The chaps over at the Center for Social Cohesion were kind enough to share with me a copy of their recent comprehensive text Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections. It got quite a bit of media attention at the time of publication, as it was basically the only substantial text to be published in time for the five year anniversary of the 2005 bombings on the London underground (this is not to forget the special edition of International Affairs that also came out at around the same time featuring a number of heavy hitters in the world of terrorism studies).

The report meticulously goes through all of the “Islamist related offences” committed in the UK between 1999-2009, though it looks as far back as 1993 for plots which have British links: some early fighters in Bosnia drawn from Azzam publications tapes, and Ramzi Youssef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center plot, who was no doubt radicalized by his time in Oxford and Swansea.

In an attempt to bring some statistical analysis to bear on the information, they have culled background and biographical data to create pie charts and tables. Problematically, the dataset itself is not actually that big (they have included “120 Islamism-inspired terrorist convictions and attacks in the UK”), meaning that the figures are a little less than conclusive and rapidly impacted by subsequent prosecutions.

Nevertheless, one detail that does seem clear is that South Asian’s, and specifically Pakistani’s, are the largest single group to be drawn towards terrorism in the UK. This may seem unsurprising given the fact that they are the largest single community of Muslims in the UK, but the detailed figures are actually quite interesting. Even if one includes all of the individuals classified as of uncertain South Asian origin into the Pakistani total, the figure that is reached is 36.21%. This compares to 46.69% of Muslims drawing their identity from Pakistan in the general population (according to the 2001 census figures). Meaning that Pakistani’s are, proportionally speaking, substantially under-represented in the terrorist roster in the UK as drawn up by CSC.

But frankly, the most useful thing about the report is the fact that they have collected in one place a great deal of the information about the many individuals who have been convicted for Islamist terrorism related offences in the UK. For those who follow these things (and for those only interested in the topic in passing), this will become a very useful reference tool.

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Yemeni-American preacher Anwar al Awlaki has becoming something of an international boogeyman, with traces and connections to him being found amongst an ever expanding array of terrorist plots around the world. According to the U.S., he has gone beyond being a nuisance preacher to being actively involved in terrorist plotting – his connections to underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab have earned him a place on the U.S. Predator hit-list.

But in many ways, more interesting than his apparently growing role as a preacher moving up the ladder to training individuals, is his ability to reach out through cyberspace to an ever-expanding and diverse community of people. Two recent cases highlight this in particular: Paul “Bilal” Rockwood and his wife Nadia in Alaska, and on the other side of the world in Singapore, Muhammad Fadil Abdul Hamid.

Awlaki is the common thread between the two. According to court documents, Rockwood was a long-term follower, having converted in “late 2001 or early 2002” while he was living in Virginia. He rapidly became a “strict adherent to the violent Jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki….This included a personal conviction that it was his (Rockwood’s) religious responsibility to exact revenge by death on anyone who desecrated Islam.” While his timings appear to correlate with when Awlaki was also in Virginia it is unclear from information in the public domain whether they actually met.

Having been radicalized, over the next eight years Rockwood, who when he was arrested was a 35 year-old weatherman in the charmingly named King Salmon, Alaska, identified a list of possible targets through “visiting websites on the internet that professed to identify individuals, including American servicemen, who were alleged by the websites to have committed crimes of violence against Muslim civilians.” He further researched how to execute them “including discussing the use of mail bombs and the possibility of killing targets by gunshot to the head.” He narrowed his list down to 15 possible targets and planned on sharing this list, through his knowing wife, with a third person whom he believed shared his beliefs. From here it got to the Feds, certainly suggesting that this third party was not all that he or she seemed.

On the other hand, it seems highly unlikely that Muhammad Fadil Abdul Hamid ever had opportunity to meet the preacher. A 20-year old national serviceman in Singapore, he self-radicalized online and attempted to make contact with Awlaki through the net claiming to want to fight alongside him in Yemen. He was also in contact with a suspected Al Qaeda recruiter who urged him to go fight in Afghanistan and he produced at least one “self-made video glorifying martyrdom and justifying suicide bombing.” According to information released after his detainment under the Internal Security Act, his main influences appear to have been Anwar al-Awlaki and Australian-Lebanese former boxer Feiz Muhammed.

At around the same time as they detained Hamid, Singaporean police also placed Muhammad Anwar Jailani, 44, and Muhammad Thahir Shaik Dawood, 27 on two-year “restriction orders.” Jailani was apparently distributing Awlaki material, while Dawood went so far as to try to join the preacher in Yemen, though he was unable to connect with him and was instead rather disillusioned by what he did find there.

While not delving into the detail of the plots (which are not quite on the scale of 9/11), the running theme is Anwar al-Awlaki and his ability to provide some sort of indirect ideological guidance to people through the internet. While he may have had some contact with Rockwood early on, it still took Rockwood about five years before he started his research, and another three years before he moved into action. For the Singaporean’s, no contact appears to have taken place, but (like many others) the men appear to have sought out Awlaki as a guide to carrying out contemporary jihad. It would seem in many ways as though Awlaki, rather than Osama or even Abu Musab al Suri, is actually proving to be the globalized voice of jihad. His cry for personalized jihad in English appears to resonate amongst the global community of disenfranchised individuals across racial, national, and generational lines (I have not seen any evidence of gender yet, but women in jihad remains a marginal feature).

What is not clear if this is anything particularly new, or whether he is simply the latest in a long line of radical clerics whose charisma is able to draw people to him and it his ability to use the internet that has given him a global reach. Whatever the case, it is clear that his online presence is also what will guarantee him longevity beyond if the Predator’s do ever catch him.

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It has become something of an article of faith to say that poverty and economic misfortune are not drivers of terrorism. This seems a sensible conclusion to reach when one considers the volume of poverty and misery in the world and the relatively small volume of terrorists that emerge from it. Were poverty truly a determinant of a predilection for terrorist radicalization then theoretically speaking there would be far more terrorists in this world than there are.

But at the same time, it seems clear that there is some sort of correlation between social deprivation and radicalization – even if only from the perspective that it often appears as a constant in communities where radicalization seems able to take root (though of course this is not always the case). This is a difficult correlation to understand as it is not one that appears to exist on a steady or universal gradient, but it is clearly plays some sort of a role in the radicalization picture.

Understanding this question, however becomes increasingly salient as we enter ever tighter economic times, as theoretically speaking we are increasing one of the possible drivers. The core point is: are we are going to see an increase in radicalization amongst communities as they feel the economic squeeze?

One possible vision of the consequent trends can be seen in the recent annual Europol report on terrorism trends in the EU (which I wrote about for the Jamestown Foundation). Amongst other things, it highlighted a growing level of concern about left-wing and anarchist radicalization: “In 2009, the total number of left-wing and anarchist terrorist attacks in the EU increased by 43% compared to 2008 and more than doubled since 2007.”

These trends are discernable at a wider level too: the emergence in the UK of far-right groups like the English Defence League appears to at least in part be the product of social disaffection stirred up by disenfranchisement. Rioting in Greece has taken an increasingly violent turn and there has also been a more general increase in anarchist violence and extremist activity. And German officials have expressed concern about the discovery of an 80-page pamphlet entitled “Prisma” which offers ideas for bomb-making, avoiding detection by police and other tips for urban guerrillas. They have also marked a 53% jump in left-wing attacks in 2009 which has included some large scale acts of vandalism and violence.

All of which would point to an increase in radicalization amongst communities that do not appear to be so directly influenced by the Al Qaeda narrative. So does this mean that the poor economic climate is directly contributing to radicalization in general: youths are becoming angry at the system and fighting against it, is the free time they are left with due to their economic disenfranchisement giving them the time to indulge in such activity? Well, possibly, but it seems as though it would be best not to leap to any conclusions about this quite yet or any draconian reactions. Anyway, what exactly would be the abrupt security reaction be: pour security funding into economic stimulus packages?

At the end of the day what we might assess as the underlying causes of some of the increase in right/left/anarchist violence may indeed be the economic crisis, but care must be paid to not exaggerate our response to this particular cause over others. As previous experience has shown, an exaggerated response leads to mistakes the impact of which is impossible to measure.

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Counter-terrorism sage Bruce Hoffman has an article in the latest issue of the National Interest which I would recommend as a sanguine assessment of the threat that the U.S. faces from domestic Islamist terrorists.

The article opens with a cold-eyed assessment based on insider conversations of the intelligence disaster that took place around Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to bring down an airliner in December 2009. Highlighting a number of missed connections that were likely in part for Admiral Denny Blair’s resignation recently, the main point appears to be that the dots were simply not put together in time to stop Abdulmutallab getting on the plane in Amsterdam. Apparently, preparations had been built around the assumption that AQAP was about to launch an attack on a U.S. target abroad, not that an attack was about to be launched on the homeland.

The broader point of the article, however, is the lack of imagination which has led the U.S. to treat a tactic as a strategy (Predator strikes) and a mistaken belief that America was somehow immune to the sort of domestic radicalization which has become the primary preoccupation of many European planners. A list of events, plots, and groups is provided showing how short-sighted this analysis has been, showing how links to various AQ affiliates can be found in a long list of plots, as well as a larger pool of low-level attempts all carried out by American citizens. A lack of imagination which is also found in the inability to recognize that AQ is a multifaceted organization with many different locations and iterations, rather than a monolith which can be focused on in an organized fashion in one location at a time, “we rivet our attention on only one trouble spot at a time, forgetting that Al Qaeda has always been a networked transnational movement.”

This is coupled with an ongoing failure to admit that the Predator strategy which is regularly trumpeted as crippling Al Qaeda’s ability to carry out attacks has done nothing to stem the flow of foreigners going to train in the camps in Pakistan (he cites a figure of about 100 who have graduated from the camps and now returned home). Something that is only a tactic appears to have become the only show in town when it comes to strategic planning in addressing the threat from Al Qaeda in Pakistan. As has been repeatedly said by numerous experts, it is unlikely that you will be able to kill your way of this problem. As Hoffman puts it: “until we dissemble the demand side….we will never be able to staunch the supply side.”

So simply hammering AQ or its affiliates in local insurgencies abroad is not going to get rid of the problem, especially as the ideology continues to appear to have deep resonance amongst a community of individuals living in the West. Management is key, and making sure that we are able to contain the problem from exploding as it did in the case of Abdulmutallab or some of the other plots that have managed to come to fruition in the U.S., is likely the best we can do in terms of stopping AQ or the ideology it inspires. This is not going to eradicate the problem in the immediate term, but neither is the current approach. But admitting to this will hopefully open doors which maybe lead in a better direction.

There was one point in the article which bothered me, which was when he refers to Abdulmutallab’s profile as defying “conventional wisdom about the stereotypical suicide terrorist being poor, uneducated and provincial.” My question would be: whose conventional wisdom is this still? Given the laundry list of well-educated and assimilated terrorists, who out there still sees simpletons from the provinces as the main incubator of radicalization in the West? I do not actually disagree with what Professor Hoffman says, but it bothers me that there might still be those out there looking for such a profile.

One final point which struck me as interesting is the assertion that Lone Wolves might be part of a strategy by AQ to “flood already-stressed intelligence systems with ‘noise’.” The suggestion, if I am reading it correctly, is that low-tech attacks by “lone wolves and other jihadi hangers-on,” are more coordinated than one might think and are in fact an effort to keep security planners busy and distracted from focusing on serious directed plots from abroad.

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My first substantive post to this blog was on the topic of terrorism in Italy and the attempt by Mohammed Game to blow himself up at a barracks in Milan. Fortunately, no-one was killed in Game’s attempt and he remains in custody along with two alleged accomplices – the three are going on trial (in two separate cases) May 12 and June 26.

While undoubtedly more information will come out during the trials, it would appear from what is already in the public domain as though Game and his contacts were a relatively free-standing “Lone Wolf” terror cell. A phenomenon which appears to be increasingly common in Italy, where details have just been revealed about the reasons behind the expulsion of a couple of Moroccan students from Perugia University towards the end of April. The two students, now apparently living freely in Rabat, were thrown out of Italy following an assessment that they were a threat to public safety.

It has now been revealed that Mohammed Hlal, 27, was overheard saying that he wanted to kill the Pope in order to guarantee himself a place in paradise, part of a regular digest of anger apparently directed at the Catholic Church. It is unclear what role his accomplice 22-year old Ahmed Errahmouni had in the plot, though a wide array of images of famous Italian locations were found in their possession, alongside numerous maps, and an instruction manual on how to build bombs. No actual weapons or explosives were located, though apparently confiscated computers had encryption programs installed.

Italian services had been alerted to the two in October of last year, following unspecified leads about concerns being expressed of radical views heard amongst some Moroccan students in Perugia. An investigation was launched, and in late April a series of arrests were made, allegedly because the group was becoming more isolated and radical and there were concerns that some action might be on the horizon. In the initial sweep another four Moroccans, a Tunisian and a Palestinian with an Israeli passport were also picked up: the group apparently used to attend the same mosque in Perugia.

Reporting to have emerged from the cell appears to point to the fact that it was a largely self-contained group who self-radicalized – much like the narrative being painted around Mohammed Game and his cell. This is a phenomenon which Italian investigators are seeing an increasing amount, including in the case further north  of Abdelkader Ghafir, 44, and Rachid Ilhami, 31, two Moroccan laborers accused by security head Bruno Megale of being in a cell like Game’s atlthough in an earlier phase (two others stand charged of immigration offences alongside them). Those men’s trial is currently ongoing. And Game’s cell has been repeatedly referred to in the context of the Perugia cell that threatened the Pope.

In all cases, the groups appear to be self-contained and have (according to reporting) no connections to Al Qaeda core or a regional affiliate. The individuals involved appear to be mostly of North African extraction (like most Muslim migrants in Italy) and male, but aside from this they tend to defy uniform classification. Their radicalization appears for the most part to be self-generated, though they appear to also operate on the fringes of known networks. In the case with the Game group who were also linked to the radical Viale Jenner mosque in Milan, a former Imam of which was incarcerated last month, while Ghafir and Ilhami were also apparently helping run a local Islamic center. According to the press, the other students involved in the Perugia sweep are being looked into for connections.

In my earlier post on Game I described the group as a Lone Wolf Pack – something I have been exploring in greater detail in a longer paper that I am currently working on. The phenomenon is not in fact isolated to Italy, both the Fort Dix group in the United States from 2007 and Jihad Hamad and Youssef el Hajdib, who in July 2006 left a set of suitcase bombs on a Cologne train, have elements similar to the Italian groups. What is interesting, however, is the apparent high instance of these sorts of groups in Italy – I have yet to see any analysis as to exactly why this is (of course, it has to be said that all of these Italian groups are being tried or are on trial (or have not been tried and simply ejected from the country) – so they are in fact still innocent until proven guilty. Only Game would appear to be conclusively guilty of something).

What is not clear is to me yet is whether these sorts of groups coming together is something which needs to be analyzed within the context of Al Qaeda plots or if it should be analyzed within the context of trying to understand the impact of the internet as an accelerant of the ideology. Or maybe it is something which is a social phenomenon which needs to be understood using the sort of social network analysis that Marc Sageman deploys. Whichever is the case, it would not surprise me if this sort of phenomenon in one way or another becomes an increasingly important element of counter-terrorism in the West that will require deeper understanding and research.

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Inspired by a post over at Kings of War which looked at the three big party’s defense proposals in their manifestos, I decided to perform a similar operation of the big three counter-terrorism proposals. As it turned out this was a pretty easy endeavor, given the almost complete absence of major shifts or proposals in any of them. To look at their respective proposals in alphabetical order:

Conservative
- ban Hizb-ut-Tahrir and “close down organizations which attempt to fund terrorism from the UK”
- create a new National Resilience Team for Homeland Security
- (I have to confess that I could not find this in their manifesto, but the BBC seem to think it is) review “the controversial control orders system”

Labour
- “we will develop our PREVENT strategy to combat extremism.”

Liberal Democrats
- scrap control orders
- reduce pre-charge detention to 14 days
- allow intercepts in court, make greater use of post-charge questioning.

All three seem to suggest that the police should take the lead in counter-terrorism, and all condemn torture (the Libdems want to launch a “full judicial inquiry into allegations of British complicity in torture and state kidnapping”). Afghanistan features in all three as linking a foreign threat to a domestic threat, while Pakistan is of greatest apparent concern to Labour – though all are concerned with unstable states as a threat to domestic security. Al Qaeda is only mentioned specifically by Labour. Aside from Labour, none of the parties discuss the allegedly all-important Preventing Violent Extremism strategy (and even Labour merely refers to it as listed above, without giving any more detail). In the debates, the topic has come up even less, with it merely being referred to within the context of Afghanistan.

Now on the one hand, it is worth remembering that for the two parties not in power, they do not have access to all of the intel that the government does and thus are potentially preparing blind. But at the same time, it is surprising that in essence all of the main parties have failed to present in their party manifesto’s anything substantial to address the threat of terrorism.

There are, in my mind, two answers to this: they either think that it is not a problem (or agree with the current strategy approach aside from the small tweaks they offer) and have thus omitted it consciously, or they have no idea what to do. Either option, however, offers the conclusion that they have no fresh ideas about what can be done to address a problem that senior police officers, politicians and security agents believe will remain with us “for a generation” and for which the budget has trebled since Labour have been in power (according to their own figures cited in the manifesto).

Of course, there is the possible conclusion that it is my personal fixation on the topic which is exaggerating the importance of its absence. Maybe in fact this is all a conscious effort to tone down the centrality or importance of counter-terrorism within the government’s duties, and thus maybe defuse some of the mythology around it. Still, if this is the really the case, then you would expect some greater acknowledgement of the choice given the fact that the government has been moving in the opposite direction, spreading counter-terrorism across an ever expanding number of agencies and departments.

To look at the specific proposals, the Liberal Democrat proposals seem most progressive, but at the same time, I wonder if they will not find themselves of a different view when they are in power and can see what I imagine is the intelligence that is bringing around the control order regime. Still, there is some substantial logic behind the premise that the government should prosecute or lift control orders and that the ongoing situation is not sustainable in the extended long term. If they are able to force the discussion about how to conclude this situation, then this is excellent news. In contrast, I remain unsure about the proposal to proscribe Hizb ut Tahrir. If it is implemented, I have a feeling it will merely increase the power and mystique of the organization with little substantial counter-terror benefit.

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I have been re-reading Stefan Aust’s excellent book The Baader Meinhof Complex and have just finished trudging through the part which looks at the Stammheim trials period when four of the main Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction, RAF) members, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Mienhof, and Jan-Carl Raspe were held in the high security Stammheim Prison while they were on trial for a series of RAF attacks.

What is interesting about the Baader-Meinhof story is that in many ways there are parallels to be drawn with the current wave of extreme Islamist terrorism in the West. A small group of individuals, mostly young, educated and from middle class families, become persuaded that the system that they were born into and live in is fatally broken and the only way to fix it is through the use of purgative violence. Of course, it is equally easy to pull holes in the comparison, but that is not the focus of my train of thought here.

The Stammheim part highlights the differences to me. For the RAF group the trial was an opportunity to grandstand for the media and an attendant audience. They disrupted the trial to the point that they were not even present to hear the conclusion. This has manifestly not been the case with the ever increasing roster of Islamist terrorist cases in the West, where instead the defendants have chosen, for the most part, to use the trials as an opportunity to plead innocence while they remain silent about any connections to other terrorists.

Olivier Roy, in his paper, “Al Qaeda in the West as a Youth Movement: The Power of a Narrative,” describes the phenomenon thus:

“most of AQ suspects keep silent or deny any involvement during their trial, a very unusual attitude for political militants, who traditionally transform their trial into a political tribune.”

This is one of the fascinating elements of the movement which has found appeal amongst a specific community of young Muslims in the West. These individuals appear committed enough to go and train in camps in dangerous corners of the world and then come back home to plot, but they do not appear willing to try to stand up for their convictions in court or to publish voluminous texts to support their activities. At the same time they are also remarkably resilient in terms of caving to pressure and giving each other or their superiors up. To paraphrase what I recall hearing a former senior copper saying, the halls of Paddington Green police station (where most terror suspects are taken in the UK), are not “ringing” with the sounds of confessions.

On the one hand, this could be explained away by the fact that they genuinely are innocent and are merely sticking to their guns. But in counter to this, in cases where there is a pretty heavy burden of evidence against them (for example, Bilal Abdulla who was literally caught sitting on his bomb outside Glasgow airport), we have still had them denying culpability and offering pretty thin political statements to defend their actions. Nowhere have there been the sort of detailed political writing and haranguing that we find during the RAF trials: the RAF prisoners used to send letters between each other arguing about their political beliefs and published books and statements about their cause. The closest I have seen to this is the odd letter that leaks out from the prison system which is claimed to be written by incarcerated extremists, but these mostly complain about their treatment inside rather than going into the finer points of Islamic jurisprudence.

But the question remains as to whether this is a sign of a lack of seriousness and thus weakness of the central motivating ideology, or whether it is a sign of strength. Weakness since they do not appear to be able to back their convictions with stirring rhetoric, or strength since they are willing to take their punishment and silently sit it out to prepare to return to the fight when they are released. Given the control order regime which can continue to hinder activity once released, there is a benefit to staying quiet and acting calm. After all, hatred is patient.

For the RAF the Stammheim trials marked the end of the first generation of fighters. Ulrike Meinhof killed herself long before the trial ended, while the other three killed themselves a few months after the verdicts were handed down (a fourth member, Irmgard Moller, also attempted suicide, but survived the attempt and claimed it was all a government plot). The group continued on until it officially disbanded in 1998 – giving it a total lifespan of 28 years. I am unsure how far we are along in the current lifespan.

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Cognizant of my own limited knowledge on the topic of Russia and terrorism, I asked Dr Cerwyn Moore of the University of Birmingham, one of the top scholars on the topic in the UK, for his thoughts. He has kindly agreed to share them with us all:

“Since 2000, there have been three waves of suicide attacks linked to the insurgency in the North Caucasus. I won’t detail the three waves here, but will note that the recent attacks in Moscow on Monday (29th March), and the most recent suicide attack directed against security personnel in Dagestan (Kizlyar, 31st March), form part of a wave of attackers which began in 2008, when a lone bomber detonated explosives near military officials in the highland Chechen town of Vedeno. Thereafter, a suicide attacker attempted to assassinate Musa Medov, an Ingush official, again in 2008. Although overshadowed by the war in South Ossetia, another suicide attack occurred in 2008, in November, when a female attacker detonated explosives in a taxi cab in the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz. Few statements were released related to these attacks, but all served symbolic, tactical and strategic purposes, in support of the case of the North Caucasus insurgency led by Dokku Umarov. Throughout 2009, suicide attacks became commonplace in Chechnya, Ingushetia and latterly in Dagestan, as the third wave gained momentum. For the most part, the attacks revolve around five points:

1)    They have served a broader strategic goal, garnering international news attention, while allowing the insurgents to draw federal forces into an evermore internecine cycle of violence, thereby demonstrating the weakness of federal and local security measures. 
2)    They have served a tactical goal, targeting key officials such as the Ingush President, federal forces including key police compounds in Nazran (17th August, 2009) and in Dagestan (6th Jan 2010) and more general interior ministry and political officials.
3)    Thirdly, they have been used symbolically, on the one hand, to unnerve local political officials, and on of the other hand, to bring the war to the heart of Russia. Given widespread human rights abuses by local law enforcement agencies, although condemned by the wider population, the attacks are viewed as a legitimate retaliatory tool by the military units of the insurgency.
4)    Politically and strategically, the leader of the insurgency, Doku Umarov has successfully integrated different ethnic groups, including a younger generation of disillusioned men and women into the insurgency. In 2008, Umarov re-instated the Riyad us-Saliheyn, a franchise organisation which links different jamaats and facilitates the use of suicide terrorism. The Riyad us-Saliheyn, essentially a group of martyrs, was founded by Shamil Basayev as part of the second war, and was used to deadly effect in the second wave of suicide attacks, named ‘Operation Boomerang’. Following the Beslan school siege and a series of decrees and military reforms by the leader of the resistance between late 2005 and 2006, the unit was disbanded.
5)    Finally, the recent attacks raise the broader issue of the relationship between insurgencies and terrorist networks. How do the former host the latter? How do these relationships evolve and change over time? The insurgency in the North Caucasus is, and indeed always has been multi-ethnic, with Chechen fighters at the forefront. The transformation from a separatist movement to a North Caucasus movement has its roots in the early 1990s, but became more marked in the inter-war year. This shift has also acted as a catalyst as a result of widespread poverty, years of conflict and latterly, the influence of religious radicalism and internal radicalisation.

Together these points have given insurgents from the North Caucasus, and Umarov, a willingness and capability to mount a campaign of suicide terrorism across the North Caucasus and in the heartland of Russia, as part of a broader anti-Russian or anti-federal campaign.  
The return of suicide attacks to Russia, as well as the steady escalation in the usage of this tactic is partly due to the pressure exerted by federal forces since April 2009, and partly due to internal radicalisation in the North Caucasus insurgency. Commentators, reporters and even some academics often mistakenly focus on the sensational aspects of the attacks; the use of female attackers (depending on how attacks are assessed, there have been nearly as many male attacks over the last ten years) or so-called ‘black widows’, highlighting trauma, the influence of foreign groups or Wahhabi religion, contagion or Al Qaeda, as a motivational causes, instead of recognising the tactical, retaliatory and strategic and symbolic nature of the attacks, or the local cultural narratives of resistance and blood revenge, and dynamics in the insurgency. Moreover, commentaries often conflate attacks with suicidal intent (such as the Moscow Theatre or Beslan School siege) with suicide attacks. All of which blurs, rather than effectively highlights the decision to employ, halt and resume the use of suicide attacks as part campaign of terrorism within a broader multi-ethnic insurgency.

Although notable exceptions exist, a tendency also exists to view attacks through the lens of Russian studies, clouding analysis of the organizational dynamics in the insurgency. At the forefront of the recent wave of attacks, as I have argued, are two key jamaats – the first, the Ingush group headed by a long serving insurgent who operates under the nom de guerre Magas, hosted the young Islamic convert and radical ideologist, widely considered to be one of the advocates who re-instigated the use of suicide attacks – Said Buratsky. Said Buratsky was killed, along with around eight other people in a two day shoot-out in Ingushetia at the start of March. A few weeks earlier, a long-serving member of the Arab mujahideen, and key leader involved in the organisation of the insurgency, Seif Islam, was also killed by federal forces, who have had other notable successes in recent months targeting the jamaats which operate in Dagestan. Moreover, in the last few weeks Abu Khaled, another foreign fighter, and a key aid of the leader of the insurgency, Doku Umarov, was also killed in federal operations. These setbacks, along with the severe restrictions, widespread human rights abuses appear to have forced the insurgents to escalate their campaign – targeting the metro stations near the FSB headquarters, the Lubyanka, and the Park Kultury station, near the interior ministry in Moscow, as part of the broader wave of suicide attacks. Both the FSB and Interior Ministry were said to be behind the recent military successes which have targeted the leadership of the insurgency.    
The recent attacks in Moscow clearly result from recent federal successes in the low-intensity conflict which has beset the region since 2007. Whilst federal authorities have repeatedly claimed major successes, indicating that the insurgency was all but defeated, wide-scale poverty in the region, corruption and hard-line policies by Kremlin – repeated in recent days in statements by Vladimir Putin (which are, incidentally, eerily reminiscent of statements he made prior to the outbreak of the second Russo-Chechen War) - appointed strongmen, and apparatchiks have helped to radicalise a generation of new fighters willing to undertake ‘smertniki’ operations or suicide attacks.” 

Cerwyn has covered this topic extensively elsewhere (see his webpage for a complete list), including two recent pieces for the Jamestown Foundation on the recent wave of attacks (here, and here). He also has a forthcoming book “Post-Modern War in Kosovo and Chechnya” from Manchester University Press. He can be contacted directly at: c.moore.1@bham.ac.uk

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Up North at Manchester Crown Court, brothers Abbas and Ilyas Iqbal have been found guilty this week of charges relating to their the dissemination of material useful to terrorists and preparation of acts of terrorism. A third man, a white Muslim convert, was cleared of charges against him.

The men became dubbed the "Blackburn Resistance" after a video was uncovered on a mobile SIM card in Abbas Iqbal’s luggage as he tried to board a plane at Manchester airport. The clip showed the men running around a park in Blackburn in camouflage and seemingly imitating command training with As Sahab-type music in the background. At the beginning of the video the words the "Blackburn Resistance" featured prominently, and a voice intoned "They are fighting against oppression, they are The Blackburn Resistance."

Alongside this footage and a wide array of other photos of the men brandishing or trying weapons out, a variety of knives, BB guns, an air rifle and pistol, crossbows and live ammunition were found with the men. Two documents entitled “attack planning” and “urban combat” were also found bearing the brothers fingerprints.

But while some of the pictures of the group are quite dramatic looking, the reality is that it is very hard to imagine this group as a cell of hardened terrorists. Cognizant of this, the prosecution was very careful to not paint the men in too heavy a light, recognizing that "some aspects of the material may at first blush seem almost comical in [their] amateurishness." Nonetheless, they saw the group as "intoxicated by the evil of terrorism," and actively preparing to disseminate recruiting material abroad.

The men ultimately received relatively light sentences, Abbas Iqbal, 24, was sentenced to two years in prison for the dissemination of terrorist publications, while his younger brother Ilyas, 23, was incarcerated for 18 months for possessing a document likely to be useful to a terrorist. Given he has spent almost that amount of time already on remand, Ilyas was released, while his older brother will still serve another three to four months. Their co-defendant was cleared on all charges having spent 387 days in custody. A fourth man picked up with them at the airport is still on trial in a separate case.

But it is hard to judge exactly how much of a victory this really is for counter-terrorists. This is not a cell of global travelers with contacts to Al Qaeda core, but rather a group of young men who through the internet and home computers were able to create an imitation set of videos and pictures of themselves dressing up as terrorists. That they may have later gone on to do something is of course perfectly possible, but as the prosecutor pointed out: "at the stage when they were stopped by police, they had not got very far."

It is easy to see how this could play badly in the court of public opinion, where what even the prosecution described as "larking around in a park in Blackburn," was painted as potential terrorist training. The fact they seem not to have been receiving much coverage in the press is a good thing, and probably the product of the fact that very few editors would have taken the group very seriously.

A final point I would add about these chaps, however, is how lucky they are to have been caught doing these acts in the UK – had they been nabbed for similar things in the U.S., they would probably be looking at very long stints inside.

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The UK is often seen at both the forefront of the violent Islamist threat and also the legislation that is being crafted in the West to counter it. Consequently, it was very interesting to see the Home Office publish a paper by DSTL (which I always thought was a more tech-based lab) that provides an overview and analysis of the current research that has been undertaken in the UK looking at counter-terrorism legislation and its impact on public opinion and opinion forming.

The conclusions are pretty bleak for those actually seeking to obtain useful information from the sea of research that has been produced on the topic (as someone in HMG put it to me late last year, much of what has been pumped out under the aegis of research on countering terrorism is "dross."), but I suppose are quite positive for those who are in fact planning to produce more of this research: the report concludes highlighting "the need for further research".

This would I suppose discount reams of speculative articles essentially re-treading what are believed to be public perceptions based on reading the press or Comment is Free (one can only hope that previous pieces I have done do not fall into this category, apologies if they do).

Here are a few quick points I took away from the DSTL paper:

Perceptions are at the heart of what this paper is trying to probe and government is clearly trying to understand: the very title "What perceptions do the UK public have concerning the impact of counter-terrorism legislation implemented since 2000?" shows this, but at the same time, the report highlights how this is something that has not been analyzed or measured effectively at all. In part this is a problem since more generally the report concludes this is a topic that is hard to measure.

But with regards terrorism legislation, it is an even harder thing to measure practically when we consider the low number of actual terrorist attacks (though this is a good problem to have), and thus measuring reactions to legislation which can appear to be targeting individuals who, in practical point of fact, have failed yet to carry out their murderous plans.

A big tangible take-away is that people don't like stop and search and think that it is targeting groups unfairly, etc. In fact, according to the paper stop and search is the only demonstrable policy which can conclusively said to be unpopular in implementation (conclusions about reactions to other policies are mostly anecdotal). Hardly a surprising conclusion to reach, and one that increasingly makes me feel as though I need to see some conclusive evidence that it actually helps or does anything if we are to continue it – under certain circumstances maybe it is necessary, but blanket stop and search for terrorism issues cannot have stopped or disrupted many terrorist plots.

In a way connected to this, it seems as though the public has absolutely no faith in the government on terrorist matters, though this likely is exacerbated by my earlier point about perceptions. While apparently if something has a judicial stamp on it, it is seen in a more positive light, I have a feeling people are in fact equally skeptical about that if pushed.

I recall giving a presentation in which I highlighted that in fact police had to present a suspect before a judge every 7 days while he was being held in a pre-charge state on terrorism charges to present their case for keeping him longer, I was met with a wave of skeptical hems and haws about the fairness of this.

Two statistical details highlighted which I rather enjoyed: it turns out we really don’t like the government getting their hands on our DNA unless we have done something very naughty. An understandably high degree of paranoia I would have thought, but good to see in numbers. Secondly, and less amusing, apparently 45% of people think that denying people a trial for terrorism charges is a "price worth paying." Admittedly the date the poll was taken is relatively soon after 7/7, but it seems to me that this is a fundamental thing that we need to hold on to if we are planning on marking long-term success in this conflict.

We will only do this if we fight it on terms that we have laid out before we step on to the battlefield, not making it up as we go along. We may have to build some flexibility into this in the long-term, but nonetheless there are certain key elements we have to establish agreement on before we proceed too far.

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Over at the Inner London Crown Court the case is being heard against Cossor Ali, the wife of Abdullah Ahmed Ali, one of the leaders of the UK end of the plot disrupted in August 2006, alternatively known by its police codename "Overt" or as the "liquid plot" after the main bomb ingredient (and the reason for the subsequent restrictions on liquids on airplanes). Cossor Ali stands accused of being complicit in the plot by knowing about it prior to its occurrence and failing to alert the authorities.

The outcome of the case is unclear at this point, and at the moment one of the newer pieces of information to emerge is that Abdullah Ali was something of an absent and abusive husband – or at the very least domineering. Cossor Ali has claimed she felt her personality was being erased when she was absorbed into her husband's family and that he was away for the birth of their child.

The evidence for the prosecution appears to hinge around statements recorded in Cossor Ali's diary about extremist literature she read and the fact that she appeared to support the activities her husband was undertaking. She hoped he might become a "shahada" (a "martyr", though the defence contends this means "the highest form of spirituality"). Her fingerprints were also found on some radical material at their home.

She is not the first wife in the UK to be brought up on charges of either knowing or being complicit in their husband's activities. Mehreen Haji, wife of convicted Al Qaeda member Habib Ahmed, was cleared of arranging terrorist funding.

Tahira Tabassum, wife of attempted Tel Aviv bomber Omar Khan Sharif, was cleared of knowing what her husband was plotting. Bouchra el-Hor was tried and cleared, while her husband Yassin Nassari, was convicted on charges of possessing extremist material.

Mohammed Siddique Khan's wife was picked up in a wave of arrests that followed the long investigation into the July 7, 2005 bombings, but was later released without facing any charges. On the other side of the coin, Yeshiembert Girma, the wife of Hussain Osman one of the failed July 21 bombers, was convicted of helping orchestrate Osman's escape and of knowing about the plot prior to the event.

Fellow failed bomber Yassin Omar's 17-year old recent fiancée Fardosa Abdullahi pled guilty to charges of facilitating his escape. Beyond British shores, there is of course the story of Muriel Degauque, the Belgian convert who blew herself up in Iraq soon after her husband had attempted a similar attack.

In other instances, there are stories of couples that meet while involved in radical groups (or join them together), a phenomenon that is maybe less surprising when one considers the time commitment and passion that is required when one joins such groups.

The underlying question, however, is the role, if any, of wives in terrorist plots? In Saudi Arabia, wives (or future spouses) are an integral part of the de-radicalization process, supposedly acting as stabilizers to men who have strayed.

While in Belgium Malika el Aroud, the wife of one of Ahmed Shah Masood’s assassins who later remarried a different plotter, is alleged to be a key figure in a radicalizing network. The point is that it would appear as though wives can play both a positive and negative role – and this is not to pry into the broader role of women in radicalizing networks more generally.

A recent story in the Telegraph suggested that security services believe a team of women had been dispatched by Al Qaeda to attack the West, while the BBC highlighted the phenomenon of female recruitment into extremist groups.

What remains somewhat unexplored (to my knowledge – any pointers to interesting reports greatly appreciated) is the role that women have played in terrorist plots – are they accelerators in their husbands radicalization (or possible plotters)? Or are they innocent naïf's who either get caught up in their husband's plotting or are firmly kept out of the loop by domineering males?

Or is none of this the case, and in fact they could play a positive role in shifting the husband’s attention from his extreme ideas? All of which would be useful knowledge when attempting to craft a counter- or de-radicalization strategy.

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In response to Amm Samm's last post, "visitor" raised a number of interesting points, one of which I wanted to use the opportunity to quickly highlight.

Amm Samm: "there are no clear metrics for measuring success"
Visitor: "what do you offer?"

This is something that I have to admit that I have also been guilty of, complaining about the absence of metrics of PREVENT without necessarily offering any solutions. Consequently, I will use this opportunity to sketch out some thoughts I have been recently having on the topic (Amm has some coming up too I believe).

On the one hand, it should be quite easy to measure success: no terrorism attacks means the strategy is "preventing" terrorism. But how do we know whether what we are spending public money is actually having an impact and it is not other factors? This is important if we do not simply want to be throwing money away.

One solution that has been offered is to calculate the amount of good that groups receiving Prevent funding are able to do in their community: are they helping kids, providing useful local social functions, etc.

A police view that I have instead heard is that success in Prevent is measured by the amount the community trusts and engages with them – are communities coming forwards to offer information on people unsolicited? Are traditionally more sceptical communities using local social services, and thus "trusting" the system and becoming more engaged and less alienated?

But while both of these sound like reasonable areas to use as a basis to measure success, it remains hard to know exactly how many terrorists have been "prevented" in each case for each pound spent. Also, it seems awfully unclear to me that either of these metrics is somehow evidence that the government's strategy is in fact shielding us from the few individuals within society who choose to get involved in terrorism.

Without wanting to sound like I am throwing the baby out with the bathwater, maybe the root of the problem is that the scope we have defined for PREVENT is simply too large, and thus this is why we cannot find suitable metrics: maybe if we pared PREVENT down to simply being activity which pre-empts terrorist activity before it reaches the PURSUE stage then we might be able to measure success it in better.

As I have said before, this does not mean stopping work being done under PREVENT, simply de-tagging it from security. Instead, let us have PREVENT be more intelligence based activity or strengthened (and targeted) social work, alongside efforts to actively counter the spread of radical ideas and breaking up groups actively recruiting people to go abroad to fight. While it will remain hard to calculate success (we are still after all talking about measuring something by its absence), it will theoretically be more tangible than the slightly abstract societal measures that are currently offered by NI 35.

I look forward to hopefully having a conversation with people on this either in the comments or via email if you would prefer.

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The decision to proscribe Al Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, and a cluster of their successor groups is not entirely surprising. The combination of a successful prosecution in Luton of five members (or individuals linked to Al Muhajiroun or one of its off-shoots) after their performance at a homecoming parade for troops from Iraq in March 2009 and the fact that the Prime Minister got dragged into the public debate over whether the group was going to make some sort of ceremonial march through Wootton Bassett, all pointed to things coming to some sort of a head. The question really is whether this time it might mean something final for the group?

The short answer is: no. It would seem highly unlikely that this is the last we shall hear of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s acolytes. Last time the Home Office went forwards with a decision to proscribe some of them in July 2006 (that time it was Al Ghurabaa (the strangers) and the Saved Sect), the decision was made in the months after a group of them had been picked up and charged by police for comments they made at a protest outside the Danish Embassy in which they crossed the line and "solicited murder." In that instance four group members were given custodial sentences, while in April and May of 2007 another six group members were arrested on charges of "inciting terrorism overseas" and "terrorist fundraising." 

This clamp-down of sorts appeared to work for about a year, though the group did not go away and simply adopted a lower profile. Then the website http://www.islam4uk.com popped up and things started to take off again, culminating with ever more confrontational and loud statements, an attack on Conservative Muslim peer Baroness Warsi and the protests for which the aforementioned Luton group were just convicted. And while I have seen nothing linking Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to the group, the renewed attention he drew to today's Londonistan meant some reaction was likely.

If history is anything to go, this should mean that we will see some further arrests in the near future – recent comments by some prominent members appear to tread close to the lines laid out in recent terrorism legislation of incitement or glorification of terrorism. But this will undoubtedly not stop them from reappearing once again, as such groups thrive on the oxygen of publicity (Anjem Chaudhury was quite open in his admission that the main reason for their raising the idea of the march in Wootton Bassett was to attract publicity), and given the relatively light sentences that will be imposed, these individuals will be in and out of jail (some of those from the previous swathe of arrests are already back out). These boys believe they are about God's work and a short stint inside is unlikely to deter them.

The more interesting question is what is their relationship to terrorism? The fact they have been proscribed under anti terrorism legislation means that the British government says there is a link – according to the BBC the impetus for the ban was a JTAC report that was commissioned after Al Muhajiroun reappeared last year – but it is hard to imagine that serious terrorists would associate with people who go around drawing the sorts of attention to themselves that the Al Muhajiroun chaps seem to thrive on. Instead, it is more likely that individuals who are involved in terrorism operate on the fringes of such groups – keeping an eye out for possible recruits amongst the zealous youngsters who are drawn in by to these groups. By shutting them down in this way, the government is at least creating a further hurdle to making them quite so easily accessible – though it is likely that they will in the long-term simply reappear under a new guise. For a period at least, they will have to tread carefully.

Conveniently I suppose, this decision to ban the group comes just ahead of an upcoming article that I have in March's Studies in Conflict and Terrorism journal entitled "The Tottenham Ayatollah and the Hook Handed Cleric: An examination of all their jihadi children," which catalogues the links to terrorism from Al Muhajiroun and Supporters of Shariah (Bakri and Hamza's groups respectively). More on that later!


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The revelations that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab may have been in part radicalized in the United Kingdom are not entirely surprising. He was in the UK while he was a student, traditionally a young person's most fecund period of political activism. Furthermore, there is the unfortunate reality that while the more overt forms of extremism and training offered by individuals like Abu Hamza al-Masri, Abdullah el-Faisal or Abu Qatada may have died down (or gone beneath the radar), many elements of what has been termed "Londonistan" do remain active. Put simply, London remains a place where extreme elements and ideas are easy to find for anyone seeking them.

But nonetheless, we need to be wary of sparking off some sort of overreaction to this. That Abdulmutallab, like a number (according to the Times count, a further three) of previously convicted terrorists in the UK, may have been the President of the University Islamic Society and organized conferences on subjects related to Islam and the war on terror cannot in itself be read as some sort of marker of his later terrorist action. How many have been through these roles and gone on to nothing remotely related to terrorism? To watch all of these individuals would doubtless be tough for already stretched services, and to ban all such groups and conferences would merely drive them underground and raise all sorts of fearsome debates about freedom of speech.

Unlike some friends, I would also contend the argument that the University of London is somehow the connective tissue – while a number of convicted British terrorists have passed through these hallowed halls (about 10 if I recall a count over drinks the other night) – innumerable others have passed through harmlessly (including most contributors to this blog). Compared to other Universities, it may seem like a high concentration (though I have not seen an absolute count yet anywhere making this an unsubstantiated assertion), but then again, consider how many students have passed through University of London: according its own count, there are currently 120,000 enrolled. The most likely explanation for these similarities is that extremist recruiters seeking warriors for Al Qaeda’s cause are probably hidden amongst London's diverse community, and they are fishing in the pools nearest to them.

Maybe a more disturbing link should be drawn through the Yemen-UK connection. Back in late 1998, seven British Muslims (two of whom were related to Abu Hamza) were picked up and incarcerated for their part in plotting a bombing campaign and kidnapping alongside a local Islamist group. In 2000, following the death of a young Briton in a incident involving a firearm at a madrassah north of the capital Sanaa, the British Ambassador went to investigate and was shocked to discover 30 British students at the school. Since then I have heard stories of journalists coming across young Britons, amongst other foreigners, seeking jihadi camps in Yemen. Furthermore, the presence of fabled extremist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, means that these youngsters can find a teacher there who speaks a language they understand.

What really stands out, however, is the familiarity of all of these connections. The fact they are not that novel highlights the fact that the ideological battle is nowhere near won. Here we are almost a decade since 9/11 and we are still seeing suicide attackers on airplanes, having passed down a path that is not unknown. This is both a break-down in security, but also a sad indictment that the stream of young men seeking martyrdom has not diminished.

Here are a few links if you want to dig deeper:

News from Nigeria
Britain turned him away
Organized "terror conf"
AQ "groomed" him in London
His time at UCL
Unis "complicit" in his radicalization
Con Coughlin "when will we wake up"
NYT long piece on London links
NYT piece news on his contacts and family background
CNN with interviews with London friends, and that he became more radical in London
Farouk "not radicalized" at UCL
THES article by UCL head

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Another week passes and more stories of young Westerners showing up on Somalia's battlefields. Two distinct tales jump out this time – first, the recent bombing in Mogadishu was the work of a Danish-Somali suicide bomber; and second, an 18 year old Italian-Somali handed himself over to government forces claiming that he was sent over to fight by his father.

The first case appears to be what can increasingly be described to be the traditional model of recruitment for al-Shabaab. Drawn by a combination of religious zeal and nationalism, 25 year old Abdulrahman Ahmed Haji moved back to Somalia from his adopted home just outside Copenhagen about 18 months ago, taking a pregnant wife with him. Friends report that he was a gregarious young man who used to party and play football, but that recently he had started to withdraw into himself. A local leader in Copenhagen claimed that the young man had increasingly turned to religion.

The young man’s father claims that Abdulrahman has apparently been made a scapegoat as he was the only person who was not recognized amongst the dead in the hall – he claims he was invited to the graduation ceremony that was bombed by a friend who was also killed in the blast. As is typical of Shabaab, they denied responsibility for the attack which killed 24 including 3 government ministers. The bomber allegedly masqueraded as a veiled woman, and since the attack took place during a graduation ceremony at the local medical university there was further chaos afterwards at local hospitals.

The second story is stranger, and was initiated when a young man started waving a white flag on the battlefield in Mogadishu, surrendering to local government forces. Under interrogation, the 18 year old revealed his Italian roots and claimed "I have no intention of being a suicide bomber. My father sent me into this hell. He wanted me to fight jihad, holy war. But none of this interests me." Born in Mogadishu, Asad Shami Sharif Abdallah joined his father in Padova, Italy when he was four, where he went to school and obtained an Italian passport. According to his father, he was awkward in Italy and wouldn’t always go to school, wandering instead around the city.

The father's account has been called into question – according to the son, it was the father who at 16 filled his head with stories of jihad, told him about his religious duty as a holy warrior and took him as far as Dubai on the path to fight. Once in Dubai his father put him a separate plane which took him to Mogadishu where he was met by three men who took him to Chismaio for training. The father denies this, however, claiming that he did indeed send the boy back to Somalia, but because his mother had called for him. The Italian press has focused on the fact that the father would choose to send his son from il bel paese to war-torn Mogadishu, but it is also worth pointing out that it took the boy almost three years to hand himself in.

Whichever the specifics of these two cases, they do point most clearly to the continuing strength of connection between diaspora Somali's and the conflict that ravages their home country. While the west has not seen any tangible backlash yet (the specifics of the Melbourne case remain unclear), and the numbers remain relatively small, there have been numerous cases in the past that demonstrate that returning jihadis can produce problems.

I have written a bit about this topic, including this paper for the ASPI and a shorter piece on the Minneapolis group. Grazie to Lorenzo for his thoughts and tips on this topic.

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The conclusion of the trial against Adam Khatib, 22; Nabeel Hussain, 25; and Mohammed Shamim Udin, 39 marks further confirmation of the apparently very real plot that was being hatched back in the summer of 2006. The three, described by the prosecution as the "backroom team" were all linked to Abdulla Ahmed Ali, the man who appears to be at the centre of the UK end of the plotting. Ali was convicted in September of this year along with co-conspirators Tanweer Hussain and Assad Sarwar – all were given life sentences (Ali 40 years; Hussain 36 years; and Sarwar 32 years). Three other men who appeared in court with them are facing a third re-trial, sometime next year.

These three appear to be part of the network of East London natives that Abdullah Ali recruited to help in various aspects of the plot. It is not clear that any of them knew that airlines were the target, but in at least Khatib's case, he was deeply involved in the plot. By his own account a rebellious teenager, Khatib dabbled in drugs and wrote an essay at school for French class about "going to Afghanistan, finding a wife and joining Al Qaeda," signing it "Adam Osama bin Laden." After graduating, he met Abulla Ali through one of Ali's brothers and the older man appears to have taken him under his wing.

Significantly, in 2005 Khatib went with Ali on a six month trip to Pakistan – at the same time as already convicted co-conspirator and plot "quartermaster" Assad Sarwar. Sarwar admitted on the stand to learning how to make bombs in Pakistan, and in emails and information released during this trial, it would appear as though Khatib too – as when they returned from their trip in Pakistan, he started undertaking in-depth research into bomb making materials. He also shared notes on his findings with other plotters, giving advice on how to construct devices and was apparently in direct contact with their contacts in Pakistan.

The other two appear to have played a more supportive role – Nabeel Hussain met with Ali a number of times, had written a will, was in contact with him on a particular number that Ali only used for him and Sarwar, and had applied for a £25,000 loan. The jury obviously did not find anything suspicious in the fact that Uddin had allowed Ali to use his computer to do research on bomb making material, but did find him guilty of possessing information useful to terrorists. According to a police statement, "the three men made no comment during police interviews."

While two allegedly key players in this plot remain at large – one on a control order and the other living freely in London (Bruce Hoffman's recent article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism goes into some detail about them) – this set of arrests highlights again the importance of Abdulla Ali in this cell. He may not have been the absolute emir of the plot, but it certainly appears as though it was his ability to draw his East London friends into his conspiracy that turned a plan being developed in the badlands of Pakistan into a conspiracy involving up to 8 British Muslim suicide bombers.

Yahya Birt has argued that this plot will mark the "end of an era" in Al Qaeda plotting against the UK – in that the model of using British Muslims who appear loosely connected to networks on the periphery of the radical preachers appears to have been repeatedly compromised and is probably now beyond practical use for Al Qaeda. This may be a premature, though it has been almost three years since these chaps were arrested and while a number of other individuals connected to this network have been arrested, none have been involved in what Jonathan Evans described as "late stage planning." This is unlikely, however, to mark the end of Al Qaeda's plotting against the UK.

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I've just had the pleasure of finishing reading Heartland by Anthony Cartwright. It is what I have been allowing myself by way of a break as I continue to plough through mountains of information about extremism and radicalization in the UK.

The book is a work of fiction (hence the break I referred to above), that explores in a wonderfully nuanced and sensitive way the issues around the BNP's rise in the British Midlands against a backdrop of inter-racial tensions in the immediate post-9/11 period. Set in the fictional ward of Cinderheath – which is in the real city of Dudley in the heart of the Black Country – the book follows Rob, a young man who briefly touched minor celebrity as a footballer, but who is settling into life as a school P.E. teacher/assistant. His uncle is the local Labour councilor who is fighting a seemingly losing battle against a slick BNP candidate and his army of football thugs, as the local Muslim community builds a large mosque and people worry about the precedent set by the revelation that three local lads are in Guantanamo Bay (the very real "Tipton Taliban"). In the front of everyone's minds, however, is football – with England battling their way through the 2002 World Cup (to no avail), while the country's press are fixated on a local league game which is pitting a local Muslim side against a non-Muslim side.

Written in a way that seamlessly blends dialogue and prose, with a fine ear for the local brogue, the book does get a little confusing in parts. There are no chapters (it is divided into four sections: first half; half-time; second-half; and final score), and it can be hard to know exactly what is being said sometimes. But it really feels like it captures the underlying tensions that lie at the heart of the BNP's rise. There is less exploration of the motivations that might persuade young men from these areas to throw their lot in with the Taliban, but we get a sense of what it might be like for the locals with the references to a ghostlike "Adnan the mujahedeen" peppered throughout the book. Overall, well worth the read if you have a moment.

This also gives me an opportunity to highlight the case of the Tipton Taliban – who after being freed worked with Michael Winterbottom to produce the impressively one-sided The Road to Guantanamo (which can actually be found on YouTube in its entirety), which while rightly highlighting the excesses of Guantanamo, probably should have done a little more background research before charging ahead. I say this, as on largely un-watched and un-reported Channel 4 show called "Lie Lab," one of the chaps admitted that he had in fact been to a training camp and fired weapons while in Afghanistan (another refused to take the polygraph-type device that was at the heart of the show). Not quite the babes in the wood that they are portrayed as in the film.

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Much of the media attention into the publication of Lord Carlile's review of the dramatic arrests back on April 8th of this year in Liverpool and Manchester has focused on the criticisms he levelled at the police, security services and government in their conduct of the case, known as Operation Pathway. However, there has not been much analysis of the details of the alleged terrorist plot that the report uncovered, something that has been made even more interesting by the later revelations that the thread for the unravelling of the alleged plot around Najibullah Zazi came from a British source, "after an email address that was being monitored as part of the abortive Operation Pathway was suddenly reactivated." Zazi, you may recall, was the young Afghan arrested in the U.S. in September of this year who admitted to having trained at an Al Qaeda camp and who was building some sort of hydrogen peroxide device.

The report by Lord Carlile highlights MI5's belief that the central figure in the Pathway plot was one Abid Naseer – a Pakistani national registered as being a student at John Moores University in Liverpool where he was doing a BSc in Computer Sciences. It is unclear where Naseer is now, but a report from earlier this month in the Pakistani press seems to suggest he is still in British custody. Aside from assertions that he was connected to Al Qaeda overseas, the report indicates that Naseer was the author of a suspicious email which was at the centre of police concerns about how advanced the plot was (the email was found in his possession on a USB drive). The email, which can be found in full in the report with under the nickname "the 'hi buddy' email", seems to indicate that Naseer has chosen a wife, has met the family, and has now chosen a date for their "Nikkah" (wedding). This final element was what pushed security services into action, as it seemed to indicate that an attempted attack was imminent.

Under interrogation (over 7 days, using 33 tapes), Naseer provided no explanation or comment on any of this. No-one else appears able to corroborate his story that he may have been about to marry a girl called Nadia, and there was little evidence he was preparing to get married. It is likely that the same could be said for the many other women referenced during the earlier email intercepts that were partially leaked in the Telegraph. The report highlights, "throughout the period of police etc interest in the group, no women had been seen, and there had been absolutely no signs of wedding preparations."

In addition, it has now been revealed that a second man who was lived in the same house as Naseer in Cheetham Hill Manchester, a UK national named Hamza Khan Shenwari, was apparently working at a hair products company and had registered a hair care company at Companies House. Presumably the suspicion is that they intended to use this as a way of obtaining hydrogen peroxide – a common base for explosives. Under interview (over 6 days, on 21 tapes), he apparently also stayed mute, answering only one question "about the contents of a bag." Possibly of greater significance, "he became very agitated when shown the 'hi buddy' email."

None of this is of course conclusive in any way, but it, and the intelligence information he has seen, does appear to provide Lord Carlile with enough to assert "if the above [intelligence community information] was correct, the potential threat posed to national security was grave." He certainly seems to agree that some of the men may have been up to something, but the links to some of the others appear tenuous.

Further speculation in the press has hinted that this plot may have been linked to the broader network around the ever elusive (and possibly dead) Rashid Rauf, but as with most things connected to the man, it appears hard to pin anything down. The initial information into the group is believed to have possibly come from interrogations of a young American Bryant Neal Vinas, who is currently facing charges of plotting to attack the Long Island Rail Road after having trained at an Al Qaeda camp. What remains clear is that the Security Services are convinced something nefarious was afoot (according to Greater Manchester Police, the case remains "live"), but it will likely be a while before anything definitive comes out.

Finally, somewhat off this central point of this post, I note in paragraph 114 of the report that Lord Carlile highlights that "it would be useful too if a government Minister were to have added to his/her responsibilities the coordination of the community consequences of any major counter-terrorism operation." I am surprised that this does not already take place, as I would have assumed it might be a DCLG responsibility – can anyone out there cast a light on this?

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Two stories surfaced over last weekend which I have only now gotten around to processing properly – first is the case of Jan Schneider, the latest convert linked to the infamous Sauerland group that has the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) on high alert, and second is the case of Khalid Kelly, former head of Al Muhajiroun in Ireland (or at least one of its more prominent activists) who has now surfaced in the Swat valley.

Both stories are amusing in their own way thanks to their predictability. Jan Schneider is merely the latest in a list of sons of Germany linked to the Sauerland group who have gotten Germany's security services into a high state of tension. An earlier scare with Eric Brenniger turned embarrassing when he released a video of himself running around an Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) training camp, ridiculing BKA concerns. And just before the elections, Bekkay Harrach, a young German-Moroccan, released a series of threatening videos which seemed to suggest that AQ or the IJU had a terror attack planned in the weeks after the recent elections. Nothing, however, surfaced which might mean nothing, or might mean everything (there was an earlier discussion about this on Free Rad!cals). This time concerns are focused that Schneider may do something in Afghanistan, maybe follow in the footsteps of Cuneyt Ciftici, another member of the broader Sauerland group network nicknamed the 'Bavarian Taliban' who has the dubious honour of being Germany's first known suicide bomber.

The Khalid Kelly case is instead amusing for the bluntness of his "coming out" interview in the Sunday Times. In it he states "I'm already on the path to jihad….next week, inshallah, I could be in Afghanistan fighting a British soldier," and if he is unable to locate a British one, he will "settle" for an American. Charming as they may be, such comments are not entirely new for a chap who once said "Osama bin Laden is a good man," and who wishes that he had "been on those tube trains" on July 7, 2005. One imagines not in a passenger role.

Kelly is a known quantity and has been active in Al Muhajiroun circles since he came back from Saudi Arabia a changed man in 2002. Initially migrating to Saudi as a nurse, he was incarcerated for bootlegging and while inside converted to Islam. Upon returning to the UK, he started attending Omar Bakri Mohammed's lectures and became an activist with his group. Schneider appears to be a brighter sort of chap: German authorities claim he is one of the intellectual figures on the Islamist scene with others seeking him out for advice, making him a possible leader. A German born in Kazakhstan (during the war Stalin brutally relocated Germans living in the Soviet Union to Kazakhstan as a pre-emptive measure), he uses the name "Hamza" (powerful), has a young family and apparently studied in Saudi Arabia for a while.

Tactically both cases are interesting in that they suggest two known European support networks feeding fighters to Afghanistan remain active. The converts angle is also interesting, however, as it highlights the high proportion of converts who appear in radical groups. Most major plots in the UK have counted a convert amongst their ranks – something that was explained to me as the product of the fact that often a convert can have a catalytic radicalizing effect on a group. Any individual who chooses to convert is clearly already very zealous – and if they are attracted towards an extreme path, it stands to reason that this zeal will follow them down this road. This in turn might drive those around them to greater lengths to prove their piousness.

It is unclear how useful Kelly will prove to be in Swat – by his own admission he is out of shape, 42 years old and seems a little under-prepared with only five hours training on an M-16. Schneider may seem scarier, but at the same time, the German government's regular shouting of wolf about individuals in this network appears not to have been answered with any attacks, something one suspects is probably beginning to dull public belief in them.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, the other major theme that appears to be on everyone's minds in Britain's Muslim communities is focused around the belief that the UK's "Prevent" counter-terrorism strategy is in fact a vehicle for spying on Britain's Muslim communities. This is not an entirely new concern – one can see earlier expressions of it amongst the almost complete lack of trust in the British government that can be found, in particular when considering the counter-terrorism strategy, amongst communities in the UK.

The recent spate of worries have been set off by a report released by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), which looked in detail at the Prevent program (Prevent being the forward looking aspect of the 4 P's of Britain's counter-terrorism strategy which seeks to prevent people from choosing a path to terrorism). In particular, press attention was grabbed by the salacious details of how the government was using programs funded under Prevent to gather intelligence on communities. The scandal around this was spurred on when Ed Husain made some comments that proved a gift for the Guardian's Vikram Dodd, giving him the eye-catching headline: "Spying morally right, says thinktank."

Reports have long been bouncing about of the intelligence community pushing community workers in a variety of ways (one report from the Independent showed how Somali youth workers were being harassed into helping the Security Service), and I have heard first hand reports of tales of community workers being asked for intelligence information. Similarly, an official report by the Audit Commission & Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Constabulary (HMIC), entitled Preventing Violent Extremism: Learning and Development Exercise, done for the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government in October 2008, highlighted that "partnerships need to collect and process information from staff so that vulnerable individuals and communities can be identified."

And more generally, have we all forgotten about the infamous "Operation Rich Picture" by which the security services sought to map out Britain's Muslim communities and thereby understand them better? The point here is that I am surprised by how much of a splash this has made, though admittedly some of the more egregious cases should be highlighted and frowned upon. None of this is of course to excuse it, but I think the furor is masking a bigger picture issue.

As Prevent has expanded out to becoming Preventing Violent Extremism and from being one of four strands to being the central focus of counter-terrorism, it has started to grow beyond what one might usefully describe as its practical parameters. One of the deleterious side-effects of this is that it has slowly turned everyone into counter-terrorists, as it evolved from being program to counter terrorism to being something which was seeking to remodel a substantial portion of our society. Not only does this mean that a wide community of individuals beyond traditional security services need get involved, but also that an ever expanding pool of money was guided towards a specific community in an ever-broader fashion (a recent Newsnight report put it at £140 million).

On the one hand, a case can be made that years of underinvestment needed to be redressed, but at the same time, this focus appears to have also had the impact of exacerbating the community cohesion problems that the money was in part meant to fix. But within this also lies at the core of the problem: work which should be defined as social work is being re-defined as counter-terrorism.

The problem with Prevent is that it would appear as though we have long lost our way in understanding exactly what Preventing terrorism is about any more. In the quest to understand and fix this, the solution has been to push the program out to an ever expanding circle of individuals as we move further and further back up the radicalization chain (though I hate linear descriptions of radicalization). This has had the added problem of confusing what everyone’s roles within this are.

Police need community intelligence to be able to do their jobs; but this should be obtained through confidence building, rather than bluntly milked from community workers. It is unlikely to be helpful to the cause of countering terrorism, or policing more generally if the current trend continues. Programs seeking to redirect youngsters from a radical path should stay firmly within a local community and civilian remit – putting them in a police direction has implications which will naturally make community workers less comfortable with using them.

More generally, however, Prevent needs to be re-focused. A tighter remit needs to be drawn up which separates out the social work being done under a Prevent banner – to work that should once again be done under its proper heading. Instead, Prevent work should remain firmly focused on countering-terrorism, as in de-radicalizing prisoners, stopping young men making contact with extremists, and lessening the appeal of jihad. Making people more integrated into British society, helping them get jobs or training, giving them a more positive outlook, and making sure they are accepting of other religions are all important things, but not things that should be tagged as counter-terrorism work.
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While I recognize that I still owe a piece on Prevent in the UK, the events in Fort Hood have sparked off a different line of thought which I thought I would quickly scribble down – this is the aspect of Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a Lone Wolf.

Let me quickly emphasize two things, one I do not have some sort of morbid fascination with the concept of Lone Wolves, and two, I am not by any means prejudging what might later come out about Hasan Malik.

The reason that this aspect has struck me, is the parallel story in the America that we are coming up to execution day for John Allen Mohammed, the infamous DC sniper who in October 2002, with the assistance of brainwashed teenager Lee Boyd Malvo, brought fear and terror to Washigton's streets. For as-of-yet not completely explained reasons, Mohammed (a Muslim convert who served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War) decided to cruise around Washington, Virginia and Maryland and take pot shots from the back of their car at people going about their daily business.

Ten people were killed and three injured at random (Malvo further claimed they had killed another four people, though nothing more is known of this), and the city was practically brought to a stand-still. Having gotten to Washington myself about six months later, I can testify that people were still shaken by the experience then.

The men's plan was apparently to extort some $10 million from the government which they were going to use to train an army of homeless children in Canada to carry out similar acts across the country, the Washington shootings were merely the first phase. This plan is nothing like what we have currently understood Malik's to be (which are at best unclear at the moment, though speculation appears to focus around the fact he apparently did not want to be deployed in Afghanistan), but the terror and impact that has been caused is on a par.

While I may be proved wrong, it would be surprising if Hasan Malik's attack turns out to be some plot orchestrated by Osama and friends in a cave in Afghanistan/Pakistan. More likely he will be listed under the category of Lone Wolf, or individual who for his own reasons chooses to launch a random terror attack. Whether this is classified as Islamist terrorism, thanks to the links to Al Awlaki, the fact he was shouting "Allahu Ackbar," or details that are yet to emerge we shall see, but what remains clear is that a single man armed with weapons has essentially taken over global headlines. Back in 2002, John Allen Mohammed (admittedly more of a Lone Wolf Pack, by which I mean a group of individuals operating without any tangible connections, and it seems clear that it was Mohammed who was driving the agenda), brought America's capital to a standstill for a few weeks.

The point here is that Lone Wolves (or Lone Wolf Packs) are surprisingly effective terror tools when they are actually able to carry out their action. Think what would have happened had young Isa Ibrahim managed his plot to attack a mall in Bristol or if Nicky Reilly's manipulation pushed him to successfully blow up a restaurant rather than just himself (a friend also told me of a case in 2005 in the US of a chap who blew himself up, however, I cannot find more information – if anyone else knows please let me know...).

The troublesome thing is, however, that these individuals are equally hard to legislate or police against – all sorts of warning signs can be seen posthumously, but it is with the 20/20 given by hindsight. It is understandably hard to figure out how you are going to legislate against the insane or those who are simply driven to insanity by the hothouse of modern life.

But none of this detracts from the fact that they can be grimly effective, and that in many ways one can see an attempt to harness their potential in the writings of someone like Abu Musab al-Suri whose ideal of "a global insurgency" is constructed around individuals independently choosing the same path, with no tangible and thus compromisable connections, but driven by a similar ideology and towards a similar goal.

In a way, this is maybe the real face of the "leaderless jihad" that Sageman has spoken about. Fortunately, it remains clear that as appealing as the Al Qaeda narrative may have appeared at times, it has not managed to make this leap yet.

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I have been traveling around the UK the last few weeks. Two things appear to be atop everyone's concerns, the "rise of the right" and the fact that the British government may be using the "Prevent" counter-radicalization and counter-terrorism program to spy on Muslim communities. I plan on dealing with each in separate posts, but first on the "rise of the right".

For those who have missed it, the United Kingdom is finding it has an increasingly belligerent and noisy right-wing which is not only managing to make unpleasant speeches and protests, but are also able to win votes in elections. The far right British National Party has won a growing number of seats in first local elections, and most stunningly in the 2009 European Parliament elections it was able to secure two seats and a total of just under 1 million votes nationally.

This seeming acceptance of an openly xenophobic party into the mainstream of British politics received its crowning moment recently when BNP leader (and holocaust denier) Nick Griffin made an appearance on the BBC's flagship politics program Question Time.

In parallel to this seeming legitimization of racists by the ballot box, the UK has also recently seen the emergence of the English Defence League (EDL), a group claiming to be "demonstrating against the spread of radical Islam" for whom the infamous Luton protests against returning British soldiers in March of this year were the "final straw".

Their response was to stage a series parades up and down England in which overwhelmingly caucasian crowds of well-lubricated shaven-headed chaps protest against extreme Islamists (a full list of their demos shows a fixation with the latest incarnation of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s extremist group Al Muhajiroun). At core a blend of skin-heads and football hooligans (something most clearly borne out during the violence in Birmingham), the group is nevertheless able to rally a few hundred protesters at a go under the banner of "taking back England" from "jihadists".

Disturbingly, there has also been an increase in armed far-right terrorists, including one group who apparently had some 300 weapons, 80 bombs and links around the world, the two right-wing extremists who were convicted for "inciting racial hatred", and separate "lone wolves" Martyn Gilleard and Neil Lewington (who was picked up with incendiary devices in his bag after he got pissed on a train and took a leak in public while on his way to a date. Lucky girl).

Responding to this growing threat, one police commander said, "I fear that they will have a spectacular", suggesting that extremists might attempt some major action in order to stir up inter-ethnic hatred.

This last group can be addressed as a clear counter-terrorism issue, but what of the others and their impact which might be said to provide the ideological backdrop for the violent extremists?

The BNP may have managed to secure the veneer of respectability, but they have not found many friends in the European Parliament (something no doubt helped by Mr. Griffin’s charming comments about sinking boat-loads of migrants) – this is significant as it dilutes their power.

Furthermore, while they may have mustered just under a million votes, this should be seen against a backdrop of falling support nationally for the main parties, who cannot shake pay scandals and a bad economy. The BNP specialize in going into economically depressed parts of the country, where they capitalize on local grievances and a sense of abandonment from Westminster with a localized narrative which dresses up anger in anti-immigrant and "national identity" language.

This is enough to rally a core group of voters who actually show up on Election Day and give the BNP its success (it is worth highlighting that it was with a less-than-impressive 9.8% and 8% of the vote that they won in each EP seat).

Similarly, while the EDL appear able to get crowds after football matches, they are almost always matched by a larger counter-protest uniting a wide array of factions. BBC's Newsnight (part 1, part 2) called them a "drinking club with a website," estimating their numbers at some 300-500 members nationally.

One concern they have voiced, about the focus of current counter-extremism funding towards Muslim communities appears to also have some parallels amongst other communities, but they do not seem to have much of a plan of action beyond running around the streets and ejecting people like Anjem Choudhary from the country. This may win them some more drinking buddies, but is hardly the basis of an election manifesto.

For Muslims in the UK, it is the terrorist group that is most bothersome – if there is this growing menace of potential right-wing terrorism, then why isn’t there the same fixation on them that one sees with terrorists who instead choose an Islamist garb?

The answer is relatively simple (the right-wingers tend to be local nutters bereft of serious external connections, and their inability to carry out effective attacks reduces their news value) – but the bigger problem does exist of how these far-right groups (violent and non-) might be impacting cohesion between communities in the UK.

More radicalization amongst Britain’s right means more protests on the streets, and likely more violence. Maybe even to the level of the famous 2001 Northern City riots, in which localized social problems provided kindling which was set alight by a growing far-right presence. None of this is to exaggerate the threat (the numbers are still quite small in contrast to continental Europe which appears to have institutionalized racist parties long ago), but it would be dangerous to simply ignore the groups all together.

What does seem clear, however, is that there is a growing well-spring of disaffection amongst Britain's communities which is finding solace in extreme rhetoric – what is positive is that we are seeing a substantial grass-roots reaction against it, and the main political parties appear willing to stand up against it.

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A couple of weeks have passed since 35-year old Libyan Mohamed Game attempted, in an alleged  revenge for Italian involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, to carry out a suicide attack on the Santa Barbara army barracks in Milan, where forces going to Afghanistan are based.

Using a fertilizer-based explosive concealed in a tool box, Game detonated his bomb in the morning of October 12, apparently as a reference to 12 November 2003 when a suicide bomber blew up an Italian military police base in Iraq killing 19 Italians. The bomb failed to completely explode, mutilating Game (his hand was amputated, he was blinded by shrapnel and remains on life support), while only injuring one guard at the base.

The attack raised speculation about possible connections with other extremists in Italy. Game had apparently been a congregant at the infamous Viale Jenner Mosque in Milan and the barracks he targeted where on the list of possible targets of a cell arrested in Milan last December. However, the President of the Milan Islamic Institute in Viale Jenner, Abdel Hamid Shaari (also of Libyan extraction), said he had only seen Game a couple of times at the Mosque and police rapidly dismissed these connections saying Game had not been on their radar before.

The next day, however the police arrested two men in connection with the attack: 52 year-old Egyptian engineer Abdel Haziz Mahmoud Kol and 33-year old Libyan electrician, Mohammed Imbaeya Israfel. The day before his arrest Israfel had been interviewed about Game, and had said that Game had been "talking about jihad generally in the last month," that "it was likely suicide" was his intention, and "he probably wanted to end his life and go to paradise" (rough translation of mine).

None of the men had appeared in any serious way on police radars before ( even though Israfel's home had been searched in July) and Italian security services continue to call the group an independent cell with no connections to a wider terror network or to Italian radical milieu's.

And this is most alarming: all three men are apparently below any radar. All three had their papers in order, two were employed (Game had lost his business a couple of years ago), and Kol and Game were both married with children. According to the security services, the three men self-radicalized and formed a cell, they set up a bomb factory (in a flat rented by Kol, went to nearby Corvetta to buy 120kgs of fertilizer and other reagents then used a recipe taken off the internet to mix the explosive. Kol apparently drove Game to the scene of the attack.

It seems to me that other details should be investigated: in the flat, 40 more kilos of fertilizer were found; there was a fridge full of food which could indicate that more than just three men were present and a mysterious "list of important people's families" was found. It also seems unclear where their money came from given all three were living in rather tough circumstances (some reports suggest that Kol and Game were squatters). Game and his wife were even interviewed in August by a local news show to show the plight of poor families in Milan.

It is perfectly likely that this group will turn out to be a cell of lone wolves who, aggrieved at their downtrodden situation in Italy and stirred up by the nation's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, concluded that a path of violence was their only option left.

This is not the first time such incidents have occurred in Italy – on September 11th, 2003, Jordanian Mohammed Al Khatib tried to blow himself up outside a synagogue in Modena, while on March 29th, 2004, Moroccan Moustafà Chaouki attempted a similar action outside a McDonald's in Brescia. In both instances, the wannabe-suicide bombers and their cars were the only victims, though they both left letters behind explaining what they were doing, something Game has not done. The only hint of a rationale behind his action is the disputed allegation that he shouted something about Italian involvement in Afghanistan before blowing himself up.

All of which suggests that the combination of dissatisfaction and Al Qaeda's single narrative is one that appeals to a growing constituency in Italy. It is still too early to dismiss possible connections between the cell and others but the seeming surprise with which the police were caught and the relatively amateurish nature of the attempt all suggest that none may be uncovered.

Italian investigators should be alarmed as this could suggest that the problem of radicalization in Italy has moved beyond the traditional networks of North Africans providing support for fighters going to Afghanistan or Iraq (which in some cases stems from previous networks sending support to Bosnia), to a domestic problem which is refusing to go away and is a source of violent anger amongst the community of Muslims in Italy.

The call by Interior Minister (and Lega Nord member) Roberto Maroni who called for a profiling of Muslim communities based on the radicalization model of Game to identify possible threats in the future and the hawkish statements aimed at the Viale Jenner mosque by Defence Minister Ignazio la Russa suggest that the social aspect of the problem will most likely not be addressed.

What is worrying is how many more cells alike may be operating beneath the radar and how long it will be before one of them gets their explosive blend right.

 

UPDATE:

Since publishing this, a friend has pointed out to me that the Viale Jenner link may be stronger than Shaari indicated in his telling. Stories in the respected Corriere della Sera and more right-leaning Il Giornale, show photographic evidence that he was involved in a Ramadan event being held near (and organized by) the Mosque in September of this year. The Giornale report goes so far as to say he served as security at the event, suggesting a possible closer link.
 

 

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This is a short introduction to my corner of FreeRad!cals which will look at radicalization, terrorism and extremism – with a particular focus on what is happening in Europe and Asia. An ambitious remit which I share with a number of co-contributors to FreeRad!cals, but I look forward to adding my two cents to the debate on this growing site.

My work over the last few years has increasingly focused in on what is happening in radicalization in Europe, and specifically the United Kingdom. I am in the process of working on a large writing project trying to understand where Britain’s jihadist culture has come from and this is likely to be a major focus of my contributing on this site. However, recent work has also looked at "Understanding the Shabaab Networks," and I write regularly for the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor on a wide range of terrorism-related topics. Further, I am currently spending most of my time in Asia on a European Community grant – so I hope to be able to bring some more information and analysis on that to the table too.

To give you some background about where I am coming from, I have been a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) since 2006, and before that I worked in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I write for a wide array of other outlets, and my literary canon can be found here.

I plan on using this blog to add my thoughts on the increasing fragmentation of the Al Qaeda threat – which has evolved from its earlier franchise-based structure (as laid out by Jason Burke) into a wide array of different threats, encompassing traditional structured Al Qaeda threats, lone wolves, self-radicalizing seekers, and fellow traveler or affiliate groups like the Islamic Jihad Union or AQIM. And against this backdrop we continue to see the radicalizing impact of wars abroad amongst certain sections of Muslim diaspora communities.

I look forward to hearing your collective thoughts and reactions (positive and negative) to my contributions and hope to bring something useful in the ongoing debate of radicalization and where Al Qaeda and global jihadism is going.

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