After the stabbing attack in Tel Aviv, carried out by Moroccan terrorist and US green card holder Abd Al-Aziz Qadi, the Hamas terrorist organization and the Muslim Brotherhood movement were quick to praise him for his deed.
The Muslim Brotherhood said in its statement that “Abd Al-Aziz, an ‘American’ of ‘Moroccan’ origin, boarded a plane from America to the [Zionist] entity, and answered the call to support Palestine in however he could… He prepared a clean knife, with a clean hand and a heart full of faith, and killed four settlers before he died.”
Some hours after terrorist Abd Al-Aziz Qadi wounded five Israelis at Nahalat Binyamin neighborhood in Tel Aviv, a Moroccan citizen who was planning to carry out a terror attack against the Jewish community of Naples, Italy, was arrested in that city. Italian media announced that the suspect, who apparently belonged to ISIS, had distributed items of Islamist propaganda and support for the organization, and had voiced his intent to obtain a knife and carry out a stabbing attack. The mode of operations invites comparison to the terror attack in Tel Aviv, but there is no answer as to whether Qadi actually represented ISIS, another organization, or only himself.
Still, the terror attack in Tel Aviv and the attempted terror attack in Naples shed light on the activities of jihadist organizations in Morocco Terrorist organizations, with ISIS in the lead, have found a convenient operating base in Morocco. There, they cultivate new operatives who directly threaten the stability of the kingdom and of the European continent. Jihadist organizations recruit and train large numbers of followers online, exposing them to inciteful content. Some recruits are used as a fighting force in other African countries in the Sahel region. They join terrorist cells established by ISIS terrorists who returned, after the fall of ISIS in the Middle East, to Morocco. Thus, Morocco has become a cardinal source of recruitment for the radical jihadist organizations that threaten Europe and the Middle East.
Both Al-Qaeda and ISIS operate jihadist recruitment and training centers across Western Sahara and benefit from the protection of Algeria, Morocco’s neighbor and rival. Algeria, refusing to cooperate with Morocco on counterterrorism efforts, provides a safe haven for these organizations.
After ISIS’ defeat in the Middle East in 2019, many Moroccan jihadists returned to Morocco and focused their efforts on increasing ISIS’ power on the African continent. According to the Moroccan Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations, in the years since the founding of ISIS approximately 1,645 Moroccan terrorist operatives have joined various jihadist organizations in Iraq and Syria. Approximately 745 of them have died in suicide attacks or in battle. Most of them had joined and fought for ISIS. Of those who survived the fall of ISIS in the Middle East, approximately 270 terrorists returned to Morocco; and of them, 137 were brought to trial. In addition, roughly 288 women and 391 minors also came to ISIS combat areas to earn a livelihood.
The operatives’ activities in the Sahel region—a belt of countries stretching from Mali and Mauritania through Chad, Niger, and Sudan—include fighting against groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and other African Islamist organizations. This conflict is part of a broader struggle for dominance among international jihadist movements, each vying to establish a global caliphate.
The Sahel countries suffer from the presence of various Jihadist organizations in their region, with Niger, Chad, and Mali battling Jihadist organizations that exploit the region’s lax border security and its arms trafficking networks. The Jihadist organizations are constantly carrying out murderous terror attacks, with an emphasis on harming Christian populations – whom they consider infidels. Despite Morocco’s offer to share intelligence to aid in the arrest of jihadists and the prevention of terror attacks in Europe and the United States, the flow of jihadists from its territory to Europe persists.
Morocco itself experienced a major terror attack from ISIS in December 2018, when two Scandinavian tourists, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland, were murdered in the Atlas Mountains. Their killers swore allegiance to ISIS while beheading the two women. That shocking event echoed strongly, as there had not been a major terror attack in Morocco since 2011, when 17 people were killed in an explosion at a restaurant in Marrakesh.
The Silent Junction: Morocco as a Crossroads for Jihadists
Many jihadists have taken advantage of Morocco’s geographical proximity to Europe in order to infiltrate European territory as immigrants or refugees and establish sleeper cells in Western European countries. This infiltration spurred wide-ranging cooperation between the counter-terrorism units of Spain and Morocco, which over the past ten years have dismantled dozens of terrorist cells in both countries.
Despite Spain and Morocco’s extensive efforts to eliminate terrorist elements within Morocco and prevent their infiltration into Europe, lone-wolf attackers—supporting ISIS and other jihadist groups—continue to emerge across Europe, many originating from North Africa. They are a burden further to the already existing difficulty of dealing with many citizens who find solace in Islamic radicalism and who feed on radical Islamist, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic content online.
At the same time, extremist movements remain active within Morocco, including the Muslim Brotherhood—which operates differently from ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Despite their differences, these groups all promote anti-Western and anti-Semitic discourse that encourages jihad. Morocco serves as a key transit hub for jihadist operatives. Some move into the Sahel region, now a major stronghold for global jihadist organizations, while others attempt to infiltrate Europe—either to carry out jihadist activities directly or to establish sleeper cells awaiting the right moment to act.
Morocco’s central location makes it a strategic point for jihadist organizations en route to Europe. While the kingdom itself is not considered a jihadist stronghold, its relative obscurity—due to the more active jihadi movements in the Middle East and East Africa—means it often receives less intelligence attention compared to other regions, such as Somalia and Mozambique in the east, or Libya to the north. As a result, Morocco’s location at the tip of the African continent provides a quiet path into Europe for jihadists.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the movement