ICSR is launching a great paper today. It deals with Islam4UK, an off-shoot of the extremist Islamist group Al Muhajiroun, which was banned by the British government earlier this year.

Written by Zara Raymond, it provides an overview of the group and its activities – based on in-depth interviews with some of its leaders, including Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Equally important, it looks at the government’s decision to ban the group. Very reasonably, it takes the position that the government had valid reasons for banning the group but that its decision to do so was undermined by the timing of its announcement.

Islam4UK was proscribed shortly after the group had announced their intention to stage a march through Wootton Basset – a town which regularly holds funeral processions for British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The group could have been banned earlier – given that Islam4UK was merely another name for a group that had already been banned under British law.

In waiting until the Wootton Bassett protest, the government unintentionally added plausibility to Anjem Choudary’s tirades against the double standards of Western liberal democracy and the limits of free speech.

Furthermore, the government seemed to act on short-term political considerations rather than long-term security imperatives, which won’t make counter-terrorism legislation more plausible or legitimate in the public’s eye.

All in all, the paper provides an excellent case study of how difficult it is for governments to deal with this kind of group. It also includes a number of valuable lessons that should be learned (and heeded) by governments everywhere.

The paper will be published on ICSR’s website later this afternoon (British time). A launch event with Zara Raymond will take place at King’s College London at 5pm.

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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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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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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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Earlier today, Danish police arrested a Somali national for attempting to kill the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaart with an axe and a knife.

Westergaart drew several of the infamous Mohammed cartoons, whose publication sparked an international crisis in 2006.

In the next days, some of the wider ramifications of the attack will become clearer.
The following points will no doubt be of particular concern:

The attacker is said to have had links with the Somali insurgent group As Shabaab. If it turns out that the group actively directed this attack, the incident will mark a significant change of strategy for Shabaab.

Thus far, Shabaab has used its links to Al Qaeda principally to promote their struggle in Somalia and attract money and foreign fighters. Diaspora Somalis from as far as Minnesota have made their way to East Africa, but few – if any – showed any interest in carrying out terrorist attacks in the West.

Attacks against American or Western targets – never mind Danish cartoonists – simply weren’t on Shabaab’s agenda. If Shabaab is fully buying into Al Qaeda’s global jihad now, this will create an enormous headache for Western security services, especially those in countries with large Somali diaspora populations.

Second, the attack underlines what we’ve already seen with the Detroit bomber, namely that the Al Qaeda threat is becoming more and more diverse. It’s no longer just the tribal areas in Pakistan that cause concern, but a whole lot of locations across the world. There now seem to be regional hubs, which provide all the things – resources, training, direction –  that used to be done in one place.

The UK and US may now have agreed to support the Yemeni government with money and training. But focusing on one or even two places isn’t good enough. There needs to be a comprehensive strategy for dealing with terrorist safe havens across the world.  
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Al Qaeda is back. It may look different from the Al Qaeda of 2001, and another 9/11 still seems far-fetched, but Detroit and now Denmark show that the threat hasn’t gone away.

Having the makers of the Danish cartoons killed would have been hugely popular with Al Qaeda’s sympathisers. Given how much criticism Al Qaeda has had to face by its own constituency in recent years, this would have revived the Al Qaeda myth and mobilised its supporters once more. (This, in fact, is a point very well made by my friend and colleague Yassin Musharbash at Spiegel Online.)

All in all, there’s clearly more to today’s events than a crazed Somali storming a suburban house in Denmark with an axe and a knife. 2010, it seems, will be anything but a quiet year...

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The internet is abuzz with rumours and speculation about the incident onboard the Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Friday night. As you will have heard by now, one of the passengers attempted to ignite an explosive device shortly before landing. The US authorities are treating the event as an attempted terrorist attack.
It’s too early still to gauge the full extent of what happened. The following points, however, are sure to be prominent as the story unfolds:
THE ATTACK
Why did airport security fail? Amsterdam Schiphol – where the suspected terrorist got onboard the plane – is one of Europe’s largest airports, and has a good reputation for its security. Why weren’t the explosive materials detected? What were they, and how did they get on the plane?
UPDATE: The latest reports are saying that the suspect did NOT board the plane in Amsterdam, and that no secondary screening had taken place at Schiphol.
Similarities with the ‘shoe bomber’.  Richard Reid, the so-called ‘shoe bomber’ tried to blow himself up onboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami shortly before Christmas in 2001. As with today’s incident, Reid was caught fiddling with the explosive device, which failed to set off. Interestingly, it later turned out that Reid had an accomplice, Saajid Badat, who was hoping to bomb a different plane.
Al Qaeda still obsessed with blowing up planes. More than eight years since the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda – if it really was Al Qaeda – hasn't come up with anything new. Most Al Qaeda-linked plots in the West have been directed at airliners or public transportation.  Also, they still prefer conventional explosives – none of the more adventurous predictions about chemical, nuclear, or radiological attacks have become reality.
THE SUSPECT
Who is Abdul Mutallad? The suspect - a 23 year old Nigerian national - is currently in hospital with injuries. According to the BBC, he might have been enrolled as a student at University College London at the time of the attack. Was he radicalised in Nigeria, or is he a product of London(istan)? Given that his name was mentioned in US databases, was he also known to the British authorities? What exactly did they know about him?
Leaderless jihadist or Al Qaeda operative? The suspect’s name appears on US government lists, but there is no evidence that the suspect was a trained, hard core Al Qaeda activist. This leaves us with the (by now) familiar dilemma of deciding if the attempted attack should count as Al Qaeda. Who recruited and equipped him? Who directed the operation? It seems fairly unlikely that he pulled this off all by himself, but the extent and level of Al Qaeda involvement will remain an issue of contention for months.  
THE CONNECTIONS
Terrorism going global. The incident is a good illustration of how Al Qaeda inspired terrorism has become more and more transnational -- a Nigerian national, who seems to have received training and instructions in Yemen, boards a plane in Holland, and nearly blows it up in the United States. Four continents – and that’s only the main suspect!
Nigerian Al Qaeda operatives. The involvement of a Nigerian in an Al Qaeda type operation is a novelty. Few, if any, Nigerians have played prominent roles in the organisation, and there remains little concrete evidence of significant Al Qaeda activity in Nigeria (though there are plenty of rumours). At the same time, the country is riven by civil unrest between the Christian South and the Muslim North, and there are several other, sometimes violent Islamist groups who are active in Nigeria, including Boko Haram, the Hisbah, the Zamfara State Vigilante Service, and Al-Sunna Wal Jamma (also known as the Nigerian Taliban).
Flashpoint Yemen. US government sources claim that the suspected perpetrator received the explosives and his instructions in Yemen -- one of the hotspots for Al Qaeda activity about which Western security services have been warning for years. Only yesterday, Yemen launched a strike against an Al Qaeda training camp in the south of the country and killed eight aspiring suicide bombers in the north. Among the people who died were two top leaders and (possibly) Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born extremist cleric who is said to have inspired the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan.

 

As we learn more about the plot, I will keep updating this post...

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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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Last week, I spoke at an excellent symposium on Islamist terrorism, which took place in Hamburg. The event was organised by the Hamburg state Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the local branch of Germany's domestic intelligence service.

The event was remarkable for the complete openness with which German officials described the situation in front of a 200 strong audience, which included many journalists.

Perhaps, I shouldn't have been surprised. Before the German federal elections in September, the services were warning that jihadists had Germany in their crosshairs. Back then, a lot of these warnings were dismissed as 'hype' and 'fear-mongering' in the German media.

The symposium was the services' opportunity to make clear what the fuss had been about.

A speaker from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)  explained that the service's assessment was based on a number of events and developments, which had been observed over the course of the entire year:

• From January, an increasing number of jihadist videos mentioned Germany or were recorded in the German language.
• From March, a higher than usual number of Germany-based jihadists went on trips to Pakistan. Of the 185 travels to Pakistan by Germany-based jihadists over the past decade, nearly a quarter took place in 2009.
• In May, warnings started coming through from foreign partner services.
• That same month, one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb appeared in a video, saying that jihadists should 'Look for Germans!'
• In September, a number of jihadist videos specifically addressed the issue of the federal elections, warning that an attack was imminent. Germany's most prominent jihadist, Bekkay Harrach, who is believed by the BfV to belong to the Al Qaeda core, featured prominently in several of them.

 
With the elections over, the immediate danger seems to have passed. The jihadist threat, however, continues to be high on the BfV's agenda. The BfV speaker at the symposium highlighted the following trends:

• An increasing number of 'home-grown' cells
• The rising number of converts involved in jihadist activities
• The increasing attractiveness of jihadism to Muslims of Turkish descent, who – for years – had been considered 'immune' to the jihadist message

The last point was backed up by an excellent speaker from the Hamburg state office, who provided extensive data on the ethnic affiliations and socio-economic characteristics of Hamburg-based jihadists, as well as Germany's leading expert on Islamist terrorism, Guido Steinberg of the German Institute for Security and International Affairs.

For German policymakers, of course, the 'Turkish factor' is the biggest headache. Muslims of Turkish descent represent the vast majority of the Muslim population in Germany. If jihadism starts spreading among German Turks, Islamist terrorism could become a huge political and social issue in addition to being a security problem.     

All in all, I was very impressed with the professionalism and openness of the German authorities, especially the Hamburg state Office.

Despite being German myself, I always used to have a rather low opinion of my country's abilities in this field. This event made me believe that, perhaps, I was wrong.

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Al Qaeda has been described as a being a part of a global Islamist insurgency. It is helpful to view the minaret ban with that in mind. It is thus unfortunate that the measure banning minarets in Switzerland has passed with 57% of the vote.

Insurgent/terrorist groups seek to provoke repression (violent or non-violent) of a constituency. For example, let’s use...I dunno, banning minarets as an example of repression. That constituency is then further alienated from the government/host society and support for the insurgent group increases.  

Writing about more traditional insurgencies, Bard O’Neill explains:

[T]he insurgents try to provoke arbitrary and indiscriminate government reprisals against the population, calculating that this will increase resentment and win the insurrectionary forces more support. The success of such an insurgent ploy is affected by the nature of the government response and by the social groups involved.

This was the infamous Irgun Strategy. This is why Hizballah and Hamas fire rockets from residential areas and schools. This is why the Taliban fire on ISAF troops from populated hamlets. The Viet Cong did the same thing. Al Qaeda uses the same dynamic in a much more psychological way. They have made many believe that the threat emanates from Muslim communities in the hopes that the West will turn on their Muslims with repression of some sort.

Now the Swiss have banned minarets and Islamists there and elsewhere will certainly capitalize on this.

This is one of the key means used by al Qaeda to draw in recruits and supporters – particularly in the West.  Leah Farrall has a decent piece on this over at All Things Counterterrorism:

To my mind the most telling thing is that this is yet another example of people failing to realise that terrorism’s efficacy stems from its ability to manufacture difference.  This is the true impact of terrorism. It doesn’t come from the immediate death and destruction caused by a terrorist act no matter how hideous and how truly awful it is for its victims.  The true power of terrorism  comes from reactions to terrorist violence by those watching.
…
These types of reactions start of [sic] vicious cycles of discrimination, feed alienation and only end up supporting and more importantly legitimizing the terrorist and extremist meta narrative of a clash of civilizations.

The banning of minarets in Switzerland – a country with only four minarets – feeds into one of the uglier Islamist propaganda pieces and makes a mockery of the practice of religious freedom, which is guaranteed by the Swiss Constitution. Al Qaeda and some other Islamist groups promote the narrative that the West is engaged in a War on Islam and that we are a bunch of lousy Zionist-Crusaders who hate Muslims simply because they are Muslims.  

They do not need to be right to successfully promote this narrative and foster false grievances, but it certainly helps them out when they can point to the reality of a Western country proscribing the religious practices of Muslims.

One of the authors of the bill claims that the minaret ‘is a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce Sharia law parallel to Swiss rights.’  While there are various Islamist movements actively pursuing both grassroots and top-down strategies to institute aspects of Islamic law in the West, minarets on mosques have nothing to do with this. The ban will only serve as further hindrance to integration and strengthen the influence of the Islamist narrative, accomplishing the exact opposite of what it was intended for.

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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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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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On Saturday, Bavarian police arrested two Islamists, who are suspected of wanting to carry out a terrorist attack against the Munich Oktoberfest.

The two suspects – Hatem M. and Marouane S. – are said to be associates of Bekkay Harrach (see picture), who appeared in a German language Al Qaeda video message last week. Harrach threatened Germany with terrorist attacks for the two weeks after the national elections, with footage of the Oktoberfest running in the background.

A day earlier, the German authorities declared the Oktoberfest a no-fly zone, with planes flying into Munich airport now having to bypass the city centre altogether.

All this clearly shows that the German authorities are extremely nervous at this point in time. But – in the words of my friend Thomas Hegghammer – 'should they be?'  

In Spiegel Online, Yassin Musharbash shows that the case against the two suspects is relatively weak. It certainly wouldn't hold up in a court of law.

According to the police, the suspects – who had been under observation ever since Harrach's video came out – started 'behaving suspiciously' in the two days prior to their arrest. The authorities believe that they had been incited by Harrach's video message and were now trying to take action.

Another German source, who is intimately familiar with the Harrach case, tells me that he had never come across the names of the two suspects. He says that they are unlikely to be among the 'really dangerous' people with whom Harrach has associated.

None of this inspires great confidence. But I empathise with the German authorities, who are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Taking preventive action is always likely to stir controversy. At the same time, there are good reasons to believe that Germany is a priority target for Al Qaeda right now. For the time being, I am part of the 'better safe than sorry' camp...

 

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Amid threats of sanctions from Western countries over its nuclear program Iran decided to look the other way where their Shahab-3 and Sejil missiles were being tested this morning.

Despite Tehran's defense that the missile tests had been planned for a while and have nothing to do with the current nuclear dispute they have been deemed "deeply destabilizing" by the French Foreign Ministry, Bernard Kouchner. It "sends the wrong signal to the international community" said the U.K. Foreign Office said in an e-mailed statement.

A former U.K. ambassador to Iran, Richard Dalton, had a more cynical view and stating that Iranian officials have "been poked and they think this is a good moment to show off their capabilities."

For all of you ballistics people, you can read more about Shahab-3 here.

I just wanted to give you details on how far these missiles can reach in more geographical terms than the approximate 2000 km-range recorded in 2008 when the missiles were last tested.

In Europe, shot from North West of Iran a Shahab 3 missile reaches the eastern part of the EU: that is Bucharest, Sofia, Athens. It can also target Kiev and Moscow.
It's already been said that these missiles can reach Israel, but basically the whole Near East could be at risk especially Cairo in Egypt and Turkey. A missile could also reachAfrica as far as Djibouti if fired from the extreme South of the country. All the ex-soviet republics of Central Asia, Afghanistan and the extreme West of China, as well as Pakistan and the North-west of India (including New Delhi and Mumbai) are also at range.

 

h/t to French journalist Jean-Dominique Merchet and his blog on Libération who concludes "one certainly understands why this is worrying to a lot of people".

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For a week now, rumours have been circulating about a new video message from Osama bin Laden. Journalists with sources deep within the German intelligence apparatus told me that the message was imminent only last week. Now, it seems to have arrived.

The intention is very clear: Bin Laden wants to influence, or at least change the dynamics, of the German elections, which will take place on Sunday.

In the video Bin Laden urges Europeans to withdraw from Muslim land. Germany is not mentioned specifically, but the timing of the release and the German subtitles suggest that the intended audience clearly is the German electorate.

This comes on the back of a number of German language videos that have been posted by Al Qaeda in the past weeks. They are all saying the same thing: vote for withdrawal, or we will blow you up!

Views about the significance and meaning of the video differ. Some believe that, if Al Qaeda were actually capable of launching an attack, they would simply do so – the fact that there have been many announcements but no action is evidence of Al Qaeda's weakness.

Others, such as my friend Guido Steinberg at the Berlin based think tank SWP, are not so sure. Steinberg believes that Al Qaeda wouldn’t make such a fuss if there wasn’t any activity on the ground. In fact, I have it from good sources that the German authorities are concerned about three groups of potential plotters right now.

The parallels with the Madrid bombings in 2004 are clear, but shouldn't be overrated. Back in 2004, Al Qaeda launched its attacks just three days before the national elections, and seemed to change the outcome of the vote.

The difference in the German case is that none of the major parties are in favour of withdrawal. Only the small Left Party wants to get out, but it seems nearly inconceivable that people will vote for them in great numbers. People, in other words, have no real choice when it comes to expressing their disapproval about Afghanistan.

Osama’s message, therefore, is unlikely to have the desired effect he hopes it will have.

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Is ETA staging a comeback?

First a massive car bomb in Burgos; then a similar attack on the holiday island of Majorca – both directed at the Guardia Civil, the Spanish paramilitary police, which has been ETA's favourite target for years.

Many commentators and analysts have attributed the attacks to a new breed of ETA recruits: they are younger and more radical than previous generations of 'Etarras' who had become involved during Spain’s transformation towards democracy in the late 1970s.

(Particularly interesting: the numbers of women who now seem to be involved!)

 This would explain why many of them hadn't been on the police's radar screens; and why the authorities' recent successes in capturing ETA's leadership could not prevent this latest series of attacks.

The conflict over the Basque Country may thus enter a new, bloody round – with disastrous consequences for people in the Basque Country, the Spanish economy, Spanish politics, and life on the Iberian peninsula in general.

ETA's chances of winning that conflict, however, are slim – no matter how many terrorist spectaculars its new, action-hungry recruits manage to pull off.

Spanish politicians (and the people they represent) are unlikely to be worn down by a low-level terrorist campaign, which – however unpleasant – they have learned to cope with in decades.

People in the Basque country do not support ETA, and are unlikely to change their views as a result of more ETA violence. In fact, they only recently elected the first non-nationalist regional government in decades.

 ETA, in many ways, has fallen into what my colleague MLR Smith and I have described as the 'escalation trap'. If they simply continue with their campaign, they are unlikely ever to generate sufficient strategic momentum to make any significant gains.

 If, however, they decide to escalate – which recent events could be a sign of – people will turn against them, and their goals will become even more difficult to achieve.

 ETA clearly hasn't thought this one through. If they had, they'd have realised that – politically and strategically – they have nowhere to go.

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