Londonistan

The axis of Islamist terror shifts to the British capital with homegrown immigrant radicals proliferating as Muslim anger grows

On the streets of London’s Finsbury Park last week, once known as the hotbed of Islamic radicalism in the UK, the sense of relief was palpable. Outside the Pakistani restaurant on Stroud Green Road, Ahmed Hafiz shook his head. “Arabs, mate,” he said. “They are to blame. Angry bunch. Nothing to do with us Brits, Thankfully.” Hafiz, 31, was not the only one to be happy that those arrested by the police for their suspected role in the failed double car bombing in London on June 30 and the subsequent attempt to ram a petrol-filled car into Glasgow Airport came from overseas. Bashir Ahmad, a Scottish National Party member of Parliament, said that when a meeting of Glasgow Muslims was told by a minister that the arrested men were not Scottish, “you could hear the collective sighs of relief around the room”. The British Muslim community, which has been living in a profound crisis of identity and faith since the 7/7 bombings that killed 52 two years ago, knew that, for once, the questions about its loyalty to the country, to fellow citizens, to the ummah, would not be asked with quite such searching and uncomfortable persistence.

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IN THE NAME OF GOD: A mosque in east London which many of those suspected of being part of a plot to blow up trans-atlantic airliners attended (left); an Islamic society holds a prayer session

Yet, for the security services dedicated to protecting the UK from the continuing and severe threat of terrorist attack, there was little to be pleased about. For one, there were the questions to be asked about why they had not detected the plot earlier. The suspects, five from the Middle East and three from India, were not on domestic intelligence service MI5’s database of over 1,600 individuals in Britain identified as preparing for terrorist attacks here or abroad. And though there were apparently ‘traces’ of them on a bigger database of ‘individuals of potential interest’ shared by MI5, MI6 (which is concerned with overseas intelligence) and GCHQ (the government centre that monitors communications), these were discovered only through the interception of conversations on mobile phones and e-mails, not through the networks of the police or security service surveillance in the UK. “We can’t watch everybody, obviously. We have limited resources and have to make choices,” said one intelligence source, “If you join enough dots between sympathisers with radical Islam, they are all joined up anyway.”

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JUNE 30, 2007 The attack on Glasgow, where a fuel-filled jeep rammed into the airport, was one of at least three foiled terrorist plans in the last two years alone	JULY 21, 2005 Four immigrants of African origin conducted unsuccessful attacks on London’s transport system and were convicted

	JULY 7, 2005 The scene after a bus explosion in London. An hour earlier, three bombs exploded on the Underground. Fifty-two were killed and 770 injured.

The other question was about the nature of the plot. Recent thinking on militancy in the UK is that the threat comes more from ‘home-grown’ terrorists—young British citizens who have been radicalised by militant Islamic propaganda and who seek out the means to mount their own terrorist operation—than trained operatives ‘parachuted in’ from abroad. This conclusion is based on the profiles of the 150-or-so militants either convicted or facing charges for their roles in a variety of plots including the 7/7 attacks, the recent trial of those who attempted to use fertiliser bombs for mass casualty attacks in London and the scheme to bring down trans-Atlantic passenger jets last year. In almost all these cases, the vast proportion of those arrested were young, male Britons of Pakistani descent. In recent years, only the so-called Ricin Plot involved a majority of foreigners. ‘Londonistan’, largely populated by foreigners, has been replaced by a far more potent threat: self-radicalising Britons. “For a long time we looked for the enemy without, now it’s the enemy within,” said one former intelligence agent, now a security consultant.

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WATCHFUL EYE: An armed policeman patrols Heathrow Airport, London. Following the attack on the Glasgow airport, security has been beefed up in the United Kingdom.

This week terrorism stayed on the front pages of the UK’s newspapers, with the conviction of four members of an Islamist terror cell found guilty of plotting suicide bombings of London’s Underground two weeks after the successful attacks of 7/7. The strike, potentially devastating, failed due to technical faults and “sheer good luck”. The four men were not, as with many other plots, drawn from the UK’s Pakistani immigrant community, but were from war-torn countries in the Horn of Africa, though they had lived in the UK for many years. Aged between 25 and 29, the four lived on the margins of society and spent a year planning their eventually abortive attack. Yet, their ringleader too had, like the leader of the 7/7 bombers, made at least one trip to a training camp in Pakistan. With backgrounds in delinquency, drug-abuse and benefit fraud, the group’s profile was very different from that of the 7/7 bombers.

A second, unrelated plot was uncovered in the UK’s capital last year, centering on a group of friends who had come together in mosques in the northeastern suburb of Walthamstow. Yet to come to trial, the young British-Pakistanis are alleged to have plotted to bring down three or even six trans-atlantic jets by concocting explosives made out of liquids carried in ordinary containers. Again, there are alleged links to networks in Pakistan. Then there was Dhiren Bharot, an Indian-born Hindu convert to Islam, radicalised through involvement in Kashmir, who was sentenced late last year—a ‘one-man band’ with connections to the top of the Al Qaeda hierarchy. There were also the so-called Ammonium Nitrate bombers, a group of young men, mainly British Pakistanis, arrested in the spring of 2004 and named after the 600 kg of makeshift explosives they had assembled in a storage facility. For the security services, the problem lies in tracking the evolving profile of the militants: young, male, often British Pakistani, sometimes middle class, sometimes from the margins of society, only one thing is sure. “The nightmare scenario does not come from overseas,” said one Whitehall security source earlier this week, “It’s at home.”

THE NUMBERS

1,600 identified as potential suicide bombers 1.5 million Muslims have made the UK their home 32 per cent are of Pakistani origin and 7 per cent of Indian 700 is the number of madrasas in the UK

MI5 says Britain has become the most targeted country in the world for several reasons. The primary among them is that it is a lot more accessible than America. So militants who would like to strike the US, but cannot obtain visas or are otherwise kept out, turn their attention to the UK. The other major reason is, the staunch support offered by former prime minister Tony Blair to Washington has pushed Britain up the target list. “Before 2001, the UK was barely mentioned by militants, though there was a threat. That threat increased between 2001 and 2003, but got a major boost from the war in Iraq. It has not dropped away since,” said one official. At the Foreign Office, strategists have been working to counter the damage done to Britain’s image in the Middle East, south Asia and more generally, among the world’s Muslims. Late last year, advisers recommended that Blair and his ministers drop all mention of “the War on Terror”—something Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair last month, has now done. But there is much ground to be covered. “Britain’s image as an honest broker in the Muslim world is ancient history,” said one Western diplomat based in the Middle East.

There is also work to be done at home. Many British Muslims, who are often poorer and less successful in school than other ethnic or religious minorities, have been alienated by the talk of ‘communities’ within Britain and by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blair’s refusal to call for a ceasefire during the war in Lebanon last year angered many. In addition, intelligence officers say Britain has a particular vulnerability because of the specific nature of the UK’s Islamic community. The fact that two-thirds of British Muslims are of Pakistani origin means that the tiny minority of those who might have ideas about seeking out training or direction from members of the ‘Al Qaeda hardcore’ in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan can more easily fulfil their ambitions. Nearly half a million people travel between the UK and Pakistan every year. “The one going for jehadi training is the needle in the haystack,” said one source, “French or German militants simply find it far harder to get to anywhere that is useful for their purposes.”

FEAR FACTOR   PICTURE SPEAK MINORITY VOICE: Women holding an anti-terror demonstration in Glasgow after the attack The suspects’ connections with the National Health Service have led to strict checks on doctors from overseas, almost one-third of whom are Indians Indian doctors were once universally acknowledged as the backbone of Britain’s health system. But within days of the latest spate of July terror attacks across London and Glasgow, the National Health Service (NHS) has been labelled the “revolving door for terror”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown demanded an immediate review of the way NHS doctors are hired from abroad. Speaking during his first question time as prime minister in the House of Commons on July 4, Brown ordered Terrorism Minister Sir Alan West to carry out the review. He said background checks on skilled migrant workers will be expanded, and other fresh steps to counter terrorism will include a worldwide watchlist of terrorist suspects and a signed agreement with other countries to ensure a co-ordinated response. As per the procedure currently followed, foreign doctors from outside the EU have to pass a series of rigorous linguistic and clinical tests before they can register with the General Medical Council. Employers can obtain details from the Criminal Records Bureau, but it only has British criminal records. They can also seek a “certificate of good standing” from a candidate’s country of origin, but this is not a legal obligation. Foreigners face further checks before they can start working in British hospitals. However, the disclosure that all eight people under arrest for their involvement in the terror attacks had links with the NHS has sent shockwaves. The NHS often depends on information provided by the authorities in unstable and even war-torn countries, and though the Department of Health has insisted that the existing checks are adequate, Brown’s statement suggests there will be tighter security checks before work visas are granted. The Government had already made it harder for foreign doctors to get jobs in Britain by imposing new visa requirements last April, and giving priority to applicants from Europe. The Home Office’s highly skilled migrant programme, used by hospitals to recruit medics, is also being toughened. Now doctors from overseas fear getting specialist medical training in the UK—the most prestigious stamp for Indian doctors for generations—will become tougher. Nearly 90,000 doctors in the UK are of foreign origin and at 27,558, Indians constitute the largest contingent. The British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), which looks after the interests of these doctors, has expressed alarm at the knee-jerk reaction. According to it, the security measures that are in place now are already very stringent. “Our biggest concern is that doctors must not be hassled in any way. There has to be a mechanism in place so that the NHS can work together with the intelligence services so that there is no need for blanket checks on all professionals,” BAPIO President Dr Ramesh Mehta said. Dr Prasad Rao, chairman of the British International Doctors’ Association, is concerned that patients may be alarmed by revelations about the doctors involved in the attempted attacks, and the government announcement of further vetting. “We have enjoyed the trust of the British public for the last 60 years,” he said, “and hope to do so in future, but if these stories about overseas doctors keep coming up continuously, it could sow seeds of doubt.” -By Aditi Khanna in London

Certainly, previous attacks have proved the value of the ‘X-factor’ that an overseas link can bring. The progression from clumsy and large ammonium nitrate fertiliser and petrol bombs to much more sophisticated explosives is believed to have been the result of tuition by expert bomb-makers in camps in Pakistani tribal areas. Martyrdom videos recorded by the 7/7 bombers show volunteers taking bomb-making lessons at undisclosed locations believed to be in Waziristan. Mohammed Sadiq Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombers, is thought to have been diverted from an original ambition to fight alongside the Taliban to the task of blowing up Britons in Britain by Al Qaeda leaders, possibly Ayman al-Zawahiri himself.

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ON THE DARK SIDE: A police surveillance photograph shows Muslims of African origin training for militant activity in a camp in Cumbria, north-west England

Yet, this most recent plot was different. The men behind it were neither home-grown Brits nor, as far as is currently known, had they travelled to Pakistan. The amateurishness of the bombs and the desperation of the attempted suicide attack on the airport are far from the meticulously prepared Al Qaeda attacks of the late 1990s or even 9/11 itself. Also, the plotters are well-educated doctors and engineers. This is less surprising than one would think. A series of studies in recent years has shown it is not the poor and marginalised who become militants. One study of 400 profiles by American specialist Marc Sageman showed that over two-thirds had university degrees. “Terrorists are usually seen as being ignorant and immature, as coming from a poor background and a broken family, with no skills and no family or responsibility. Little of this is true for Al Qaeda members and supporters,” he said.

Analysts also point out that movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat, have their support bases in the urban lower middle classes. “Though there are other examples of virtually destitute asylum-seekers, reformed drug addicts and juvenile delinquents drawn into the world of radical Islam, they are the exception rather than the rule,” said one senior British police officer. “In fact, the profiles of contemporary Islamic militants and violent leftwing (or indeed rightwing) activists over the decades have a lot in common.”

Yet, though it looks increasingly like the Doctor’s Plot which relied on a small and tight-knit group of men who had not been in the UK for more than a couple of years, few doubt that the main threat remains home-grown. Last week, an MI5 map of networks, leaked to a newspaper, revealed around 80 suspected terror networks—from a total of 219 such suspected networks in Britain—in and around the city of Birmingham. Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, said there was a “pressing demand” for the police to create a network of spies from within the Muslim population to help gather intelligence on suspects and plots, as networks “scattered across the country” were thought to be plotting up to 30 attacks at any point of time.

The idea of Muslim spies is less far-fetched than it might once have been. The events of the last week have marked a change in the attitudes of some British Muslim leaders. With Blair now preparing for his new job as special peace envoy in the Middle East, some are finding it easier to reconcile themselves to the demands of the new team at Number 10, careful to designate no one as a minority, to show more solidarity. Declaring that “condemnation is not enough”, leaders of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which has 400 affiliate organisations and is Britain’s most influential Muslim umbrella group, appealed to all Muslims last week to work with the police. Muhammad Abdul Bari, MCB’s secretary-general, said the current crisis meant that issues of conflict between the Government, police and Muslim communities—who have clashed in the past over anti-terrorist incidents and foreign policy—needed to be put to one side. “When the house is on fire, the concern must be not to blame each other, but to put the fire out,” he said.

His call found an echo in the words of Admiral Sir Alan West, the UK’s new security supreme, who called for Britons to be “a little bit un-British”. “Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone,” he said. “I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.” West outlined a campaign that will last half a generation, echoing the view of French analyst Olivier Roy, who talks of “a generational phenomenon”. “This is not a quick thing,” West said. “I believe it will take 10 to 15 years. But I think it can be done.” But with British security officials saying that they “have no more gears to go up” in terms of the intensity of their response to the current threat, it is clear that it will not be done soon.

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