MOROCCO: Moroccans on edge following the recent spate of suicide bombings that have rocked Casablanca

Casablanca, the main Moroccan city, is going through a difficult period now. After the death of five suicide bombers who blew themselves in the space of 4 days (10 & 14 April), the police are taking no risks. Anyone behaving suspiciously or carrying a bag is arrested on the spot and searched. The police are totting their guns and sub machines in public, something not seen in this city since 16 May 2003 when a series of bombings rocked simultaneously five different locations, killing in the process 45 people including 13 kamikaze bombers. The city inhabitants are also very edgy. At the slightest suspect movement or rumour, they start panicking and running in all directions, expecting the worse at any moment. They fear being caught in a suicide bombing because the press has told them that some extremists are loose in their city with explosive belts. While a small extremist organisation can scare a big city like Casablanca with its' six million inhabitants, the mosques still attract huge crowds of believers, some of whom spoke to Reuters and condemned the bombers out of touch with Islam. Old, middle aged, young and very young people are adamant that the suicide bombers are brainwashed people or desperate ones who believe that heaven is waiting for them after killing themselves. "We live a strange situation in Morocco because poverty cannot justify killing your Muslim brother," Haj Boubli Ahmed told Reuters. A young Moroccan called Hassan Al Bachi went further. "Those who perpetrated these acts are not Moroccans and we have nothing in common with them," said Al Bachi. While a very young girl called Ilham Kabouri said that what the suicide bombers did not only was very bad, but nobody expected a Moroccan to do it. If the average Moroccan is puzzled by the Casablanca bombings, the experts can only shed some lights on what motivate the suicide bombers, their links, if any with the foreign terrorist organisation and what can be expected from them in the future. Mustafa Khalfi, a leading expert in Islamic movements and organisations told Reuters that he does not think that that there is a relationship between Al Qaeda and events in Morocco because Al Qaeda is a sophisticated organisation that chose its targets very well. When asked about the tactics the Moroccan government is using to tackle the militants, he said that the authorities are doing well on the security level but a more global approach is needed. "It should integrate all the elements related to the social, cultural, economical levels and not only the security level," said Khalfi. He added that Morocco may witness more terrorist acts but not on a huge or widespread scale for the simple reason that the local extremist groups are not as established, for example as they are in neighbouring Algeria. His words are echoed by the Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa who said during a recent press conference that the preliminary view of the recent events in Morocco shows that there is no direct link between the local extremist groups and their counterparts in neighbouring countries. Benmoussa also stressed the fact that the Moroccan extremist organisations are not well structured and still use primitive tactics and weapons. The wave of suicide bombings in Casablanca is giving a headache to the police and security forces. Even if they are proud of their war against them, they admit in secret that it's virtually impossible to infiltrate them and that they take their secrets with them when they kill themselves. For Nabil Benabdallah, the Moroccan Information Minister, the war against terrorism is being won by the security forces and this is why extremists prefer to blow themselves than to surrender to the police. He may be right for now, but many Moroccans believe that as long as abject poverty is rife and as long as the future for thousands of young people is bleak, those desperate people will be an easy target for those who want to enrol them.

ITN Source | April 16, 2007

Tags:. .muslim. .movements. .difficult. .bag. .admit