“It’s probably pure coincidence that the militancy in Kashmir began with the end of the Soviet attack on Afghanistan.”

By chance, I was in both Kashmir (on both the Indian-occupied and Pakistan-administered sides of the Line of Control), and on the Afghan border, in 1989 when the (current and continuing phase of) militancy in kashmir was just beginning, as I’ve discussed at:

http://hasbrouck.org/kashmir/

The impression I got from people I met then as to the relationship between the Afghan struggle against Soviet occupation, and the renewed assertion of Kashmiri resistance to Indian occupation, was that the successful (as it was then perceived to be) Afghan struggle gave renewed *hope* to Kashmiris for possible success in their struggle.

That source of *hope* was much more important than any Afghan, Pakistani, or other foreign military suppoort or training in inspiring the renewed outbreak of mass protest against Indian rule in 1989. It’s important to realize The renewed armed struggle in Kashmir against Indian rule came some months later, mainly beginning in 1990, *after* and in response to India’s large-scale violent repression of what was at first in 1989a very largely nonviolent movement. (c.f. the role of violent repression of mass protest in leading people to armed struggle in other places I’ve visited like South Africa, Northern Ireland, etc.)

Kashmiris took further hope that Central Asia was becoming the next great world region of decolonization in 1992 when the Central Asian republics that had been colonized and forcibly annexed by Russia into the Soviet Union acheived their independence. This was portrayed in the USA and Europe mainly in in relation to Communism and as “breakup of the Soviet Union”, but was perceived by people I met in 1992 in Uzbekistan and (to a lesser degree) Kazakhstan as primarily a step in decolonization rather than “de-communization”.

And this time thank you for again taking the trouble:

“you are left with a very large number who are ambivalent, and that that ambivalence is tiered — i.e. many amongst the ambivalents would be partial in one direction to varying degrees.”

More or less I think you are right about this.

“However, we have NO clue as to who exactly is wearing a scarf(the woman-shield), and who the Hamas bandanna.”

Yes, this is the issue.

“This needs Intelligence and infiltration, and the London attacks let me down on this:”

You and me both.

“I used to get clues from the news right from the early-90s that the UK and Canada were major sources of fund-raising for terrorist groups operating in South Asia.”

Well the diaspora effect is important. Look at the IRA and the US. It is always easier to romanticise from a distance. Curiously (this doesn’t exactly fit here but it is relevant to something) I read an interesting report from Shezad Tanweer’s village about how when he was there he didn’t go out much since he felt that - being British - he wasn’t accepted. I think this is revealing about something important in this ‘in-between’ world.

“the Sikh militancy owes a lot to the firm base they had here. The LTTE of Sri Lanka did too. In more recent years”

And the Algerian GIA in France, and now Morrocan groups in Spain (maybe Eritrean goups in Italy?). There *is* a pattern.

“I’ve read of so many anti-UK incendiary statements come out of Finsbury.”

Again, me too, the inability to track these people out of Finsbury Park is just incredible.

“there was also a parallel process of infiltration of those groups, but am much less sure now.”

I think you are right to be worried. The mistaken identity of that poor Brazilian boy *outside* the block of flats doesn’t seem to augur well.

I’ve mentioned this article before:

http://www.nationalreview.com/gaffney/gaffney200505181246.asp

It’s actually hopelessly erroneous balderdash, but something here is interesting. The Spanish security got hold of the perpetrators of 11 March so quickly because they had an ex member of Al Fatah working for them:

“Cellphones used for March 11 were unlocked in a phone shop owned by… a Spanish police officer. And not just any police officer: It was Maussili Kalaji, a Syrian born citizen who had been granted Spanish citizenship several years ago and entered the police department when he arrived in Spain [despite] his past as an Al Fatah member and as an agent for the Soviets’ intelligence services.”

This seems to National Review evidence for a conspiracy, I would say that it is exactly what you need to do, recruit people with some intimate knowledge of the ‘terrorist environment’.

“Apparently as soon as [Kalaji] left the [Spanish] police academy, he was assigned to infiltrate extremist groups and so he got acquainted with such nice guys as Abu Dadah, currently under trial for the 9/11 plot and who will be on trial again in the future for his role on March 11. He also was assigned to the security detail of Judge Garz?n, now on leave and teaching at a New York university ? who insisted that, no matter what Aznar was saying on March 11, he knew from minute 1 that?the bombings had been by Islamic terrorists, not ETA. I think we know now why.

WellI think we know why too, because of good police strategy, good informants, and a highly sophistocated anti-terrorism judge. This is the same judge who got Pinochet pinned down in London, he has effectively ‘bust’ eta, and he now has a warrant out on Osama Bin Laden himself. As you may gather if you read my posts, I am an unshamed admirer of Garzon. If you were to put him in charge of the global anti terrorism campaign, I would expect to see early results.

And there’s more:

“And that’s not all: Kalaji’s sister was the translator for the police in charge of translat[ing] the wiretapped conversations between the alleged March 11 culprits before the bombings. And his ex-wife, also a police officer, was the first to arrive at the scene where another key [piece of] evidence pointing to Islamic terrorists and not ETA was found: a white van with detonators and some tapes with Koranic verses.”

Obviously she was one of the first called to the scene, she would have been one of the few people in Spanish police at that stage who could assess the tapes! So what Gaffney, El Mundo and blogger Franco Aleman deem - in their paranoia - to be evidence for a conspiracy, I would say offers another reading, with clues on how to go about all this. And the resistance they have to what the Spanish police were actually doing (mining the terrorist movement) may give clues as to why others have so far not done so.

Finally, thanks for the background on the Northern Alliance.

So one more time thanks for the comments. This debate is obviously to be continued, and the more informed and thoughtful participants we have the better. Your information and point of view will be more than welcome, so please stick around. I’m closing this down now, as I really am off for the summer, and I don’t want mindless spam clogging up the works. So have a nice summer youself, and hasta septiembre everyone.

Further, whatever the percentages, the sheer numbers are scary. The Lashkar-e-Taiba (the main amongst various the Pakistan-based groups that want to make all of India Islamic) boasts of a 200,000 following. And the L-e-T is a very new org formed after 1987 (interesting read: http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper374.html - The author is worth reading, btw. Not great writing, but a lot of facts that seem to hold together) Groups like the Hamas and the Hezbollahs are pretty well entrenched in their societies. Also, there are groups like the tablighi-jamaat which are not supposed to be militaristic but to spread the word of god to young wastrels, and in some countries these seem to be getting into the action.

Also, in a sense, I agree with you that the 10% or 1% of proponents is not the important figure. If the world was made up of those for and against, you wouldn’t have any problem in taking effective action. If all muslims, or all muslims from pakistan, or all muslims from Karachi were active proponents, you would aggressively profile those groups and probably search them before entering tube-stations and avoid 7/7s. No, for me, the ones in the middle form the important figure for societies that cherish multiculturalism. They form the figurative ‘women and children placed as human shields’ which prevents an all-out attack on terror. Multicultural societies hold back to avoid hurting these ‘non-supporters.’ However, we have NO clue as to who exactly is wearing a scarf(the woman-shield), and who the Hamas bandanna. This needs Intelligence and infiltration, and the London attacks let me down on this: I used to get clues from the news right from the early-90s that the UK and Canada were major sources of fund-raising for terrorist groups operating in South Asia. Let alone the Islamist groups, the Sikh militancy owes a lot to the firm base they had here. The LTTE of Sri Lanka did too. In more recent years, I’ve read of so many anti-UK incendiary statements come out of Finsbury. I always assumed that inspite of the ’soft stance’ the UK seemed to take was due to their wanting to avoid trouble in their backyard, there was also a parallel process of infiltration of those groups, but am much less sure now. (A must-read article here: Part1: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6992 and Part 2: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6995)

Agree with the communities bit: e.g. more residents of pakistan, somalia, saudi may be supporters than those of the UAE.Further, if you assume 49% of Iranians to be moderate (51% being the slimmest majority I can give to hardliners) in normal life, this 49% number may be much lesser if muslims are seen to be under attack (even legitimate) from a ‘Christian’ US. So this number is a bit difficult to pin down.

Also agree on the polarization of ideas post-Iraq. Sadly, this also affects the media, where even mainstream newspapers seem to colour their facts according to whether they were for the war or not. And there far too much excuse-making for jihadis in the media.

A PS: on the Northern Alliance suffocating prisoners. This is one of the subjects that gave me the idea that the pundits on CNN had no clue at all. The NA was a very new entity. It was formed AFTER the Taliban took over most of Afghanistan. After the soviet occupation of Af’stan, the warlords who ruled bits of that country and had their own agendas got together: Ahmed Shah Masood, the US favourite, (an ethnic Tajik, if I remember correctly)seemed to be a nationalistic guy who wanted to get the country together. Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, with his MiG squadron and soviet backing was important to any coalition and was frequently supporting one group or the other. Burnahuddin Rabbani, a cleric, had a decent powerbase of his own, and being a cleric was the consensus choice for President. Then there was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Prime Minister (I think) with his large powerbase and Iranian support who subsequently quit the coalition and started shelling Kabul. So blaming the ‘NA’ for one thing or the other was a bit of intellectual laziness on the part of analysts in that no one bothered to check which group did the suffocating at what time, considering that Masood and Hekmatyar were chalk and cheese. Of these Hekmatyar was most Islamist, and fairly recently, he pledged his support to the Taliban. He reputedly has 100,000 men but I remember reading that Iran wanted him out of their territory to avoid troubles with the US.

http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369754

which brings us round to the real big unknown about the European ‘theatre’, how all the theads fit together at a ‘pan-European’ level.

Clearly there is no definitive answer yet, and guessing simply won’t do. We do have two rival theories (but they don’t need to be mutually exclusive).

My feeling is that Cerwyn Moore is right to draw ttention to changing generational guard, but you may not need to go as far as this:
” the attacks on London present further evidence that it is the Salafi-Jihadist movement, rather than organizations such as al-Qaeda, which draws upon a slightly different network of support, that constitutes the current threat in Europe.”

“rather than organizations such as al-Qaeda”: I don’t see the need for the contrast, and especially not in the case of the London bombings.

Moore is right however to draw attention to the idea that this ‘new generation’ Salafi-Jihadist movement may be setting the pace in Europe, and indeed I was trying to say something similar in my early posts on the ‘Spanish Connection’.

I think his last point is extraordinarily important:

It is increasingly clear that many of those involved in the new terror networks do not recognize either the legal or the political frameworks associated with known terrorist organizations. Therefore, what is being proposed by some UK government officials and influential media circles runs the very real risk of being ? at best ? irrelevant to the real issues.

The UK authorities would be better served by paying closer attention to three factors which are compounding the existing threat: first, the use of different tactics ? such as the failure to immediately claim responsibility and the use of home-grown bombers; second, the importance of networks aiding trans-boundary movement and implicitly aiding recruitment by appeals to non-territorial forms of identity; third, the connections with North African militants, suggesting that the terror threat in Europe is morphing, creating a new Salafi-Jihadist generation which is no longer in the al-Qaeda orbit.

BTW, following an earlier discussion we had, many roads now seem to lead to the door of:

Abu Hamza al-Masri

(and incidentally it *was* Juan Cole who pointed out at the very start what a strange coincidence it was that the bombs went off just two days after the start of his trial.

The name Finsbury Park Mosque seems to come up a lot.

Then there is Haroon Rashid Aswad. As noted on this blog, there were quite solid reports of his arrest in Pakistan - inculding the naming of the city of the arrest, and his transfer to Lahore. These reports were run eg in the Times. Then the British high commissioner in Pakistan said there was ‘no truth in the rumour that’ he had been arrested. Then Mussaraf says that no-one from Pakistan is in any way connected with the London bombings (they are all British), and Haroon Aswad shows up wandering around between Zimbabwe and Zambia. I don’t know what conclusions if any to draw from this, but it is decidedly strange. Let’s see where he is extradited to, and on what charge.

I say lets see, because part of the tangled web now leads us back through Haroon Aswad and Abu Hamza al-Masri to the stange issue of a 1999 attempt to set up an Al-qaeda training camp in Oregon:

According to CNN:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/29/london.tube.ap/

Last week, an American once accused of trying to set up a terror training camp in the western U.S. state of Oregon was questioned about Aswat. That man, James Ujaama, a Muslim convert from Seattle, was charged in 2002 with trying to set up a terrorist training camp for Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for cooperating with terrorism investigations until 2013. Three U.S. federal law enforcement officials said on July 22 that Ujaama was being questioned about Aswat, who also was implicated in the 1999 plan to establish a training camp in Bly, Oregon. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. The officials did not say whether Ujaama has provided any useful information on Aswat, and Ujaama’s lawyer, Peter Offenbecher, declined to comment. Federal officials have said Ujaama’s help was crucial in last year’s indictment of al-Masri on charges that included trying to establish the Oregon camp. Al-Masri, formerly the head preacher at London’s Finsbury Park mosque, also faces British charges of incitement to murder. He is being held in England. Aswat is one of two al-Masri associates who are referred to but not named or charged in the 2002 indictment of Ujaama by a federal grand jury in Seattle, officials said. The other is Oussama Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swede, who was convicted of weapons violations in Sweden in 2003.

Also this piece from the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1694998,00.html

It was first suspected that it was the work of a UK radical group that sympathised with Osama bin Laden?s ideas, and the operation had been planned and executed in Europe. That view may now have to refined.The mastermind, who is of Pakistani origin, is thought to have been trained in an alQaeda camp in Afghanistan and has been linked to previous terror operation…..Investigators are also tracing the mastermind?s alleged links to three major al-Qaeda figures. One of these is said to be in US custody. Intelligence is being re-examined from the summit held last year in a mountain village in the northwestern province of Waziristan. A month after he took part in that summit, Mohammed Barbar, a New York computer executive, was arrested near his home in Queens. He admitted to being an ?al-Qaeda sleeper?. He had arrived at the summit carrying cash and supplies for jihadis fighting in Afghanistan. Babar, 29, has betrayed a number of fellow sleepers during his interrogation and the information led to the arrest of 13 people in Britain. The US authorities have charged him with trying to buy materials to make bombs for attacks in the UK.”

The unnamed ‘mastermind’ is - of course Haroon Aswad. From all this, I think two things can be deduced.

Firstly Abu Hamza al-Masri is up to his neck in all this, and secondly talk, in the context of the London bombings of a ‘freelance’ operation, and ‘copy cats’ is ludicrous. If you look through the evidence we have to date, all the key people go back well before 09/11 or the war with Iraq. They are mid-ninetees people in the main (Bosnia?). They are all plugged in at quite a high level to the Al-qaeda command structure, and form one net. This is both good and bad news. It is good news since it means the key people here are quite a small group. Break them and you have a headless chicken. But it is bad news in that it begs the question of whether there may be other, quite separate networks already in place. Since the Abu Hamza al-Masri net has obviously long been known to have been penetrated what alternatives have been set up? And if so many disaffected young people have been radicalised by the Iraq war, just how many more volunteers are there ‘out there’ in the process of being pre-programmed?

The answers to these questions will only become clearer as and when we get the kind of counter intelligence the need for which this comment started with.

The latest in-depth on the UK bombings from the Jameston Foundation:

http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369753

which is worth a read in its own right, concludes as follows:

“Intelligence officials admit that they are at the same ?level of penetration? amongst the Muslim community now as they were with the Irish republican community in the early 1970s, when the Provisional IRA acted with impunity. It took twenty years to effectively infiltrate the IRA, but that was a structured organization supported by a tiny community with distinct and realistic political goals. Now the potential pool of recruits is massive and the enemy is young British Muslim ?clean skins? who are engaged in what appears to be a global struggle.”

So obviously there is a long way to go. Why are we so late starting, well I think they imagined that the Londistan dimension would give protection of some sort against internal attack.

OK, i understand and agree with what I assume you may be thinking, in fact your objection occured to me as I was writing the sentence. What am I talking about?

Well look at the UK right now. Are there two groups or three (going by the vistors to the whitewater excursion)? If there are only two, then that puts the number of leading edge active terrorists at 8, if they are three, then maybe at 12. Add-in back-up of 10 per team, and we get around 50. This would be what I’m calling the number of active terrorists. But this number isn’t interesting, since we have no idea at all how many sleepers there are. 100, 300, 500. 1,000. And how many people perpared to provide safe houses. Or to go on demonstrations opposing the deportation of an OBL supporter. These are what I call the interesting numbers. The number of ‘active service’ terrorists at any one moment in time will be an operational decision, and to understand how these decisions are taken you need to get into following the weird and wonderful world of OBL.

After they round this lot up we really have no idea at all whether in one month there is another group lined up to act, or whether they will decide to ‘park’ the UK, and move to another venue.

Of course, from the point of view of the police trying to arrest them, the number of active terrorists on the loose is a critical one.

When I get back from the summer perhaps a look at how the Spanish judge Garzon has addressed the issue of attacking the Eta ‘environment’ has been handled would be worth taking. I think there are lots of points to discuss, and perhaps things to be learnt.

I am sure that attacking - in a democratic, and civil liberties oriented context - the ‘environment’ of terrorism is one of the keys to making things really difficult for them. One example: the Finsbury park Mosque. I was amazed to read that most of the known members of the present cell passsed through Finsbury Park at one point in time or another. Even I in Barcelona had heard about this one. Every second worshipper should have been an ‘infiltrator’ ages ago. If this was ‘anti G8′ people in Spain or Italy I’m sure this would have happened. The question is the security services - in conjunction with Egypt, Pakinstan or wherever - need to be prepared to recruit people who can do this kind of work, and in significant numbers.

One line in your last comment I do not understand Obviously the number of active terrorists is very small, but this isn?t an especially interesting number.
To me this looks like the most interesting number.

On a more substantial level I would like to see more debate on your last paragraph: In fact I think we have two different groups of people on the extremes, ones who want to deny there is a problem, and ones (at the other extreme) who want to hi-jack the problem onto ?other issues?.

The first group is very difficult to define but still much more easy than the second group.
After reading this detailed refutation of Ken Livingstone?s defense of Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to me the picture became a little bit more clear concerning the first group. Ken Livingstone surely belongs to the group. While Tariq Ramadan made a case of denfending Yusuf Al-Qaradawi too, my doubts are still growing about the defenders of Ramadan (here at Afoe too).
I think it is extremely important that we further this part of the debate as rational as possible.
The same goes for the definition of your second group, the ones who want to hi-jack the problem onto ?other issues?. It is even more difficult there because this group does not just include individuals with more or less informed opinions but governments as well. Most governments actually, but most specifically the US administration.
(hence the caregory “believe it” on my blog)

“90% being opposed to terrorism. I think it more likely that maybe 1% actively support it, 1% actively oppose it, and the rest are caught up in finely graduated moral dilemmas between the various threads that bind them (this cleric v/s that cleric, religion v/s nation, god v/s humanity,’my god’ v/s secularism, etc.)”

Well we don’t really have reliable numbers so its hard to say exactly. And of course it depends what you mean by ‘active’. Obviously the number of active terrorists is very small, but this isn’t an especially interesting number.

Also you need to talk about specific communities, and not very general religious - or even ethnic - categories.

What seems to me to be important is identifying the issues that ‘radicalise’ people. When we do this we can address the ‘perceptions’ which lead to the radicalisation. If we slow down the radicalisation process, then we can slow down the rates at which people ‘pass over’ and become 100% fanatics. After this point there is precious little that can be done, except catch them when they move into active mode and incarcerate them.

But if we are to break this down we need to break the flow of recruits and we need to do this on a number of levels.

I have been very struck in the cases of European terrorism - like eta and the ira - how the overwhelming majority of people in the respective ‘host communities’ when asked condemn terrorist violence. But behind this condemnation often lie various levels of ambivalence. I don’t see why this should be any different in the ‘host communities’ which can feed what we now call international terrorism.

Young British born and socially deprived pakistanis growing up in a culturally closed environment undoubtedly form one such potential host community. Right now I am sure Iraq is radicalising people there. But when Shezad Tanweer crossed the frontier (where-ever and when-ever that was) from being an angry young man to being a fanatical member of a sect, I doubt that Iraq was a big issue in his mind. That is all I am saying here.

If we look at the second group, at least two of whom are Somalis - they seemed to have been ‘radicalised’ in the late ninetees. So again it wasn’t Iraq.

Those who are now making the move they made back then probably won’t show up as ‘footsoldiers’ till 2010-2012. I think there is a relatively long process involved, and they won’t become generational leaders till 2015 - 2020. So it looks like we may have quite a long road in front of us.

“The siege mentality wrought about by the perception that they are being victimized everywhere is what the preachers of terrorism seek to exploit.”

Yes, I agree, and see the Maalouf identity post. You would also be right to point out that young punjabi indians (sikhs) living in roughly similar social conditions (Southall) in the UK haven’t responded in the same way, and some conclusions can be drawn from this.

“that in Turkey, often pointed out as a progressive model, everyone I’ve spoken to who was not indifferent considered even the attacks on Afghanistan to be some sort of attack on muslims.”

I imagine you are right. I think this varies across communities. But my argument about Afghanistan relates as much to the European debate as it does to any other. Opinion-blocks often hide as much as they reveal. The Iraq war has been special since it has produced a whole debate about why it was necessary, and what role it really plays (apart from a negative one) in the fight against terrorism.

So Afghanistan is interesting, because it lets you see much more clearly where people are. The invasion of Afghanistan was legal in UN terms, so in theory the term ‘war criminals’ should only be applied to acts which infringe on the normal rules of war, as for example the suffocation of prisoners on mass by members of the northern alliance, and, of course, the multitudinous crimes of the Taliban themselves. Those people in Europe who oppose Afghanistan are effectively denying there is a terrorist problem, and I think it useful to filter them out in debate, from others who simply have genuine reservations about what is happening in Iraq (and this would be my case now, though I, like you, accepted the war when I thought it was mission search and destroy WMDs).

In fact I think we have two different groups of people on the extremes, ones who want to deny there is a problem, and ones (at the other extreme) who want to hi-jack the problem onto ‘other issues’.