Without addressing the root causes of Islamic terrorist attacks Britain risks becoming a permanent target
The past six months suggest that the barbarians have not only breached the gates of London but have learned to blend in seamlessly among the multicultural population and evade detection until such time that they make their voices heard.
In fact, “Allahu Akbar” is becoming an all-too-common refrain across all major European cities; this, right before the bomb detonates, the car plows through a crowd of pedestrians, or a machete rips through the air and then the flesh of a heavily armed security official struggling to contain the onslaught of Islamic terror that, if not neutralized soon, some believe risks transforming Western capitals into “Little Baghdads.”
The latest major strike occurred Friday morning when a makeshift bomb went off in the middle of rush hour traffic in a subway at the Parsons Green station in London. The attack, which injured dozens, brought back haunting memories of the 2005 multi-pronged terrorist assault, also targeting the Tube, which killed 52 people and injured some 700 others.
That too was perpetrated in the name Allah—and only by the grace of other personal interpretations of God was nobody murdered this time, as the improvised explosive device (IED), known as “Mother of Satan,” malfunctioned. According to British media, while the bomb’s initiator appears to have gone off, the main charge did not detonate. Moreover, the IED’s timer reportedly discharged earlier than scheduled; namely, when the train was meant to be passing underground and through busier terminals, conditions more conducive to inflicting maximum damage.
Once again, the so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for the carnage.
In response, British Prime Minister Theresa May offered the typical platitudes, condemning the “cowardly” act and declaring that whereas “the threat of terrorism that we face is severe…by working together we will defeat them.”
Then, mere hours after declaring that there would be no need to do so, May ordered the national threat level to “critical,” suggesting that a further attack is “imminent.” She thus reactivated “Operation Temperer” for the first time since the deadly Manchester Arena bombing in May, deploying up to 1,000 soldiers to landmarks in support of police efforts to track down the perpetrators.
Britain has now been hit with five instances of terrorism this year, following the killing of four people in an attack near parliament in March and the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester two months later, which killed twenty-two people and wounded some 250 others. In June, multiple assailants drove a van into crowds on London Bridge and thereafter went on a stabbing spree nearby, killing eight and injuring nearly 50. Later that month, ten people were wounded when a car targeted them indiscriminately while they were strolling through Finsbury Park.
Recently, the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed that at least a half dozen additional significant plots were thwarted over the same timeframe. For its part, the British Home Office revealed that the number of suspects arrested for terror-related offenses in the country rose 68% to 379 in the twelve-month period ending in June.
According to Julie Lenarz, formerly a director at The Human Security Centre in London, the task at hand is a monumental one and the resources needed are limited. “The police and security services continue to face an unprecedented threat,” she explained to The Media Line, “as intelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadists roaming freely in the UK. Due to capacity constraints, however, only 3,000 of them can be permanently monitored.”
Furthermore, Lenarz contended, “because of the nature of terrorist attacks today it [is] extremely challenging for law enforcement to prevent them from taking place. There has been a shift away from hard targets, such as embassies and military bases, to soft targets, such as museums, shopping malls, and pop concerts.”
Effective prevention, therefore, “[must] start with tackling the root cause of terrorism; namely, ideology and the environment in which it flourishes,” she concluded. “Putting more soldiers on the streets is not going to resolve the problem. Terrorists fly planes into skyscrapers. We tighten airport security. They use cars. We erect barriers. Vans. We tighten rent permits. It’s not planes, cars, or vans that kill. It’s the radical Islamist ideology spurring the men behind the wheel.”
In fact, the Parsons Green subway attack might have prompted an immediate public debate on British government policy relating to terrorism along with ancillary issues such as immigration, for example, but such does not appear to be materializing. Instead, much of the initial focus centered on the “diplomatic row” caused by U.S. President Donald Trump, who tweeted after the blast that authorities had the terrorist “in their sights” and should have been “more proactive.”
While later followed up with a more conciliatory message, as well as a personal phone call with May, the Trump media circus effectively deflected attention away from the hard-hitting issues. Furthermore, the British premier herself appeared intent on shifting blame onto “internet giants,” and vowed to pressure them to clamp down on “extremism” when she holds a summit next week with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Speaking to The Media Line, Jonathan Sacerdoti, a British journalist and political commentator, reinforced the notion that there remains an averseness to addressing the core elements of Islamic terrorism, which he believes is a prerequisite to effectively combatting it. “Theresa May has spoken about how she wants to target the ideological causes, but it’s still not clear exactly how she is doing that, nor if it is too late to tackle some problems that have been brewing for decades.
“There is also some reluctance among politicians and within some parts of society to even name or speak frankly about the threat from Islamists, for fear of being seen as anti-Muslim,” he stated.
Indeed, following Friday’s attack London Mayor Sadiq Khan, not unlike May, vowed that the city “will never be intimidated or defeated by terrorism,” while qualifying that “what we’re not going to do is allow them to change how we live our lives, to be pluralistic, to be respectful.”
But who exactly is “them” and what of the policies that have allowed “them” to penetrate so deeply into British society?
“Tony Blair was a key architect of the multiculturalism project,” Sacerdoti elaborated to The Media Line, “and last week he conceded that it is time for curbs on immigration. Britain is on the whole quite proud of being welcoming, but many now see a problem in a failure to integrate some minorities.”
As a result, he predicted, “things will get worse as lone actors, smaller terror cells, groups operating without direct lines of command from ISIS and even British born fighters who train abroad and return to the UK to carry out attacks will all continue to be a problem. Without acknowledging the elephant in the room, tackling these and other important issues will remain difficult.”
Hence the growing presence of armed military personnel across Europe, from Brussels to Berlin to Paris. And yet, throughout the continent, shouts in Arabic of “God is Greatest” continue to induce harrowing cries from innocent men, women and children on what is beginning to feel like a near-daily basis.
One sound that will not be heard for some time, however, is that of London’s Big Ben, as restoration work recently began on the Queen Elizabeth Tower, where the iconic bell has long chimed in accordance with the complex’s famous timepiece, which is also undergoing repairs.
It is an irony not lost on those who believe that it is past due for Britain to also reset the clock on the policies that they contend could in the future bring about the second fall of a former empire.