Wednesday, Mar 17, 2004
Facing each other across only a sliver of the Mediterranean, Spain and Morocco have often had fraught relations.
They almost went to war over a tiny disputed island only 18 months ago.
But as soon as there was a hint that Moroccans might have been involved in last week's bombings in Madrid - which left 201 people dead - the Rabat authorities reacted with urgency. Morocco sent investigators to help its northern neighbour, with none of the hesitance or the denial shown by the Saudi authorities in the wake of September 11 2001.
"The terrorists mean to tarnish our name and focus attention on us because we've been a liberal voice in the Muslim and Arab world," says a Moroccan diplomat.
Just as the Twin Towers attacks focused the world's attention on Saudi Arabia, home to most of the terrorists, confirmation of a Moroccan role in Madrid would spread alarm about radicalism in the countries of North Africa and the export of extremist ideology across the Mediterranean. Three Moroccans were arrested in connection with the Madrid bombings.
European counter-terrorism officials say most suspects in recent years identified in Europe as tied to al-Qaeda have been North African nationals - though some appear to have become radicalised after their arrival in Europe. "You arrive in a country needing support and you find yourself part of an illegal community, and on the fringes of it are the extremists," says one European official.
The US has also taken a growing interest in North Africa, helping to train anti-terrorism forces in the region.
The involvement of North Africans in extremist organisations dates back to the 1980s, when thousands of Arabs, including Moroccans and Algerians, fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan alongside Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. Some are believed to have travelled to Europe after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
But home-grown groups attached to the rigid Salafi ideology, adhered to by many supporters of al-Qaeda, have also been spreading in the region known as the Maghreb in recent years.
The most prominent is Algeria's Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat, the main militant organisation fighting the military-backed regime and suspected by the US of having ties to al-Qaeda.
Attacks last May in Casablanca, Morocco's financial capital, left more than 45 people dead and highlighted the growing role of Salafi Islam in Morocco. Scores of Salafis - radical and moderate - were rounded up following the bombings.
Extremists in the region have fed on widespread social discontent. Despite a decade of economic restructuring, Morocco still has endemic poverty, rampant unemployment and high illiteracy rates.
Seeking to establish the country as a model of a modern Arab state that preaches a tolerant Islam, the Moroccan government has aligned itself closely with the US, an unpopular policy and one reason cited by al-Qaeda last year when it called for attacks against Morocco.
"The leaders of al-Qaeda have tended to be Saudi, Egyptian and Kuwaiti but they've picked Moroccans, among others, to execute their orders," says Mohamed Darif, a Moroccan expert on the country's Islamist groups. "Moroccans, in general, have a degree of religious awareness and there's a high level of illiteracy, including among immigrants (to western Europe)."
The threat of religious radicalism from North Africa spilling over into Europe has long worried the European Union. In 1995, the EU launched the so-called Barcelona process, a partnership with 12 southern Mediterranean countries designed to promote economic reforms and cement closer trade and political ties.
The main concern then was Algeria, which was in the throes of a civil war provoked when the military-backed regime cancelled an election that an Islamist party had been set to win. But the initiative was also aimed at improving social conditions to keep other North Africans at home.
The scale of the threat became more apparent after September 11. The first suspected al-Qaeda attack after the US bombings was on a synagogue in the Tunisian island of Djerba, prompting arrests among North Africans in France. Suspicions of a plot to use the poison ricin in a terrorist attack in the UK in December 2002 led to a round-up of North Africans and a wider European sweep of mostly Algerians in Paris and Spain.
"There is a recognition that North African networks are no longer just engaged in using Europe as a logistics hub but also to plan attacks," says a European counter-terrorism official. Martin Wolf, Page 19
By ROULA KHALAF
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