Zarqawi and Morocco

In what seems like a direct retort to Ayman al-Zawahiri's advice to concentrate on reaching out to the Muslim masses, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has taken another step to alienate mainstream Arab public opinion:  kidnapping and threatening to execute two Moroccan embassy workers.  Just as the murder of an Egyptian diplomat infuriated Egyptian opinion, and the murder of Algerian diplomats enraged Algerian opinion, the threats to kill the two Moroccans have set off a national protest.

Moroccan rally against Zarqawi, November 6, 2005, photo courtesy of Associate Press

Where the Algerian case left open questions of the real distribution of public opinion, the Moroccan reaction seems less ambiguous.  Tens of thousands including government officials, union leaders, and opposition parties, marched in protest in Casablanca yesterday, "Holding banners and chanting "Muslims are brothers. A Muslim does not kill his brother" and "Yes to freedom, No to terrorism and barbarity".  Reuters reports that "Morocco's influential organisation of Islamic scholars, known as the High Council of the Ulema and the Councils of Ulema in the Moroccan Kingdom, dismissed al Qaeda's argument that its verdict to kill the two embassy employees was "God's judgment". "The two Moroccans would be considered martyrs if this iniquitous verdict were to be carried out as they were carrying out a duty assigned to them by their nation and legitimate state," the Moroccan Islamic body said on Saturday.

Zarqawi's strategy aims at driving representatives of Arab states out of Iraq to prevent any Arab intervention on behalf of the struggling Iraqi government.   The cost is the alienation of mainstream Arabs - tactical gain for strategic loss, or at least so it appears on the surface.  Whether it is also a pointed rebuff to Zawahiri strikes me as an important and interesting question, though:  if Zarqawi is engaged in a two-level game, with Zawahiri and al-Qaeda-Central seen as the second front, then that might account for some things.

Comments

[wingnut]

When will Muslims and The Left finally renounce terrorism?

[the aardvark]

Only when you finally recognize that hanging your nuts off your wings has rendered you impotent and renounce accordingly. Til then, all terrorism all the time for "Muslims and The Left", I'd wager.