Morocco’s Bourita: Similarities Between Separatist, Terrorist Movements ‘Not Coincidence’

Director General of Bilateral Relations and Regional Affairs at the Moroccan Foreign Ministry Ambassador Fouad Yazough delivers a speech on behalf of Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on Monday, October 17, 2022. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Director General of Bilateral Relations and Regional Affairs at the Moroccan Foreign Ministry Ambassador Fouad Yazough delivers a speech on behalf of Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on Monday, October 17, 2022. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Morocco’s Bourita: Similarities Between Separatist, Terrorist Movements ‘Not Coincidence’

Director General of Bilateral Relations and Regional Affairs at the Moroccan Foreign Ministry Ambassador Fouad Yazough delivers a speech on behalf of Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on Monday, October 17, 2022. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Director General of Bilateral Relations and Regional Affairs at the Moroccan Foreign Ministry Ambassador Fouad Yazough delivers a speech on behalf of Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on Monday, October 17, 2022. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Nasser Bourita said on Tuesday that the challenges facing Africa today are “unprecedented and unanticipated,” stressing that their pace is accelerating and their complexity is growing exponentially.

The similarities between separatist and terrorist movements “is not a coincidence”, said Director General of Bilateral Relations and Regional Affairs at the Foreign Ministry Ambassador Fouad Yazough, on Bourita’s behalf, during the Asilah Forum’s first symposium on the “Separatist Movements and Regional Organizations in Africa.”

“Nearly half of the world’s terrorism victims were killed in Africa, especially that the terrorist organizations are expanding and increasingly imposing their control over geographic areas throughout the continent,” Bourita said, affirming that Africa is the most affected region by crises, conflicts and wars.

He added that the continent is also the most affected by the repercussions of climatic changes, and their resulting threats to food security and the demographic shifts as a result of forced displacement and migration.

He pointed out that the food crisis, for instance, has affected the lives of more than 300 million Africans.

Bourita referred to separatist tendencies, stating that it is “another indication of a difficult situation in Africa, which houses the largest number of separatist movements in the world.”

He considered the separatist groups a direct factor behind the outbreak of civil wars and racial and ethnic strife, as well as tearing apart the social and cultural fabric and undermining the countries’ foundations and stability.

Bourita recalled his statements during the first ministerial meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS that was held in Marrakech in May in which he stressed that the spread of separatist movements in Africa undermines stability and contributes to the further weakening of African countries, ultimately serving ISIS and other violent extremist and terrorist organizations.

Based on these statements, Bourita said the separatist ideology not only leads to the outbreak of civil wars but also fuels extremism and terrorism.

He pointed out that these terrorist and separatist movements share the goals of undermining the countries’ sovereignty and foundations and boasting the abundance of funding and the succession of operational tactics.

The FM stressed that they even share the same methods of mobilization and recruitment, namely exploiting the weakness in the social and cultural structure and manifestations of weakness and fragility, especially among the youths.



Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Israeli forces withdrew Tuesday from border villages in southern Lebanon under a deadline spelled out in a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, but stayed in five strategic overlook locations inside Lebanon.

Top Lebanese leaders denounced the continued presence of the Israeli troops as an occupation and a violation of the deal, maintaining that Israel was required to make a full withdrawal by Tuesday. The troops' presence is also a sore point with the Hezbollah group, which has demanded action from the authorities.

Lebanese soldiers moved into the areas from which the Israeli troops withdrew and began clearing roadblocks set up by Israeli forces and checking for unexploded ordnance. They blocked the main road leading to villages, preventing anyone from entering while the military was looking for any explosives left behind.

Most of the villagers waited by the roadside for permission to go and check on their homes but scores pushed aside the roadblocks to march in. Elsewhere, the army allowed the residents to enter.

Many of their houses were demolished during the more than yearlong conflict or in the two months after November’s ceasefire agreement when Israeli forces were still occupying the area.

In the border village of Kfar Kila, people were stunned by the amount of destruction, with entire sections of houses wiped out. Some knelt on the ground and prayed in the village's main square.

“What I’m seeing is beyond belief. I am in a state of shock,” said Khodor Suleiman, a construction contractor, pointing to his destroyed home on a hilltop. “I am feeling a mixture of happiness and pain." said Suleiman, who had last been in Kfar Kila six months ago.

In Kfar Kila's main square, Lebanese troops deployed as a military bulldozer removed rubble from the street. As people gathered in the square, a young man ran in, screaming that he had found two men alive on the edge of the village.

An ambulance rushed to the distant area and then quickly drove away from the village, preventing anyone from looking inside. Residents said later the two young men were members of Hezbollah and had been hiding out inside a grocery shop for three months until they were found on Tuesday.

Abbas Fadallah from Kfar Kila said that his family’s house that was built 105 years ago was now a pile of debris. Fadallah said he is happy to return but sad because “many civilians were martyred.”

Kfar Kila’s mayor, Hassan Sheet, told The Associated Press that 90% of the village homes are completely destroyed while the remaining 10% are damaged. “There are no homes nor buildings standing,” he said, adding that rebuilding will start from scratch.

Also Tuesday, Ayman Jaber entered Mhaibib, a village perched on a hill close to the Israeli border that was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army had released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun region.

The Associated Press interviewed Jaber and his family early November when Jaber said he worried Israel would again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that the home he had built over the past six years for himself, his wife and their two sons, would be gone.

That worry, at least, turned out to be well-founded. “Not a single house in the village is still standing,” Jaber said. “It is like an earthquake wiped out the village.”

“The situation breaks my heart,” Jaber said, as he stood inside the village’s cemetery. “They dug up the graves and opened the vaults. I don’t understand what security threat the dead posed to them.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army “will stay in a buffer zone in Lebanon in five control posts" to guard against any ceasefire violations by Hezbollah. He also said the army had erected new posts on the Israeli side of the border, and sent reinforcements there.

“We are determined to provide full security to every northern community,” Katz said.

However, Lebanon's three top officials — the country's president, prime minister and parliament speaker — in a joint statement said that Israel’s continued presence at the five locations was in violation of the ceasefire agreement. They called on the UN Security Council to take action to force a complete Israeli withdrawal.

“The continued Israeli presence in any inch of Lebanese territory is an occupation, with all the legal consequences that result from that according to international legitimacy,” the statement said.

The Israeli military presence was also criticized in a joint statement by the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UN peacekeeping force in the country, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro.

The two, however, warned that this should not “overshadow the tangible progress that has been made” since the ceasefire agreement.

Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September.

More than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and more than 1 million were displaced at the height of the conflict, more than 100,000 of whom have not been able to return home. On the Israeli side, dozens of people were killed and some 60,000 are displaced.

Hussein Fares left Kfar Kila in October 2023 for the southern city of Nabatiyeh. When the fighting intensified in September he moved with his family to the city of Sidon, where they were given a room in a school housing displaced people.

“I have been waiting for a year and a half to return,” said Fares who has a pickup truck and works as a laborer. He said he understands that the reconstruction process will take time.