It is hard to find a Moroccan who understands the motivations of the 14 "kamikazes" who stormed a restaurant, a hotel and three other downtown locales late last week, leaving horror and broken lives in their wake.

But Fathallah Arsalan, spokesman for the banned Moroccan political party Justice and Charity, says he does. And he wonders why so many in his homeland, including foreigners and government officials, are now scratching their heads in disbelief.

"There is a common denominator in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco," says Arsalan, who broke off an interview to pray. "The system we have now is totalitarian, exclusive, manipulative, and lacks all credibility. As the status quo continues, the situation becomes more and more explosive."

Linking the Morocco attacks to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, he insists that Morocco and the rest of the Arab world are headed for more mayhem at Al Qaeda's hands unless repressive governments like his own ease their grip on moribund economies and corrupt political systems.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bin Laden's group, stealthy and sometimes invisible, is successfully capitalizing on local and national issues across the Arab world to foment international terror, say terror experts and Western diplomats.

Morocco, a country of 30 million citizens, has long been considered by Western travelers to be a Francophone paradise of sandy beaches, orange groves, and exotic birds. But it has been plunged into crisis and uncertainty this week with the realization that it faces a possible wave of homegrown - and internationally connected - terrorism.

Moroccan officials have identified two fundamentalist groups - the Righteous Path and Retrenchment and Excommunication - believed to have helped organize last Friday's attacks.

Police and military units swooped down on poor neighborhoods across the country Monday and Tuesday, seizing more suspects in last Friday's attacks. In some neighborhoods, veiled mothers and wives told investigators that their sons and husbands had already fled the police sweep.

Though officials are questioning two Egyptians in connection with the attacks, which killed 41 civilians, they have identified a majority of the 14 suicide bombers, two of whom survived, as locals. Eight bombers have been identified as of Tuesday morning, and all are said to be from the impoverished suburb of Sidi Moumen, southeast of Morocco's economic capital, Casablanca.

They are known here as "kamikazes," and officials say they have links to international terror - Al Qaeda topping their list of suspected groups. "The arrest of the two terrorists who are still living enabled remarkable advances in terms of intelligence," Interior Minister Mustapha Sahel told state television late Monday, revealing that 12 assailants, not 13 as initially reported, had died during their five-pronged assault on Friday.

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