They were given assault rifles and money and codes to speak on the telephone when their mission succeeded. But when they got to the seaside, they saw women in bikinis. Nobody was naked at all. As a prosecutor suggested later, kids who grow up in France aren’t likely to see bikinis as a crime against God. In that incident, not a shot was fired.
Such were the revelations from the last major terrorist attack in Morocco, in August 1994, which Pulitzer-prize-winning freelancer Craig Pyes investigated in great detail. The differences and the similarities between that incident and the bloody bombings in Casablanca last week, which cost at least 42 lives, could tell us a lot about the evolution of Al Qaeda and groups connected with it.
That stifling summer of ‘94, three small squads of terrorists were sent to carry out their missions in Morocco.
One was the group who walked away from the bikini beach in Tangier, according to court records culled by Pyes. Another team was supposed to attack mourners at a Jewish cemetery in Casablanca. The leader of that squad had trained in Afghanistan and fought in Bosnia. But when he saw the people remembering their dead, he couldn’t go through with the slaughter. “He told the court that these people had done nothing to him,” says Pyes. “So the group turned their weapons and fired instead at a wall.” Only one group murdered anyone, in the desert resort of Marrakech. They burst into a hotel and fired on two women cowering under a table, killing one and gravely wounding another, then shot a man who tried to intervene.
The Morocco operations of 1994 were a tragic farce, long forgotten even by the press. But Al Qaeda and terrorist groups allied to it have an unpleasant obsession with their own past, and insist on learning from it. Thus the February 1993 attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York, which failed to bring them down, was followed more than eight years later by the ferociously successful attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In 1994, terrorists who intended to fly an Air France plane into the Eiffel Tower or another target in Paris were thwarted by an uncooperative crew. So in 2001 they made sure they knew how to fly the planes themselves.
In Morocco last week, what did the terrorists think they’d learned from the failures of Tangier, Casablanca and Marrakech in 1994? First and most importantly, they waited until they had teams who were not only willing to die, but intending to die. The 1994 attacks in Morocco (like 1993 in New York) were carried out by people who might be willing to take risks, but hoped they’d survive. And that’s a huge difference, because suicide bombers have always been a rare breed.
Contrary to the hysterical stories that came out after the 9-11 attacks, the Islamic world is not populated by tens of thousands of people ready, willing and able to blow themselves to smithereens. Until this month, at least, no matter how they’ve been exhorted to further the cause of jihad, no matter how often they’ve been promised the pleasures of Paradise surrounded by virginal, dark-eyed houris, very few would-be mujahideen have been willing simply and directly to kill themselves.
And we should be thankful for that. If the tens of thousands of trainees who passed through Osama bin Laden’s training camps in the 1990s were all committed suicide bombers, the world would be exponentially more dangerous than it is today. When history has seen large numbers of suicidal combatants, like Japan’s kamikazes in World War II, they were usually mounting a last-ditch defense of hearth and home. Among Palestinians in the occupied territories, certainly, that’s been part of the psychology that created waves of suicide bombers. But, as Osama and his minions found out, it’s much harder to get suicidal killers to travel far from home and attack obscurely symbolic targets. Even on September 11, it’s not certain that all 19 of the hijackers actually knew they were going to die. The pilots knew, of course. But the thugs in the back? It’s not clear.
In Morocco last week there were 14 suicide bombers operating on foot, working in five teams attacking five different locations in Casablanca. One ran away, and was captured. One reportedly was wrestled to the ground before he could set off his backpack bomb. But the other 12 went through with their missions. Twelve! A mother lode of self-immolating lunatics. And all from Morocco, where there is no culture of suicidal violence, and no external threat to their hearth or home.
What rationale, what level of brainwashing, can have led them to such actions? It’s possible that the incessant preaching and indoctrination inspired by Osama bin Laden and his fellow ideologues is at last taking root abroad, helping to create what is essentially a new culture of death, unlike any that’s been seen before. It depends on the ability not only to take away the suicide bomber’s fear, but any hint of his or her conscience.
“The crusaders and the Jews only understand the language of murder, bloodshed … and of the burning towers,” intoned a voice believed to be that of Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Zawahiri on Arab satellite television this week. Rattling off an enemies list similar to one cited by bin Laden in February, Zawahiri justified attacks on citizens of Norway as well as Qatar, of Australia as well as Kuwait. Without any detailed explanation, whole swathes of innocent people are deemed ready for the executioners’ righteous anger. Once the slaughter of innocents is approved, then the choice of targets is easy. Anyone American can be killed. Or anyone Jewish. Or for that matter any Kuwaiti or Norwegian.
In the Casablanca operation last week, the Jewish cemetery was a target–again. And a Jewish social club. And a hotel which had hosted a Jewish conference. And a Jewish-owned restaurant near the Belgian embassy. And a Spanish social club and restaurant which was sure to be packed with somebody the terrorists were told to hate, even if they weren’t sure whom. The Spanish club is where more than half the 28 innocent victims died.
Using bombs instead of guns, and concentrating their efforts in a single city made this a much more disciplined and effective terrorist operation than the one nine years ago.
But the greatest difference was in the terrorists themselves. They did not think twice about their targets. They did not stop to wonder about what they’d been told. They didn’t wink at bikinis on a beach, or pity the mourners wrapped in black. Even before they sacrificed their lives, they sacrificed whatever last shred they had of humanity.
