Month: July 2005

The conclusion I previously drew from the London bombings is that the terrorists are weakening.

I will go further than that: the whole of modern Islamist terror is a sign of the weakness, and indeed of the death throes, of what could be called “primitive” Islam.

I leave aside the nationalist struggles that have produced terror – the Algerian conflict, for example, had nothing to do with “primitive” Islam; it was essentially a western-style nationalist movement, and the Palestinian movement also had that character through the 1970s. Today, however there is a mixture of western-style nationalism and primitive Islam involved, and that may be the reason it is proving so intractable.

The truly Islamist terrorist movement, however, that of the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden, is, as the leftists tell us, driven by anger.

And the root cause of that anger is that wherever their culture comes into contact with ours, it loses. From Turkey under Kemal Ataturk to modern Pakistan, traditional Islamic society is giving way to an imitation of the West.

Read more…

This post at Captain’s Quarters — suggesting that the bombers were implementing the plan which had been previously foiled with the arrest of Naeem Noor Khan — reinforces something I had in mind while writing the piece below, but didn’t actually state.

It strikes me that the bombers’ tactics were formulated to be maximally simple and, above all else, to minimise the chances of being interfered with.

Once the explosives had been made and made into bombs, the operation was carried out in as few hours as possible. Drive down from Leeds, dump the car in Luton, get on a train to King’s Cross, spread out a little and blow up. There are many refinements that might have increased the impact or reduced the amount of intelligence available afterwards, — getting on tube trains coming in to King’s Cross rather than away from it, heading for a high-profile target, say Westminster or Canary Wharf, staggering the explosions over hours or even days, or simply hiding the car somewhere rather than leaving it in the station car park, but if one of the four was already suspected by the security services from a year ago, then any delay at all might have provided the opportunity for the authorities to spot what was happening. As it was, they might have been followed by police the whole way, and would quite possibly have still managed to cause as much damage as they did. (Not that I’m suggesting they were followed, but they might have feared they could be under surveillance).

This suggested to me that the plot was very small in terms of personnel (which is somewhat contradicted by this new report), and, along with other things, that the terrorists are weak, only able with the greatest difficulty and after several failed attempts to achieve any kind of successful operation, and that a suicide mission not just for the bombers but for their cell as a whole, which is being rapidly rolled up.

In a lost essay on the Structure of Terrorist Movements, I examined different participants in a terrorist movement and their roles and motivations.
Looking at the information that is coming out about the London bombings, there are striking hypotheses that immediately emerge.
Firstly, there is no coherent visible political leadership to the movement. When dealing with the IRA, or even Hamas, there is an obvious political movement controlling the violence. The leadership may be open, anonymous or pseudonymous, but it clearly exists and makes political statements.
Second, the soldiers did not operate from out of a mass of sympathisers. I might be being naive here, but I think that if a rumour of terrorist activity was going up and down Bury Park road, it would reach the police pretty quickly. What sympathisers there are are probably small groups around particular radical mosques or other organisations. There are of course large areas of sympathy overseas (e.g. the madrassas in Pakistan which the bombers may have visited), but they are remote from the soldiers.
The operation last week looks to me to have been almost entirely the work of five to ten individuals, including the bombers and the bomb-maker. The assistance that may have come from outside organisation would be:

• putting the participants in touch with each other
• providing technical knowledge or materials for the bombs
• directing strategy – timing and targets
• providing money

It seems quite conceivable that no organisation supplied any of these things. The individuals may well have all the knowledge required to make the bombs, the operation was not expensive, and it might not have been part of any wider strategy. The participants may have met each other and carried the whole operation out on their own. That would put it more in the category of the Columbine shootings than the Manhattan attacks or the bombing campaign against Israel.
At the other extreme, it is possible that there was a “chain of command” extending up through several layers to a political strategy group in some James Bond style hideout somewhere, possibly including bin Laden and/or al-Zarqawi.
The motivation of the suicide bombers is likely to be not so much related to the political consequences of their actions, as might be the case for more “conventional” terrorist soldiers, as by their own feelings about the past and about how they expect other people (and God) to feel about them. In other words, it is about self-expression rather than strategy.
Assuming their operation was part of a wider strategy, the nature of that strategy is far from clear. It may mirror, on a larger scale, the inward-looking expressive motivation of the individual bombers. This is the Lee Harris “Fantasy Ideology” theory. Under this theory, the bombings are primarily an expression of the organisers’ feelings about the growth of Western power and the occupation by westerners of traditionally Muslim lands, rather than a practical attempt to stop or change those things.
Another possible strategic aim, which I have not seen suggested, is distraction. The organisers may be primarily concerned with the war against the “near enemy”: moderates or secularists in Muslim lands (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq etc.) Striking against the “far enemy” may be done in order to make the movement seem stronger and more powerful, to attract support in the day-to-day local wars. This form of strategy has been put forward by commentators to explain violent acts by successive US presidents, but it should make at least as much sense for Zarqawi or bin Laden as for Clinton or Bush.
These both seem more probable than the “straightforward” strategy – to effect a change in British policy, primarily towards Iraq but also to Israel and other foreign policy areas of interest. Such a strategy seems destined to fail, and likely to backfire. Indeed, it is more likely that the strategy is to deliberately escalate the conflict (as they see it) between Britain and Islam. If that is the strategy, it has had mixed results so far – the Islamists have lost ground in Afghanistan, but have strengthened their position in Iraq.
Do these speculations lead to any ideas about countermeasures? If Britain is a symbolic target rather than a real enemy, attacks could perhaps be avoided simply by keeping a lower profile, thereby being a less attractive symbol. On the other hand, the symbolic value of appearing to cause a change in policy, as in Spain, is greater than merely causing destruction, so the appearance of weakness should be avoided.
However, a counterstrike might increase the symbolic impact of the original attacks. The way to minimise the impact is to do nothing, neither to hit back abroad, nor make a big fuss, nor show any sign of caving in.
It is slightly suspicious that this is pretty much what I identified as the instinctive British reaction – passive defiance. Am I guilty of going to great lengths to rationalise what I would want to do anyway? Perhaps.

The police are now saying they think the bombers were killed at each of the four sites. I see that as encouraging news, because, most simply, they won’t do it again. I do believe that terrorists ready to blow themselves up and able to merge into British society are very rare. Suicide bombing can be a regular tactic in Israel or Iraq, but not in Luton or Leeds.

Also, suicide bombers can be identified from their bodies, and the operation traced back from them, as seems to be happening currently. If the bombers are long gone, police have a more difficult job.

The police have moved quite quickly – it emerged in September 2001 that some of the US hijackers were already under investigation, but nothing concrete had come up, so they were being left alone. As soon as they struck, the authorities were able to quickly track down their backgrounds. The same may well be the true here, and no blame would neccessarily attach to the police or security services – It could be very difficult to make the jump from vague suspicion to grounds for arrest.

Why suicide bombing? Maybe they are too unsophisticated to produce timer devices of the neccessary reliability (not trivial – the “1996” bus picture in my post below was caused by an unintentional IRA suicide bomber). Maybe it is too difficult to leave a bag on a London train or bus — we really are attentive to them after all these years. Maybe they feel that, other things being equal, it is better to die in the attack than survive it. I don’t 100% believe the “Blood Feud” theory of Islamist terrorism — I do think there is some strategy to it — but it is valid to say that the bombers are very much concerned with themselves and their supporters, not just with their effects on us.

I’ll liveblog the Met. press conference here if there’s anything interesting. I’m not going anywhere – they (the Police, that is) have blown up another car in Luton station car park.

(times in GMT for reasons of insanity)

16:10 GMT – Peter Clark: They thought they knew who the bombers were before identifying their bodies.

16:11 GMT – Peter Clark: One of the suspected bombers was reported missing by his family around 10am Thursday.