Special to WorldTribune.com

CAIRO — Thousands of Moroccans have been recruited for the civil war
in Syria.

Diplomatic sources and analysts said that Al Qaida and other Islamist militias were focusing on recruiting Moroccans and other North
Africans to fight the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to a report by Middle East Newsline.

The sources said many of the Moroccans were approached by Al Qaida’s Nusra Front for the Defense and the Levant and Saudi-sponsored militias.

“At first, the Moroccans were joining rebel militias in the war against Assad,” a source said. “Over the last few months, the Moroccans were forcibly recruited by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”

On April 12, the Moroccan Interior Ministry reported the capture of an Al Qaida cell that recruited Muslims for the war in Syria. The ministry said Nusra and ISIL marked the leading recruiters in Morocco.

“As well as selling their belongings, the members of the dismantled cell collected donations from people who sympathized with their jihadist beliefs to pay for volunteers to travel to Syria and fight there after recruiting them and explaining various security precautions to them at meetings held at a house used especially for that purpose,” the Interior Ministry said.

Officials said the Al Qaida network trained the Moroccans in weapons,
explosives and suicide strikes. They said the network, which operated in
several cities in the kingdom, forced the recruits to sell their belongings
and extort money for travel to Syria.

It was not clear how many Moroccans were fighting in Syria. Analysts
said the Moroccan contingent could exceed 2,000 fighters.

“Tens of hundreds of Moroccans belonging to Sham Al Islam, Nusra Front,
closely linked to Al Qaida, and the Free Syrian Army have been killed in the
Syrian war,” Moroccan analyst Mussa Al Mauritani said.

Al Mauritani said the Moroccans were flown to Turkey and then
infiltrated Syria. He said the Moroccans were trained by a Saudi cleric,
Abdullah Al Mohaisany, as well as Al Qaida veterans from the war in
Afghanistan.

“But now, we are seeing a reversal of the situation because for various
reasons, the fighting, which was supposed to be against Bashar Assad’s
troops, has turned into an aggressive confrontation between jihadists from
various fighting brigades,” Al Mauritani told the U.S.-sponsored Magharebia
website.

Moroccans have sustained casualties in the Syrian war. A leading
Moroccan Islamist was identified as Anas Haloui, killed in fighting in the
coastal Syrian province of Latakia.

On April 3, a Moroccan commander Ibrahim Benchekroune was killed in a
battle with the Syrian Army in Latakia. Benchekroune was identified as the
founder of the Al Qaida-inspired Sham Al Islam.

“The dismantling of this [latest] terrorist cell shows that the number
of jihadists who want to fight in Syria is growing all the time, yet
paradoxically, the number of Moroccan fighters who are dying is rising too,”
Mahmoud Hanine, a counter-insurgency analyst, said.

  funds extorted for Syrian war, ISIL, Moroccan youth were forcibly recruited, Nusra Front, Sham Al Islam