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THE
ROVING EYE
Blowback
By Pepe
Escobar
BRUSSELS - It's blowback time.
There had to be a day when Baghdad, Fallujah,
Najafa and Jenin reached London, and the
"collateral damage" was on "our side". If one of
the concentric circles in the al-Qaeda nebula
really did perpetrate the synchronized London
bombings, this spells a failure in the "war on
terror".
But maybe things are not as
clear-cut as they seem.
The invisible
enemy within
European intelligence
services are initially considering the working
hypothesis that a previously unheard-of group -
The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe -
was behind the bombings in retaliation for British
Prime Minister Tony Blair toeing the Bush line in
both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The claim of
responsibility was online last Thursday only for a
short time, at an alleged Islamist website.
Analysts at a European Union counter-terrorist
cell in Brussels warn that the claim, if it is to
be taken seriously, would have to be addressed via
the usual channels, ie major Arab-language media
(al-Hayat, al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Sharq al-Awsat) or
via a communique to al-Jazeera. In Dubai, the Abu
Hafs al-Masri Brigades - which claimed the Madrid
bombings - also claimed the London bombings, once
again not using the usual channels and not
following al-Qaeda's trademark ideological and
linguistic style.
On paper, the EU deals
with terrorism via a special unit in the heart of
Europol, based in The Hague and staffed with 500
officials. But this unit is still subordinate to
national police systems. The pre-eminent
intelligence body is the G5 - grouping France,
Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain - which
exchanges qualified intelligence not available to
the remaining 20 EU members. The G5 operates a
sophisticated analysis center of satellite data in
Stockdorf, Germany, and has built an extensive
list of European-based jihadis, including dozens
who left for Iraq via Syria or Jordan, and has set
up an alarm system that pinpoints the
disappearance of weapons and explosives
susceptible of being employed in terrorist
attacks.
EU analysts agree on the
attackers' extremely sophisticated strategy -
wrong-footing the British police, whose attention
was concentrated on the Group of Eight (G8) summit
in Scotland, simultaneously dissolving the impact
of the G8 and the atmosphere of euphoria after
London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games, and
going for an uncomplicated bombing strategy in a
city they know very well. The analysts also agree
that after New York, Madrid and London, Rome and
Copenhagen (as the attackers mentioned) are now
under threat, not to mention Paris because of its
high global visibility.
EU analysts knew
an attack on Britain was inevitable, at least
since they learned, in 2004, that 70 British
Muslims, most of them originally from Pakistan,
had joined the Iraqi resistance. Once their skills
have been sharpened in the field, so-called
"internationalist jihadis" inevitably come back
home, to Europe, where they are much more
valuable. Dozens of terrorist sleeper cells are
scattered around Europe. Great Britain has long
been considered a preferential target for a
terrorist strike, along with the US, Israel, Italy
and Denmark. The second line of targeting includes
assorted "infidel" countries like Spain, France,
Belgium and Germany.
Scotland Yard's
terrorist branch, as well as MI-5, MI-6 and EU
experts, are concentrating on the picture of a
master bomber - probably trained in, or taught by
someone trained in, Afghanistan in the 1990s -
operating a four to 12-person cell, using timed,
synchronized explosives (the three London
Underground blasts were separated by 50 seconds).
They tend to believe the cell is basically British
(up to 3,000 British-born or British-based
operatives have passed through Afghan training
camps).
But the cell could also be a mix
of British and Northern African jihadis - some
previously based in France, Germany or Spain. The
EU is actively pursuing the so-called "Moroccan
trail". The key suspect in this is Moroccan
Mohammed al-Gerbouzi, also a British citizen,
wanted in connection with the Casablanca and
Madrid bombings. In an unusual development,
Gerbouzi showed up on al-Jazeera this past
weekend, in a London setting, his face away from
the lights, denying any involvement. The most
worrying possibility is that the bombers -
British-born and Northern African - in the "mixed
cell" could have come straight from the current
Harvard of jihad: Iraq. In this case, they would
be part of the new, lethal international jihadi
generation (See Asia Times Online, The US's gift to
al-Qaeda, May 21).
'Our
values'
London was still smoldering as the
Blair government and British think-tanks instantly
blamed al-Qaeda, based on the bombers' modus
operandi. Some sectors of British right-wing
media went one step further, blaming British
Muslims as a whole.
Blair's emphatic
denials that he compromised London's safety by
following Bush to Afghanistan and Iraq are
virtually identical to US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's. In the next few days and
weeks, the way the British people respond is
crucial. It could be just like the US after
September 11. Or it could be "Blair brought this
on us" - as Blair continues to side with Bush in
the "war on terror". Opposition to the war on Iraq
has always been overwhelming in London.
Unanswered questions
Many
elements in the London scenario don't add up.
Questions were raised about the unheard-of group
claiming responsibility for the bombings so
quickly. The translation of their communique was
nothing less than dodgy; and they even misquoted
the Koran.
The stations where the bombs
went off - Liverpool Street, Edgware Road, Kings
Cross - are not exactly part of wealthy London.
Al-Qaeda would have caused much more economic
havoc by going for the financial center (the City
of London), the commercial center (Oxford Street)
and the modern Jubilee line - even though the FT
100 index lost more than US$80 billion in only one
hour and a half. Bin Laden, in his late 2004
videotape, made it clear that al-Qaeda's strategy
is to bleed dry the economies of "crusader"
countries.
But a much stranger development
was an Associated Press report, later retracted,
according to which Scotland Yard warned the
Israeli Embassy in London only minutes before the
explosions. Former Israeli prime minister and
hardliner Benyamin Netanyahu was in town to
address an economic conference in a hotel over one
of the attacked underground stations. He did not
leave his room. The Israeli government denied it
had been forewarned. But it could not explain why
Netanyahu didn't leave his room. Then Netanyahu
said Scotland Yard did indeed warn the Israeli
Embassy. Scotland Yard denied it. The Israelis
then said Netanyahu was warned only after the
first blast. According to Russian intelligence
reports, there was frantic telephone traffic
between the Israeli Embassy and the US immediately
before the bombings. Some EU diplomats dismiss the
whole story, saying that "Scotland Yard didn't
have a clue an attack was coming".
The
'Londonistan' factor
Sheikh Abu Qutada,
preaching in London, used to define al-Qaeda as
"the group of winners" which would follow the way
envisaged by the Prophet, much like the primordial
community of Islamic believers in the 7th century.
In this framework, it does not matter what happens
to bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri: the
new Salafi-jihadi (or Islamist) generation will
keep the struggle alive.
Since early 2002,
al-Qaeda has not been an organization: it's a
virtual community comprising concentric circles,
all of them with their own operational capability.
The London bombings bear all the hallmarks of a
franchised organization.
Both Scotland
Yard and the MI-5 amassed plenty of information on
Salafi clerics operating in "Londonistan". The
ideological media icons may have been neutralized.
Sheikh Abu Qutada, the master ideologue, first
arrested in 2002, remains under house arrest. The
invalid, one-eyed Egyptian Abu Hamza, founder of
the Supporters of Sharia group, arrested in May
2004, has not been extradited to the US as
Washington wanted, and is still being prosecuted
in the UK. Syrian Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad,
leader of the al-Muhajiroun, remains on the loose.
Last February, the Finsbury Park mosque in
London was finally "captured" by London police.
This might have meant, in their view, the end of
"Londonistan". But in fact it was a big bang that
set free the Salafi-jihadi ultra-radicals. Now the
British are bound to be attacked on two fronts:
because of Blair being aligned with Bush, and
because of the repression of Salafi jihadis in
London. For Islamists in Britain, Marble Arch
prison in London is nothing less than the British
Guantanamo.
There's a crucial dissidence
currently playing out between well-established
Salafi jihadis (like the London clerics) and the
"deterritorialized", ultra-radical, new generation
jihadis. For the new generation, it's not a
question of liberating Islamic lands anymore
(Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Kashmir and
Chechnya). The point now is much more ambitious:
armed struggle against "infidel regimes", be they
Western (US, Great Britain, Israel) or Muslim
(Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Shi'ite-dominated
Iraq).
One just has to look at what the EU
analysts call "the jihadi road map" - a July 2004,
20-odd page document - where the Abu Hafs al-Masri
Brigades make it clear that both Great Britain and
Italy would inevitably meet their own "Madrid"
fate. This document repeatedly demands the
liberation of Sheikh Abu Qutada. A thorough
investigation may conclude that London was indeed
like Madrid: the work of a totally independent
cell.
A sort of online International
Islamic Information Front has also been in place
since mid-2004. A new institution, al-Sahab (The
Cloud) publishes communiques by jihadi groups in
Iraq and produces propaganda videos of
al-Qaeda-related operations in both Iraq and Saudi
Arabia. This is how al-Qaeda usually communicates
(and where analysts expect to see an authentic
communique claiming the London bombings).
"Instructions" for operations tend to appear in
discreet, fleeting but increasingly proliferating
websites. This is how aspiring jihadis, for
instance, can get a copy of the massive
Encyclopedia of Jihad - the 650-page remix
of a volume widely available in the Afghan
training camps. The encyclopedia teaches how to
make explosives, biological and chemical weapons,
and dissects methods of recruitment and
infiltration, military techniques in urban
settings and manipulation of new technologies.
Delocalized jihad
British
writers like Ian McEwan are on the wrong track,
lamenting that "we have been savagely woken from a
pleasant dream". In the eyes of the new generation
of jihadis, no dream is possible: the
Anglo-American coalition - as well as civilians -
must live in fear, just like people live in fear
in Iraq or Palestine. It's not a question of "how
much freedom will we be asked to trade for our
security". It's the foreign policy of governments
that have led to blowback - and then to these same
governments restraining freedom in the name of
security. Hardcore repression - which means
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, anti-terrorist legislation
that infringes on civil liberties - only serves to
encourage the new jihadi generation.
Only
two developments might prevent another bombing in
another European capital, and the spread of
delocalized, apocalyptic Islamist ideology: the US
leaving Iraq and a decent,
internationally-accepted agreement between
Israelis and Palestinians. That's it - or jihad,
and blowback, will go on forever.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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