Salafi jihadism

Morocco has long enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as an oasis of moderation and relative tranquility amid the whirl of religious extremism and violence that passes for politics in most of the Muslim world, especially its Arab lands. Moroccan leaders are wont to remind their American interlocutors that Morocco's Sultan Mohammed III was, in 1777, the first foreign sovereign to recognize the independence of the United States. Subsequently, a 1786 treaty established diplomatic relations between the two countries, the oldest such ties between America and any Middle Eastern country. Renegotiated in 1836, the accord is still in force, making it the United States' longest unbroken treaty relationship. In June 2004, after notifying Congress and in recognition of the country's strategic support for the war on terrorism, President George W. Bush formally designated Morocco a "Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States," making one of only fourteen states to be accorded that privileged status. And while it does not have full diplomatic relations with Israel, the Sharifian Kingdom has maintained high-level contacts with representatives of the Jewish state since 1986, when the late King Hassan II became only the second Arab ruler to openly host a senior Israeli leader, inviting then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to the royal palace at Ifran for formal talks. Just last week, on the ninth anniversary of his accession to the throne, King Mohammed VI conferred the Royal Order of Al-Alaoui on several prominent Jews of Moroccan origin, including Dr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund; Dr. Yehuda Lancry, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations; and Rabbi David Messas, chief rabbi of Paris. Thus it is more than disconcerting to note the rising tide of Islamist extremism and concomitant menace of terrorist violence in Morocco.

Last Thursday an airstrike on the Somali town of Dhusamareb, 300 miles north of Mogadishu (see W. Thomas Smith, Jr.'s report in Human Events), dispatched Adan Hashi ‘Ayro, the commander of al-Shabaab ("the youth"), the terrorist organization spearheading the bloody Islamist insurgency in the Horn of Africa, and several of his cohorts to the custody of the nineteen angels stoking the stone-fueled fires of hell (Qur'an 74:30, 66:6). The territory of the onetime Somali Democratic Republic is, however, only one front in the war on terror's African theater. Another is the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert and the Sahel, areas which are likely to play an increasingly significant role in the overall struggle against extremism.