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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ICSR hosted Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation for a talk today on their new report, Unlocking Al-Qaeda: Islamist Extremism in British Prisons (pdf).

Nawaz said that the UK's National Offender Management Service (NOMS) faces a huge challenge now that more and more people who have been convicted of terrorist offences are populating the prison system.

In his view, the authorities have vastly underestimated the potential role of prisons in the process of radicalisation. Prisons have been the incubators of terrorism, yet – in many countries – they have also served as the principal engines of de-radicalisation.  

Which one it will be in the UK's case remains to be seen.

Right now,  he says, there are few signs that the challenge is being taken seriously. Extremist literature is widely available in prisons, and – on a number of occasions – imprisoned extremists have been allowed to become the representatives of prison wings.

The audience was particularly interested by Nawaz' explanation of the latent, untapped power of a corpus of literature renouncing violence that was produced by al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Egyptian Islamist group responsible for waves of terrorist violence in Egypt during the 1990s.

Those of us studying terrorism have been aware of these books for a long time and, like Nawaz, we have wondered why they have not been translated into English.

His analysis is connected, of course, to his incredibly powerful personal story. As many readers of this blog are likely to know, Nawaz – a former member of Hizb-ut Tahrir – was imprisoned in Egypt shortly after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. There, he became acquainted with the imprisoned luminaries of the Egyptian Islamist movement, including some of those behind the assassination of Anwar Sadat.  

While in prison, Nawaz came to question his (then) radical beliefs, especially under the influence of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya's new literature and after he was adopted by Amnesty International – an organisation he had previously vilified – as a prisoner of conscience.

Maajid Nawaz' talk was recorded and can be listened to here. 

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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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Definitely not something I thought I’d ever read in a serious newspaper: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish.

Today's Telegraph reveals that the Iranian President was born a Sabourjian and kept the name until his family converted to Islam.

Sabourjian is a well-known Persian Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. According to the Telegraph, 'The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior'.

Ahmadinejad has always been vague about his ethnic origins, admitting that his family had changed their name but refusing to reveal his birth name and the reasons for the switch.

In fact, earlier this year, an Iranian blogger who had investigated his roots was locked up by the authorities.

The Telegraph uncovered the secret when taking a closer look at a photograph in which Ahmadinejad proudly displays a copy of his national identity card, which records the change of name.

One doesn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to understand what's going on here.

Clearly, Ahmadinejad’s irrational hatred of Israel and the Jews has nothing to do with the Palestinians or any 'Zionist conspiracy'. Rather, it is one giant attempt to compensate for his Jewish origins.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Ali Nourizadeh of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies summed it up very neatly: 'He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society... By making anti-Israel statements, he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections'.

In other words, even if he ever owes up to being Jewish, don't expect him to make Aliyah any time soon...

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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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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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You may have heard about the great Atkin conference on Middle East peace we hosted in July.

 

ICSR brought together experts and policymakers from across the region to work out ways in which to move the situation forward.

The result is a booklet with 15 ideas on 'how to fix the Middle East'. They are snapshots of the discussions and the debate that took place at the conference.

They don't amount to a comprehensive peace plan, nor are they all complementary. But they really provide an excellent overview of the issues that have to be addressed.

And they show that positive action is possible, no matter how fraught the situation appears to be.

Now that President Obama seems to be moving the process forward, it is precisely this kind of creative thinking and debate that's needed now more than ever.

Have a look at the various ideas... tell us which ones you like most... and contribute your own!!

Let's see if we can get 15 MORE ideas on how to fix the Middle East from the Free Radicals' blog... ;-)  

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Australian police and intelligence agencies are said to have prevented a major terrorist plot.

Over the past 20 hours, the following facts have emerged:

•    Following a series of coordinated raids on 19 properties in the Melbourne area, four Australian citizens of Somali and Lebanese descent, mostly in their mid-20s, were arrested in the morning hours. Several others are being questioned.

•    According to the acting federal police commissioner, the suspects’ intention was to attack the Australian Army’s Holsworthy Barracks in suburban Sydney, killing Australian military personnel as well as themselves. Planning is said to have been at an advanced stage.

•    The police believe that the attackers might have been inspired by the Somali-based militant movement Al Shabaab, with two associates of the cell having travelled to Somalia in order to participate in fighting.

Much of the context and circumstances, however, remain unclear:

•    The method of attack. The Australian authorities claim that the attack was to be an ‘armed assault with automatic weapons’. The alleged intention was to kill as many military personnel as possible before being killed themselves. If true, this would be the exact same method that was used by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar e-Taiba in Mumbai in November 2008. Was it the suspects’ intention to copy these tactics?

•    Links to Al Shabaab. Al Shabaab is the youth militia of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council in Somalia, which – for a few months in 2006 – represented the Somali government. Like the Taleban in Afghanistan, Al Shabaab is an extremist Islamist movement with links to Al Qaeda. It has driven much of the recent fighting in Somalia: its aim is to expel international forces, overthrow the government and establish a harsh form of Islamist rule.

Al Shabaab has been successful in recruiting ‘foreign fighters’ from across the world, mostly – but not exclusively – members of the Somali diaspora. The most recently reported incident is that of two groups of men from Minnesota, one of whom died in Somalia. Earlier this year, Channel 4 in Britain uncovered the case of a young man from Ealing (West London) who blew himself up in Somalia.

Intelligence services have long been concerned about the rising traffic of jihadists to and from Somalia. In an interview earlier this year, the head of the British Security Service MI5 expressed concern about 'returning fighters', urging policymakers to ‘focus more on the Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular’.

In the context of the Australian plot, the question is whether the four individuals had successfully established ties to Al Shabaab, or whether it was merely their intention to do so.

How did they try to connect with Al Shabaab? What role was played by the internet? What prompted them to turn their attention from fighting in Somalia towards attacking a target in Australia?     

•    Al Shabaab and the global jihad. Al Shabaab has long had ties to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leaders have repeatedly encouraged followers to join Al Shabaab’s jihad. Thus far, however, Al Shabaab’s operations have been limited to Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Whilst drawing on the support of the Somali diaspora across the world, there have been no overseas operations, nor has Al Shabaab encouraged terrorist attacks against Western targets abroad.

This, again, raises the question to what extent the four men were ‘freelancers’ who were inspired by Al Shabaab propaganda on the internet, or whether they followed orders directing them to attack targets in Australia.

If the latter turns out to be true, the alleged plot would represent a major escalation of Al Shabaab’s campaign. If the former is correct, it demonstrates the ease with which jihadist recruits seem to be able to transfer their attention from one jihadist ‘battlefront’ to the other. If indeed they were freelancers, the planned attacks seem to have been purely opportunistic, resulting from their inability to go to Somalia and participate in the kind of jihad which appears to have radicalised them.

The significance of this plot has been depends on the answers to the questions above. There can be no doubt, however, that the situation in Somalia is finally spilling over into the West. The Australian plot together with the cases of radicalised Western Muslims joining Al Shabaab may be harbingers of a new – albeit not entirely unexpected – problem for Western security agencies.

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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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The other night, the BBC aired yet another excellent instalment of its documentary series Conspiracy Files. This latest episode looked at the theories surrounding the London bombings on 7 July 2005, which killed 56 people and injured nearly a thousand.

As with 9/11, conspiracy theorists were quick to point out inconsistencies in the official records, speculating that the bombings were an 'inside job', carried out by the government, its domestic intelligence service MI5 and all the other usual suspects (America, Israel, etc.) in order to gain support for the 'War on Terror'.

These theories had never gained much currency outside the Muslim community and the so-called 'Truth Movement'. Recently, however, a film titled '7/7 Ripple Effect' appeared on the internet, which seemed to make a compelling and comprehensive case for the conspirators.

The BBC’s Conspiracy Files is brilliant in exposing the flaws, contradictions and profanity of many of the conspiracy theories contained in the 'Ripple Effect'. Critically, it also sheds light on those who are peddling them.  

The author of '7/7 Ripple Effect', for example, hides behind the supposedly Arabic sounding name 'Muad'Dib'. He is later shown to be a bearded Yorkshireman called Anthony John Hill, who - far from being an Arab or a Muslim - thinks of himself as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Another leading member of the 7/7 'Truth Movement' is Nick Kollerstrom, who – besides uncovering the truth behind the London bombings – specialises in crop circles and has written several articles about how the Nazis' death camps never really existed.

In the age of 'old' media, people like Kollerstrom and Hill would have been ignored by the mainstream media. In the age of 'new' media, the internet provides them with a global platform for their ideas – with no journalistic 'middlemen' or quality control to filter out what really belongs into the gutter.

None of this would matter, except that conspiracy theorists – however discredited – are sincerely believed by significant sections of the population. That's why, in late 2005, I was among the first to call for a public inquiry into the events of 7 July 2005. (Annoyingly, much of the article, which appeared in Prospect Magazine, is no longer available for free).

It's not so much about resolving every possible contradiction, but about being seen to be transparent and honest. Faced with an increasingly sceptical public who get their information about current events from the internet as much as the traditional media, governments must put all their cards on the table, and do so early.

Otherwise, it will be the nuts and cranks of this world who determine the 'truth' behind events like 7/7.

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I should be blogging about radicalisation in Europe – a topic I have been looking at for many years – but it is Bin Laden’s new tape which has caught my imagination.

Assuming it really is Bin Laden – and all the experts seem to think so – the recording proves that Bin Laden is alive and able to communicate with the outside world.

Many questions remain unanswered, however. Where is Bin Laden? Why is it so difficult to find him? Does it matter?

I obviously don’t know where Bin Laden is. Over the years, people have tried to convince me of the wildest theories, ranging from Bin Laden sipping tea somewhere in India to him being locked away in a secret CIA prison in Morocco.

Needless to say, none of my informants could produce even the slightest shred of evidence to substantiate any of these claims.

Still the most plausible scenario is what a very, very senior American intelligence official told me eighteen months ago. Namely that Bin Laden is likely to be somewhere in the Pakistani region of Waziristan.

In his own words: ‘We haven’t stopped looking for him. We still do. But we haven’t had any signal or indication for a long while. It’s embarrassing, but we really don’t know where he is.’

Does it matter? I think it does.

Bin Laden is clearly no longer running Al Qaeda in operational terms. Nor is he the inspirational figure he once was. But he is still an important symbol.

He is the face of 9/11 – Al Qaeda’s one victory, its one moment of undisputed ‘glory’.

No one wants to back a loser. As Bin Laden himself put it: ‘When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.’

I am under no illusions, of course. The problem won’t be solved with Bin Laden’s capture or death. 

 

But if Bin Laden was to be found and caught, the Al Qaeda brand – its mystique and sense of invincibility – would surely take a serious hit. Contract article -