the new spain Immigrants on the streets of Madrid's Lavapiés neighborhood, home to many of the 3/11 terrorists
Under Hassan's son, Mohammed VI, the Moroccan regime has tried to offset the appeal of fundamentalism through modernization. The government held Morocco's most transparent parliamentary elections ever in 2002, passed landmark women's rights legislation, and is encouraging foreign investment to create new jobs. The king has also reformed religious education and actively promotes the moderate Maliki school of Islam practiced in Morocco for centuries. A new Equity and Reconciliation Commission will investigate cases of torture and other human-rights abuses committed mainly during Hassan II's reign and compensate victims. "We do not consider ourselves a country that produces terrorists," Moroccan Prime Minister Driss Jettou told Time, "but a country that has always been recognized for the peace that prevails within it."
Critics say these changes are not enough, and that the now familiar amalgam of economic despair and political frustration could fuel radicalism anew. There's no good way out, but there are lots of bad ones — drugs, Islamist extremism, illegal immigration or some combination of the three. "Sadly, the only way to protest the regime is Islamism now," says Ali Lmrabet, a Moroccan editor who has lived in Spain since he was pardoned last year after serving part of a prison term for writing an article the government claimed undermined the monarchy. Lmrabet says nothing in Morocco will change until it finds a democratic path between "feudal monarchy and violent Islamism." Says Mohammed Najib Boulif, a Moroccan M.P. from the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party: "If there is social harmony, jobs, equality before the law, there will never be extremism; if injustice increases in Morocco, there will always be extremists."
Last year in Tangier, the Community House for Women, which offers self-help programs to poor women, hosted a discussion about the Madrid attacks. Organizers expected a handful of people to turn up, but dozens packed the room — mostly mothers with sons living, legally or illegally, in Europe. "They were really scared that their children are turning to terrorism," says Mounira Bouzid el Alami, president of the Darna Association in Tangier, which runs the Community House for Women. "For the first time, they realized that you don't become a terrorist just because you meet somebody and he tells you to put a bomb somewhere. Morocco prepared them for terrorism. When you have no future, anybody can work on your brain."
Once in Europe, many Moroccans face discrimination for jobs and housing and find themselves back at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. "When they go to Europe, they are not prepared for the realities," says Naima Benyaich, sister of Salaheddin and Abdulaziz Benyaich, who are jailed in Morocco and Spain, respectively, on terror-related charges. "They want to recover their religious values and resort to the mosques there. What do they find? A more rigid mentality than the one they left behind."
The aftershocks of 3/11 are making life even harder for young Moroccans in Europe. In Lavapiés, the poor, bustling immigrant Madrid neighborhood where many of the 3/11 terrorists lived, a 29-year-old unemployed construction worker named Avdun loiters in the chilly sunlight. Eight years ago, Avdun received his residence permit and moved in among the area's fruit stands, bars and phone shops. But the dream has soured. Since last March 11, he says, police are everywhere. As he speaks, a team of officers move through the square, demanding papers from the idling men. Mohammed, a 23-year-old Tangier native who lost his construction job six months ago, grumbles that since the attacks, Spaniards view Moroccans as "all either drug traffickers or terrorists." Avdun agrees: "The economic situation is worse in Morocco, but they treat you like a person there. Here you lose your dignity."
In fact, very few incidents of revenge or xenophobia have been directed against Moroccans in Spain since the Madrid bombings. Spain's Socialist government has launched a program to grant residence permits to illegal immigrants with jobs, and Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos says the government is committed "to re-establishing a sense of trust and mutual confidence" with Morocco. Still, authorities on both sides of the Mediterranean will keep a close watch on the tiny minority of Moroccans committed, like Ahmidan and his fellow jihadists, to the kind of unspeakable violence that last week silenced Madrid.
With reporting by Leo Cendrowicz/Brussels, James Graff and Jane Walker/Madrid, Jeff Israely/Rome and Grant Rosenberg/Amsterdam
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