Posted on 05/23/2003 9:14:06 PM PDT by Destro
The Casablanca Blasts
As in the case of many terrorist strikes, those at Casablanca in Morocoo on the night of May 16, 2003, too, have presently only a small kernel of facts surrounded by considerable speculation.
B. RAMAN
As in the case of many terrorist strikes, those at Casablanca in Morocoo on the night of May 16, 2003, too, have presently only a small kernel of facts surrounded by considerable speculation.
First, the facts: At least 41 innocent 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 centre, a Jewish cemetery and a Jewish-owned Italian restaurant. The explosion aimed at the Jewish-owned restaurant also caused damage to the Belgian Consulate building located nearby. According to the 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 organisation, 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 organisation in retaliation for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The targeting of Spanish interests is also underlined in this connection. Spain was one of the NATO countries to have 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 detenus 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 restaurant in Bali attacked by the terrorists had a 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 and at a hotel catering 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 too such as the anger over the trial of some Al Qaeda activists before a Moroccan court.
There is a strong possibility of 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 a hundred Moroccans are estimated to have participated in the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. About 40 of them returned to Morocoo after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from there. Some of the remaining stayed back in Afghanistan and Pakistan and some others went around the world participating in the jihad in Chechnya, Dagestan, Bosnia and Kosovo. Many of these gravitated towards bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. Some joined him even in Khartoum in the Sudan where he was based till 1996, while the others joined him in Afghanistan after he shifted there from the 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 Masood, the legendary Tadjik leader of Afghanistan, a few days before the 9/11 terrorist stikes in the USA. A Moroccan trace could be seen across many of the Al Qaeda-connected arrests in West Europe last year. Amongst the detenus undergoing interrogation in US custody at Guantanamo Bay are 17 Moroccans. They and Abu Zubaida (a Palestinian), the then No. 3 in Al Qaeda, who was arrested in Pakistan in March last year, were believed to have been the source of much of the information relating to Al Qaeda presence in Morocco. Al Qaeda's hardcore in Morocco consisted 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 Gilbraltar. 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 Soviet troops in Afghanistan, Morocoo -- 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. Amongst the organisations 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 organisations do not propagate 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 Centre 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 organised into a large number of autonomous cells each headed by an Amir. Like the Jemma Islamiya of South-East 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 (IIF). 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 under trial, does in Indonesia---as the venerated godfather of the local Islamic extremists.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Cheney, and convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai)
I tend to side with people seeking freedom from oppressive government.
That is what Free Republic is all about -- don't you know?
There is a qualitative difference between fighting to grant yourself natural God given rights over fighting for ethnicity and religion for the sole sake of that religion or ethnicity.
Their is no basis of denial of rights by the Russian state to the Chechens that existed at the time of their revolt to justify their war other than Chauvanistic reasons not acceptable by the standards of the Declaration of Independence.
Under your rational the Puerto Rican urban guerilla/terrorists pardoned by Clinton were justifiable freedom fighters. In all reality Chechnya under the post Soviet Russian system had more rights than the current commonwealth of Puerto Rico does under our own.
When the soviet Union fell apart, why is that Russia did not let the Checnens go?
Since the Chechens had FULL AUTONOMY (something for example Puerto Ricans and American Indians and Mexicans don't have) the Chechens had no personal rights impinged upon.
When your rights are not an issue--their is no justification for supporting ethnic or religious revolutions---or do you support the Basques and the IRA? (and the Chechens had more rights than the Catholics in Northern Ireland do).
Volume II
Al Haramai Islamic Foundation Takes a Hike -- The Islamic Entente Prepares to Strike
*******
In Tirana, finally the West has spoken,
As a shadowy Entente cover is subtly broken.
But the NGO that was booted,
Leaving behind many cells they recruited,
Planning a response anything but token.
******
An embassy weakness the Entente seeks to breach,
"A classic success!" in Foggy Bottom they preach,
But the story of a long commo tunnel,
(Causing many dark funds there to funnel)
Is common knowledge in the mosques where they teach.
******
A magnificent new five star hotel,
From which Americans are covered to "sell."
Where in 1999 the KDOM retreated,
(Their gallant efforts in Prishtina defeated)
Is land still owned by bin-Laden from hell.
*****
In Tirana a man comes from Argun
To grant the Entente a spectacular boon.
He never shows his face,
Until the operatives are all in their place,
Then he waits for the proper phase of the moon.
******
The Entente seeks a high body score,
Versus soft Tirana targets galore.
With Nano in trouble,
And U.S. Marines on the double,
Suicide fundamentalists prepare to roar.
***********
--Westerby
Just who to believe is the nomine
Of the metrical poster called Jomini?
It's not so confusin'
To those seeking news in
The land of pork ribs and hominy.
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