Casablanca's shanty town poverty that spawned attackers

As Moroccan police swept through some of the poorest shanty towns of Casablanca yesterday, hunting Islamist radicals who helped suicide bombers kill 41 people on Friday, Khalid Aits was worrying not about fanaticism but about work, food and poverty.

Loitering on the corner of a litter-strewn, dirt alleyway in the Sidi Moumen shanty town, from where most of the 33 young radicals picked up over the weekend came, he shrugged his shoulders at the idea of an Islamist revolution in his neighbourhood.

"People want work. They want to earn money. That is what they really care about here," the 23-year-old said.

A walk through Sidi Moumen, past washing lines, barefoot children, and colourful rugs set out in the sun, reveals the poverty and desperation. Khalid shares the tiny rooms of his brickshack with 16 relatives. There is no running water, and bony mules and horses add their waste to the human detritus. "It is just as bad as a village in the countryside," Khalid said, indicating an even poorer Morocco beyond these slums.

The divide here, in a country with a long tradition of religious tolerance and co-existence with Judaism, is not between Islamists and nonIslamists, but between rich and poor.

It finds its other expression in the huge, green-tiled mansions of the Ain Diab neighbourhood that look out over the elegant Atlantic beaches of La Corniche and the designer-clad people who gather to play.

While authorities yesterday blamed the influence of al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden for the attacks by 14 suicide bombers on five foreign and Jewish targets, Casablancans were still surprised the perpetrators had been Moroccans.

Most believed that Morocco, where even the powerful, banned Islamist movement known as Justice and Charity is relatively moderate and against violence, would remain unshaken by the radicalism that brought a 10-year civil war to neighbouring Algeria.

In February three Saudis in an al-Qaida cell planning attacks on US and British ships were sentenced in Casablanca. But that was considered an example of foreign militants.

There had, however, been other warnings. Police last year arrested 11 radicals from a Salafist sect after a series of punishment killings of those deemed apostates, including one man reeling drunkenly out of a bar in the middle-class playground of La Corniche.

The leader of the so-called Serat Al Mustaquin, or Direct Path, Salafist group, Youssef Fikir, wrote a letter before his trial a few months ago to the As Sahifa newspaper in which he warned that "other things will happen", according to its publisher, Aboubakr Jamai.

Al-Qaida itself, in a recent tape released to al-Jazeera, named Morocco as one of six Muslim states "most eligible for liberation".

The attacks would have been far worse if, with their cheap clothes, the attackers, some little more than teenagers, had not been so obviously from the poor end of town. Stopped by doormen and guards at the Hotel Farah, the Israeli Alliance club, and at a Jewish-owned Italian restaurant outside the Belgian consulate, they only managed to make their way past 52-year-old Haj, the doorman at the Casa de Espana, exploding their bombs at the doorways of the other targets. Most of the dead were in the Spanish club.

"Haj asked for their membership card, so they slit his throat," said a neighbour, Abdul Saafi, drawing a line across his throat. "The unemployed people here, the ones with no money and nothing to eat, will do anything."

Security remained tight yesterday. Soldiers and police appeared to be guarding every tree along the route to the Hotel Farah, popularly known as the Hotel Safir and possibly targeted because it housed a night-club popular with many prostitutes, where the king, Mohamed VI, was expected to visit during the day.

A team of French police forensic staff in orange boiler suits picked carefully through the debris around the hotel entrance and foyer yesterday.

Mohammed Darif, a professor of political science at Mohamedia University, said that armed Salafism had arrived via Moroccans who had fought for al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Mr Darif said that King Mohammed faced a dilemma: there was pressure for a crackdown, and also pressure to legalise more Islamic groups. In the palace in the capital Rabat, an influential royal adviser, Andre Azoulay, claimed the king was building a form of democracy suitable for a Muslim country.

"We've done our best to build a democracy. Our vision is fought by those who want to bring the ideology of hate, and use God as a reason to kill," he said.

There was much confusion yesterday. Amongst obscure groups named as possible perpetrators were Salafia Jihadia and Attafkir wal Hajira. What nobody doubted was which global group was, ultimately, behind the co-ordinated attacks. "They have the signature of al-Qaida," said Mr Darif.