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Stiff upper
lip
By Ronan Thomas
LONDON - London knew that this would
eventually happen. The rumble came at 10.15 on
Thursday morning, the sound of an explosion
ripping through a London double-decker bus in
Tavistock Place, Central London.
I heard
it and knew that this was no accident. The air
over London had been full of sirens and the drone
of helicopters for two hours in response to an
earlier, suspected power cable explosion at
Aldgate underground station.
Other blasts
were reported at Moorgate, Edgware Road, King's
Cross, Old Street and Russell Square underground
stations. Eight people have been reported killed and
scores injured. The entire underground service was
suspended immediately and central bus routes shut.
Police cordoned off the whole area surrounding the
main London stations in a highly disciplined and
much practiced anti-terror routine leaving milling
yet quiet crowds.
The long-anticipated and
much-hyped attack has come and is the most serious
in the United Kingdom since the Irish Republican
Army's attack on Canary Wharf in 1996, which
killed two and devastated parts of London's
financial center. The Madrid train attacks of
March 11, 2004 were of a higher order - more than
190 people died and 1,900 were injured.
Thursday's attacks are nevertheless an
appalling reminder of the threats that London,
already assessed as a much higher than average
security risk city, now faces.
On
Wednesday, the capital had been suffused in
celebration - the awarding of the Olympic Games
for 2012 was marked by near hysterical scenes with
revelers cheering in Trafalgar Square and in
Stratford, East London, where the games will take
place.
And clearly a sense of hubris hung
over the country. The awarding of the games, the
high profile media positions taken by Prime
Minister Tony Blair while hosting the Group of
Eight (G8)summit of world leaders, aid for Africa
(and the Live8 concerts), even the earlier
celebrations of the bicentennial of the naval
battle of Trafalgar in 1805 have in recent weeks
have given Britain something of a "feelgood
factor", not to mention the shadenfreude of
humbling President Jacques Chirac of France, whose
country narrowly lost the Olympic bid to Britain.
The holding of the G8 summit in
Gleneagles, Scotland is central to these
atrocities, providing a means for jihadi groups to
embarrass and shock world leaders in one place.
Naturally, the commitment of British troops to
Iraq and Afghanistan also sits in the background
to the tragedy and the appearance of a UK utterly
joined to US strategy has no doubt increased
Islamic resentment during the past four years.
Blair set out the UK position in the so-called
"war on terror" in the aftermath of September 11
in New York when he said to the American people:
"Your fight is our fight." In that sense, these
attacks, while shocking, are unsurprising.
At this time, al-Qaeda or one of its
several imitators are the prime suspects. London,
a hugely diverse city where terrorists can
intermingle with a global population would always
get through.
Londoners will take this
attack in their stride. There has been no panic.
After all, London has a long memory, having
suffered disasters of all kinds, both man-made and
natural. From the Roman occupation to the present
day, armed destruction, plague, fire, water,
chemical poisoning, aerial bombing and terrorist
attacks have all made their mark on the city. The
threat to life and fear of disaster, as shown
today, are nothing new.
Yet, murder has
come to London once again.
Ronan
Thomas is a security consultant based in
London.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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