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Interviews
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| “The political elite is sold out to the highest bidder” | |
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| Nadia Yassine interviewed by Mokrane Ait Ouarabi, from the Algerian daily “El Watan”, issue of May 6, 2007 |
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| Nadia Yassine, 49 years, is the daughter of Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine, founder and spiritual father of the Islamist movement Al Adl Wal Ihsan (Justice and Spirituality). Holder of a Bachelor in political sciences in 1980, she dedicated herself to activism within the movement where she leads the Women’s Section. Nadia Yassine became famous by her scathing criticism of the Makhzen. |
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| What analysis do you make of the last suicide attacks that took place in Casablanca? |
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| The attacks that took place in Casablanca didn't really surprise us, considering the previous alarms of May 16 and the very recent ones of March 2007. Indeed, the government keeps burying its head in the sand by brooding incessantly over a security-oriented rhetoric which, it is true, has been globalized ever since 9/11. A rhetoric that is furthermore plagiarized by many other regimes of the Third-World (Morocco is not an exception) that prefer a sort of democracy coming from (or more precisely dictated by) overseas for the benefit of a sort of liberalism that is, to say the least, barbaric and destructive. Thus our governments are kept in power by the hegemonic political and military powers rather than by the free choice of their people. |
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| Why is terrorist violence escalating in Morocco? What are the causes? |
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| This escalation of violence in Morocco remains quite relative compared to other escalations of violence in other countries. As far as Morocco is concerned, this violence was established long ago, it is escalating for sure, and the aforementioned causes may be built on the effects they produce: the absence of real development policies, a political elite that is sold out to the highest bidder even though it is the enemy number one of the Arab and Muslim nation, the galloping degree of corruption, the lack of credibility of the official line, a fake political life that no longer fools anyone, economic stagnation, a re-colonization and expropriation of the national wealth, a system of education that vows to further people’s illiteracy, a youth that is lost and therefore at the mercy of all kinds of extremism: drugs, suicide, etc. |
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| Some specialists of terrorist groups link the attacks of Casablanca to the booby-trapped car attacks in Algiers and say it is the work of Al Qaïda. What do you think? |
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| I wish those "specialists" were also from time to time anticipating and preventive instead of lapsing too easily into “textbook” cases that ordinary people would not suspect or refute. Besides, it is known that before being a specialist in whatever field, one should first be a generalist, so to speak. However, these supposedly specialists of terrorism were born right after 9/11. So they didn't have the time to be generalists and to study things in depth except from a redemptive perspective adopted by a sort of Orientalism that is dying ever since Edward Saïd. Besides, those "specialists" fell, sometimes willingly but always under subjugation, into the trap of subcontracting and of the relocated strategies which bypass them and of which they don’t know the ins and outs. But all the same, this specialty sells very well: scores of books come out every day and many unknown names receive excessive media coverage. |
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| So you think there is no link with Ben Laden’s group… |
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| It seems that Al Qaïda has settled firmly in a sort of collective subconscious to maintain fear and to legitimate all security-related abuses. Al Qaïda is made to fit all cases, Al Qaïda is always mentioned even to say: “It is not Al Qaïda” that is behind the attacks. The word is fascinating. How mysterious it becomes especially when it is mispronounced! Alas, the Rabat-Algiers confrontational axis doesn't need this "link", as you say, to move up a rung. However, there is a difference because in Algiers there were targets. But Morocco and Algeria need to enjoy basic freedoms instead of seeing them vanish. To say that the causes of the events in Morocco are one hundred per cent Moroccan doesn't hold either, since borders in the age of globalized ideas and products are permeable, to say the least. Let's say that the international has been internalized and that there is no Moroccan exception in our village-planet. |
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| How can one put an end to this deadly violence? |
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| The deadly violence you are talking about is not a phenomenon that is to be used as a front, for the tree cannot hide the forest even though the media try to make us believe in that by repeating the same old stories. This violence, even though it must be condemned in all the world’s Guantanamos, is only an epiphenomenon. What can I tell you? The only thing I can tell you is that we have never stopped proclaiming non-violence whatever forms of violence we have been subjected to. Am I not myself subject of a marathon court trial, which will probably last for long on account of political warming, because I verbally expressed a political—I was going to say, purely philosophical—idea that is taught universally, which is that a republican system is better than a monarchical system. Plato and all those who expressed this preference should therefore be prosecuted! That’s sheer madness… |
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