamy,
is strongly opposed to the ones generally called
"Arab fighters" - a "minority" in the Iraqi
resistance, he believes. "They are not working to
free Iraq," he says. "They are against Islam. They
are killing civilians, journalists, innocent
people." Alhashamy insists on the distinction
between what he describes as a well-organized and
strictly Iraqi resistance and al-Qaeda-linked
groups. "The machine of US information makes all
the resistance look like the same branch," he
says.
Wyaal Kaaib, an Iraqi who has lived
in Morocco for seven years and currently runs a
business with Alhashamy, shares a somewhat similar
point of view. "The target is the Americans. This
is jihad for the liberation of Iraq, but if they
go to bomb themselves in crowded markets, they are
terrorists."
The candidates for jihad have
dramatically diverse social, economic and cultural
backgrounds, yet they unite in their radical
interpretation of Islam, and most of all, their
conviction that it is their duty to fight against
the invasion of Iraq by "infidels".
"Some
of these young men grow up with the perception
that they are at war with Western society by
virtue of their race and religion alone," says
Evan Kohlmann, a Washington-based terrorism
consultant and author of Al-Qaeda's Jihad in
Europe.
As early as 1996, European
jihadis of North African origin joined al-Qaeda's
training camps in Afghanistan, transiting through
the renowned "Algerian house" in Peshawar,
Pakistan, the main recruiting network for
terrorists coming from Europe. Well-known
terrorists like Algerian Ahmed Ressam, who was
arrested in 1999 at the US-Canadian border for
planning terrorist attacks on US soil for the new
millennium, later had a major role in planning
large-scale attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui, a
Moroccan born and raised in France, went to
Chechnya in 1996 and to Afghanistan in 1998 and
1999.
On April 22, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to all six
counts of conspiracy to engage in terrorism. With
the plea, Moussaoui became the
first person to be convicted in a US
court in connection with the terrorist attacks of September
11.
Today, North African terrorists play
a considerable part of the al-Qaeda orbit and are
involved with groups throughout Western Europe,
such as the GSPC and the Moroccan Islamic
Combatant Group.
Some analysts see this
predominance of North Africans as a mirror of
immigration patterns in Western Europe, where
Moroccans and Algerians represent the most
important immigration community.
The
difficulties they encounter in being absorbed into
their welcoming countries is a major asset in the
hands of recruiters. Most of the time, their
interaction with European society has led them to
adopt radical religious practices. "Islam became a
way to defend themselves against a society they
didn't like or didn't understand," explains
Taarnby.
Earlier this month, the French
daily newspaper Le Figaro reported that six people
suspected of jihad in Iraq had been arrested in
Paris and Marseilles, including Said al-Maghribi,
a Moroccan militant known for years by security
officials.
According to French
authorities, out of 12 known fighters, at least
three died in Iraq. Tarek Ouinis, 24, was killed
September in the Sunni triangle northwest of
Baghdad, and his long-standing friend, Abdel Halim
Badjoudj, 19, drove a car packed with explosives
on the road to the Baghdad airport a month later,
wounding two Iraqi policemen and two US soldiers.
Redouane el-Hakim, 19, died during a US
bombardment of insurgents in Fallujah last July.
The sons of Tunisian immigrants, he and his
brother Boubaker were part of an Islamic
fundamentalist organization linked to the mosque
of Levallois-Perret, later closed by French
authorities.
In neighboring Germany,
authorities arrested six men suspected of
belonging to a recruiting network. A few months
later, two North African cells suspected of ties
with Ansar al-Islam were dismantled in Italy.
European authorities believe the
recruiting network is not highly structured, but
the recent discovery of recruiting cells in France
as well as in Italy, Spain and Germany has emerged
as another wake-up call. According to Kohlmann,
while recruits leaving from North Africa are
"individual volunteers", the ones enrolled in
Europe are usually under the lead of clerics
operating in a sleeper network.
"Because
they are more organized and deliberate in this
process than their ethnic brethren in North
Africa, they are also more dangerous," says
Kohlmann. "As transnational terrorists with
potential access to European passports, they
represent a much greater security threat at home
than they do in Iraq."
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
|
|
|
