Author: Jason Burke in London
Publication: India Today
Date: August 28, 2006
Introduction: Investigations into the foiled
air terror attacks in UK suggest that the new generation of jehadis do not
wait for orders, they conduct their own operations
They had been watching for weeks, months,
possibly years. When the British police and agents from MI5, the United Kingdom's
domestic security service, finally launched the series of raids on suspected
Islamic militants last week, they were sure it was time to move. Plain-clothed
officers slipped down quiet roads in the leafy country town of High Wycombe
and in the city of Birmingham, vans with darkened windows parked to block
off streets. With little fuss, 24 suspects were quickly rounded up. Searches
continued for days afterwards at various locations ranging from Internet cafes
to a patch of woodland where a gun was rumoured to have been found.
The British investigators knew exactly where
to go and what to look for. Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair,
explained that the police had "been behind this group of people for some
time. The decision to move in was not taken lightly. What we always have to
do is balance waiting to gather more evidence and make sure you get all the
people, against the risk to the public by not moving in earlier. That's the
decision that was reached. There's a point where the information reaches a
level of concern that means if you don't take action it is indefensible."
But if the operation was very low-key, the
threat was, at least according to the police, not. The men, who are still
being questioned and have not yet been charged formally, are believed to have
been in the final stages of preparing simultaneous bomb attacks on six passenger
jets heading from the UK to the US. The explosives would be mixed on the plane-out
of adapted household chemicals such as peroxide-by teams of bombers. The planes
would be brought down one by one, a tactic to maximise terror and chaos.
It would have been a strike to rival those
of September 11, 2001. Paul Stephenson, Blair's deputy at Scotland Yard, did
not mince his words: "This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable
scale." As the British Government imposed draconian restrictions on security
at airports and on planes, plunging peak holiday period air traffic into confusion,
Britons struggled once more to come to terms with the menace within. Just
over a year ago, 56 people-including four British Muslim suicide bombers-had
died in a series of attacks in London.
The first question was how grave was the threat?
Critical and chronic, according to John Reid, home secretary. He said that
police and security services were aware of about 24 "major conspiracies",
each believed to be "multi-handed" or complex plots involving many
people. According to one senior British policemen a further 50 terrorist-related
inquiries are being conducted by anti-terrorist police, most of them involving
Scotland Yard and MI5. Some relate to fundraising activity-aimed at Iraq or
other foreign "theatres of jehad" including Kashmir, as well as
the UK. Some involve intelligence gathering, such as details of potential
targets or Internet communication between groups, often between young Muslim
men at college or university.
The total number of suspects in Britain has
not been disclosed and security sources say it is often fluid as individuals
sometimes drop in and out of suspect groups and, at times, obvious overlaps
emerge between terrorist gangs. "The numbers are very difficult,"
one intelligence source said. "Some may not be about to launch a bomb
attack but may be suspected of background help." As with last year's
attacks, almost all the current suspects come from within Britain's large
Muslim community of Pakistani descent and are predominantly young. Once again,
British newspapers, though this time celebrating what appears to be a significant
counterterrorist success, are full of editorials agonising over the failure
to assimilate immigrant communities and debating whether the government's
controversial and unpopular policy of unquestioning support for President
Bush is a contributory factor in the radicalisation of a significant number
of its citizens. And as with the 7/7 attacks, links quickly lead to Pakistan.
It was the arrest of the relative of one of
the suspects in Britain earlier this month which forced the UK police to move
in, according to several sources. Rashid Rauf, a Briton who has been officially
described as a "key" suspect, is the brother of Tayib Rauf, 22,
one of those arrested in Birmingham last week. Rauf's exact role is unclear
though a Pakistani security official said his frequent use of text messages
to Britain was the reason for his arrest outside an Internet kiosk in Zhob,
in the border region of Balochistan.
Seventeen individuals have now been arrested
in Pakistan prompting British Prime Minister Tony Blair to ring President
Pervez Musharraf to thank him for his cooperation while urging others to make
less celebratory remarks about the southwest Asian country's apparent continuing
role as a haven for radical militants. But the real importance of the "Pakistani
angle" in the alleged London plot is still not evident. Some observers
have cited the importance of Mati-ur Rehman, a senior figure in the Pakistani
terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. "He's big, and getting bigger all
the time, but that does not mean he is connected to this plot," said
one militancy expert.
Observers dismissed links to Lashkar-e-Taiba,
the officially banned militant organisation, saying that the group was currently
focused just on Pakistan and Kashmir. However, men like Rehman, who is believed
to have been involved in the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl in
2002 as well as a series of attempts on the life of Musharraf, have played
a key role in the rapprochement of international jehadi groups such as Al
Qaida and sectarian or Kashmiri Pakistani groups with a more local agenda.
There are also investigations into a possible transfer of charitable donations
sent to Pakistan as quake assistance last year to militant groups.
A strong Pakistani link-beyond the normal
family affinities expected of a group of Western men with string ancestral
ties in the country-will strengthen those who still argue that Al Qaida is
a powerful organisation. Senior American officials have not hesitated to point
the finger of blame at Osama bin Laden's group. "Certainly in terms of
the complexity, the sophistication, the international dimension and the number
of people involved, this plot has the hallmarks of an Al Qaida-type plot,"
said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. But is the alleged London
plot really the work of the same group responsible for the attacks of 2001?
Many analysts have a more nuanced answer.
"There is no such thing as Al Qaida as it existed before we went to Afghanistan
and destroyed it," said Marc S. Sageman, a former Central Intelligence
Agency officer and author of a book closely studied in intelligence agencies,
Understanding Terror Networks. "We won the war against the old Al Qaida,
but we're not winning against the global social movement that Al Qaida was
part of, because more and more kids are joining the movement."
And it is the current wave of recent recruits
that all agree is the problem. Israeli Al Qaida expert Reuven Paz says the
would-be killers arrested in Britain belong to a "new generation of jehad
seekers" that has taken shape in recent years. They are typically "Islamic
fundamentalists with a poor Islamic education, but a great deal of motivation
for jehad in the sense of terrorism. They're not waiting for Al Qaida to recruit
them. They initiate their own operations, in accordance with Al Qaida's strategy,"
Paz said.
Other experts point to the rapidity with which
youngsters complete the transformation into killers. "Once it took at
least a year," said a French counterterrorist analyst. "Now we are
talking a few months or even weeks. That means the turnaround time for an
attack is much shorter." British policemen agree. "It is not the
ones we know about that are worrying," one told India Today. "It
is those that we don't know about."
Secret services around the world are now citing
last week's operation as a text-book example of how to disrupt an attack.
In every region threatened by Islamic militancy, especially South Asia and
the Middle East, the combination of surveillance, patience, technical skill,
coordination between security agencies and timing that lay behind last week's
arrests are being examined. Indian intelligence officials, reeling from the
recent Mumbai attacks, are paying special attention.
But, if security services in the UK and elsewhere
have learned much about the difficult business of stopping bomb attacks before
they happen without dismantling the legal safeguards that characterise a democracy,
their governments are far from dealing with the problems that lie behind the
decision of dozens of young men to blow themselves up. For some, the reasons
for terrorism are clear. Last week US President George W. Bush said the plot
was "a stark reminder that (America) is at war with Islamic fascists
who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom".
British politicians denied terrorism had any
link with their country's foreign policy. For other observers, nothing is
quite as clear cut. "The propaganda pumped out by the militants works,"
said one former radical Islamic activist. "It works because it is easy
to understand, because it is easy to find and because it is easy to manufacture."
But more than anything, it works because, very sadly and very worryingly,
for a growing minority of young Muslim men, it makes sense.
Burke is chief reporter of The Observer, London,
and authored the book Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam.
