CourcyInt

COURCYINT SPECIAL BULLETIN

To: All Courcy's Intelligence Service members

Date: 13 July 2005

From: JKC de Courcy, Chief Executive, Courcy's Intelligence Service

Subject: The London bombings

A week on from the London terror bombings of 7 July a number of key points are becoming clearer.  They include:

1.  Al-Qaida still has the capacity to launch major operations in even the most sophisticatedly policed cities that have long expected such an attack.  There was nothing remotely surprising about bomb attacks on London's transport network, yet the combined resources of the Metropolitan Police, MI5, and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) were unable to prevent the attacks.

2.  The pattern of about 15-24 months between major attacks continues (the last major attack was on 11 March 2004 in Madrid).  Whether this is a consequence of a deliberate al-Qaida policy to induce a false sense of complacency or a reflection of its natural "reload" capacity, the end result is one of reduced vigilance (see the main briefing in 7 July Courcy's Intelligence Review: "Security experts battling complacency" - http://www.courcyint.com/crl/crl6620.asp).

3.  The invasion of Iraq is NOT the cause of the anti-Western jihadist terror campaign, as clearly the campaign pre-dates the invasion of Iraq.  Nevertheless, the invasion of Iraq has had an effect that is analogous to poking a wasps' nest with a stick.  For the moment the consequences are mostly being felt in Iraq, but increasingly two adverse consequences of the invasion will be felt elsewhere.  Recruitment to the Islamist cause has been and will continue to be boosted, and, eventually, veterans of the Iraqi resistance, like the Afghan veterans before them, will return to cause difficulties in their homelands or in other jihadist theatres of war (see item in our 30 June issue: "Italian intelligence chief on changing face of Islamic terrorism" - http://www.courcyint.com/crl/crl6584.asp).  It is still an open question as to whether the benefits of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein outweigh these clear disadvantages.

4.  Our analysis of the cause of Islamist terrorism remains that it is rooted in the failure of the Islamic world to match the political and economic advances of the rival civilizations of Europe, Europe-abroad, and (more recently) Asia.  The frustrations bred of this failure have been festering and accumulating since at least the collapse of the Ottoman empire and cannot easily be removed or neutralized.  Even the Arab-Israeli conflict (seen by many as the principal cause of Islamist radicalism) is a symptom not the source of Islamic failure - and hence of Islamic terrorism.

We highlighted the difficulties of reversing the relative economic failure of the Arab world in the main briefing in our 21 April issue: "Mideast & North Africa still lagging on reform" - http://www.courcyint.com/crl/crl5962.asp.

5.  One of the most pernicious aspects of jihadist terrorism is the fact that a low-cost sporadic campaign can force the Western world into such colossal expenditure, changes in behaviour, and other defensive measures that curtail traditional freedoms.  We have often pointed out how relatively small scale the direct impact of terrorism actually is - certainly when compared with natural disasters and health crises.  Nevertheless, the reaction to the jihadist threat is not irrational because the possibility that the jihadists could one day resort to weapons of mass destruction is not one that can be ignored - even if that means that the jihadists can gain as much from maintaining the threat of using such weapons as from actually using them.

6.  We have in the past taken comfort from the fact that the Islamist cause, unlike the earlier threat to the Western democracies posed by communism, has almost no resonance beyond its core constituency.  The children of the white Western middle classes are not potential recruits to jihadism in the way that some of their parents were to the communist cause.  The London bombings, however, have shown that seemingly well-adjusted children of Asian immigrants in Britain can be recruited as suicide bombers - and if that is the case in Britain then it is likely to be the case in other Western countries with substantial Muslim immigrant communities.  Post-London, the fact that jihadism appeals only to Muslims is less comforting than it was if the type of Muslim who can be induced to carry out suicide attacks includes Western-educated youths.

7.  If the causes of anti-Western jihadism are as deep-rooted and intractable as we believe them to be, it is logical to assume that this is going to be a long war.  In the meantime, President Bush has put much emphasis on bringing democracy to the Middle East as the long-term antidote to jihadism.  It has to be acknowledged, however, that the London bombers lived in a democracy, and that did not prevent them becoming terrorists.

For us, however desirable bringing democracy to the Middle East might be, there is a danger that this is putting the cart before the horse.  We have already stated how crucial economic advancement is in the fight against extremism, but even before that the primary target of Western pressure on Middle Eastern governments should be on reforming ignorance-reinforcing education systems.  As we pointed out last week, compared with India’s 4.3% and the US’s 5.0%, Pakistan spends just 1.7% of its GDP on education. The slack is taken up by an estimated 15,000 religious schools, which educate about 700,000 Pakistani boys between the ages of six and sixteen in little but Urdu, Arabic, and the Koran and indoctrinate them in the creed of jihad.  Parallel with the need to reform education is the need to muzzle the hatred-inducing mullahs - and not just in the Middle East, but in London and elsewhere.

END