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| Africa: North |
| Morocco sez GSPC, Polisario are terrorist organizations |
| 2005-06-09 |
| "The Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front form part of terrorist organisations of political and religious conviction and of various ethnic origins, who are active in the vast Sahel and Saharan deserts," wrote the Moroccan French daily newspaper L' Opinion on Wednesday. Commenting on the attack perpetrated last Saturday against a Mauritanian military unit in Lemghit, less than 100 km from the official borders between Mauritania and Algeria, the daily said that this aggression "is new and hard evidence of the flourishing and development of the phenomenon of terrorism in the area". According to the daily, terrorist organisations, to which Polisario and GSPC belong, "do not find any difficulty in setting up bases for themselves; they move and act freely in these vast deserts. The displacement of the nomadic populations in these areas was never controlled, and here illicit trade, the traffic of drugs and weapons constitute a dominating source of income". "The uncontrolled desert spaces, in which Algeria installed Polisario in Tindouf, where it still detains Moroccan civil and military prisoners, are predisposed to accommodate such groups. These groups are manipulated sometimes by ideologies or policies which opt for expansionism, or separatism or ethnic division, sometimes by the extremism and the instrumentalisation of religion," underlined the daily. It added that "the objective of these groups, or, actually that of those who shelter them, finance their activities and maintain them is clear: to destabilise, by means of terrorism, the national security of the Sahel-Saharan countries of the area; to set up a base for international terrorism in favour of Al-Qaïda". The daily concluded that "the attack carried out against the Mauritanian military unit, and the way in which the hostages were executed by the GSPC, revealed the extent of the suffering that Polisario has been inflicting on Moroccan prisoners that still detained in the Tindouf camps, southwest Algeria". For the Moroccan Arabic daily newspaper "Al Ahdath Al Maghribia, Polisario agents are involved in operations of sale of weapons to terrorists in the south of Algeria. It stressed that terrorist groups have transformed the area into a refuge, benefiting from the rough ground and ease in smuggling weapons because of the strong presence of trafficking networks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |