Look beyond Iraq

If the London attack limned al-Qaeda’s limitations and strengths, it has not yet helped clarify what role the Iraq war has played in helping or hurting the jihadist movement. We know that some of the Madrid terrorists had watched videotaped messages from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq. Did he also help inspire the London attackers? Jihadists groups in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations say they have found it easier to lure new recruits because the American invasion has encouraged a climate of social approval for radical Islamist. And it’s virtually certain that some terrorists are improving their homegrown skills with live combat training in Iraq.

On the other hand, the roots of Islamic extremism in Europe go back much further than the beginning of the Iraq war. After all, al-Qaeda was originally founded in the 1980s to depose the Saudi monarchy, and that goal remains very important. In London, North African extremists were preaching at the Finsbury Park mosque well before 9/11. And France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, has battled Muslim extremism for decades. Finally, as Bush Administration officials point out, every jihadist who gets killed in Iraq is one more who won’t be plotting in Barcelona or Jakarta or Los Angeles. Denece describes the scores of European terrorists who have ended up in Iraq as “cannon fodder.”

Now that extremists have attacked in Madrid and London, one hope is that the larger, law-abiding Muslim communities in Europe will more effectively marginalize their radicals. A British intelligence expert says British Muslims seem to be hardening towards jihadists in their midst.

But the most enduring lesson terrorism experts have learned is that a movement as far-flung as Bin Ladenism can’t easily be contained. “It’s been a constant truth in this discipline that by the time you’ve figured out what Islamists are up to, they’ve already moved on to something else,” the French official says.

Source: Time, July 18, 2005

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