FOM Newsletter March 2004
Morocco Week in Review 
March 20 2004

Women's assembly praises HM the King's personal involvement in reforming women status
ITC BEGINS ASSESSMENT OF U.S.-MOROCCO FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Portugal to grant Moroccan operators a 100 million Euro credit line
France to Double Aid to Morocco
Morocco adopts consumer protection strategy
Duke Of York arrives in Morocco for trade promotion
Morocco calls for a world conference on terrorism
Rally in Morocco in solidarity with terrorism victims in Madrid.
Moroccans feel Madrid's pain: March in support of bombing victims.
In Morocco's gateway to Europe, disbelief greets arrests over Madrid bombings
Morocco ratchets up fight against home-grown extremism after Madrid bombing attacks on trains.
Moroccans unsettled by free-trade deal with US
Group Accor to open seven new hotels in Morocco in 2005
Moroccan connection brings old enemies into a new relationship
Sabmiller Pours $46m Into North Africa.
MOROCCO, EUROPE AND TERRORISM
Caught between Arabia and the West, Morocco cultivates its allies with care.
For Morocco's Jews, a mixture of integration, vibrancy and decline
Morocco finding shadow of al-Qaida
Spain fears 'bad blood' with Morocco.
Morocco bid threatened by Madrid bomb: Spain may end Morocco support

Women's assembly praises HM the King's personal involvement in reforming women status
Paris, Mar. 19

The « Union des Femmes Décorées de la Légion d'Honneur » (UFDLH) praised, here Thursday night, HM the King's personal involvement in
reforming Moroccan women status known in Arabic as "Mudawana".  The holders of the French Legion d'Honneur decoration, meeting in their
first general assembly in Paris, in presence of HRH Princess Lalla Meryem, sister of HM King Mohammed VI, also paid homage to the late princess Lalla Fatima Zahra, former Chairwoman of the Union Nationale des Femmes Marocaines.

Paulette Laubie, Founding Chairwoman of the UFDLH handed to HRH Princess Lalla Meryem, current chairwoman of the National Union of Moroccan Women, the distinction of "Commandeur de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur » bestowed in July 2003 by French President Jacques Chirac on the late Princess who died on September 15, 2002.

Participants in this assembly unanimously praised the newly enacted Family Law which treats women in morocco in an equal footing with men, "thanks to the courage and determination of HM King Mohammed VI."

"It is one of the most important signals that we have received from the Moslem World", said the chairwoman of the Belgian Senate's foreign affairs
commission who praised the action undertaken by HRH princess Lalla Meryem "real Ambassador of the woman's condition" in favor of the abused children.

Addressing the assembly on Thursday, HRH Princess Lalla Meryem underlined the "shared history and memory" between Morocco and France.

"Our common history, our shared memory attest of a never denied exception for the ties that were weaved between our two peoples. They are also foundations of intentions that we will forge together for a future liberated from the demons of blind intolerance" said the Princess who noted
that the two "strategic partners" are endeavouring to "bring about a Euro-Mediterranean space for peace, security, stability, democracy, tolerance, shared prosperity ...".

The princess also paid homage to the Late Lalla Fatima zahra for her  "audacious fight for the emancipation of the Moroccan and the Arab-Moslem
woman."

"She dedicated her life to the disabused, the excluded, and to all those excluded by fatality", the princess added.

The UFDLH, made up of female ministers, members of parliament, university teachers, jurists, academicians and doctors, aims to promote justice,
tolerance, women's rights and peace.  © MAP 2004
http://www.map.co.ma/mapeng/eng.htm
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ITC BEGINS ASSESSMENT OF U.S.-MOROCCO FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
March 18, 2004 News Release 04-025

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has instituted an investigation to assess the comprehensive bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) that the President has proposed to establish with Morocco.  The investigation, U.S.-Morocco Free Trade Agreement: Potential Economywide
and Selected Sectoral Effects, was requested by the U.S. Trade Representative in a letter received on March 8, 2004.  The Trade Act of 2002 granted the President authority to negotiate trade agreements that can only be approved or disapproved (but not amended) by the U.S. Congress. The law requires the ITC to prepare a report that assesses the likely impact of proposed FTAs on the U.S. economy as a whole and on specific industry sectors and the interests of U.S. consumers. The ITC's report, which will be public, is due to the President and the Congress no more than 90 days after the President actually signs the agreement, which he can do 90 days after he notifies the Congress of his intent to do so. The President notified the Congress on March 8, 2004, of his intent to enter into the FTA with Morocco.  The ITC will hold a public hearing in connection with the investigation on April 29, 2004. Requests to appear at the hearing (one original and 14 copies) should be filed no later than 5:15 p.m. on April 15, 2004, with the Secretary, U.S. International Trade Commission, 500 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20436. For further information, call 202-205-1816.  The ITC also welcomes written submissions for the record. Written submissions (one original and 14 copies) should be addressed to the Secretary of the Commission at the above address and should be submitted at the earliest practical date but no later than 5:15 p.m. on May 6, 2004. All written submissions, except for confidential business information, will be available for public inspection.  Further information on the scope of the investigation and appropriate submissions is available in the ITC's notice of investigation, dated March 17, 2004, which can be obtained from the ITC Internet site (www.usitc.gov) or by contacting the Office of the Secretary at the above address or at
202-205-1816.
http://www.usitc.gov/er/nl2004/er0318bb2.htm
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Portugal to grant Moroccan operators a 100 million Euro credit line
Morocco-Portugal, Economics, 3/19/2004

Portugal will grant Moroccan businessmen a 100 million Euros credit line to help the kingdom's enterprises access the European markets, it was announced at a meeting, here Thursday, between the two countries businessmen who gathered to explore the opportunities to further develop bilateral economic relations.

Tawfik Rkibi, President of the Moroccan Chamber of trade and industry, told MAP that this grant comes in addition to the 10 million Euros credit line
already granted by Lisbon to Morocco's small and medium enterprises
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040319/2004031928.html
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France to Double Aid to Morocco
Mar 19, 2004 (LiquidAfrica via COMTEX)

The French Development Agency will double the aid granted to Morocco for the 2004-2006 period to reach a300m (US$366m), said chief of the French economic mission in Rabat, Michel Derrac. Maghreb Arab News reports that France is supporting Morocan small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Derrac said they will benefit from up to a61m ($74m), reports the Moroccan weekly, La Nouvelle Tribune.  The French diplomat, who was asked whether decisions made by the European Union (EU), such as the common agriculture policy, would induce a decrease in development aid, said that, on the contrary, the farming deal signed recently between Morocco and the EU had boosted trade between Morocco and Europe. Competitiveness-related considerations apart, he said French enterprises were "highly interested in Morocco, France's traditional
partner".  France's investments in Morocco, worth a207.2m ($252m), have tapped over 400 sectors and employ more than 65000 people. In the past five years, they recorded a 50% rise against an average of 20% previously. There may be a slight decline in exchanges, but it is a logical upshot of the diversification of the Moroccan economy, he said.
(C) 2004 Business Day Africa, Redistributed by LiquidAfrica.com, All Rights Reserved
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=079i6013&section=Countries&page=Morocco&channel=All%20Morocco%20News&objectid=22403786-8F1A-11D4-867000D0B74A0D7C
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Morocco adopts consumer protection strategy
Politics, 3/16/2004

Moroccan minister of industry, trade and telecoms, Rachid Talbi Alami, said Monday that his department has adopted a strategy that puts consumers at the center of economic and social development.  Speaking at the opening of a seminar on "a strategy of proximity to protect consumers," El Alami said the scheme aims to promote the consumer's basic rights through strengthening the legal framework and adoption of several measures meant to reduce health jeopardy risks. The strategy also includes awareness campaigns on consumers rights along with the civil society. Several moves have already been made in collaboration with the government secretariat general, the minister said.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040316/2004031625.html
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Duke Of York arrives in Morocco for trade promotion
Economics, 3/16/2004

The Duke of York arrived, in Casablanca Monday, on a three-day official visit to Morocco during which he will have talks with several senior
Moroccan officials, leading members of the business community and British companies established in Morocco.

This visit coincides with a United Kingdom trade mission in Morocco, organised by the South East of England Exporters Association (SEEA). It also
comes in the context of ongoing efforts to boost the growing political and economic partnership between the UK and Morocco.

The visit by the Duke of York, who is the second son and third child of the Queen, follows last February's visit to Morocco of Mike O'Brien, Foreign and commonwealth Office Trade Minister.

The Duke of York has taken up in 2001 a new role as Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, working in support of UK Trade and Investment, the government body which supports UK companies trading internationally and which encourages foreign investment.

Morocco is becoming an increasingly important market for British companies looking to expand overseas, while Moroccan companies are taking more and more interest in the British market and British goods and services.

Morocco is now UK's fastest growing market in the Maghreb, said, last week, the British embassy in a press release announcing this visit.

The UK is Morocco's third largest export market. It was rated sixth largest investor in Morocco over the period 1992-2002. 50% of two-way trade is generated by the textile sector and some 30,000 Moroccans working in 150 factories directly work for the UK textile industry.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040316/2004031628.html
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Morocco calls for a world conference on terrorism
Geneva Mar. 16

Morocco has called for an international conference on terrorism and human rights with the ambition to reach "a common conception of the fight against terrorism." The appeal was made, here Tuesday, by Moroccan minister of human rights Mohamed Aujjar who was addressing the 60th session of the Geneva-based UN Commission of Human Rights. Aujjar called on the conference to "adopt an international strategy with the participation of the civil society, searchers and human rights advocates, while seeing to the respect of the International Human Rights Charter".

He recalled Morocco's endeavor to fight terrorism in particular after the May 16 terrorists attacks in Casablanca killing 45 people including the 12
suicide bombers, as well as the democratic process in the kingdom under the leadership of HM King Mohammed VI. The Moroccan minister rejected the amalgam between Islam and terrorism, insisting that "Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance. Aujjar who is leading the Moroccan delegation to this conference met several ministers including Canadian foreign minister, Bill Graham whom he briefed on human rights achievements in Morocco.

Aujjar surveyed Morocco's human rights developments and its efforts to consolidate democratic institutions and the rule of law.  The minister explained the reforms of the family code, which he qualified as pioneering and model in the region, highlighting their impact on Moroccan women's rights. He also evoked morocco's considerable efforts to fight terrorism, underlining that measures were undertaken in order to guarantee the respect of human rights in the anti-terrorism endeavor, in accordance with international law and norms.  Aujjar raised, on the other hand, the issue of the Moroccans natives of the Sahara held against their will in the Tindouf camps (southwestern Algeria) by the Algeria-backed Polisario separatists who are claiming the independence of this former Spanish colony, retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid Accords signed with Spain and Mauritania. He stressed, in this regard, the inhuman and deteriorating conditions in which they are held.
http://www.map.co.ma/mapeng/news/politics/pol_20055.htm
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Rally in Morocco in solidarity with terrorism victims in Madrid.
Rabat, Mar 19, 2004 (EFE via COMTEX)

More than 1,500 people demonstrated in front of the Spanish consulate in the northeastern city of Nador on Friday to express the Moroccan people's solidarity with the victims of the Mar. 11 terrorist attacks on a commuter train in Madrid.  The demonstration was organized by a committee of political parties, labor unions and other organizations.  Demonstrators chanted slogans condemning terrorism and expressing their solidarity with the people of Spain.  In Rabat on Thursday some 1,000 people took part in a rally in front of the
Cervantes Institute to denounce the terrorist attacks.  A liturgy attended by Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio and members of the Moroccan government was held Tuesday in Rabat's Catholic cathedral for the purpose of paying tribute to the victims of the Mar. 11 bombing in Madrid.
On Monday, a "train of life" carrying representatives of political parties, labor unions, cultural associations and human rights organizations is
scheduled to leave Casablanca for Madrid. http://www.efe.es  Copyright (c) 2004. Agencia EFE S.A
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=079u5216&section=Countries&page=Morocco&channel=All%20Morocco%20News&objectid=22403786-8F1A-11D4-867000D0B74A0D7C
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Moroccans feel Madrid's pain: March in support of bombing victims.
TANGIERS, Morocco

Hundreds of Moroccans, including children holding flowers, showed support for victims of the Madrid train bombings by marching yesterday through Tangiers _ the hometown of three suspects arrested after the attacks.  About 500 people marched in Tangiers, a city perched on the edge of the
Strait of Gibraltar within view of the Spanish coast. "We want to share in the pain of the Spanish people _ our friends and neighbours," said Tarek Chebboun, a teacher. Some Tangiers residents did not realize that three men who grew up here were arrested in connection with Madrid's bombings.

A Moroccan arrested in connection with the bombings is a "modern" Muslim with a penchant for fashionable clothes, a friend said yesterday.  Spanish police on Saturday arrested Jamal Zougam, his half-brother and another Moroccan who together ran a mobile telephone shop in the capital. Two Indians were also detained.  "Jamal is the kind of guy who'd walk around in a Lacoste T-shirt in the summer. He liked to wear good labels. He was very modern, but he didn't drink alcohol," said Abdul, 28, who said he had known Zougam for some seven years.
"He was religious, we're all religious," he said. But Zougam did not seem a fanatic, Abdul added.  Abdul works in a clothes shop a block away from Zougam's store in central Madrid's multi-racial Lavapies district, where Moroccans yesterday complained of an atmosphere of fear and suspicion as police patrolled the streets on motorbikes.  Residents said there was nothing out of the ordinary about Zougam's shop - called Locutorio Nuevo Siglo or New Century Telephone Centre, according to a shabby sign above the door. 

Police believe mobile phones were used to detonate the bombs which exploded on commuter trains during Thursday's rush hour, killing 201 people. A mobile phone was found connected to the detonator of an unexploded bomb found in a bag on one train.  "We were friends. We'd often have coffee together, sometimes we'd pray together, and then each of us would go home," Abdul said. "He was good-looking, he didn't have a beard. He liked sport, he liked to joke around a lot."  Abdul, also from Morocco, said Zougam had come to Spain as a child. He said he did not believe his friend had anything to do with the attack.  The grey shutters of Zougam's shop, which also sold telephone accessories and did money transfers, were pulled down yesterday and a small candle was burning outside.  "The shop would get very busy in the afternoon," said the attendant in the bakery next door. "Small groups of Moroccan men would hang about outside the shop in the afternoon, leaning against parked cars and chatting." 

Residents said the narrow, dusty streets of Lavapies and its ethnic and Spanish restaurants had been a lot emptier than usual since the bombings.  "At first I was afraid to go out of my house," said Fauzia Abdul, 46, a housewife, wearing a Muslim headscarf. "On Sunday, I walked two metres from my door and someone shouted insults." Fauzia Abdul, who moved to Madrid from Morocco 23 years ago, said she also knew Zougam by sight.  "He used to run a food shop just along there," before opening the phone shop about three years ago, she said, pointing down the street lined with shops selling traditional water pipes or "narghile" and colourful scarves. 

Many Moroccans have settled in Lavapies, one of the oldest and most racially mixed parts of Madrid with a recent history of racially-motivated brawls. Moroc-cans are Spain's largest resident Muslim community, numbering about 300,000.  Malika Abhok, 41, who runs the "Albaraca" Arab restaurant, said many clients were staying away. "I'm scared to go out wearing my headscarf," said Abhok, who came to Spain 18 years ago.  Fellow Moroccan Abdil, one of a handful of customers at the restaurant, said he had closed his fish shop for the day. "People don't want to buy my fish. They think it's Moroccan fish. They think they'll find a bomb in it!" he said. "Today the paper says six Moroccans, tomorrow it will say 20 then the next day it will say all Moroccans" were behind the attack, he said angrily. "It's a stain on our name." - Agencies
http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp?CategoryId=3&ArticleId=25576
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In Morocco's gateway to Europe, disbelief greets arrests over Madrid bombings
Owen Bowcott reports from Tangier, the native city of three of the suspects
Saturday March 20, 2004 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk

To close neighbours in the ancient kasbah, Jamal Zougam was an affluent expatriate. They noticed him when he was home from Spain, at the apartment his family kept for holidays. They admired his jeans and fashionable haircuts.  They knew him socially: he played football with youngsters on their concrete-surfaced street, Rue Ben Ali Ym. When it was hot he took off for the beach. "He was a very kind guy," explained a youth standing in a shaded doorway. "He wasn't the type you'd think of as an Islamist.  "Sometimes he had a beard, but on other occasions his hair was cut short at the front and grew long at the back. The family were rich; they'd done well for themselves in Madrid. He was here every summer with his mother and sister."

Yesterday there was no sign of life behind the ornamental metal grilles which enclose the shuttered windows in the Zougams' ground floor flat. Two
plainclothes Moroccan policemen stood opposite the building, monitoring arrivals. No one answered knocks on the lacquered wooden door.  The kasbah - like the rest of Tangier, which was once an international city with its own laws and administration - long ago shed its glamour. The heyday of independence was in the 1950s, when the Woolworth's heiress Barbara Hutton owned a mini-palace and American beat poets congregated in the nightclubs.

The old colonial houses have survived and the street markets still throng with customers in long djellabas but the city increasingly functions as an
economic gateway to Europe. On a clear day it is visible 15 miles away on the other side of the narrow Straits of Gibraltar.  Approach roads to the city are studded with placards advertising cheap ferry crossings. By night, illegal immigrants from as far south as Senegal and Gambia risk their lives in small boats, hoping to reach the far shore.  Zougam's mother, Aicha, joined the human tide flowing north to escape poverty and unemployment. Jamal was only 10 when - along with his older half-brother, Mohammed Chaoui - he left Tangier in 1983 to start a new life in Madrid. Aicha's first husband, Ali, had already moved to Barcelona and set up a business.

Escape from poverty
It was on his regular return visits that Zougam aroused suspicions with the Moroccan authorities. He was spotted meeting known Islamist extremists and was said to shave his beard whenever he came back to avoid being questioned. It was also rumoured he was selling mobile phones, stolen in Morocco, to customers in Spain.  Following his exposure as the prime suspect in the Madrid train massacres, the list of Islamist fundamentalists with whom he was supposedly in contact has grown longer and longer. He is alleged, for example, to have travelled to Norway to meet the exiled leader of the Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam, currently blamed for many of the suicide attacks on coalition forces in Iraq.

But it was the concentration of Islamists around Tangier which prompted claims that the city may have been used as a rear base for al-Qaida
operations against Europe. All three Moroccans arrested by Spanish police come from the city: Zougam, his half-brother, Chaoui, and their Madrid
business partner, Mohammed Bekkali. They sold mobile telephone equipment in Madrid.  Among those whom Zougam frequently stayed with in his native city were the Benyaiche brothers. They are alleged to have been members of the Groupe Islam-ique Combattant Marocain (GICM), part of the Salifiya Jihadia movement blamed for the suicide bomb attacks which killed 45 people in Casablanca in May 2003.

The history of the Benyaiche brothers is well documented: Abdellah died when the Americans bombed the Tora Bora cave complex in Afghanistan, Abdelaziz is under arrest in Spain for alleged membership of an al-Qaida cell, and Salaheddine is in a Moroccan prison for the Casablanca bombings.
When Spanish police, acting at the request of a French judge, raided the Zougam family apartment on Madrid's Sequillo Street in 2001, they found
videos of the Benyaiche brothers fighting as mojahedin in Dagestan, Russia.  Also, in a clear sign that Zougam was, at the very least, intrigued by the brothers' fundamentalist creed, they also found a videotape containing an interview with Osama bin Laden and several books on global jihad. Zougam's address book included the numbers of several men now awaiting trial in Spanish prisons on al-Qaida-related charges.

Another of Zougam's associates was reported to be Robert Pierre, a Frenchman who is serving a life sentence for the Casablanca bombings. After converting to Islam at 17, Pierre moved to Tangier and married a local woman. Nicknamed "The Emir with Blue Eyes", he is said to have earned a good living smuggling drugs and stolen cars.  He also travelled to Afghanistan. After the Casablanca bombings Pierre allegedly arranged the escape of those who coordinated the attack. (Zougam, the Moroccan authorities noted, left the country three weeks before the attack.)

Pierre himself fled into the Rif mountains, where he was eventually captured despite being disguised as a woman. At his trial he created confusion by claiming he had penetrated Islamist networks on behalf of the French intelligence service.  The popular response in Tangier to such revelations has been profound disbelief, mingled with sympathy for the victims of the latest atrocity. Two of those who died in Madrid were from families who live in the centre of the city, not far from Zougam's holiday home: a 24-year-old man and a 13-year-old girl. Their bodies have already been repatriated.  Another significant figure in Tangier was Mohammed Fizazi, a preacher infamous for urging the "assassination of the impious". For a period he taught at a mosque in the Beni Makada district of the city, an area known for its Islamist activists.

The Benyaiche brothers attended his prayer sessions. Perhaps they brought along Zougam. Fizazi later moved to Sidi Moumen, an impoverished area of Casablanca from which many of the suicide bombers set out last May. He is currently serving a 30-year sentence for his part in the attacks. Under interrogation he declared: "I love death as much as the impious love life".  Mohammed Chaoui's cousins now live in Beni Makada. Until he was arrested in Madrid they did not know he had a half-brother called Jamal Zougam. "Mohammed was born here in 1969 and was only 15 when his mother moved to Spain," one of his cousins, also called Mohammed, explained after offering a glass of mint tea.  "We last saw him about three years ago when he came back here for a wedding. He said his prayers and he seemed a completely normal person. He eyed up girls and laughed and played with everyone. He smoked cigarettes, went to the beach, kissed girls on their cheek. Islamists don't do those kind of things.

"He went out wearing T-shirts, shorts or jeans. I'm sure he's innocent. If you saw Mohammed, you would never think he would be capable of this terrible act, this crime. Those bombs were acts of terrorism, not Islam. It's sick ideology."  The presence of Mohammed Bekkali, 32, in the list of those arrested is even more puzzling. His religion appears to have been football. He was not renowned for saying his prayers but was an avid devotee of Real Madrid.  A bright science student, he had a degree from Tetouan University and moved to Madrid to enroll for a doctorate in physics. The cost was too great for his family, however, and he teamed up with Chaoui to set up a mobile telephone sales shop in the Spanish capital in 2000. There is no evidence that he knew Zougam or Chaoui before moving to Madrid and nothing to suggest he knew any of the Islamists active in Tangier. It was the SIM card inside a mobile phone - which was attached to an unexploded rucksack bomb discovered after the Madrid bombings - which led the police to the shop.  Bekkali's family is well to do. His father runs a carpet business in Tangier. His cousin is a university lecturer. In their home the family last week pored over snapshots of him taken at Real Madrid's stadium, or admiring the team's trophies.

Interrogation
"Mohammed knew the history of Real Madrid like a sports commentator. He went to see all their matches and training sessions," said his cousin, Zaki Bekkali, 38. "If he ever missed a match, he called his father to get a full report.  "He was always smiling, very happy. He was not someone shut in on himself, not a fanatic or fundamentalist. Exactly the opposite. He was very open." A Real Madrid shirt is produced, Number 23, Beckham. "Each time there was a new recruit, he brought a new shirt."  His father, also Mohammed, 57, said his son had many friends and the family had been inundated with calls from those offering to pay for a defence lawyer: "In Madrid, he had Chinese friends, Spanish friends, Lebanese friends, he was very open. We are sure he's innocent."  It is a feeling echoed by neighbours of the Zougam family in Madrid's Sequillo street, where nobody has been seen since Saturday, and by people who knew them in the city's Lavapies district, where the three had their "Nuevo Siglo" shop dealing with mobile telephones. Zougam, Chaoui and Bekkali are all remembered as polite, cheerful, friendly men. They were good, even thoughtful, neighbours. They never gave even the slightest hint of being Islamist radicals.  Does that mean they were innocent purveyors of mobile telephones to the Madrid bombers? Or were they hiding something sinister behind friendly facades?

Charafa, the youngest sister in the Bekkali family, said she had spoken to Mohammed by telephone on the Saturday after the explosion after he attended a demonstration against the killings in Madrid. "His voice was a bit taut," she recalled. "He said he had been on the march against terrorism and lit one of the candles. He said he felt very sad for the victims. He was arrested that evening. We haven't been able to speak to him since."  · Additional reporting by Giles Tremlett in Madrid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1173883,00.html
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Morocco ratchets up fight against home-grown extremism after Madrid bombing attacks on trains.
By Dominique Pettit - RABAT

Morocco has once again been implicated in terror attacks, with the inquiry into the Madrid bombings indicating that six Moroccans plotted the series of explosions on rush-hour trains that killed 201 and left 1,500 injured.  But with accusing stares levelled at it, the north African country insists it has never let up in its battle against home-grown extremist groups, and has even ratcheted up the fight against radical Islam since the start of the year.  Moroccan extremists have been implicated in several other major attacks in recent years, including the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and the attacks on Morocco's cosmopolitan economic hub Casablanca in May last year.

Forty-five people died in that attack, including 12 suicide bombers - mostly from the ramshackle slums that dot Casablanca's outskirts, said to be ideal breeding grounds for all forms of radicalism.  A vast inquiry launched by the police and legal authorities immediately following the Casablanca attacks had, four months later, led to the arrests of more than 900 people.  The Moroccan parliament fast-tracked anti-terror legislation following the attacks, overwhelmingly adopting a controversial law less than two weeks later, which stiffened penalties and eased police work in terrorism cases.  The law broadened the definition of terrorism and made it easier for courts to hear cases classified as terrorist.  Since it was enacted, 16 people have been sentenced to death for their key roles in the Casablanca attacks, and several more have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, often for "helping to prepare terrorist acts" and belonging to the banned Salafia Jihadia Muslim extremist group.  Salafia has been roundly blamed by the authorities in Morocco for the Casablanca attacks.

Although the arm of the law has been very long in rounding up suspects and pronouncing guilty verdicts in connection with the Casablanca attacks, officials here say their investigation into the series of suicide bombings are far from over.  One police source said that some 200 people have been detained since the start of the year in connection with alleged extremist activities on Moroccan soil.  Ninety of the suspects were from Tangiers, hometown of Jamal Zougam, one of three Moroccans arrested in Spain following the Madrid bombings. An official in Rabat said Morocco, which has sent agents to Spain to help in the probe, had warned Madrid in June 2003 that Zougam was in Spain and belonged to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.  Zougam left Morocco three weeks after the Casablanca suicide attacks, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Spain, meanwhile, has dispatched its own investigators to Morocco to pore over the results of the probes into the Casablanca attacks, a source here said.

The authorities in Morocco, which prides itself on its moderate form of Islam, have also stepped up their fight against radical Muslim preachers who
allegedly promote extremist doctrines in their sermons.  In February, the ministry in charge of Islamic affairs was reorganized, revamping, among  others, the directorate of the north African country's mosques.  "The main mission of the directorate of the mosques will be to ensure efficient control of sermons," said Islamic scholar Mohamed Darif.  Twenty percent of working age Moroccans are unemployed, and the country has
great disparities in wealth and widespread illiteracy.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/morocco/?id=9293
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Moroccans unsettled by free-trade deal with US: Agreement leaves analysts skeptical about disparity between 2 markets
Khatoun Haidar Special to The Daily Star

The debate over the bilateral free-trade agreement (FTA) signed March 2 between Morocco and the US took the Moroccan national scene by storm. Never did the choice of a foreign commercial policy generate such a controversial reaction in the Moroccan public opinion. Many view it as a first step in the US Greater Middle East Initiative, a political statement rather than just a commercial issue.

Already in 2002 when the FTA discussions were started in Washington during a meeting between Moroccan King Mohammed VI and US President George W. Bush, the principle of such an agreement was received with suspicion in Morocco. The only other regional countries with bilateral deals with Washington are Israel and Jordan. Aside from political rhetoric, a rational and legitimate debate was mirrored in the press. "This accord will advance the national economy, generate thousands of jobs,and insure the well being of the Moroccan people" said supporters. "Given the disparity between the two economies, the accord will destroy our productive sectors. US imports will condemn local production and suppress thousands of jobs," said FTA opponents. A close look at the deal gives some credibility to the objections. The FTA clause will mainly benefit US products subject in Morocco to 20 percent custom duties, compared to 4 percent restrictive tariffs on Moroccan products entering the US. This was reflected by a March 2 press release by the office of the US Trade Representative, saying: "This is the best market access package negotiated yet with a developing country in a US free-trade agreement."

Agricultural products usually subject to special clauses aimed at protecting the basic sectors of emerging markets, have to the dismay of many Moroccans, been subject to the same immediate free access clause Morocco will provide duty-free access immediately on products such as pistachios, pecans, frozen potatoes, whey products, processed poultry products, pizza cheese and breakfast cereals. Wheat, a highly political issue in Morocco, is the only US product to stay subject to quotas. Eight million people in Morocco depend on production of wheat - the main crop produced by small farmers - for their livelihood.

Against this, the US was keen on protecting its agricultural sector. The FTA states that there will be no immediate free access: "The US will phase out all agricultural tariffs under the deal, most in 15 years. An agricultural safeguard will be available in the event of significant price decreases for
certain products." Commenting on this, Mohammed bin Arouss, a Moroccan farmer said: "They are selling us promises. Who know what will happen in 15 years?"

On the other hand, the Moroccan textile sector stands to gain from the agreement, especially in view of the clause that makes textiles and apparel
duty-free if imports meet the FTA's rule of origin."  AMITH, the Moroccan textile and clothing manufacturers association, expects that the sector's exports, estimated at $30 million, could under the new deal witness a six-fold growth in a short period of time. This will have a positive outcome on economic growth in Morocco.

According to the Trade and Industry Chamber of Casablanca (CCIS), the textile clothing sector represents 43 percent of the country's industrial
exports, accounting for 14 percent of Morocco's overall industrial production with a yearly turnover of $2.8 billion, employing 196,213 people, or 39.5 percent of total industrial employment. Unique to this sector is that female staff form 66 percent of the total number of persons employed by
the industry.

The deal's most controversial aspect remains the two titles in the clause on the enforcement of intellectual property rights relating to generic
medicine. They could complicate and delay the access of pharmaceutical industries to generic molecules once they enter the public domain. Health Minister Mohammed Cheikh Biadillah stressed that "gains in the field of generic medicine will be preserved" adding that, in the case of an epidemic, the Doha deals stipulate that "health overrules all accords." However, the deal still seems to be undermining the efforts of pressure groups acting within the framework of the World Trade Organization on behalf of poor countries to insure access to affordable medication for all. US pharmaceutical giants will be able through this deal to circumvent future gains.

Moroccan Premier Taieb Fassi Fihri gave assurances regarding some aspects of the agreement, mainly on generic drugs, agriculture and intellectual
property, insisting that "Morocco's rights and interests are preserved." Many analysts remain skeptical, stressing that the deal's political implications reach beyond its technical framework, and that Morocco will not be able to cash directly on the price of its alignment with the US. In fact, the most significant returns will be indirect, coming from an increase in US investment encouraged by the clause aimed at establishing a
secure and predictable legal framework for investors in Morocco. Strategically located in North Africa, at the doorsteps of the European market, Morocco could thus become an attractive location for US investments.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/business/18_03_04_f.asp
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Group Accor to open seven new hotels in Morocco in 2005
Morocco, Business, 3/18/2004

Accord Morocco Group announced the opening in 2005 of seven new Ibis Moussafir three-star hotels, which will raise the number of these units in
the country from nine to sixteen. In a press conference held on the occasion of the recent achievement of the ISO 9001 certification, version 2000, the Group officials stated that the new units, with a hosting capacity of 900 rooms, will be built in the cities of El-Jadida, Ouarzazate, Marrakech, Essaouira and Tangier and Casablanca. The construction work of these units, which has already begun, will cost 340 million DH (nearly 38 million dollars) and will create 300 new jobs. Seven years after its implantation in Morocco, Accor manages 18 hotels (2977 rooms), employs more than 2000 people and realized in 2002 460 million DH (over 50 million dollars) sales. Accor is represented in Morocco by Sofitel (6 units), Mercure (1), Ibis (9) and Coralia (2).
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040318/2004031821.html
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Moroccan connection brings old enemies into a new relationship
Owen Bowcott
Wednesday March 17, 2004
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk

Moroccan and Spanish investigators found their inquiries converging on the same group of al-Qaida followers yesterday as fresh evidence emerged to link the Madrid train bombing directly to last year's multiple suicide attacks in Casablanca.  Reports that Jamal Zougam, the Moroccan arrested on suspicion of planting the rucksack bombs in Spain, had previously met Mohamed Fizazi - one of the spiritual leaders of the Salafia Jihadia movement, the North African group blamed for the Casablanca atrocities - strengthened the connection.  Another similarity between the two attacks emerged yesterday. The Casablanca bombs were, apparently, carried in rucksacks not in belts of explosives strapped to the bodies of the suicide bombers.  Aboubakr Jamai, editor of the influential Casablanca paper Le Journal, said the use of bags was unusual for al-Qaida operations.
"There were reports at the time that the bombers did not realise they were going to be killed," he told the Guardian. "They thought they were simply carrying the bombs in [to hotels, foreign consulates and a Jewish communitycentre].

"The devices were detonated by the people behind them. The rumors at the time was that mobile phones were used - the same method as in Madrid.  "One of the tragedies was that the main suspect, a man known as Moul Essabate [shoe owner, in Arabic] died in custody. There was a strong suspicion he was tortured to death.  "He was the missing link. Almost everyone else said they had been recruited by him - and he has been 'missed' by the Moroccan police."  The knowledge that a significant part of the militant organization which perpetrated the Madrid massacres has its roots on the southern side of the Strait of Gibraltar has created closer relations between Spanish and Moroccan detectives.

A team of anti-terrorist officers from Madrid has flown in to exchange intelligence with their Moroccan counterparts. It is likely that they will
have asked to interview some of the imprisoned Salafia Jihadia's members.  There have been no reports of related arrests in Morocco since March 11, but Moroccan police officers have travelled to Madrid to liaise with Spanish investigators.  Another combined line of inquiry may involve the telephone caller who alerted a Spanish television station at the weekend to the presence of a tape claiming responsibility on behalf of al-Qaida. He is reported to have had a Moroccan accent.  The recognition of shared tragedies has brought the two countries, which have a long history of mutual suspicion, closer together. Three of the victims of the train bombings were migrant Moroccan workers. Spain's departing foreign minister, Ana Palacio, attended a memorial service in the Moroccan capital's Catholic cathedral yesterday.  One of Morocco's leading anti-terrorist experts, Mohamed Darif, told the Guardian that he believed two groups were involved in the Madrid attacks: one based in Morocco and one founded by al-Qaida's reputed head of operations in Spain, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, a Syrian also known as Abu Dahdah, now in a Spanish jail awaiting trial.
"Salafia Jihadia," Professor Darif said, "is more a doctrine, like Marxism, than a single coherent organisation. Zougam helped prepare the Casablanca
attacks but left Tangier a month before they were carried out."  The Moroccan government has made no comment on the arrest of Moroccans in
connection with the Madrid bombs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1170842,00.html
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Sabmiller Pours $46m Into North Africa.
Business Day (Johannesburg) March 19, 2004
Charlotte Mathews, Consumer Industries Editor Cape Town

Global beer giant SABMiller was busy investing a total of 46m in more joint venture arrangements with Castel, its partner in Africa this time in Algeria and Morocco, the brewer announced yesterday. SABMiller first partnered with Castel, which has extensive beer, carbonated
soft drink and mineral water interests in west and central Africa, in February 2001.  SABMiller's latest annual report said it had recently entered Algeria with a joint investment in soft drinks, to be supplemented with brewing in the short term, and was evaluating other opportunities.

SABMiller, which has a 20% interest in Castel, will make a direct investment of $25m in a joint venture in that country. This will include a 25% stake in two Castel soft-drink bottling plants and one brewery, and a 16% stake in a second brewery. In Morocco, SABMiller will spend 21m to take a 25% stake in an investment company that owns three breweries, a malting plant and a wet depot, which is a filtration and packaging line without an adjoining brewery.

These investments, together with SABMiller's existing 20% stake in Castel, mean it will have a 40% interest in the Algerian and Moroccan operations, while Castel will hold 60%. Last year these businesses generated $86m in sales. Castel will manage the businesses, but both parties will co-operate on procurement and technology.

Although these are Muslim countries, which limits the market for alcoholic drinks, SABMiller said it was "optimistic about the longer-term prospects of these markets, and the impressive operating ability of the joint ventures to participate in consolidating the beer and soft drinks markets in Algeria, and to grow the beverage markets in both countries". Algeria's beer market is estimated at about 900000 hectolitres a year, while
its soft drink market is about 5-million hectolitres. In both these sectors the joint venture's market share is about one-third. In Morocco, the beer market is about 1-million hectolitres a year and the joint venture operation has a 95% market share. SABMiller said it would "continue to pursue all investment opportunities in new countries in Africa through joint venture arrangements".
http://allafrica.com/stories/200403190168.html
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MOROCCO, EUROPE AND TERRORISM
With links being discovered to Morocco and Al-Qa'ida in last week's train bombings in Madrid, the future of the large numbers of Arabs who are living in Europe has come into question.

Five Moroccan suspects were arrested in connection with the terror attacks on Tuesday, in addition to three that were apprehended immediately. Jamal Zoukam, one of the five, is believed to be connected to Al-Qa'ida as well as a small Moroccan terrorist group involved in the Casablanca terror attacks in May 2003. Because of the arrests and Morocco's geographical proximity to Spain - at its narrowest point, the Strait of Gibraltar is 8 miles wide - the Muslim monarchy is a gateway for migration from Africa to Europe, much of it illegal.


While this is a potential passageway for Islamic terrorists, Morocco resolutely joined the 'war on terrorism' following the Casablanca bombings
in which 45 people were killed. Likewise, in the aftermath of last week's bombings, the perception of the hundreds of thousands of Moroccans living in Europe may vacillate between ally and enemy. Moroccans will inevitably be the targets of suspicion in Europe, said Professor Muhammad Charef, a professor of geography at the Ibnou Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco. "It will be a dirty period to live through," he said.

"It's easy to blame the other, to link all Moroccans to the new generation of terrorists," Charef said. "One fish can spoil the entire batch," he said,
quoting a Moroccan proverb.Charef said the bombings would also be used as a pretext for the extreme right to tighten security measures. Moroccans began remaining in Spain only in the late 1980s and 1990s, Charef explained, when traditional destination countries like France, Belgium and the Netherlands closed their doors to immigrants. In 2001, Moroccans made up the largest foreign community in Spain, numbering 234,937.

In the mid-1980s, Europe closed its doors to the guest workers who had swelled its population in the preceding decades. Until then, Spain had been a transitory spot for the émigrés. Until recently, Moroccans were considered the "ideal" immigrant group in Spain, being well-integrated and "discreet," Charef said. While many are students or professionals entering legally, the lower classes often enter from Morocco illegally and work in "sub-human" conditions, particularly in the agriculture industry of southern Spain. The Moroccan government's failure to develop the country, economically and in terms of infrastructure, accounts for emigration, and monetary incentives offered throughout the past half-century were largely unsuccessful, says Charef. Three million Moroccans currently live abroad, according to him.

However, in recent years, Morocco and Europe have tightened their policies and punishments for illegal immigration, according to Ferruccio Pastore, the deputy director of the Center for International Political Studies in Rome and an expert in international law. The criminalization of Moroccans in the aftermath of the March 11 attacks would be "frightening and unrealistic," Pastore said. He cited recent publications encouraging the Moroccans in Spain to take a clear stand against terrorism.

Since the Casablanca attacks, Moroccans have become particularly sensitive to suspicion of terror because they see themselves as united with victims of terror, judging from what Charef said. "It's crucial for the future of Europe, and of Italy and Spain, that from a political and public
understanding, the people will be able to [distinguish] a minority of those who are a threat in terms of terrorism and those who are victims and are
willing to stand against it with Europe," Pastore said.

While the relationship between the Moroccan and Spanish governments has deteriorated in recent years, he continued, newly-elected Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero plans to make Morocco "a key priority in foreign policy." This "radical change" is hopeful for the future of Europe, Pastore added.

Europe's treatment of foreigners in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings, particularly those of Arab and Muslim origin, Pastore predicted, will "be
one of the most important measures of the maturity of Europeans." By Melanie Takefman on Wednesday, March 17, 2004
http://themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=5223
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Caught between Arabia and the West, Morocco cultivates its allies with care.
By Michael S. Arnold  CASABLANCA, Morocco, March 16 (JTA)

When American Jewish figures were planning their visit to Morocco last month, one of their goals was to shore up the country's commitment to the war on terrorism.  They didn't realize how timely their visit would be.  Moroccans have been part of nearly every Al-Qaida cell discovered in Europe
over the past two years, and a number of Moroccans have emerged as suspects in last week's massive suicide bombings in Spain.  Over the past decade, the scheduled stopover en route to the annual Israel mission of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish  year's stop in Morocco was no exception.  Conference officials choose the stopover on each year's mission with an eye to building strategic relationships that can help Israel and the Jewish people.

Recent destinations have included Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan - relatively moderate Muslim states that can form a "firewall"
against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, in the words of Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the conference, an umbrella association
of 54 groups representing a broad Jewish religious and political spectrum.  The group is seen as an important voice of American Jewry in Washington and around the world.  Conference officials had considered a visit to Morocco for several years, but as Israeli-Palestinian violence raged and King Mohammed VI consolidated his control after ascending to power in 1999, the timing was never propitious.  The pieces fell into place after Mohammed visited New York last fall and extended an invitation at a meeting with conference leaders.  "This is one of the most sensitive and significant trips we have taken," Hoenlein said during the three-day visit. "In Morocco you not only have a Jewish community" - one gravely shaken by a series of suicide bombings last May - "but important geopolitical issues."

For the conference, three issues were paramount: reassuring the Jewish community, strengthening Mohammed's stand against terrorism and enlisting the king's aid to break the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.  As chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's Jerusalem Committee
- and, according to tradition, a descendant of the founder of Islam - Mohammed has the credentials in the Arab world to push for peace and
normalization with Israel, conference leaders believe.  "I believe his majesty will play the largest role among all the Arab leaders," Hoenlein said. "In the vacuum of leadership in the Middle East, he can show courage in that role. And as a descendant of the prophet, he has standing in the Muslim world that can't be ignored." Morocco's cooperation in the war on terrorism is no less essential. Indeed, Moroccan intelligence has become an important ally of Western agencies seeking to crack down on Islamic radicalism, especially in the days since the deadly attacks in Madrid.
Last year's Casablanca bombings were a trial for the young king, who had yet to conclusively demonstrate his authority. After an initial stunned silence, Mohammed has reacted by taking a more assertive stand against Islamic radicalism and for women's rights, an issue considered a litmus test for Muslim countries that want to fully enter the modern world.  For Mohammed, the Conference of Presidents visit was a means of strengthening his ties to the West and burnishing his credentials as an ally against terrorism.  In the background is the belief, common in the Arab world, that American Jews constitute a lobby of unrivaled influence in Washington.  Moroccan officials are thought to believe that U.S. Jews can help Morocco finalize a free-trade agreement currently under discussion with the United States - the first in Africa and only the second in the Arab world - and build support at the United Nations for Morocco's contested claim to the Western Sahara.  Conference leaders indeed are talking up the free-trade agreement in Washington.  But more than that, Hoenlein says, is the necessity of boosting a country with one foot in the Middle East and one in Europe - Mohammed is moving, haltingly, on steps toward democracy and reform - more firmly into the Western camp.
"If we're serious about fighting Islamic fundamentalism, we have to be more supportive of the countries that are more moderate but that are largely
ignored," he said.  The conference long has advocated for increased U.S. aid to Morocco. This year, U.S. foreign aid was raised to $65 million from $12 million - but that's still only a fraction of the amount given to other U.S. allies in the Arab world, such as Egypt and Jordan. Both those countries saw their U.S. aid soar after signing peace treaties with Israel.  It's not clear the extent to which Morocco will help revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Some say the hope that Mohammed will take a leading role is exaggerated.  Morocco "is willing to take some steps, but I don't think they're willing to take the lead on this," Tim Lenderking, the political adviser of the U.S. embassy in Rabat, told the American Jewish group.  Morocco froze its ties with Israel after the intifada began, closing its liaison office in Tel Aviv.  Yet lately there have been signs of a thaw. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was invited on an official visit to Morocco last September, and Moroccan officials are believed to be eager to revive links that saw thousands of Israeli tourists, including many of Moroccan descent, visit the country in the late 1990s.  The fact that the Conference of Presidents visit featured so prominently in the country's state-sponsored media was taken as a sign of the importance
Mohammed places on cultivating relations with American Jewry.  Indeed, a meeting that Hoenlein and several other top members of the conference held with the king was the top item on that night's newscast.  Mohammed took a tough line at the half-hour meeting, criticizing Israel's West Bank security barrier and urging Israel to negotiate with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, according to members of the small Jewish delegation at the meeting. Israel and the United States have shunned Arafat because of his ties to terrorism.  Insisting on anonymity, one member of the delegation said Mohammed may have felt obliged to take a harder line after his foreign minister, meeting with the full American group the previous day, had strongly criticized Palestinian terrorists and said it was "impossible" for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their former homes in Israel.  The foreign minister later claimed he had been misquoted, an indication that such forthright statements - most unusual for an Arab official speaking on the record - had caused some consternation.  Still, the American group considered their audience in the royal tent important.  "The significant thing is the ongoing relationship" that Jewish leaders are developing with the king, the conference's chairman, James Tisch, told JTA. "The king, I think, can be very influential at some point in time when he sees a real opportunity for progress" toward Israeli-Arab peace.  At least, the closer ties have produced one tangible result - the Conference of Presidents launched a relief fund immediately after a late February earthquake in Morocco killed an estimated 300 people.  Donations will be given through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to the Moroccan Jewish community, which will distribute them to victims on a non-sectarian basis.  © JTA. Reproduction of material without written permission is strictly prohibited.
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13879&intcategoryid=2
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For Morocco's Jews, a mixture of integration, vibrancy and decline
By Michael S. Arnold
CASABLANCA, Morocco, March 16 (JTA)

Growing up in Casablanca, Raphael Elmaleh says he never felt fully at ease as a member of a small Jewish minority in a heavily Muslim country. So when he was 7, Elmaleh's family sent him from Morocco to a Jewish boarding school in England.  Elmaleh thought he would feel more comfortable there - but it was in England, already unnerved by the chilly demeanor of the people, that he first encountered anti-Semitism. Elmaleh is like thousands of other Moroccan Jewish youths who have left their homeland for work or study. But a dozen years ago, Elmaleh did something quite unusual: He came back. After two decades away, Elmaleh found Morocco more advanced and developed economically and socially than when he had left. As an adult, Elmaleh says, he also was better able to appreciate the country's traditional warmth and ethnic tolerance.

When Elmaleh, who keeps kosher, goes to the homes of Muslim friends, they prepare vegetarian meals for him - and think nothing of it. "To find that in an Arab country," Elmaleh said in a recent interview, "is amazing." Yet Elmaleh returned, too, to a Jewish community that has fallen from a peak of 300,000 souls after World War II to about 5,000 today. Marriageable men and women of Elmaleh's age are long gone, most to France or Quebec in search of school, work or love.  "It's very hard to find friends of my age in Morocco." In the Jewish community, Elmaleh said, "my age doesn't exist anymore." "And to find a bride? Forget about it. I have to go to France or Israel if I want to find a shidduch." For now, Elmaleh isn't looking. Instead, he's busy going from village to village documenting the country's Jewish heritage and earning money as a tour guide - "Morocco's only Jewish tour guide," as he is quick to tell visitors. Elmaleh's life illustrates the two poles of experience for the Moroccan Jewish community today - warm, integrated, patriotic and vibrant, on the one hand; small, diminishing and potentially doomed on the other.

"In 10 to 15 years I feel there may be no more Jews left in Morocco," Elmaleh said. "I don't think most parents would even want their kids to come
back." Serge Berdugo, president of the country's Jewish community and a former minister of tourism, is more optimistic. "A lot of people said we
were going to disappear when we were down to 100,000 people, and then when we were 20,000 people," he said. "We have numbers that can never disappear." Yet Berdugo is aware of the incentives drawing the community's youth inexorably away. "How can you ask a Jew to come back when he can work in France for $3,000 and here he'll earn $700?" Berdugo said.  But the reality is never so simple. Two of Berdugo's three children found success in Paris, yet one returned to Marrakesh and is living a life of industry and luxury. So, too, in the family of Jacky Kadoch, head of the
small community of Marrakesh. The community numbers about 260 people, most of them over age 60. Those who do stay in Morocco enjoy community institutions and services that would be the envy of many small Jewish communities around the world. 

Morocco's "is the jewel in the crown" of Jewish communities that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee serves, said Amir Shaviv, the
JDC's assistant executive vice president for special operations. "There is such a rich fabric of Jewish life in the community although it's so small,
and it's a model of peaceful coexistence in an Arab and Muslim country." The Casablanca community, which with 3,000 people is by far the largest in Morocco, has 10 Jewish schools serving some 800 students. The community also has at least six synagogues, an old-age home, a medical clinic and a youth center. Until a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations arrived in the country last month, Berdugo said, he never realized Moroccan Jewry had something to teach other Jewish communities.  But, he said, as a Jewish community living with full rights in a Muslim country - in fact, as the last significant Jewish community in the Arab world - he now realizes that they do. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, said the vitality of the community, despite its small numbers, is inspiring. "To see a community that is dwindling but that is still investing so much in its future - that should cause us all to rethink," Hoenlein said. At the youth center, known as the DEJJ, Jewish scouts arranged themselves around the edges of a courtyard to greet a visiting delegation from the Presidents
Conference. As the Jewish dignitaries watched in delight, the Moroccan youths sang "Heiveinu shalom aleichem." In a nearby classroom, young girls
performed a choreographed dance number, while in another room a Jewish youth chorus performed.

The American group later visited an old-age home run by the JDC and the local Jewish community, and visited the local Jewish museum, which houses ritual objects and photographs of buildings and tombstones that failed to hold the delegation's interest. More compelling was another site visit - to the Cercle de l'Alliance, a social club that was among four Jewish targets hit in a series of suicide bombings last May 16. A fifth target was located near the Spanish consulate. No Jews were killed or hurt in the attacks; the buildings were empty of Jews because it was the Sabbath. Twenty-nine Muslims were killed.  The bombings were a blow to the Jews' sense of security in Morocco. Yet many Moroccans saw them primarily as a strike against the country's social and political order, so much so that the anti-Jewish nature of the attacks largely has been obscured. That's just fine with the community, which discouraged overseas Jewish groups from visiting after the bombings to express condolence, outrage or succor - acts of solidarity that might have portrayed the bombings as a Jewish affair, or created a sense that the community was somehow alien to Moroccan society. Instead, the Jewish community has been heartened by the outpouring of support from the country's leadership and the general public.  King Mohammed VI visited the Cercle de l'Alliance the day after the attack and urged the Jewish community to rebuild. Reconstruction is still in progress. The regime then organized a huge rally in support of the Jewish community in the streets of Casablanca. Together, the marchers chanted, "Jews are citizens, Wahhabis are assassins," a reference to the fundamentalist roots of the attackers, who have been linked to Al-Qaida.
The bombings clearly have been the seminal event for Moroccan Jews in recent years, yet members of the community insist they are not overly worried. "We were thinking we were completely immune," Berdugo said. "Now we know that's not the case. We're in the same situation as everywhere else - but not more. Muslims feel just as targeted as Jews." Since the bombings, there have been two more murders of Jews, one in Casablanca and one in Meknes. Some observers say those, too, were anti-Jewish attacks, but members of the community say they simply were criminal murders. "A Jew has to be aware no matter where he is - in Casablanca, in New York or in Paris," said one community member who asked not to be named. "In fact, it's much worse for Jews in France; there you have real anti-Semitism," the man continued. "Not here. Here, if you tell someone you're Jewish, they'll be proud."  In the Jewish community, reactions to the bombings tend to divide along two lines. One is a variant on the timeless notion of Jews as the "canary in the coal mine" as a barometer for a society's health. From this perspective, the bombings weren't really directed at the Jews, but essentially were a test of the young king's power. A second line is that because the bombings prompted the king to reaffirm the protection his predecessors historically offered to Morocco's Jews, the community is now more secure than ever. "We were shocked," said Kadoch, the head of the Marrakesh community, "but we understood right away that the king takes it very seriously, so right away we felt very safe."

After the massive Jewish emigrations of the past half-century, it is often said that those who remain in Morocco either are too rich or too poor to
leave. Yet since last year's bombings, some say, even the remaining members of the community essentially are sitting on their suitcases. "For the Jewish community in Morocco, this is a very sad place," said one Western observer who asked not to be named. "I think in general, people are packing their bags. It's difficult for me to imagine that they will have a viable community a generation from now." Corinne Breuze, the French consul general in Casablanca, said that nearly all Moroccan Jews have visas to France that can be used in case of emergency, a luxury that is much harder for Muslims to obtain.

"I really believe the Moroccan government is doing all it can to allow the Jewish community to live in peace here," Breuze said. But, she said, as in
many countries with small and potentially endangered Jewish communities, "they have the facility to go to Europe - just in case." Berdugo insists the current concern is no more than the customary jitters the community has each time the throne changes hands. "With every change of regime, Jews speculate about continuity," Berdugo said. "But with each king, the situation gets better." Indeed, an informational booklet the community has produced begins with the proclamations of various Moroccan monarchs about the Jews, each successively more assertive and tolerant.  Government ministers dispatched to meet with the American group - Foreign Minister Taib Fassi Firhi and the minister of Islamic and religious affairs, Ahmed Toufiq - stressed the historically warm relations between Moroccan Jews and Muslims. Toufiq, an ethnic Berber who grew up in the Atlas
Mountains, said his community still regrets the emigrations of the 1950s and 1960s, when successive waves of Jews left Morocco for Israel, France and Canada. Many members of the American delegation marveled at the ease and warmth with which Jews and Muslims mingled at the receptions and meals for the American group.

Liliane Shalom, the Moroccan-American president of the World Sephardi Federation, wept demonstratively during a visit to the Rabat tomb of King
Mohammed V, the current monarch's grandfather. Yet a few members of the delegation were less impressed by the oft-stated commitment to tolerance, saying it evoked medieval times when Jewish communities depended precariously on the monarch's favor for their safety. With equality among citizens today taken for granted in the enlightened world, Morocco's tolerance is noteworthy only in comparison to the anti-Semitism raging in other parts of the Muslim world, they said.  "We're supposed to say thank you that the Muslims here aren't killing their Jews?" asked Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America. "What kind of standard is that?" Indeed, though the American group encountered smiles and warm wishes at every turn during their brief visit, they traveled under extraordinarily heavy security and were discouraged from going out alone or circulating in the Marrakesh marketplace with kipot or other visible Jewish signs.

Members of the local community say they do not flaunt their Jewishness, but don't hide it either. Elmaleh said he rarely encounters problems because of his ethnicity, except among less-educated Moroccans who are enraged by televised images of Israeli-Palestinian violence and who scorn all Jews as Zionists. "They don't know that there two different kinds of Jews," Elmaleh said.  Community members are not naive about the potential dangers of the situation, but generally they feel safe, Berdugo said. "After the bombings I was afraid. But when I saw how many letters I got from Muslims, how many visits of condolence" - and then the huge Casablanca rally - "we don't feel so isolated," Berdugo said. "Of course in our history here we have dark pages," he said. "Nevertheless, we feel we have a better life here than many Jewish communities all over the world."
© JTA. Reproduction of material without written permission is strictly prohibited.
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13880&intcategoryid=2
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Morocco finding shadow of al-Qaida
By Associated Press Published March 18, 2004 RABAT, Morocco

Moroccan authorities said Wednesday they suspect an Islamic extremist group with alleged links to al-Qaida was the guiding hand behind
the rail bombings in Spain that killed more than 200 people.  Emerging evidence that implicates Moroccan nationals in the bloody attacks
in Madrid points toward Ansar al-Islam, a guerrilla group blamed for terrorist strikes in Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Morocco, authorities told the
Associated Press. They cited evidence that Jamal Zougam, a Moroccan arrested in Spain shortly after the attacks, had links to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - a key operative with strong ties to Ansar, an al-Qaida-linked Muslim group based in northern Iraq.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believe the perpetrators of the March 11 attack in Madrid also have ties to those responsible for last year's suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, and that Zarqawi may be a common link between the two. For now, Zougam stands as the No. 1 suspect in the Madrid bombings, although Spanish police are seeking at least 20 people - nearly all Moroccan - for questioning, the Spanish daily El Mundo reported Wednesday. French private investigator Jean-Charles Brisard said the names of 10 suspects now being sought in Spain showed up in a massive terrorism database compiled by Spanish investigative Judge Baltasar Garzon. Brisard has a copy of Garzon's dossier, which is thousands of pages long, because he is investigating the Sept. 11 attacks for attorneys representing victims in a civilian lawsuit. U.S. officials blame Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant, for the March 2 bombings in Iraq that killed more than 180 Shiite Muslims. He is also believed to have been behind the 2002 killing of Laurence Foley, a U.S. diplomat in Jordan.

Zougam and Zarqawi apparently were introduced by Abdelaziz Benyaich, a dual French-Moroccan national, who was arrested in Spain in 2003 in connection with the Casablanca bombings. Morocco is seeking Benyaich's extradition. Shortly after Benyaich's arrest, Moroccan authorities sent a warning to Spain in June 2003 to signal Zougam's presence. Two years earlier, French authorities had asked Spain to search Zougam's apartment, turning up a video of mujahedeen fighters in the Dagestan region of Russia and phone numbers of three members of an al-Qaida cell allegedly
led by Imad Yarkas. Yarkas is in jail in Spain on suspicion he helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Investigators also found a video
containing an interview with Osama bin Laden. Zougam came to the attention of French intelligence as part of an investigation into a clandestine network that was recruiting fighters for Afghanistan.

Police believe cell phones or prepaid phone cards were used to detonate the bombs in the Madrid attack. Zougam was allegedly in charge of buying the "Activa" brand cell phone cards that were inserted in the 14 mobile phones used as detonators, the Spanish news agency EFE said. The phones were set to go off about 7:40 a.m., with the phone alarms set on vibration mode, which sent an electric impulse to the copper detonators connected to the goma-2 explosive used in the bombs, the agency said. Meanwhile, authorities in Morocco said they are firmly convinced the Madrid and Casablanca attacks are linked, and those suspicions intensified when Brisard described a phone tap in which Zougam said he had met with Mohamed Fizazi, the spiritual leader of Salafia Jihadia, a clandestine Moroccan extremist group. Salafia Jihadia is suspected in the Casablanca attack, which killed 33 people and 12 bombers and has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network.

Fizazi had been in Hamburg for a short time between the end of 1999 and the first months of 2000, and his fiery sermons at the radical al-Quds mosque attracted the attention of Hamburg investigators. "He was very militant, he fired people up in a radical way - really fanatic," said Heino Vahldieck, who heads the agency. "But it didn't have the same meaning then that it does now - it was almost two years before Sept. 11."
[Last modified March 18, 2004, 01:20:35]
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/18/Worldandnation/Morocco_finding_shado.shtml
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Spain fears 'bad blood' with Morocco.
By Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid (Filed: 18/03/2004)

Spanish security sources said yesterday they believed that bad blood with Morocco caused a critical breakdown in communication over terrorists'
movements Analysts fear that the centuries-old rivalry could further hamper the investigation into the Moroccan terrorist cell that appears to be behind last week's bombings in Spain that killed 201 people  Spanish police have arrested three Moroccans believed to be closely linked
to several Islamist terrorist groups and have identified five more who are presumed perpetrators of the March 11 attacks. Yesterday they broadened the manhunt for a further 20 Moroccans thought to have entered Spain illegally after a string of suicide bomb attacks in Casablanca last May. But arguments between Morocco and Spain over the island of Perejil and other matters had seriously damaged co-ordination on known shared threats, according to security sources quoted in the newspaper El Mundo.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the prime minister-elect, has already pledged to improve relations with Morocco. Meanwhile, it emerged that the explosive used in the 10 bombs was a type of dynamite made last February at a factory in Burgos, northern Spain. Police are now investigating mines and quarries to discover how 220lb of the explosive disappeared. The security services are examining the possibility that the attacks were
organised by the Moroccan Combat Islamic Group, an organisation thought to have been founded in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1993 to which the main suspect so far arrested, Jamal Zougam, is thought to be connected. The spectre of a Moroccan jihad touches one of Spain's most sensitive
nerves. King Juan Carlos has publicly atoned for the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 but has refused to pay the same tribute to the Moors. In the 1920s, Spain conducted a brutal colonial campaign in the Rif Mountains of Morocco and the country still has two North African colonies, Ceuta and Melilla, which Morocco claims. Relations between the two countries became further embittered during the centre-Right tenure of the defeated prime minister Jose Maria Aznar. They bickered over illegal immigration, fishing rights and drug trafficking. These disputes culminated in the invasion of the tiny island of Perejil by a handful of Moroccan gendarmes . They were ousted by Spanish special forces backed by frigates and submarines.
Some Spaniards are convinced that the Madrid attacks were based not only on the war in Iraq but on Islam's historic claim to Spain. * The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which has said it carried out the Madrid bombings, is calling a truce in its Spanish operations to see if the new
government would withdraw its troops from Iraq, the Arabic daily al-Hayat said. - Reuters
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/18/wterr18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/03/18/ixportal.html
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