Before last weekend's bombings, Morocco was considered strongly pro-Western. Has al-Qaeda now infiltrated it, asks Lara Marlowe
Until suicide bombers struck at the heart of Casablanca last weekend, the north African kingdom of Morocco had been spared the fundamentalist violence that plagues neighbouring Algeria and other Arab countries. On the night of May 16th, 28 innocent people, among them six European tourists, along with 13 bombers died in five explosions. Although the scale of the deaths and destruction was small compared with September 11th, Moroccans say May 16th delivered a psychological blow comparable to that felt by Americans when the World Trade Center collapsed.
Moroccans cannot forget images of the gutted restaurant and hotel lobby or descriptions like those of Sabah Mazouzi, a French professor who survived the bombing of the Casa de España restaurant, where most of the deaths occurred.
"It was worse than a horror film," Prof Mazouzi told Le Figaro. "People were crawling in their blood towards the exit, people who were burned, without arms or with a jaw torn off."
Prof Benjamin Stora, who teaches the history of the Maghrib in Paris, says: "Moroccan Islamists never took recourse to political violence before now." He believes Morocco has reached the end of the epoch that began with independence from France, in 1956. "The state will have to change its conception of politics."
The late King Hassan II, who died in 1999, was an autocrat whose secret police did not hesitate to torture opponents, but he nonetheless ruled through a kind of consensus, based on broad acceptance of the monarchy and rejection of internal strife. Moroccans believed the king's status as "commander of the faithful" made an exception of their country. May 16th changed that.
Prof Mohamed Darif, who teaches in the suburbs of Casablanca, told Le Monde that the "culture of suicide" was previously alien to Moroccans. "Henceforward, the authorities know that there are Moroccans ready to sacrifice their lives. Anything could happen in this country now."
The timing of the suicide attacks, following week-long celebrations of the birth of Prince Moulay al-Hassan, the first child of King Mohamed VI, seemed calculated to put into question the future of the monarchy. The dilemma facing the young kingis to an extent the one faced by all Arab rulers, as well as by Western democracies with Muslim minorities. Is it better to welcome moderate Islamists into the political process, in the hope they will chose compromise over extremism, or should all forms of Islamic activism be fought?
In recent speeches, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has repeatedly alluded to Turkey, which has a moderate Islamist prime minister, as an example that might one day be repeated in Iraq. The Algerian military has subdued but not eliminated Islamic extremism in an 11-year civil war that has claimed up to 200,000 lives. The Algerian experience is not a good advertisement for the efficacy of repression, but secular factions claim it was the only alternative to Islamic revolution.
King Hassan II kept Moroccan Islamists in line with carrot-and-stick policies. The moderate Justice and Development Party (JDP), the only legal Islamist party in Morocco, nonetheless tripled its number of deputies in legislative elections last September, making it the leading opposition group. In April, attuned to popular outrage at the US invasion of Iraq, the government postponed municipal elections from June until September, apparently fearing the JDP would win control of Casablanca, Rabat, Fez and Tangier.
Both the JDP and the biggest Islamic association, Al Adl wal Ihssane (Justice and Charity), immediately condemned the attacks of May 16th. The ageing former teacher of French who leads Justice and Charity, Sheikh Abdessalam Yassin, is tolerated but kept under surveillance. His newspaper, At-Tajdid, criticised the government spokesman "who took advantage of events to denigrate all types of Islamists". At-Tajdid's angry editorial summarised the judgment King Mohamed VI must now make. "According to this minister," the Islamist newspaper wrote, "the Islamist vision carries within it the seeds of terrorism."
Nobody has suggested links between the JDP, Justice and Charity and Al-Sirat Al-Mustaqim (Straight Path), the underground group accused by Moroccan authorities of perpetrating the atrocity. Straight Path was first heard of in February 2002, when it stoned to death Fouad Kerdoudi, an alcoholic who lived in Sidi Moumen, the Casablanca slum that was also home to most of the suicide bombers.
Miloud Zakaria, the founder of Straight Path, was condemned to a year in prison and is still held, although he has served his sentence. Until May 16th, police considered the group more as a criminal gang bent on social revenge, which robbed the rich and committed several murders, based on the fatwas of Zakaria.
The odd combination of professionalism and amateurism with which Straight Path carried out the Casablanca attacks strengthens the impression that it was an indigenous group acting under the inspiration - but perhaps not the direct orders - of the far-flung, loosely knit organisation that al-Qaeda is believed to have become.
Moroccan authorities arrested two accomplices and claimed their interrogation confirmed "a connection with international terrorism". But they provided no further explanation. Morocco was one of six countries singled out for "liberation" by Osama bin Laden in the last audio tape attributed to him, in February.
The way the Moroccans synchronised five suicide attacks to occur within less than an hour in central Casablanca, the way they hid explosives in belts and rucksacks and their use of the chemical explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, are typical al-Qaeda methods. But the bombers made errors of planning and judgment that mercifully reduced the number of victims.
Two men who blew themselves up at the Jewish club did not realise it would be closed on Friday evening for Sabbath. Killers were stopped by doormen at Hotel Farah and the Positano restaurant (believed to have been targeted because its owner is Jewish) because they were so poorly dressed.
Moroccan police say about 300 Moroccans who trained in bin Laden's Afghanistan camps returned home. Curiously, the first attacks in Morocco appear not to have been carried out by more entrenched extremist groups, Salafia Djihadia and At Takfir wal Hejira, both of which allegedly maintain links with al-Qaeda.
The same names are often used by Islamist groups in other countries. Pakistanis who helped the shoe-bomber Richard Reid in Paris also called themselves Straight Path. Salafism, an Islamic revival movement that started in Egypt at the end of the 19th century, has been influential across north Africa and repeatedly crops up in names of clandestine organisations. Egypt and Algeria, as well as Morocco, have groups called Takfir wa Hijra, whose name alludes to the act of denouncing others as infidels and to the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Morocco's close relations with the US may lie at the root of the May 16th attacks. A year ago, three Saudis living in Morocco were arrested on suspicion of planning attacks on NATO ships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, based on information interrogators gleaned from prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the US navy's base in Cuba. The following month, hundreds of young Moroccans suspected of Islamist sympathies were rounded up, Prof Darif told Le Monde. "Some of them were tortured. Moroccan Islamists are convinced that the arrests were made from a list provided by the Americans."
More recently, the Washington Post revealed that "terror suspects" captured by the US have been handed over to Moroccan intelligence officers for interrogation on the understanding that they would be tortured for information.