By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Courtesy of Strategic Forecasting
Moroccan security services recently dismantled an 11-member militant jihadist network that operated in the cities of Fez and Nador, the official Moroccan government news agency Maghreb Arabe Press (MAP) reported May 19.
According to the report, the network was involved in recruiting young men to fight in Iraq and had also allegedly sent recruits to train in camps run by al Qaeda’s franchise, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), in neighboring Algeria.
The recent crackdown follows a string of similar arrests in Morocco in the wake of the Casablanca suicide attacks in 2003. These countermeasures, including an arrest in February of 35 alleged militants with ties to AQIM, have thrown jihadist militants in Morocco off balance. The arrests also underscore the difficulty jihadists face when recruiting in a country where infiltration efforts by the local security service are aggressive.
