Maroon 321industry. The conflict of interest among SEPTI officials has resulted in an
ongoing controversy and a great deal of animosity between the two over-
sight bodies. International and national opinions on the matter generally
recognize the greater contribution of ANRT to Morocco’s success.
21.eports on the development of ITC in Morocco include the International R
Telecommunication Union Report (2001); Mohammed Ibrahine, “Toward a
National Telecommunication Strategy in Morocco,” First Monday 1 (2003),
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/ibahrine/index.html (accessed
August 2004); Mohammed El–Mandjra, Dialog of Intercommunication:
Towards a Just Information Society (Casablanca: al–Najah al–Jadida,
2001); and Agence Nationale de Réglementation des Télécommunications
(ANRT), The Moroccan Telecommunications Sector: Key Indicators (Rabat:
ANRT, 2004), http:// http://www.anrt.ma (accessed May 2005).
22.e use of the Internet to organize terrorist actions in the city of Casablanca Th
came to the fore on 11 March 2007, when a suicide bomber detonated
explosives in a cybercafé after using a computer in the café to gain details
and instructions over the Internet for bombings to be carried out in the city.
- International Telecommunication Union Report 2001, 2007.
- Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1965).
25.ürgen Habermas, J The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with
Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 33.
26.ere are several studies that complement or extend the work of Jürgen Th
Habermas in detailing the role of cafés in cultural transformations. Among
these are Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social
Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1985); Andre Levy, “Playing for Control of Distance: Card Games
between Jews and Muslims on a Casablancan Beach,” American Ethnologist
3 (2000): 632–653; and William Roseberry, “The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and
the Reimagination of Class in the United States,” American Anthropologist 4
(1997): 762–775. - Throughout this essay I use the terms “cyber” and “cybercafé” interchange-
ably to refer to Internet-connected cafés with computer terminals for rent
by the hour. It should be pointed out as well that as public spaces for private
communication practices, cybercafés are linked to another type of space
found throughout Moroccan cities, the téléboutique. Though increasingly