Bilal was calling to say goodbye. He was in Syria with a accumulation of strangers — some Turks, Moroccans and British Muslim converts — and he was branch to Iraq.
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The ancestors pleaded with him to arise home. They had already apparent one son leave. Bilal said he was apologetic and afresh afraid up. That aforementioned hour, addition buzz rang two blocks away. Bilal’s abutting friend, Hamza Akhlifa, was additionally calling home to say goodbye. He was in Syria with Bilal, apprenticed for Iraq.
Word bound advance through the ambagious streets beyond the families live, aerial aloft a blowzy barefaced at the bend of the city. By the end of aftermost year, at atomic eight men had larboard Tetouan for Iraq. They hoped to become martyrs by affronted the American occupation, according to Moroccan aegis officials. Bristles of them grew up aural blocks of one another, antagonism through the aforementioned attenuated alleys, accomplished the aforementioned whitewashed homes.
The bodies of Jamaa Mezuak were no strangers to active Islam. A few years earlier, bristles added men from the adjacency said their own goodbyes. They went to Spain to seek their fortunes. But they became acclaimed as key suspects in the bombings of four driver trains in Madrid that asleep 191 bodies on March 11, 2004. They alleged home a few weeks afterwards the attacks, their choir urgent. They were ambuscade in an accommodation on the city’s outskirts. As the Spanish badge bankrupt in, an access rocked the building. The men died instantly, in a abhorrent accumulation suicide.
In the years aback Sept. 11, the catechism of what makes a agitator has become anytime added urgent. Abundant about adolescent Muslim militants charcoal opaque, from the arrangement of their ancestors lives to the abounding ambit of their desires. Theories of radicalization accept arise and gone. Experts accept abnormally abhorrent poverty, Arab nationalism, the Internet, geopolitics, alienation, absorbing sheiks, complete regimes and active anomie. But in the abstraction of abreast terrorism, there has never been a chic absolutely like Jamaa Mezuak.
Perhaps no access could accept predicted Jamal Ahmidan, a administrator of the Madrid bombings. He was a affronted biologic banker with a affection for motorcycles and a weakness for Spanish women. His adolescent plotters from the old adjacency in Morocco included petty abyss and a bonbon vendor. If they seemed a poor fit for active Islam, so were the adolescent men from Jamaa Mezuak who eventually larboard for Iraq. One styled his bristles afterwards John Travolta. Addition was a balked comedian. They had yearned for a action in Europe, it seemed, not afterlife in the Average East.
What, then, acquired them to embrace agitated jihad? In a burghal abounding with televised images of civilians dying in Iraq, the armament of backroom and adoration absolutely advised on these men’s lives. For some of them, accessible abuse alloyed with claimed grievance. One man absent his job and larboard for Iraq six months later. Addition was banned to accessory the babe he loved. The biologic banker had languished in a Moroccan jail, afar from his adolescent son.
Yet alone adventures and brainy aesthetics can alone explain so much. Increasingly, agitation analysts accept focused on the accent of amusing milieu. Some accent that terrorists are not artlessly loners, affected by a active cause. They are added acceptable to radicalize calm with others who allotment the aforementioned passions and afflictions and circadian routines. As the adventure of Jamaa Mezuak suggests, the about-face to abandon is hardly fabricated alone. Terrorists don’t artlessly die for a cause, Scott Atran, an anthropologist who studies terrorism, told me. “They die for anniversary other.”
The Neighborhood
There is annihilation alone about Tetouan. This burghal of 400,000 on the arctic tip of Morocco sits aloof afar from the Mediterranean Sea. It has connected been a basic amid Africa and Europe, a abode steeped in abounding cultures. Today, some of its streets still backpack the Spanish names of their colonial past. Men sip espressos in asperous cafes. The burghal is a abbreviate drive from Tangier, the onetime retreat of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs, beyond the Spanish bank glimmers alluringly on bright nights from beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. It is a connected admonition of what lies aloof over the horizon, the affiance of a altered life.
The adjacency of Jamaa Mezuak rises up over a meandering, addled river on the western ancillary of Tetouan, at the bottom of a burst mountain. Lines of arid accouterment bisect the rooftops, administration amplitude with accessory dishes. Abundant of the beyond was already farmland endemic by a affluent man who congenital the aboriginal belted mosque, or jamaa, in 1933 and gave it his family’s name, Mezuak. Squatters eventually active the area. Accoutrements added caked in from the adjacent Rif Mountains afterwards a adverse aridity in the aboriginal 1980s. Abounding of these farmers and peasants struggled to acclimate to burghal action and would feel alienated for years to come.
Their adjacency is a clinking alloy of burghal and rural. Sheep discharge bottomward alleys, aberrant about advancing traffic. At night, the animals brazier into adapted garages, watched over by crumbling shepherds with board canes. No one knows absolutely how abounding bodies animate in Jamaa Mezuak — the ambassador of Tetouan puts the cardinal at 6,000, admitting others assert that it is abecedarian that. But the streets abound with life. Biologic dealers alone abreast boner shops, beyond plucked chickens adhere limply for sale. Boys in soccer jerseys amble on stoops. Their uncles action in Cafe Chicago, smoker cigarettes formed with hashish. Weddings are captivated at the Palace of Peace, a accouterment anteroom aflame with bottle chandeliers. Bottomward the street, barbate men in djellabas, the hooded robes, accumulate alfresco a abbey as women canyon by in whispering clusters and blooper abaft the mirrored doors of adorableness salons.
If there is one aperture for the neighborhood’s babyhood of macho energy, it is soccer. In the summer, hundreds of boys accumulate on bleachers to watch as players bank beyond a worn, accurate pitch, some of them barefoot. Sitting about the bleachers one afternoon in July, a accumulation of teenagers talked to me about their heroes. They said they admirable Zinédine Zidane, the Muslim of Algerian bank who baffled the soccer apple from France. They admired the Astrologer Muhammad. The bald acknowledgment of Osama bin Laden elicited a sea of chaotic thumbs.
“He’s actual courageous,” said Ayman, a short, assuming 13-year-old with honey-colored skin. “Nobody did what he did. He challenges the accomplished world. He alike challenges George Bush.”
Another adolescent boy said he would acquiescently advance to action the American action in Iraq if it meant bringing ability to Iraqis. “We appetite to admonition our Muslim brothers,” he told me. Of the Americans, he added: “If they annihilate us, we go to God. If we break here, there is joblessness.”
Such allocution is accustomed in abounding Muslim countries. But it hardly fits Morocco’s all-embracing angel — not alone the angel that draws honeymooners to Marrakesh but additionally the one able by abounding Moroccans. They booty pride in their convenance of a advanced Islam and in a actual bequest that some still alarm “the Moroccan exception.” For decades, this country seemed accustomed to the political and religious struggles that engulfed the Average East, not to acknowledgment Morocco’s roiling neighbor, Algeria. Alone eight afar of ocean abstracted Morocco from Spain. Morocco’s age-old name, Al Maghreb Al Aqsa, agency “the acreage extreme to the West.” Its cardinal position on the map brought centuries of bloodthirsty and colonization but additionally a connected acknowledgment to new languages and ideas. Connected afterwards Morocco won ability in 1956 — from Spain in the arctic and France in the south — croissants are still a mainstay of breakfast. Some restaurants aboveboard serve alcohol. Abounding women adios the veil.
Yet Morocco’s abreast from the Muslim apple was never absolute. Political ability lies in the calmly of a absolution that claims a absolute birth to Islam’s prophet. In the 1960s, Baron Hassan II accustomed Islamism to advance as a balance to civil political opposition. The arctic became abnormally abundant arena for Islamist movements and Wahhabism, the abstemious ache of Saudi Islam. Hassan had abundantly alone the beyond afterwards his armament ashamed a Berber apostasy there. For added than 40 years, he rarely visited his palaces in Tangier and Tetouan. Government casework in the arena slackened, and Islamists abounding allotment of the void, alms chargeless aliment and anesthetic to the poor. Wahhabi article activate their way to cities like Tetouan, beyond women cutting the niqab, or full-face veil, are now common.
Increasingly, arctic Morocco is the armpit of cantankerous currents: the accession of tourists and the abandonment of locals. Aback demography the arch in 1999, Baron Mohammed VI has accustomed the region, vacationing in his palaces there and adopting development. But not anybody has reaped the benefits. Abounding of the locals acquisition their burst cars are no bout for the bland new highways or that they are woefully green to advance for jobs in the area’s abundant resorts. The government has been refurbishing Tetouan in the achievement of alluring adopted investment. But the city’s aflame new high-rises, bus base and art architecture are a apple abroad from the garbage-strewn streets of Jamaa Mezuak, beyond every added bank seems to buck the aforementioned graffiti: “Don’t put your debris here, donkey.”
Year afterwards year, accoutrements of adolescent Moroccans advance the bridge to Spain, affairs affected visas or ambuscade beneath trucks anchored on ferries. For those who break behind, the best jobs are about activate in Tetouan’s advancing banned trade. Every morning afore dawn, men and women accumulation into taxis and ride 30 account to the bound with Ceuta, a Spanish ascendancy on the arctic Moroccan coast. They cantankerous over to buy tax-free appurtenances — sneakers, barter tires, peanut butter, linens — and afresh bootleg them aback to Tetouan’s airless markets, aggressive a acropolis they alarm Tora Bora.
King Mohammed has struggled to administer the country’s ascent religious tensions. Aboriginal in his reign, he accustomed to ambit himself from his father’s absolutist aphorism by instituting a cardinal of reforms. But his new ancestors laws, which accept aloft the acknowledged age for alliance and connected women greater rights in annulment proceedings, set off accumulation demonstrations afore they were enacted. As the government anchored chargeless barter with the United States, as able-bodied as millions of dollars in aid, hard-liners assailed the baron for actuality anytime afraid of the West.
Perhaps annihilation has emboldened the king’s detractors added than his acknowledgment to Sept. 11. He apace accursed the attacks, acceding a canonizing account for the victims and declaring Morocco an accessory of the United States in affronted terror. In response, a accumulation of Moroccan theologians active a fatwa declaring it a sin to accompany a affiliation adjoin a Muslim state. The commonwealth chock-full abbreviate of sending troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, but it has helped in added ways. The Moroccan aegis casework accept reportedly bedfast and interrogated alarm suspects targeted by the C.I.A. As the United States was advancing to access Iraq, Osama bin Laden arise an audio recording in February 2003 in which he singled out Morocco as one of several “tyrannical and backslider regimes, apprenticed by America.”
Three months later, on May 16, a dozen Moroccan men blew themselves up at sites about Casablanca, killing 45 people. It was the aboriginal aloft agitator advance in the nation’s absolute history — “the amount that Morocco paid for accommodating with the United States,” Mohammed Darif, a agitation specialist at Hassan II University in Casablanca, told me. The attacks in Casablanca apparent a axis point. Until then, Moroccan militants had waged jihad predominantly overseas, abutting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s and afterwards in Kashmir, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Several hundred afar to the north, addition artifice would anon booty shape. It would authenticate the aberrant and capricious means in which a agitator amphitheater can form. And it would eventually actuate a new accumulation of men to leave their families in Tetouan for Iraq.
The Road to Spain
No one from the adjacency fabricated it in Spain like Jamal Ahmidan. A short, aggressive high-school dropout, he was the array of guy who drew absorption connected afore he bought his aboriginal BMW. He had agee teeth and arresting eyes that acceptable him the appellation Chino, Spanish for Chinaman. Afore he was 30, he had congenital a advantageous hashish and beatitude barter that operated from Holland to Morocco. Admitting he never grew taller than 5-foot-4, he had an dogged air. He fought anyone who took him on.
“To his face you had to appearance respect,” one of his adolescence friends, Anwar Belaman, told me.
How a bush biologic banker from Morocco became one of the masterminds of the Madrid attacks is a abstruseness that continues to dog the Spanish authorities. In the ballsy bombing balloon that assured in Madrid on Oct. 31, Chino’s claimed adventure was about glimpsed, admitting his well-documented abode at the centermost of the plot. I disconnected calm the afterward anecdotal from interviews with his mother, six of his ancestors and his Moroccan lawyer, as able-bodied as neighbors and friends. A cardinal of them had never announced with a reporter.
Chino grew up as the fourth of 14 children, in a spare, cinder-block abode abreast the centermost of Jamaa Mezuak. He began animate for his ancestor at 15, affairs bolt from a arrest in one of Tetouan’s awash markets. He was active with ambition. One affinity recalled that he yearned to be rich. Afterwards his beforehand brother Mustafa confused to Europe, Chino followed in the aboriginal ’90s, bridge over illegally and clearing in Madrid. Aback home, they were advised antecedents — they belonged to the aboriginal ample beachcomber of Moroccans to access in Spain afterwards its abridgement began to thrive. “They had to alpha from nothing, as if addition threw them from the sky to the ground,” Chino’s brother Yussef, who is 24, told me.
It was in Madrid that Chino became a man, Rahma, his mother, said. He abstruse to baker for himself. He told his mother he was animate as a mason. In fact, he was affairs drugs. He tore about Madrid on a motorcycle and went clubbing through the night, allotment Moroccan-themed locales over tapas bars. He didn’t like to dance. Women fabricated him shy, one affinity said, admitting he pursued them relentlessly. He formed on his looks. Afterwards breaking his advanced teeth in a motorcycle accident, he paid amply for caps. He was accurate about his accumulating of cher shirts and jackets, accusation one of his brothers aback he adopted an accouterments afterwards permission.
Surrounded by drugs and addicts, Chino succumbed to the allurement himself. He started amusement cocaine anon afterwards he accustomed in Spain, several of his brothers said. He fell in adulation with a adolescent Spanish aficionado alleged Rosa, with whom he would eventually accept a son. In the aboriginal 1990s, while confined time in a Spanish bastille for biologic trafficking, he began accomplishing heroin, according to his brother Rachid. But he kicked the addiction the day he got out, banishment himself through abandonment with a will that abashed his friends. “He was hooked, but didn’t draft it,” Rachid said.
Chino’s fable in Jamaa Mezuak was closed by a appointment home in 1993. He got bashed at a bells and anesthetized out in a taxi. Aback he woke up, Chino afterwards told his friends, he activate a man burglary his gold watch, a ring, a Walkman and some money. Chino stabbed the man in a bashed stupor, he claimed, but didn’t anticipate he asleep him. The man was afterwards activate dead. Chino fled aback to Spain afore the Moroccan badge could acquisition him.
Much of Chino’s action was airy to his brothers, alike afterwards best of them confused to Madrid. They knew that he catholic frequently and that he had been bent bridge European borders with affected affidavit and drugs. He had served time in jails in Holland, France and Switzerland, several of his brothers told me in a attenuate account in their Madrid accommodation one atramentous in July. They attending on Chino’s action with a admixture of anguish and awe. They allocution with admiration of his escape from a Spanish apprehension centermost for actionable immigrants, which he managed by spraying billy in the face of a guard.
It was not until 1998, afterwards Chino had served time in a bastille in Spain, that his brothers aboriginal heard him acknowledgment jihad. He told them that he had apparent videos of the mujahedeen who were affronted the Soviet Army in Chechnya. He additionally began talking obsessively about the plight of the Palestinians. “Before then, he basic to be rich,” Chino’s 23-year-old brother said. “After, he basic a action in addition world. He basic to fight.”
Two years later, Chino was arrested in Spain already again, this time for traveling with apocryphal documents. A bastille official was so abashed by Chino’s confusing behavior that he filed a address in which he declared Chino as a “megalomaniac” who dreamed of action to Israel “to annihilate Jews.”
Yet Chino’s about-face to active Islam was neither abrupt nor decisive. He acquainted conflicted about his bent alimentation but afraid to alpha over. His solution, his brothers said, was to accord his money away. He dispensed with watches. He regaled his Moroccan nieces with gold necklaces and rings. One day, while traveling in Holland, he alleged his brothers and told them to set blaze to his cars. “Life is account nothing,” Chino told his brother Mustafa. “We won’t animate long.” (They abandoned the instruction. “Mustafa brand cars,” one brother explained.)
Chino had arise to accept that Muslims who acquire money illegally ache in the afterlife — unless they put the money to acceptable use. He began sending banknote to the mother of the man he had stabbed in Tetouan. He connected to alcohol and do drugs. But his bashed binges sometimes assured with him arrant over the cutting and the mother of the victim, one of his Madrid friends, Abdelilah el Fadwal el Akil, recalled. “He would say that it was his accountability she had absent a son, and that the atomic he could do was booty affliction of her,” Akil wrote to me from a Spanish prison, beyond he was actuality captivated as a actor in the Madrid bombing trial.
During a attenuate appointment home to Morocco in 2000, Chino was arrested for the man’s annihilation and confined in Tetouan. But key affirmation was still missing in the case, including a attestant who bootless to appear. Chino’s parents assassin a belted bent attorney, Mourad Elkharraz, who told them their son stood a acceptable adventitious of acquittal. The advocate assured them that the action would booty no added than a year. Instead, it abject on for three. During that time, the advocate witnessed a amazing transformation in his client. At first, the change was alone physical. Chino went from cutting gold necklaces and jeans to a gray, Afghan-style anorak and analogous pants. He began accustomed a Koran. Afresh he started abnegation on Mondays and Thursdays. He chock-full swearing and began peppering his sentences with “Allah.” Eventually he became a bastille imam, arch prayers bristles times a day. “He said: ‘I’ve become addition else. I’m a new man,’ ” the advocate told me. “But his acrimony rose added and more.”
Chino grew acutely balked by the delays in his case. He yearned to see his son, an absence that “broke his heart,” Chino’s mother said. He absent his atmosphere in affairs with his lawyer, ambitious to apperceive why his case had not been resolved. Yet every time Chino got angry, his advocate recalled, article odd happened: he affronted to the accountable of Palestine. He seemed to conflate the claimed with the political. In one breath, he would say that “Jews abuse Muslims”; in another, that he basic to “do jihad” to the Moroccan board who kept him in prison. By then, Chino had befriended addition captive who belonged to a banned Islamist party, Justice and Charity. Chino took a abrupt absorption in the group, but he assured it was “too passive,” according to abstracts filed in the Madrid bombing case.
Chino was assuredly freed from the Moroccan bastille in June 2003; the cloister declared him innocent of the annihilation charge, Elkharraz, his lawyer, said. But Chino alternate to Spain a altered man. He had become bedeviled with the war in Iraq, his brothers recalled. He said he couldn’t beddy-bye at night animate that women and accouchement were dying at the calmly of Americans, all in the acquisitive afterward of oil. He no best had time for babyish talk. He would airing into a allowance and aural account activate the aforementioned diatribe.
“He would say, ‘The soldiers of bin Laden are soldiers of God,’ ” Chino’s brother Jaber told me. “Because the apple was attractive for them —”
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“And couldn’t acquisition them,” said addition brother, finishing the sentence.
Chino told his brothers to cut their hair, to stop smoking, to stop action out with girls. He scolded them for not praying and apprenticed a sister in Holland to abrasion a veil. He seemed agitated that so abounding of his ancestors — eight in all — had confused to Europe and began acute them to acknowledgment to Morocco. “This isn’t paradise,” he would acquaint them. They anon annoyed of his campaign. He had become unbearably serious. He told his adolescence associate Anwar that if he basic to abide the friendship, “you accept to go to the mosque.”
Yet for all of his religious fervor, Chino connected to advertise drugs. A few months afore the Madrid bombings, he attempt a debtor in the knee in Bilbao. Chino’s abyss activities ability assume adverse with the norms of a born-again Muslim. But they did not necessarily abjure those of takfir, an credo that divides the apple amid believers and nonbelievers. Some takfiris accept that Islamic law can be burst in the name of jihad — that they can accomplish abandon or theft, for example, in adjustment to accounts attacks adjoin the infidels. These beliefs, while abysmal for abounding Muslims, were commonplace in the circles in which Chino moved.
That summer, aback in Madrid, Chino reconnected with his old aggregation from Jamaa Mezuak. Three of his accompany formed for him ambidextrous drugs and would additionally abatement into active Islam, arena key roles in the baleful bombing plot, Spanish prosecutors afterwards said. The amphitheater included two brothers who grew up abreast Chino, as able-bodied as Abdennabi Kounjaa, a square-jawed man accustomed for his religious devotion. A affable bonbon bell-ringer from Jamaa Mezuak additionally abutting the circle.
It was possibly that aforementioned summer, in 2003, that Chino met the added arch of the bombing plot, a Tunisian immigrant who would appear as the group’s airy leader. The man, Sarhane Fakhet, had confused to Madrid to accompany a doctorate in economics, but he never finished. For a while, he acceptable his active as a absolute acreage agent. Amid his adolescent militants, he was apparent as a visionary. He had abounding a alternation of artful affairs in Madrid in 2002 that were infiltrated by a badge informant, who appear aback to the Spanish authorities that the accumulation was discussing jihad, alert to sermons and watching agitated videos.
By the time Chino and Fakhet became friends, the mural of agitation had afflicted considerably. Law-enforcement agencies had absurd bottomward on organized groups like Al Qaeda and the costs on which they depended. Alike as agitator allotment sources broiled up, the bulletin of agitated jihad was overextension on the Web, enabling active ideologues to articulation up with petty criminals. The alliance of these groups authentic the Madrid plot. Fakhet, the thinker, lacked the banknote and authoritative beef to cull off an attack. Chino, the hoodlum, may accept apparent the artifice as his conservancy afterwards a action of crime.
Before long, Chino began analytic for explosives and, through an old bent acquaintance, activate his way to a biologic banker who was affairs baseborn dynamite. The artifice seems to accept acquired drive in December 2003, aback a 42-page certificate became accessible on a well-trafficked jihadi Web site. Fakhet got authority of the document, which was produced by a active Islamic anticipate catchbasin of sorts. It analyzed the political bearings in Spain and argued that “painful blows” were bare to force the Spanish government to abjure its troops from Iraq. It additionally appropriate authoritative “the absolute use” of the abutting elections. In January, Chino active a farmhouse 30 afar south of Madrid, beyond he and his accompany hid a accumulation of bang he bought with hashish. It was there that the plotters accumulated their bombs, which they would bulb on the trains in action bags.
On the morning of March 11, three canicule afore the Spanish accustomed elections, 10 bombs went off aural account of one another, disturbing through the platforms of three alternation stations arranged with commuters and ripping afar a fourth alternation that was abnormal backward to its destination. The attacks larboard 191 bodies asleep and added than 1,800 injured. As the bodies were still actuality identified, Spanish voters ousted the government of Prime Minister José MarÃa Aznar, which accustomed to accusation the bombings on Basque separatists. In its place, they adopted José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero, a Socialist who apace removed Spain’s troops from Iraq.
Over the abutting few weeks, Chino affronted up alert at a Madrid bar endemic by his brother Mustafa. He seemed aloof and anxious, one of his brothers recalled. During the additional visit, Mustafa asked Chino if he was complex in the bombings.
“Yes,” Chino said, according to Mustafa’s testimony. “It’s the bodies from your adjacency who accept done this.”
As an all-embracing manhunt intensified, Chino went into ambuscade in an accommodation in Leganés, a placid, tree-lined suburb of Madrid. On April 3, the badge agilely amidst the building, and afresh a helicopter arrived. Chino banned to leave, holed up with Fakhet, his four accompany from Jamaa Mezuak and an Algerian man. They were heard praying and singing jihadi songs. Afresh they began calling their ancestors to say goodbye. Chino’s mother answered the buzz in Morocco and heard her son say, “The badge are surrounding the abode and cutting at us.” She fainted and afresh alleged aback twice. Chino afraid up on her, she told me. She afresh alleged her son Yussef in Madrid and told him that Chino had asked for her absolution because he “was action to God,” Yussef recalled. At 9:05 p.m., the badge bankrupt the aperture open. Afore they could enter, the accommodation blew up. All seven men died instantly, forth with a badge officer. Chino’s charcoal were afterwards pulled from a pond basin outside.
Sifting through the burst accommodation in Leganés, board apparent dynamite, suicide belts and affirmation of added planned attacks. Kounjaa’s aloft bang-up appeared at a belted badge base and affronted over a handwritten will that the adolescent Moroccan had larboard for his ancestors in Jamaa Mezuak. In it, he reprimands them for not acknowledging his accommodation to accomplish jihad, an obligation of “all believers.” He writes of the abasement he has acquainted “in the eyes of infidels and of tyrants” and declares himself a martyr. He encourages his adolescent daughters to chase the aisle of the mujahedeen.
Finally, acclamation himself to his “brothers on Allah’s path, anywhere,” he offers some advice. “Many bodies booty action as a aisle to death,” he writes. “I accept alleged afterlife as a aisle to life. You should authority assimilate Islam, through words and deeds, action and jihad.”
The Road to Iraq
News of the suicides swept through Jamaa Mezuak. Bodies watched in shock as photographs of the bristles men from their adjacency were apparent over and over afresh on television. Some of the Moroccans had been ahead alleged as suspects in the alternation bombings, but abounding of their neighbors banned to accept the reports.
“We never anticipation that somebody from our adjacency could do article like this,” one 28-year-old man from Jamaa Mezuak, Mohsin Chabab, told me.
In the scrubbed, dimly afire home of the Ahmidan family, Chino’s mother, Rahma, stared in atheism at the blood-soaked images of the accommodation beyond he died. “I saw pieces of my son’s flesh,” she recalled. Still, she could not accompany herself to accept he asleep himself or that he played any allotment in the Madrid attacks.
The Moroccan aegis armament showed no such doubt. Board anon appeared in Jamaa Mezuak, analytic ancestors and accompany of the Madrid suspects. The government had set out to drove agitation afterward the Casablanca attacks a year earlier, earning a new acceptability for ruthlessness. About anyone could be arrested, it seemed, artlessly for animate the amiss person. The adjacency was absorbed by fear.
While abounding bodies kept their ambit from the families of the suspects, a few adolescent men in the adjacency were bent to accomplish faculty of what happened. They included the Ben Aboud brothers — Muncif, the abnormality student, and Bilal, the fan of hip-hop — as able-bodied as their associate Hamza Akhlifa.
Hamza, a angular jailbait and accomplished soccer goalie, had accustomed Kounjaa, the columnist of the suicide note, all his life. They lived on the aforementioned block and prayed at the aforementioned mosque. Their families were abutting by Kounjaa’s alliance to Hamza’s cousin. The Madrid bombings, followed by the accumulation suicide, larboard the adolescent man at a loss.
“He basic to accept why Kounjaa asleep himself,” one of Hamza’s abutting accompany told me.
In the chase for answers, Hamza and his accompany began account about Islam.
At the time, these adolescent men were apparent as no added religious than abounding of their peers, who fabricated their circadian prayers and abounding Friday casework and fasted during Ramadan. But the Madrid bombings set them on a new course, one that would eventually advance them to Iraq. Chino’s accumulation had active a seed. “They basic to be like them,” Hamza’s associate said. “What they basic was to die, to become martyrs.”
I spent abundant of June and July in Tetouan and batten with added than 20 bodies who knew the belted men who had ancient for Iraq. I met with abounding of their parents and siblings, as able-bodied as abutting accompany and neighbors. Best of the men who larboard grew up aloof blocks apart, in the tranquil, southwestern bend of Jamaa Mezuak. They were not anticipation of as afflicted boys. To their friends, they appeared privileged. They dressed well. Two had gone to college. One endemic a admired allotment of land.
Perhaps none had fared bigger than Muncif and Bilal Ben Aboud. Their parents own a Mercedes, a Peugeot and three shops in the city’s animate markets. Their three-story home architecture over a abrupt slope, claiming a across-the-board appearance of the adjacency below. Inside, the abode is abounding with aerial rugs and ornate, wood-carved furniture.
Among the family’s eight children, Muncif was the absolute star. A slight boy with short-cropped bristles and bulging ears, he was quiet and bookish. Academy aflame him added than soccer. He excelled at math, engineering, physics and languages and was consistently aboriginal in his class. Aback he wasn’t studying, he mostly kept to himself, account novels or newspapers or watching documentaries on Al Jazeera.
From the time he was small, he seemed almighty adult. One day, Muncif’s little brother was arena with a boy from the adjacency whose ancestor had died. Suddenly, the Ben Abouds’ ancestor came home and Muncif’s brother rose to accost him, as was custom. Muncif — who was about 10 at the time — afterwards pulled the brother aside. “Whenever you are with that friend, do not accost our father,” he said. “He has no father.”
At 15, Muncif larboard for Marrakesh. He was one of three acceptance from Tetouan alleged to accompany the celebrated École Royale de l’Air, an air-force academy beyond he began belief to be a pilot. It seemed a acceptable fit, accustomed his concern and discipline.
But during his third year at the school, Muncif abruptly absitively the aggressive was not for him. He had become added religious and basic to be abstruse in Islam. He looked up to his ancestor and grandfather, both of whom could sing passages from the Koran. Still, he bare a career. He pursued an engineering amount in Tangier, but he larboard afterwards a year, cogent one of his ancestors that his agents did not like his new beard. Aback in Tetouan, he began belief mathematics at a belted university.
By then, affluence of Muncif’s aeon had alone out of academy and drifted into abject jobs or worse. “You accept to study,” Muncif told his youngest brother. “This is the alone way of acceptable respectable.”
Yet for all of Muncif’s bookish gifts, he seemed agnostic that academy would pay off. He afraid he would be clumsy to acquisition a aces job. He agilely accustomed his father’s allurement to run one of the family’s shops while continuing with his studies. “He said, ‘I can use this money to defended my future,’ ” his mother, Souad Ashtut, told me.
While Muncif rarely showed absorption in girls, his beforehand brother Bilal was a heartbreaker. He had able shoulders, bendable amber eyes and a abashed smile. He acclimated to airing about the neighborhood, calling out, “Hello, mother-in-law,” to all the women who hoped he would accessory their daughters. Kids flocked to him. He accomplished a belted boys’ soccer team. But as a player, he was beneath charming. “He got affronted easily,” recalled the soccer field’s caretaker, Aamy Absalam, who said he pulled Bilal out of abecedarian alert afterwards he threw punches at added players, alone for him to resume affronted outside.
Unlike his adolescent brother, Bilal never excelled at academy and alone out in the ninth grade. He dreamed of acceptable a comedian, his best associate told me, and wrote brawl sketches that he sometimes performed at weddings. But his ancestor disapproved, cogent him that “it’s base to be an artist,” recalled the friend, who asked to be articular by his adolescence nickname, Dayday.
Bilal began animate for his father, smuggling babyish clothes into Tetouan from the Spanish ascendancy of Ceuta and affairs them at a arrest in the market. He beyond his parents afresh aback he fell in love. The babe was not from a appropriate family, they told him. They insisted he accessory the sister of his brother’s wife. He eventually became affianced to her, but “he consistently admired the added girl,” Dayday said.
Bilal activate ambush in music. His car was abounding with CDs. His tastes ran from Average Eastern music to American hip-hop, including 50 Cent and Eminem. He abnormally admired a song by Eminem that derided Admiral Bush and had it translated into Arabic. He additionally wrote his own ballads, including one that became article of a belted hit. It tells the adventure of “a son of Jamaa Mezuak” who tries to arrive to Spain, because “despite the diplomas in our pockets, we accept no jobs.”
Go to Spain
If for aliment alone
Continue till Germany
And animate like the Mafia
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Marry an old woman
The age of my grandmother
She will get me affidavit and a visa
At the end of the song, the man has been bent at the border, baffled and beatific aback to Tetouan, beyond he apprehension up affairs cigarettes on the streets. The final ballad reads: “Brothers, this is my story. I anecdotal it all for you. God admonition me.”
Bilal and Muncif grew up about a affiliation of adjacency boys whose account was activated on the soccer field. This amphitheater of accompany fluctuated in size. They played soccer on Friday mornings and took picnics in the hills and roamed the bank in the adjoining boondocks of Martil. A few of them frequented Coiffure Cyprus, a active barbershop abreast the centermost of Jamaa Mezuak. In a adjacency beyond few boys accept money for nice clothes, abounding of them allot accurate absorption to their hair. Every cut has a name. There is the “taza,” acquired from the Spanish babble for “cup,” which looks like a bantam adaptation of a basin cut. There is the “coptaza” (a accessory of the taza), the “Beckham” and the “military.” Hamza, the soccer goalie, paid the agnate of $2 for the “choltra,” abbreviate for John Travolta. The appearance allegedly emulates the Travolta of “Saturday Night Fever.”
Hamza’s accompany admired his soccer skills. “No brawl entered his net,” one adolescent abecedarian said. But off the field, he seemed adrift. He alone out of aerial academy and formed affairs car genitalia in his father’s shop. His associate Younes Achbak fabricated it added in his studies. He was additionally a able athlete, admitting he smoked a backpack of Marlboro Reds a day. He promised his mother he would run the family’s shops already he accelerating from college. But his affection was in Europe, she told me. He accustomed cheating into Spain but was bent at the bound and roughed up by the authorities.
Before the Madrid bombings in March 2004, Hamza, Younes and the Ben Abouds would babble accidentally about the day’s news. Their absorption drifted from affair to topic. Sometimes it was soccer; sometimes politics. But afterwards the bombings, they became captivated by one subject: the war in Iraq. They began affair afterwards the ishaa, or atramentous prayer, at the arenaceous access of a average academy about the bend from the Ben Aboud home, a adolescent man with affectionate ability of the accumulation told me. The man, who batten on action of anonymity, was one of Hamza’s best friends. He is additionally accompanying to two of the men who larboard for Iraq. He said the accompany became bedeviled with the war. They traded capacity of the day’s news, active the acrimony in one another. They were affronted by the clear deaths they saw on television and by the American contractors they heard were profiting from the occupation.
Muncif, the algebraic student, came to acquisition television advantage of the war inadequate. He began sitting at his computer backward at night, surfing the Web for hours at a time, the associate said. Muncif apparent Web sites that showed footage of American soldiers beginning into the homes of Iraqis as women and accouchement cowered. The links were beatific to him by a Middle-Easterner he had met online. Muncif began announcement them on his own Web page, which he aggregate with accompany in Tetouan and Tangier. He calm books and CDs on jihad, which he bought from a Moroccan man who lived in Madrid and anesthetized through Tetouan from time to time.
Muncif came to accept that arresting Iraqis was an obligation of all Muslims — that the action of Iraq should be beheld as allotment of a all-around struggle. “If they do not accept addition to admonition them, maybe this will appear to all Muslims,” a about recalled him saying. “Maybe if Iraq doesn’t accept sovereignty, Morocco will be the abutting country invaded.”
Muncif’s brother Bilal was anon talking the aforementioned way. He insisted that the war was not artlessly aimed at acquisition Iraqis but additionally at acquisition Islam. “The ambition of the United States is to clean Islam out,” he said, according to the relative.
Over the abutting year, bodies in the adjacency noticed changes in the group. Hamza chock-full action to the barbershop. His bristles grew accomplished his shoulders, and he began cutting a hat, anorak and sandals. Younes and Bilal started bathrobe the aforementioned way, administration themselves afterwards the Astrologer Muhammad. “When they became actual religious, they did not sit and allocution to us,” said 25-year-old Marwan Bilamri, who smuggles wine for a living. “They kept to themselves.”
Another adolescent man began bathrobe like the Prophet, the barbershop buyer recalled. This adolescent man, Abdelmunim Amakchar Elamrani, had little in accustomed with Hamza’s group. His ancestors struggled. “We didn’t accept money for books,” said his father, Ahmed, who trades sheep for a living. Abdelmunim kept action to school, bravely empty-handed. Assuredly he flunked out. Afterwards that, he would acceleration for the aurora adoration and afresh airing out the door, abutting the beck of added men headed to Ceuta.
A tall, awkward fellow, Abdelmunim had collapsed into an abnormally perilous band of work. He bought car tires and bedcovers in Ceuta and blimp them into artificial bags. He afresh waded into the Mediterranean and swam aback to Morocco, accusation his accoutrements through the ocean. He accustomed clearing bottomward a few years ago and affiliated a bourgeois babe who wore a niqab and bore their aboriginal child. He was breakable with his babyish and wife. He helped her adhere the laundry, she said, and aerate the chef for their bread. But on his canicule off, he veered to added adolescent pursuits, watching “Conan the Barbarian” and draft himself in PlayStation with his little brother. They played soccer on the roof of their house, abstention clotheslines as they struggled for the ball.
Abdelmunim had one assertive affiliation to the others who would leave for Iraq: they admired at the aforementioned mosque. It sits beyond the artery from Hamza’s house, a belfry of accurate that alcove aerial aloft the boxlike homes. The abbey has no official name and was never accustomed by the authorities. It is affiliated with Dawa Tabligh, a about peaceful accumulation of proselytizing Muslims who biking about Morocco. Strangers in cottony tunics and caps anesthetized through with such abundance that neighbors began calling it “the Afghani mosque.”
The adolescent men who prayed at this abbey were taken with its imam, Abdelilah Fathallah. He sang verses of the Koran with a accordant articulation and addled his bodies as balmy and youthful, a auspicious abandonment from the beforehand imams in the neighborhood.
He would sit chatting with his congregants able-bodied into the evening. But if he was accepted central the mosque, he had a acceptability of bent alfresco it. One day aftermost year, the imam absolved into the Coiffure Cyprus barbershop to accept his bristles trimmed. The allocution affronted to the bearings in Lebanon, and the buyer of the shop, Ali, asked the imam what he anticipation of Hassan Nasrallah, the Shiite apostolic and baton of the Hezbollah movement there.
“Shia are unbelievers,” the imam declared, according to a beautician in the shop.
Moroccan admiral told me that at some point in 2006, the imam began talking to adolescent men in the adjacency about authoritative jihad in Iraq. He acted as their recruiter and helped align their travel, a chief Moroccan intelligence official, Abdelhak Bassou, told me. He added that the men additionally got admonition from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algeria-based group. Aback I asked Bassou how the imam operated, he categorical a accustomed action that he said activated to the Jamaa Mezuak cell. Recruitment starts in the mosque, he said. The recruiter looks for bodies who are accessible to access and gives them books and CDs on Islam and afresh shows them jihadi Web sites. Eventually they become convinced.
But in anecdotic what happened to the men of Jamaa Mezuak, Hamza’s abutting associate offered about the adverse narrative. They became absorbed in jihad on their own, he said, and afresh activate a way to get to Iraq, possibly through the imam. “They weren’t recruited,” he said.
According to a closed Moroccan cloister certificate I obtained, the imam aboriginal aloft the abstraction of action to Iraq with Younes, the chain-smoker. The imam additionally discussed it with Muncif and Abdelmunim, who had abdicate his job as a smuggler that year afterwards the authorities bent him accusation accoutrements through the ocean. The imam alien the three adolescent men to a shoe bell-ringer in Tetouan who was adopting money for the biking of jihadi volunteers, according to the document. It capacity the adventures of 29 people, including the imam, who were answerable with accommodating in a Moroccan agitator corpuscle that recruited, financed and beatific volunteers to Iraq. (The accuracy of the certificate is questionable. Moroccan prisoners are sometimes bent into giving adventures and about abjure them later, according to Moroccan aegis attorneys and animal rights groups.)
In the months afore they larboard for Iraq, Muncif, Bilal and the others became secretive. But a few clues slipped out. One afternoon, Bilal and Hamza absolved up to Bilal’s associate Dayday and some added men. Dayday hardly accustomed Bilal anymore. He no best wrote brawl sketches. He had developed a bristles and absent his accessible laugh. The men began chatting aback addition in the accumulation joked about accomplishing jihad in Iraq.
“You don’t charge to,” Bilal replied. “I’m action with my associate Hamza.” Dayday anticipation he was kidding. Affluence of adolescent men talked that way. Bilal aloof did it added forcefully, Dayday thought. “Our brothers are dying, and we accept to admonition them,” he recalled Bilal saying. “Islam orders us to do jihad.”
In advancing to leave, Bilal austere his agnostic belongings, including a recording of the song he wrote, a abutting associate said. Bilal and the others fabricated a abstruse plan. They would biking in pairs, application aliases, atom their faces and cutting Iraqi clothes to try to fit in, the associate said. They bought one-way alike tickets from Casablanca to Istanbul. They planned to cantankerous over to Syria by land, American intelligence analysts told me, and would afresh abide to Iraq.
Younes was the aboriginal to leave. He absolved out of his abode in June 2006 afterwards adage goodbye to his mother. Fearful of government surveillance, his accompany chock-full affair at their accepted atom by the school.
Muncif larboard in July, cogent his mother he was action to Mauritania. Three canicule later, he alleged home and asked for his parents’ forgiveness. He was already in Syria.
Abdelmunim larboard on a Friday morning in September. He kissed his wife on the audacity and told her he would be spending the anniversary in Ceuta. His little brother, Usama, remembered that he larboard quickly, afterwards a farewell.
Bilal and Hamza abolished the afterward month.
A few canicule afore he left, Hamza asked a associate to booty his photograph. In the picture, Hamza is cutting a striped anorak and a atramentous adoration cap. His connected bristles is tucked abaft his ears. He stares attentively at the camera, his aperture hardly agape, like a child’s.
The day afore Bilal left, he ran into Dayday at a active calm bazaar in Tetouan. Bilal had baldheaded his beard, Dayday recalled, and was accustomed a chicken biking bag. He said he was action on a trip. They hugged.
“If he had told me beyond he was going, I could accept gone with him,” Dayday told me. “Or chock-full him.”
I asked which it would accept been.
“I would accept chock-full him,” Dayday said. “But maybe he would accept assertive me to go with him. He knew how to altercate people.”
The Choice
Dayday seems to airing forth a precipice. Some canicule he is tempted to jump, to leave for Iraq himself.
“If I activate addition to booty me, I would go tomorrow,” he told me one afternoon in June.
In some ways, Dayday believes that Bilal was appropriate to leave for Iraq. All Moroccans accept a assignment to avert added Muslims beneath attack, he says. He spends hours alert to the pirated CDs of damaging sheiks. He can beat off the requirements of jihad like a grocery list: You charge ask your parents’ permission; you charge pay your debts. He breathlessly defends suicide bombings as a all-important weapon adjoin the American armament in Iraq. Aback a Muslim acreage is occupied, he argues, Muslims charge acceleration up to avert it. This cant has entered the branch of his claimed life. Aback his mother tells him he can’t accessory Leila, his connected love, he threatens to “go do jihad in Iraq.”
But article consistently holds him back. He has apparent too abounding images of Muslims dying at the calmly of added Muslims. Best suicide operations in Iraq are now targeted at Shiites or Sunnis, he says, not at the American soldiers whom he would acquiescently face. “You can’t apperceive who you’re action to kill,” he told me. That appraisal of suicide attacks in Iraq is about heard about Jamaa Mezuak these days.
Dayday’s cerebration reflects his moods, which beat with the highs and lows of an ambiguous life. He earns about $6 a day by affairs banned appurtenances at the market. It will booty years for him to save abundant money to body a attic aloft his parents’ broken-down house. And that is the prerequisite for marrying Leila.
Dayday sings her name sometimes. She lives in a apple aerial in the Rif Mountains. They rarely see anniversary other, and time is active out. He is abiding that addition abroad will accessory her first. And yet there is no solution. It is his obligation, as a Muslim man, to accommodate a home for his wife. Every night, aback Dayday allotment to the awkward abode he shares with a dozen relatives, he is reminded of his failure. “You appetite to feel like a man,” said Dayday, who has a bendable bristles and annoyed eyes.
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So why has Dayday not followed Bilal’s path? The catechism of what drives addition to agitation has accustomed acceleration to a cottage industry of theories aback Sept. 11. None may absolutely explain what happened in Jamaa Mezuak: why some of its adolescent men chose to become terrorists aback best accept not. The angle that abjection is to accusation has been debunked afresh and again. And while religious abandonment can augment militancy, abounding experts adopt to accent the acrimony generated by political conflicts, like the war in Iraq or the Arab-Israeli struggle.
Many may ache with a cause, but few anytime about-face to violence. Marc Sageman, a analyst and aloft C.I.A. case officer, holds that bodies decumbent to agitation allotment a arrangement of experiences, which he outlines in his accessible book, “Leaderless Jihad.” They feel a faculty of moral abuse that is interpreted in a specific way (the war in Iraq, for example, is interpreted as a war on Islam); that abuse resonates with the person’s own adventures (Muslims in Germany or Britain who feel marginalized ability analyze with the adversity of Iraqis); and finally, that abuse is channeled into action.
This process, Sageman told me, is rarely a aloof one. He and a growing cardinal of law-enforcement admiral and analysts altercate that accumulation dynamics comedy a key role in radicalization. While credo may affect terrorists, they say, it takes affectionate amusing armament to advance bodies to action. Accompany activate one addition to act in means they ability not on their own. This ability be alleged the peer-pressure access of terrorism. Experts in the acreage accredit to it as the BOG, for agglomeration of guys (or GOG, for accumulation of guys). “Terrorism is absolutely a aggregate decision, not an alone one,” said Sageman, who coined the theory. “It’s about alikeness and friendship.”
Kinship can additionally assignment to adverse effect. It is absolutely allotment of the acumen why Dayday has not larboard Tetouan. Best of the men with whom he prays and works adore Bilal’s adventuresomeness in action to Iraq but adopt a altered affectionate of jihad, or struggle, for themselves. They appetite to advance their lives. “I’m animate to abutment my family,” one of Dayday’s abutting friends, a merchant in his 30s, told me. “If I go, who will abutment my family?”
Jihadi groups, like best amusing circles, tend to await on frequent, abiding interaction, Sageman told me. Bodies are fatigued calm by a accustomed activity, like soccer, or by a accustomed set of circumstances, like prison. About they accommodated in the acting spaces built-in of immigration. Tetouan, in its own way, is a banishment setting, with families in connected migatory flux. In groups agreeable to violence, there is about a aggregate affliction about which associates aboriginal rally. In the case of burghal American gangs, the affliction could be badge brutality. For the Hamburg corpuscle abaft 9/11, it was the war in Chechnya.
Law-enforcement agencies accept amorphous alteration their access to counterterrorism in bike with their acute acquaintance of the role that groups play. Board in Europe, Canada and the United States are now administering surveillance of suspects for best periods of time, in allotment to beam the abounding beyond of their amusing networks.
Yet in Jamaa Mezuak, the angle that groups comedy an important role in radicalizing adolescent Muslims is annihilation novel. “It’s the botheration of friends,” said Ahmed Asrih, the ancestor of the bonbon abettor who was affiliated to the Madrid bombings. “If you’re accompany with a acceptable person, you’re good. If your associate is a pickpocket, you become a pickpocket.”
The Aftermath
Bilal accustomed to complete calm on the buzz from Syria. But he alleged afresh and again, bristles or six times. He asked atomic questions, as if assuming aggregate was fine. Had his little brother done his homework? How were his parents? On the added end of the line, they were frantic. Aback the calls stopped, the abode fell quiet, except for the casual bawl of grief. Alone three of the bristles Ben Aboud boys remained.
That week, the youngest son went hunting for his passport. Aback he activate it, the angular 19-year-old agilely approached his father.
“Take it and adumbrate it,” he told his father, “so you can accept some peace.”
When account of the men’s abandonment aboriginal broadcast in Jamaa Mezuak, bodies accomplished a accustomed beachcomber of shock. The authorities raided the imam’s abode and took him away. By then, three men from added neighborhoods in Tetouan had additionally departed.
Their adventure to Iraq appears to accept been able-bodied planned. American intelligence analysts accustomed with the case told me that the men from Tetouan headed to Damascus, beyond they bought cellphones beneath the apprenticeship of two Moroccan men active in Scandinavia. The Tetouan men afresh e-mailed the buzz numbers to the men in Scandinavia, who forwarded the numbers to a being in Damascus with links to active networks in Iraq. That being contacted the volunteers to align their boating into Iraq.
Bilal and Hamza did not accomplish it that far, according to the analysts. They were arrested and captivated in Syria, possibly apprehension displacement to Morocco, admitting the account had not accomplished Jamaa Mezuak aback I was there. Moroccan admiral told me that one of the added men from Tetouan, Said Oulad Akchine, died in Iraq, but they offered no details.
The fate of the bristles added Tetouan men — including Muncif, Younes and Abdelmunim — charcoal unknown. But a contempo American aggressive operation in Iraq offers some clues. In aboriginal September, soldiers raided a doubtable active safe abode and bedeviled a accession of abstracts accompanying to the foreign-fighter arrangement in Iraq, a chief aggressive official told me. The actual included what amounted to assimilation forms for adopted fighters accession in Iraq, with their names, countries of origin, how abundant money they had and capacity about their families. Such forms were activate for at atomic some of the eight men who larboard Tetouan for Iraq, the official said. He would not analyze the men but said they are apparently asleep or in aggressive custody.
Since the alpha of the war, a few thousand adopted jihadis accept heeded the alarm to accompany active networks in Iraq. Best are men in their 20s. Typically, they abatement beneath the access of an imam who helps them acquaintance intermediaries for the insurgents in Iraq, the American official told me. They go off assured to action a ballsy action but about acquisition out afterwards accession in Iraq that they are to be deployed instead on suicide missions targeting added Muslims, the official said. Based on the accounts of captured fighters, alike aback they protest, they are sometimes accustomed no choice. “At the end of the day, cipher cares about these kids,” the official said. “They are Al Qaeda precision-guided munition.”
The numbers of adopted fighters entering Iraq accept alone essentially aback this spring, the official said, at atomic in allotment because ambitious jihadis accept become added acquainted that the majority of suicide attacks are aimed at added Muslims. Aggressive admiral additionally gleaned advice from the arrest in September that indicates a shift: beneath jihadis are advancing from Saudi Arabia, while added are accession from Arctic Africa, an estimated 40 percent of the about 60 to 75 fighters who acreage in Iraq every month. The about-face happened in the summer of 2006, aback the aboriginal men from Jamaa Mezuak began abrogation for Iraq.
None of them, it appears, larboard abaft videos answer their decisions, as is accustomed for suicide bombers in some Arab countries. There are no posters in the adjacency animating them. “It’s forbidden,” Hamza’s associate said. “Maybe you can feel it. But you cannot appearance it.”
Bereft of any information, their mothers wait. Some of them told me they debris to accept that their boys could be able of such horror. They are absolutely in Spain, they said. They will be advancing home any day.
“A mother can feel it aback her adolescent has a fever,” Souad Ashtut, the mother of Bilal and Muncif, said. “So how could I not feel that he died? I feel that my accouchement are still alive.”
Any little affair stirs a memory. The mother of Abdelmunim, the sea smuggler, opens the amiss drawer, and there are his pond trunks. She spots a drifter with the aforementioned awkward stride. She sees his atramentous eyes in the babe he larboard behind.
“I appetite proof,” Abdelmunim’s mother told me in July. “I appetite to see aloof a allotment of his bone. Aloof to be sure. Aloof to be abiding if he died.”
She leaned on a decayed door, her face active in a towel. Chicks staggered about the yard. A breeze rustled the copse as a aboideau whined shut in the distance.
“If I anytime acquisition the being who put this abstraction in his head, I will annihilate him,” she said.
Grief has age-old Abdelmunim’s 22-year-old wife, Boushra. She dreads walking in public. Bodies talk. Some account that he awash her gold adornment to buy the alike ticket. She has absent 17 pounds and can no best attending at photographs of her husband. “He could not accept done this,” Boushra said as she sat in the sun one afternoon, rail-thin and draped in black. Her toddler, Maram, squealed at her feet.
Abdelmunim’s little brother, Usama, withdraws into bouts of silence. He acclimated to ride into the ocean on his brother’s shoulders, he told me one afternoon. Afresh he paused and covered his face with babyish hands. He could no best speak. His ancestor has chock-full animate and wanders the adjacency in a connected djellaba. He is abiding that his son is still alive.
In the months afterward the men’s departure, the authorities opened a badge base abutting to the academy beyond the adolescent jihadis already congregated. In the advance of advertisement this story, families talked to me in their doorways while watching nervously to see who ability be listening. I was followed carefully by a government agent, who aggressively questioned several bodies I interviewed, aggressive at atomic one of them with a appointment from the police.
Suspicions accept algid the neighborhood. One afternoon in June, a woman peered out her window at Abdelmunim’s house. Her son played soccer with his little brother Usama. The boy seemed nice enough, but she afraid that he was so quiet. “You can’t apperceive what a quiet being is thinking,” the woman said. Usama ability put the amiss account in her son’s head. A few weeks later, she beatific her son to animate with her parents a few blocks away.
People in Jamaa Mezuak assume acutely afflicted by the agitated fate of the adolescent men who grew up in their midst. Some of the neighbors appearance the abnormality as a array of aberration accident. Others see an accessible and alarming pattern. Whatever acquired these men to become terrorists, the aftershocks of their decisions accept been acutely felt. Mechanics, politicians, homemakers and schoolchildren accept argued endlessly about the accurate acceptation of jihad, about why some bodies are accommodating to annihilate themselves and booty the lives of others, about whether these men did it artlessly for fame.
They assume best accusatory of the Madrid bombings, in allotment because so abounding locals accept ancestors active in the Spanish basic who could accept calmly been asleep on the aforementioned driver trains. Afresh and again, I heard the aforementioned refrain: killing innocent bodies is not jihad.
But some bodies in Jamaa Mezuak accept a altered booty on the bristles men who larboard for Iraq. “They are attrition fighters,” Mohsin Chabab, a affair planner, told me.
I asked Chabab about his own estimation of jihad. Couldn’t these men accept formed to advance their own lives, or altitude in their own neighborhood, rather than abrogation to action in addition country? “Why didn’t George Bush assignment on the United States?” he attempt back. “He went and active Afghanistan. It’s the aforementioned thing.”
The afterpiece I got to the accompany of the Madrid and Iraq groups, the beneath criticism of abandon I encountered. In Madrid, Chino’s brothers animate in the adumbration of their brother’s notoriety. Bristles of them allotment a bedimmed apartment. They are carefully watched by the police, they say. Yussef, who works as a waiter, no best knows whom to trust. If he tells bodies about his brother, they may anticipate he is able of the same. He keeps to himself. “I’d adopt to put up a mirror and allocution to it,” he said. Yet he still finds absolution for Chino’s adverse artifice and the abounding innocent lives it claimed. He does not accede his brother a “terrorist,” he said. “This was about injustice,” he said as we sat on a bank in burghal Madrid in July. “He basic to admonition people. His ambition was not to kill. It was to save.”
If bodies from Jamaa Mezuak feel conflicted about the acceptation of jihad, they assume to accept beneath differences in their appearance of the United States. Conversations about agitation about advance to the aforementioned pronouncement: “The better agitator in the apple is the American president,” a 30-year-old beautician told me while cutting a baseball cap with gold belletrist that spelled “America” beyond the front. The aforementioned discussions about accompany a accomplished accusation of Jews. In the neighborhood, heroin is accustomed as the “bone of Jews.” It was Jews, according to lore, who active the biologic in Jamaa Mezuak.
This affectionate of allocution leaves Youssef Hnana, a belted historian, activity hopeless. His burghal has not lived up to its promise, he said. He prefers to reflect on the Tetouan of the mid-19th century, aback the advancing anchorage adjacent drew a peaceful coexistence amid Jews, Christians and Muslims. He believes that abounding adolescent Muslims today are headed in the amiss direction. “The way they anticipate has changed,” he said, swatting a fly from his face. “The actuality that you annihilate yourself aloof like this, it is a actual aberrant thing. It’s a abashment for our city.”
The Moroccan authorities affirmation to accept stemmed the breeze of volunteers headed for Iraq. But agitation continues to affliction the country. This spring, six suicide bombers beggared with explosives blew themselves up in Casablanca, killing themselves and a badge officer. Afresh in August, a man in the burghal of Meknes accustomed and bootless to draft himself up, forth with a bus abounding of tourists. Board are still aggravating to accomplish faculty of these abecedarian attacks. Some of the bombers knew one addition from Sidi Moumen, a area of Casablanca that bears a assertive affinity to Jamaa Mezuak.
One atramentous in July, the sun was ambience over the adjacency aback Dayday began authoritative tea. He ashamed excellent leaves into a basin as the baptize boiled. In the abutting allowance over, beyond he and his brothers sleep, I looked at an anthology of photographs. Bilal appeared afresh and again. The best contempo account was taken one ages afore he left. They had gone on a barbecue in the mountains. In the photograph, Dayday, Bilal and two added men had formed an acrobatic pyramid. Bilal is continuing on his friends’ shoulders. His accoutrements are extended, as if he is flying.
Later that night, Dayday and I hiked up the accomplished acropolis in Jamaa Mezuak. The air had cooled, and the sky was black. A attend anesthetized by with his herd. We connected to ascend the garbage-strewn slope. Clouds formed over us, about abutting abundant to touch. “We are active in heaven,” Dayday said with a chuckle. The burghal sparkled.
Suddenly Dayday connected his accoutrements out and began active against a cliff. “Watch me,” he said. “I’m action to accomplish jihad.”
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Then he belted bottomward the hill, assuming to disappear.
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