A top Moroccan security official says about 1,659 Moroccans are among the thousands of foreign fighters active within insurgent groups close to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Sahel region of West Africa.
The Head of Morocco’s Central Office of Judicial Research, Haboub Cherkaoui said in an interview with Hespress Eng that the semi-arid region of Sahel has come to represent Morocco’s biggest militant threat in recent years, after Daesh shifted its stronghold from the Middle East to Africa.
He said that while his agency’s latest count showed about 1,659 Moroccans active in the area, it is hard to estimate numbers of Moroccan and foreign fighters in the largely barren region extending from Senegal eastward to Sudan.
“Daesh repositioned itself and was able to reform clans in other countries in Africa, but there is little idea about the nationalities and number of members,” the head of the agency, known as Morocco’s FBI said.
The IS-affiliated Islamic State Organisation in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) has killed hundreds of civilians this year in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and continues to push further across the continent, warned Cherkaoui.
“Due to the strategic location of Morocco, the ISGS makes the situation dangerous, particularly in a context of absent regional cooperation.”
He blamed Algeria for failing to cooperate with Morocco in the face of growing militant threats. “Algeria gives no importance to cooperation. There is no security cooperation that poses a threat to the Maghreb. Algeria instead contributes to the expansion of the terrorist area.”
ISGS’s leader, Adnane Abou Walid al-Sahraoui, a Moroccan native, is a member of the Algeria-backed Polisario front, said Cherkaoui.
The current Emir of the al-Qaeda-affiliated group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is led by Algerian Abu Ubaidah Youssef al-Annabi. Cherkaoui’s agency counted at least 100 members of the Polisario front who carried out terror attacks with AQIM.
The militant groups in Africa, he said, have taken up a rapid shift online. “Cyber terrorism has become a very effective tool to attract people. Potential targets are gradually saturated with disruptive thoughts until fully convinced, alongside attractive offers including marriage, salary and work.”
“The Sahel is dangerous. It is dangerous, dangerous,” stressed Cherkaoui, speaking from his Salé office, referring to the dysfunctional governance and substantial socio-economic disparities in the area that fuel the growth of violent extremism and armed militancy, as the war of terror moved to the African continent twenty years after September 11.
The Central Office of Judicial Research is also alarmed about a number of Moroccans who fought with IS in Syria and Iraq and relocated to the Sahel.
Of the 1,645 Moroccans who fought in Syria and Iraq, 745 have died in battle. 270 returned to Morocco and 137 were prosecuted, with sentences up to 10 years in prison.
Cherkaoui’s agency, created in 2015, works closely with Western allies to crack down on terrorism, dismantling 84 terrorist cells on a local level and providing information that has enabled the arrest and prosecution of hundreds of terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa and the US.
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