HONG KONG (The Asia Times) As in the case of many terrorist strikes, those in Casablanca in Morocco on the night of 16 May have presently only a small kernel of facts surrounded by considerable speculation.

First, the facts: At least 41 civilians - three of them French, two Spanish, one Italian and the rest believed to be mostly Moroccan - were killed in five well-orchestrated explosions carried out by suicide bombers on foot. The blasts were directed at a hotel, a Spanish night club, a Jewish centre, a Jewish cemetery and a Jewish-owned Italian restaurant. The explosion aimed at the restaurant also caused damage to the Belgian consulate building located nearby. According to Moroccan authorities, 14 terrorists, divided into five groups, are estimated to have participated in the strikes.

The speculation relates to the identity of the terrorists, their motive and the implications of the blasts. While the Moroccan authorities themselves have initially blamed "international terrorism" for the attacks without naming any organisation, media speculation has blamed al-Qa’eda and projected the blasts, coming so soon after those in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a new global offensive by Osama Ben Laden's organisation in retaliation for the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In explanation of their theory that the Casablanca blasts were Iraq-related, some analysts also refer to Morocco's close relations with the West, the reported location of a US Air Force base there and the alleged transfer of some of the captives of the Iraqi war to that base for interrogation. They see in the blasts ominous signs of more to come in the coming weeks in different parts of the Islamic world, directed at Christian, if not Western, and Jewish lives and interests.

The Mombasa explosion and the failed attempt to hit at an Israeli plane carrying tourists home from Mombasa were clearly directed at Jewish lives (the bombed hotel catered to Israeli tourists). The Casablanca blasts, too, seemed to have had an anti-Jewish motive and an economic purpose to hit at Morocco's tourism industry at the beginning of the tourist season. It would, therefore, be incorrect to look at them purely through the Iraqi prism and exclude domestic factors, such as anger over the trial of some al-Qaeda activists before a Moroccan court.

About 100 Moroccans are estimated to have participated in the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. About 40 of them returned to Morocco after the withdrawal of the Soviet. Some of the remaining stayed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and some went around the world participating in the jihads in Chechnya, Daqestan, Bosnia and Kosovo. Many of these gravitated towards bin Laden and his al-Qa’eda. Some joined him even in Khartoum in Sudan, where he was based until 1996, while others joined him in Afghanistan after he shifted there from Sudan in 1996.

A Moroccan trace could be seen across many of the al-Qa’eda-connected arrests in West Europe last year. Among those undergoing interrogation in US custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are 17 Moroccans. They and Abu Zubaida (a Palestinian), the then number 3 in al-Qa’eda, who was arrested in Pakistan in March last year, are believed to have been the source of much of the information relating to the al-Qa’eda presence in Morocco. Al-Qa’eda's hardcore in Morocco consists not only of Moroccans, but also of other Arabs.

The dossier built up through these interrogations led to the thwarting of a plot in May last year to strike at US and British naval vessels in the Strait of Gibraltar. Three Saudis - Hilal Jaber Aouad al-Assiri, Zuhair Hilal Mohamed al-Tbaiti and Abdullah M'Sfer Ali al-Ghamdi - were arrested in this connection. Two of them were married to Moroccan women, who, too, were alleged to have played a role in preparing the groundwork for the plot as couriers of secret communications. Two other Moroccan associates were also arrested.

The three Saudis were reported to have told the Moroccan authorities during their interrogation that they had received instructions from the Yemeni Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, alias Mollah Bilal, described as commander of al-Qa’eda operations in the Maghreb and the Middle East, to carry out spectacular attacks in Morocco, including an explosion directed at an American naval vessel. They also reportedly stated that the plans for al-Qa’eda operations in Morocco were drawn up by the surviving leaders of al-Qa’eda from their sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Since the return of the Afghan-Moroccans after having fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Morocco - otherwise a pro-Western liberal society - has been showing signs of a creeping fundamentalism and anti-Americanism, though the fundamentalism is not yet very widespread and not as extremist as seen in Algeria and elsewhere in the Arab world. Among the organisations stressing the need for an Islamic way of life are the Justice and Development Party, the al-'Adl wa al-Ihsan (Justice and Charity) headed by 76-year-old Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, a former regional inspector in the Ministry of National Education, and the Salafi Jihadi movement.

While the first two organisations do not propound resort to jihad to achieve their Islamist objectives, the Salafi Jihadi projects bEn Laden, the blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the founder of the Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, now undergoing imprisonment in the US in connection with the New York World Trade Center explosion of February, 1993, and the London-based Islamist ideologue Omar Mahmoud Omar alias Abu Qatada al-Filistini, as worthy of emulation.

The Salafi Jihadi is estimated to have a membership of about 400 in Morocco, organised into a large number of autonomous cells each headed by an amir. Like the Jemmah Islamiyah of Southeast Asia and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, it calls for the creation of a number of region-wise Islamic caliphates, one of them for the Maghreb. It is believed to have a close association with al-Qa’eda, but is not yet a member of Ben Laden's International Islamic Front. It is headed by Ahmed Raffiki, a former male nurse of Casablanca. In the 1980s and the 1990s, he was active as a recruiter of volunteers from Morocco for the jihad in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Daqestan, Bosnia and Kosovo. He plays the same role in Morocco as Abu Bakr Bashir, now on trial, does in Indonesia - as the venerated godfather of the local Islamic extremists. ENDS ISLAMIST TERROR NETWORKS 19503

Editor’s note Mr. B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India. He was also head of the counter-terrorism division of the Research & Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, from 1988 to August 1994

The Hong Kong-based "The Asia Times" published the above article on its 19 May issue

Some editing, the title , phonetisation of names and highlights are by IPS .