Terror threat

Morocco’s Outlaw Country Is the Heartland of Global Terrorism

In the weeks since terrorists struck the Belgian capital, authorities and journalists have wasted no time mapping out the links between the Brussels and Paris attacks — between Molenbeek, Schaerbeek, and the French banlieues, between a hideout location here, and a fingerprint found there. The lines connecting the complex web of kinship and friendship ties across national borders are starting to resemble a Jackson Pollock drip painting with a disturbing message: These are the squiggles and dots that can usher deadly terrorist plots from conception through to execution.

Mapping out the form and content of Europe’s terrorist cells is certainly vital investigative work. But lost in all these lines connecting Europe’s gray urban landscapes are the sun-drenched hills, valleys, and towns of northern Morocco. And it is to Morocco that we must go, tracing links that go back generations to the colonial era, crossing the Mediterranean — a sea that binds, rather than divides, Europe and North Africa — to fully understand what has spurred young men to wreak havoc in Western European capitals.