WHAT SPAWNED THE FOREIGN FIGHTERS OF TETOUAN?

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 RABAT 000112 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR S/CT AND NEA/FO LONDON FOR S/CT AMB. DAILEY E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/05/2018 TAGS: PTER KISL KIRF MO SUBJECT: WHAT SPAWNED THE FOREIGN FIGHTERS OF TETOUAN? Classified by Political Counselor Craig Karp for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Tetouan, notorious for having spawned the jihadists who carried out the Madrid train bombings, and at least two dozen foreign fighters, also carries the promise of a new, more prosperous Morocco. Poloffs learned during a recent visit that it took a variety of environmental, political, and social factors to produce this jihadist nexus. An Islamist Member of Parliament blamed GOM corruption and ineptitude for creating the problem. During our visit, an Imam's Friday noon sermon at a major mosque in front of Tetouan's Royal Palace poured brimstone about Islam under siege and warned of the treachery of Jews and Christians. By contrast, Tetouan's secularist Mayor proudly showed us recent infrastructure projects, partly intended to counter extremism, particularly in Jamaa' Mezouak, the marginalized neighborhood which produced most of the young jihadists. Ultimately, Tetouan's sociopolitical environment is not unique to the city, but does shed light on the alienation that can produce terrorists. End summary. -------------- City Emerging from Decades of Neglect -------------- ¶2. (C) Polcouns and D/Polcouns paid a January 31-February 1 visit to Tetouan, a city of roughly 400,000 nestled in a narrow valley at the base of the rugged Rif mountain chain, near Morocco's Mediterranean coast. The strong influence of Spain, which controlled Tetouan and all of northern Morocco until the late 1950's, is evident in the city's architecture and commerce. The smuggling of consumer goods from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, 15 miles north of Tetouan, remains a mainstay of the local economy. Today the city is undergoing a modest economic renaissance after decades of purposeful neglect by the late King Hassan II, who is said to have disdained all of Northern Morocco as a backward region of dubious loyalty to the Crown. ¶3. (C) New building and major public works projects are underway across the city, fewer of which are now funded by money laundered from the substantial local drug trade than in the past, according to our interlocutors. A new four lane highway, and a new railway, will link Tetouan to Tangier, 30 miles to the northeast, and also to the new Tanger-Med port, a state of the art facility which, when completed, will be one of the largest and most modern container ports in the world. Rachid Talbi Alami, Tetouan's Mayor, who also served in Prime Minister Jettou's cabinet from 2002-07 as Minister-Delegate for Economic Affairs, told us he was positioning Tetouan to be a base for service industries supporting the Tanger-Med port, the site of which is closer to Tetouan than to Tanger itself. This is taking the place of smuggling, particularly of drugs and people, that have been key pillars of the local economy in the past. -------------- From Obscurity to Notoriety -------------- ¶4. (C) Mayor Alami anticipated our interest in Jamaa Mezouaq, the marginalized neighborhood perched on a steep slope on the southeast edge of the city. Sparsely inhabited until the 1970s, the neighborhood's population burgeoned in the 1980s and 1990s as rural settlers poured in and filled in the pastures with cheaply constructed, haphazardly placed two and three story structures, modest but a clear notch above the shantytowns still present in many Moroccan cities. Few if any public services accompanied the growth of the neighborhood, which quickly became saturated by trash, with inadequate sanitation, water, and electric facilities. Alami told us Jemaa Mezouaq had been slated to benefit from a USAID public housing initiative that was hastily terminated in the early 1990s. ¶5. (C) Jemaa Mezouaq remained just another marginalized sector of another marginalized city in North Africa until five young Moroccans from the neighborhood, who had migrated to Spain, were implicated as the core of the operation that detonated ten bombs on commuter trains in suburban Madrid on March 11, 2004. The incident and its aftermath prompted shock, and some denial, in Jemaa Mezouaq and across Morocco. In the next two years, about two dozen young men from RABAT 00000112 002 OF 004 Tetouan, including at least eight from Jamaa Mezouaq, turned up as foreign fighters in Iraq or disappeared en route. In January 2007, the Moroccan authorities arrested 29 persons, including an Imam who had been preaching at an unlicensed mosque in Jemaa Mezouaq, for plotting to feed young men into the "foreign fighter pipeline" bound for Iraq. With that, Jemaa Mezouaq, and Tetouan by extension, attracted the attention of the foreign media and attained an international notoriety as a "jihadist factory" that it is still trying to live down. -------------- Breaking the Isolation -------------- ¶6. (C) Mayor Alami, eager to show us how much he has done to solve the problems that have plagued Jemaa Mezouaq since its emergence, led us on an impromptu tour of the area. Despite its apparent proximity to the rest of the city, Jemaa Mezouaq has suffered from geographic isolation. Due to the steep terrain and the unplanned building, Jemaa Mezouaq has only been accessible from the city proper by following a tortuous and circuitous path of rough, unpaved streets. This geographic isolation kept mainstream Tetouan residents out of the area and hampered the usually effective GOM monitoring of neighborhood activities. ¶7. (SBU) Within months, a broad new boulevard will be completed, offering a direct line between the city and Jemaa Mezouaq's principal market street. Other freshly paved arteries, lined with newly installed streetlights, have been shored up in the past year. A Spanish sanitation company has been contracted to provide daily trash removal, with new plastic dumpsters and smaller receptacles deployed at regular intervals in the neighborhood, though trash still permeates many open spaces in the area. ¶8. (C) Alami said he financed the upgrades in Jemaa Mezouaq by selling city-owned land in other parts of town to developers, and has also been drawing from a $50 million grant to the city from the GOM. Alami lamented the bad name the jihadists from Jemaa Mezouaq had given to the neighborhood and the city, expressing confidence that the city government's efforts, supported by the GOM and a King who has made social development a cornerstone of his program, were turning things around in the neighborhood and in the city overall. ¶9. (C) Outside of the neighborhood, Alami showed us the upgrades he has been leading to public spaces across town - widening streets, establishing green spaces, and building athletic fields and even an open amphitheatre facing the brand new Wilaya (regional governor's office) which he cheerfully predicted would become a popular venue for political demonstrations once finished. (Note: We were subsequently passed a copy of a local weekly tabloid with a front page headline accusing Alami of corruption. End note.) -------------- Islamist Skeptical -------------- ¶10. (C) Amin Boukhobza (protect),a Tetouan native and Member of Parliament for the Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD) since 1997, denounced Alami to us as a corrupt hypocrite. (Alami and local Islamists make no secret of their disdain for each other and frequently trade barbs in the media.) Asked whether the upgrades in Jemaa Mezouaq would contribute to defeating local radicalism, Boukhobza scoffed: "Do you think terrorists care about streetlights?" he asked indignantly. "The people who are now taking credit for trying to solve the problem are the same ones who created it," he charged, though willful neglect and corruption. ¶11. (C) Boukhobza takes the Jemaa Mezouaq issue personally. He preached every Friday in the neighborhood's principal mosque until 1999, when the government told him his preaching was incompatible with his status as a parliamentarian. His own removal as a self-styled "moderate" preacher in Jemaa Mezouak was a contributing factor to the emergence of jihadist cells in neighborhood, Boukhobza asserted. He was replaced, he recalled, by a "traditional" preacher incapable of inspiring or influencing the congregation, particularly the restless youth who attend every Friday. This left a void RABAT 00000112 003 OF 004 that was later filled by radical voices coming in from the Middle East by satellite, cd-rom bootlegs, and other channels, he charged. Boukhobza said he had no knowledge of individuals caught up in the Madrid and foreign fighter investigations, terming such details "intelligence information." ¶12. (C) Boukhobza reprised the familiar PJD line that they, as credible Islamic moderates, were best qualified to take on jihadists and expose the flaws in their theology. Boukhobza himself is clearly a member of the party's hard-line wing, led by caucus leader Mustafa Ramid. Boukhobza told us he has "no problem with western people or western governments, just with the policies of some western governments," and expressed particular ire at France, describing Sarkozy as an arrogant imperialist who had insulted Moroccan Islamists during his visit to the Moroccan parliament in October 2007. Boukhobza said he and his colleagues would fight those in Morocco (implicitly including Mayor Alami) who seek to "impose western values on our society." -------------- Islamists Walk Tall on Campus -------------- ¶13. (C) Dr. Jamal Benhayoun (protect),a professor of English literature at Abdelmalek Essadi University in Tetouan, told us Islamist students, particularly those from the anti-monarchist Al-Adl wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality Organization),maintain a dominant posture on campus. They regularly "occupy" common spaces on campus to carry out their own activities, such as group prayer, discussion sessions, and trading places for religious materials, easily pushing aside secular students and faculty when conflicts arise and disrupting classes with the noise of their debates and petty commerce. When faced with complaints, the university administration pleads helplessness, apparently fearful of a confrontation pitting "Muslims" against "Kafirs (unbelievers)," Benhayoun asserted. The Islamists have penetrated especially deeply into the faculties of the hard sciences on campus, he noted, though the humanities faculties remain islands of secular modernism, he said proudly. -------------- Tetouan is Not Unique -------------- ¶14. (C) Despite the strength of Islamism on campus (and Tetouan's university is hardly unique in this regard),there is nothing particular about the city that should prompt it to become a breeding ground for jihadists, Benhayoun maintained. A particular combination of factors created the jihadists of Jemaa Mezouaq, he postulated. With its geographic isolation and lack of public services, the stage was for social alienation, a key element in the formation of extremists, he observed, noting that purely economic factors have proved less important. ¶15. (C) The traditional Moroccan surveillance system, in which local "caids" (district bosses) and their deputies, keep an eye on their communities and report back, seems to have broken down in Jemaa Mezouak. "Someone should have noticed what was happening," Benhayoun observed. The third key element was the international dimension, he stated. A Jihadist-internationalist network penetrated the neighborhood, in the form mostly of returnees from Spain who been recruited by extremists from Syria and Egypt, again without being noticed, and found fertile ground for recruitment. Whether the transformation from alienated young men to walking bombs took place in Tetouan or only after the youth had left the area is not clear, Benhayoun stressed. -------------- -------------- Fire Breathing Anti-Semitic Sermon Points to Problem -------------- -------------- ¶16. (C) As we strolled through the city's central market place at Friday noon, hundreds of faithful gathered in the square abutting the Royal Palace to hear the weekly sermon. Far from drawing from GOM Ministry of Islamic Affairs guidelines, the Imam delivered a harsh lecture, no doubt inspired by current events in Gaza, warning Muslims to stick together and remain wary of dealings with Christians and RABAT 00000112 004 OF 004 Jews. The Imam reminded the audience that despite his good faith efforts to reach out, the Jews of Mecca had plotted to kill the Prophet Mohammed and his followers and remained enemies of Muslims to this day. While such rhetoric is common enough to be considered cliche, its open airing at one of the city's principal mosques, in front of the Royal Palace, struck us as significant and worrying. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶17. (C) Notwithstanding Benhayoun's argument that Tetouan is not unique, our impressions after our visit, combined with anecdotal discussions, confirmed that conservative Islamism was strong, and likely getting stronger, in the community. While there were many unveiled women, a majority wore Hijab, and many of those conformed to the very concealing garb more typical of conservative parts of Egypt and the Levant than of traditional Morocco. The adoption of conservative attire is of course not an indicator of a community's openness to violent jihadism, but does point to a shift in attitudes that could lead in that direction. Ultimately, the sociopolitical conditions in Tetouan are not unique to the city, but are rather indicative of the much broader phenomenon of alienation that can spawn terrorists. End comment. ***************************************** Visit Embassy Rabat's Classified Website; http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/rabat ***************************************** Riley