The bloody Salafist jihadist terrorist offensive during September in Algeria, marked by suicide bombings, has caused more than 50 dead and more than one hundred injured. Meanwhile, the opposition Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) grabbed the most votes in the Moroccan elections on September 7 (although it has been relegated to the second position thanks to the application of an electoral law arduously designed by the authorities). The latest events in Algeria and Morocco provide an eloquent scenario in the Maghreb, something that Spain should not ignore.

In Algeria’s case, the terrorism is evident, explicit, tremendously lethal and coherent in its approach; in Morocco’s case, Salafist jihadists that, as a rule of principle despise the ballot box, will undoubtedly use the example in Morocco to try increasing didactically their activism. One should not forget the very high abstention in the Moroccan elections – 63 percent – very similar to the legislative elections in Algeria on May 17, with a 65-percent abstention rate, something that many analysts hasten to blame on the people feeling apathetic due to the lack of appeal that governments and traditional parties have.

But that can also be due to the effectiveness of the emissaries of Islamist radicalism. They made it very clear in Algeria and Morocco: To vote is to play the game of apostate tyrants and Islam must discredit corrupt regimes by not playing their game and fighting back with the sword. It is evident that, together with those abstaining because they consider the political game as having very little credibility, there are some doing it to follow the radical Islamists’ breakaway slogans, and there are others doing it out of fear of terrorist threats – a detail far from negligible.

Terrorism’s Increasing Forcefulness in Algeria

Five suicide bombings since April 11 are enough to conclude that terrorism is not residual in Algeria and its increasingly ferocious manifestation should call everyone’s attention in the Maghreb as well as in Europe – if it has not occurred yet. That day, 3 suicide bombers crashed their cars loaded with explosives into the seat of government and police stations leaving 30 dead, 300 injured and the culprits, the martyrs, appeared a few days later on a didactic video by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) praising what they did and announcing what was about to come.

While all this was happening, the Algerian authorities and some Western analysts were deep into an incomprehensible debate, discussing if the attacks had been suicide bombings or not, diverting attention from the real problem. It is true that it was difficult to admit – although there was a precedent in Algeria with a GIA suicide attack against Algiers Central Police station in 1995 – because it is highly destabilizing that the daily suicide methods of Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan become implanted in the Maghreb and at Europe’s doors, but the sooner we assume it, the better because we will be able to apply preventive measures against them. On the other hand, it is also good to remember – to counter the idea that terrorism is residual – that 4 days before these suicide attacks on April 7, in the Aïn Defla region, around 50 AQIM terrorists had killed 9 Algerian soldiers in an ambush and that in the fire exchange between terrorists and military forces, the terrorists might have suffered 8 to 10 losses.

After the April 11 attacks – time on July 11 – another suicide attack in Lakhdaria against army barracks caused the death of 10 soldiers and left 15 injured in an attack very similar to the recent one in Dellys using a modus operandi repeated over and over again in Iraq. After that, the Batna suicide attack on September 6 caused 22 dead and 107 injured in an attempt directed against President Abdelaziz Buteflika – though the perpetrator, the first suicide bomber on foot in Algeria, had to precipitate the explosion when realizing he had been discovered. The attack in Dellys on September 8, killed 30 servicemen and wounded 47, when a 15-year-old boy carried out the attack against the barracks of a naval base.

One cannot forget the need to count all the casualties due to terrorist violence in the country; some are isolated clashes and others are anti-terrorists operations that the armed and security forces must carry out against very resolute AQIM members. The Dellys suicide attack – a bomb attack against the police in Zemuri, 50 kilometers east of Algiers killing 3 people and injuring 5 on September 14 – was just to show that the terrorist routine continues, and it is sprinkled with showy suicide bombings that do attract the world’s attention.

It is illustrative that the young Nabil Belkacemi, who died killing Navy people in Dellys, had chosen as nom de guerre Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the most nefarious terrorists that, before dying in June 2005 during an American raid, was very successful in planting the seed of hatred and inter-sectarian confrontation in Iraq, something so hard to eradicate now.

Assassination attempts of important people, attacks against military and police forces in their own barracks, the use of very young terrorists (On October 30, 2006, one of the bombers that rammed trucks packed with explosives into 2 police stations in Reghaia, Algiers, was hurt and arrested by law enforcement; he was only 18 years old), propaganda videos and other elements give terrorism in Algeria all the tools that al-Qaeda enjoys showing off with parallel scenarios in Pakistan, and that it tries to keep alive in Iraq.

The Complexity of the Moroccan Scenario

If in Algeria’s case, we see the figure of the walking terrorist, equipped with a suicide belt and not showing up until September 6, in Morocco it has been a regular figure since the May 2003 attacks just like the ones occurred during this year, from the one at a Casablanca cybercafé on March 11 to the last one in August taking place in Meknes. Although that method is also extremely lethal, and we bear witness to Israel’s dramatically acquired experience on the matter, it is true that the lack of forceful attacks, like the ones in Algeria during 2006 and 2007, using cars and vans loaded with explosives and driven by suicide bombers hitting hard objectives like barracks, has given less visibility to Moroccan jihadist terrorism.

For that reason, and unlike their Algerian brothers, the jihadist terrorists seem to have less leverage in Morocco, and consequently less visibility, but we should not be deceived by such external appearance. It is evident that the name Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) does not have the leverage of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), now transformed into AQMI; however, one must not forget that the group was able to carry out the synchronized suicide attacks on May 16, 2003 in Casablanca, putting the death toll at 45 and shocking the country – they could even repeat their feat.

On the one hand, time is drawing near to know the verdict on the 3/11 bombings in Madrid and it will be very interesting to see where the GICM ends up in the much-awaited text. On the other hand, jihadist terrorism in Morocco has shown capabilities that, fortunately, Algerian terrorism has not reached yet: To infiltrate the armed and security forces – though it seems to be just in an embryonic stage that the intelligence services would have been able to abort.

The arrest of 3 Royal Gendarmerie’s members and one of the Judicial Police on August 9, 2006 came after the arrest of 44 alleged jihadist terrorists, 5 of them belonging to the armed forces, on July 5. With Sergeant Yusef Amani stealing assault rifles from Guercif’s headquarters in January 2003 to be handed over to a Salafist jihadist group in the region of Meknes, the purge of the Royal Armed Forces’ soldiers, sub officers and officials in the spring of 2004, and the arrests in the summer of 2006, the issue of the persistent jihadist attempt to infiltrate the armed and security forces has been ever present among the worries of authorities and citizens.

Unlike the structuring and strength shown by jihadist terrorism in Algeria, one can observe less structuring and more “amateurism” – the consequence of that is less lethal effectiveness in Morocco. Nevertheless, the key in the Moroccan case is that, every time one observes that different kind of terrorism, it is because it becomes more evident every time, forcing the authorities of the kingdom to act tirelessly and to carry out preventive operations. Such will to strike is important because as experience shows that after many attempts, sooner or later, one can always obtain patent results and that is how the Moroccan jihadists hope to succeed.

Compared to the Algerian structuring, where the GSPC was created in early 1998, jihadist terrorism has been more and more structured; however, next to the structuring efforts of the GICM in Morocco, one finds the proliferation of unstructured, spontaneous elements, but let us all remember that al-Qaeda recommends both paths to fight against apostates and infidels. Al-Qaeda says that it is good if they are able to provide the backbone of an organization and with that, become more effective, but in the meantime one cannot waste time, one must strike the enemy unrelentingly; in a nutshell, one must keep ignited the flame of a sacred combat. This is what the professionals of terrorism in Algeria and Morocco are looking for – without disdaining the joining of efforts.

But, as it happened after the 3 suicide attacks in Algiers on April 11 – when some lucubrated on if they were suicide attacks or not, or about the real culprits – others do it now when analyzing Batna’s suicide attack as perhaps an attempt to boycott Buteflika’s national reconciliation policy from within the Algerian system itself.

Those who feed such deliriums do nothing but distract the attention of citizens who must accept that they are facing a determined enemy, an enemy that admits responsibility for its bloodthirsty attacks because it is proud of them (on September 9, without wasting a moment, AQMI claimed responsibility via Internet for the Batna and Dellys suicide attacks) and who is going to continue perpetrating them as often as our inaction or our lack of coordination allow it.

©2007 Translated by Miryam Lindberg

Carlos Echeverría Jesús is a professor of International Relations professor at UNED. He is in charge of the regular feature “Observatorio del Islam” in the monthly magazine War Heat International. He has worked for different international organizations (WEU, EU, and NATO) and he was the Spanish coordinator for the project “Understanding Terrorism” paid for by the U.S. State Department through the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) between 2003 -2004. As a GEES analyst, he is responsible for the Salafist jihadist terrorism area.