NORTH AF RI CA

The Spectre of Jihad

John Thorne

THEY shot Mohamed Mantala before dawn, in the street, as he fumbled for the detonator concealed beneath his clothing. The police had waited all night, some in the alley, some perched atop the mosque beside the building where Mantala lived with two accomplices. The structure was like any other in the Casablanca neighbourhood of Hay alFarah: four storeys stuccoed the colour of crèème anglaise , with a stairway leading up to the flats and a spray of purple bougainvillea in the ground floor window. None of the neighbours suspected it housed members of a terrorist cell. Bombings do not occur often in Morocco. A spate of attacks in the spring was the first such violence the country had seen in four years. But a wave of Islamic extremism washing over North Africa suggests more violence is coming. On that morning in April, Mantala and his flatmate Mohamed Rachidi emerged from the building on their way to mosque for the day’s first prayer. Dozens of police were waiting for them.

The men froze before Mantala reached into his clothing. Instantly, three bullets struck him in the chest, and he slumped dying to the pavement. Rachidi darted inside and appeared a moment later on the building’s roof terrace. The police ordered him to surrender, but he refused. Then, he exploded. When I heard about Mantala and Rachidi, I caught a train down the coast to Casablanca from the capital Rabat, and reached Hay al-Farah around noon. The police had evacuated the buildings around the mosque and blockaded the street. A forensics team, looking like misplaced astronauts in their white overalls, were scavenging for DNA. Out on the avenue Chouaib Doukkali, the curious had gathered on the caféé terraces anxiously sipping tea. The cigarettesellers were doing a brisk business. I approached a bleary-eyed policeman leaning against a barricade. “I’m tired”, he said. “We all are. We’ve been chasing these guys for five days”.

Mantala, Rachidi and their comrade Ayoub Raydi had arrived in the sprawling working-class district a month earlier. They rented a flat and melted into the throngs of street vendors and unemployed. They came from Douar Skouila, a shanty town several miles away, where goats clamber over reeking piles of trash and lives stagnate behind cinder-block walls. Mantala played football, Rachidi may have murdered a policeman, and Raydi –the youngest at 22 –had not done much of anything. Extremist Islam beckoned, and by early 2007 the three were wearing explosive belts. Now Mantala and Rachidi were dead. “Any idea where the third guy is?”, I asked the policeman. “No”, he replied wearily. “Far from here, I hope”. I wandered over to the mosque. Its whitewashed walls, aquamarine trim and square-angled minaret were typical of the Moroccan style, and beside the front steps, a crowd of neighbours had gathered in shock. “This isn’t Islam”, a teenage boy insisted. “This is not our religion, this is not Morocco”. Moroccans often say their country, on the cusp of the Arab world, is different. They argue that Islamic extremism is an alien Middle Eastern disease. They are wrong. On 16 May 2003, a date that rings in Morocco as September 11th does in the West, fourteen young Casablancans proved them so. It was a Friday night. The fourteen boys left their homes in a poor suburb and headed downtown, where they quickly dispersed. Some proceeded to fine restaurants, some to a fancy hotel, some to a Jewish community centre, one to the Belgian consulate and one to a Jewish cemetery. There they blew themselves up. The twelve dead bombers –

8 | The Liberal | Autumn 2007