Ceuta, a Spanish territory (and vacation destination) in north Africa, has been a hub of recruitment for extremist organizations that have joined the civil war in Syria. Since April of 2012, at least 8 Muslim Spaniards from this area have traveled to Syria to participate in that country’s civil war. It is estimated that 700 people from Europe have joined the “jihad”. On June 21, the police raided a neighborhood in Ceuta, arresting 8 for terrorist recruitment. Two more are currently sought. It is alleged that Ismail Abdelatif Al Lal, one of the fugitives (from Ceuta but living in Belgium), made several visits to Turkey to facilitate several would-be suicide bombers’ entry into Syria; the other, Yassin Ahmed Laarbi, allegedly trained would-be recruits on beaches in Ceuta for combat, and talked them into trips to Syria. Several of the recruits have been involved in suicide attacks for which Al Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq (aka Al Qaeda in Iraq) have claimed credit. Authorities are concerned, based on intercepted phone conversations, that the suspects, having failed to fight in Syria, may try to carry out violent actions in Ceuta. According to the authorities, references to “jihad at home” are on the rise among the jihadis.
Ironically (but not really surprisingly), as these Islamist groups recruit jihadi to fight the regime of Al Assad in the name of Islam, some of those fighting on the side of Al Asad also do so in the name of Islam.
I have a simple question for those who dismiss religious ideology as the motive of Islamist violence and try to blame everything on US policy. Why do these youth, of Moroccan descent and not having anything to do whatsoever with Syria, abandon their homes to join the jihad, if it weren’t for what their religion teaches them? And what on earth does US “imperialism” or “militarism” or whatever you want to call it, have to do with any of this? Likewise, if the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah can be attributed to Israeli occupation, how can the violent rift between the two over Syria can be explained, if not by taking their respective religious affiliations? Why would Hezbollah fight on the side of Al Assad while Hamas condemns Al Assad, if all they cared about were protecting their people against the occupier, as opposed to having an agenda based on radical Islamism?
