Surprise. Surprise. Three of Britain’s home-grown suicide-bombers, born of Pakistani parents, were in Pakistan last year and in early 2005, where they were in touch with madrasas, the so-called Koranic schools that have taught entire generations to hate Christians, Jews and Hindus.
Thus, some 5 million boys have been brainwashed in nearly 12,000 madrassas since the late President Zia ul-Haq, a military dictator for 11 years (1977-88), encouraged fundamentalism as an ideological barrier to communism.
The U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were close allies in the guerrilla war against the decadelong Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89). The Koran, drugs, U.S.-supplied Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and tens of thousands of mujahideen volunteers from Arab and other Muslim countries — in that order — were the weapons that compelled the Soviet Union to pull out. The war produced many heroes. Osama bin Laden was one. He launched al Qaeda as a vehicle for recruiting “Afghan Arabs” and for keeping in touch with them after the war.
In the last year or two, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf had convinced some American interlocutors madrasa reform was well under way and the jihadi genie was now back in its bottle. Now, reluctantly, after the London atrocities, Mr. Musharraf has ordered his nth crackdown of Islamist extremists. In previous crackdowns, Islamist organizations took down their shingles, changed logos and reopened down the street.
Bin Laden is a national hero among Pakistan’s impoverished masses. He is, after all, the man who follows the Prophet’s order to slay the “infidel unbelievers” who threaten Islam. Prophet Mohammed himself participated in 78 battles. At least that’s according to Apocrypha (noncanonical writings).
Religious extremism and militarism are the two key ingredients in Pakistan’s body politic. They coexist uneasily. A coalition of Islamic zealots actually governs two of Pakistan’s four provinces. The more Mr. Musharraf orders the army to assist U.S. Special Forces, the more the rank and file and junior officers resent him. In public opinion surveys, Osama bin Laden leaves Mr. Musharraf in a cloud of dust.
The army has taken heavy casualties operating along the mountainous tribal areas that form the Afghan-Pakistani border. Under tribal treaties that date to the time of independence in 1947, Pakistani troops are not allowed into Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). But under U.S. pressure, Mr. Musharraf agreed to commit some 70,000 troops to the thus far vain search for bin Laden, while resisting U.S. requests to allow Special Forces to operate on the Pakistani side of the unmarked border.
For years, British authorities, like the Pakistanis, have allowed firebrand Muslim clerics to use their bully pulpits, both in mosques and in public, to preach hate and condone violence. They proclaim their friendship and admiration for Osama bin Laden and are not in the least inhibited in their repeated warnings to the British that unless it ordered British troops out of Iraq, it could expect to be attacked by al Qaeda.
Since the July 7 London atrocities, some have repeated their warning of another attack as long as British troops remain in Iraq. It came July 21, though no one was seriously hurt, and it had all the earmarks of extremist copycats.
Terrorist incitement was allowed under a debased definition of freedom of speech. Knowing it will take several months for Parliament to enact laws that would muzzle them, not to mention court challenges to new laws abridging speech, al Qaeda’s “religious” friends had no compunction using the megaphones provided by local and global media.
Protected by their British citizenship, acquired precisely for such protection, they gave scores of interviews in London to say, “The real terrorists are the British regime.”
Anjem Choudary, a British-born agitator linked to the radical Al Muhajiroun group, told the BBC the British police were also to blame because “they have tried to divide the Muslim community into moderates and extremists whereas this classification does not exist in Islam.” Both Urdu and English language Pakistani dutifully published every poisonous morsel, giving bin Laden yet another boost in prestige.
In a survey two years ago among 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, 13 percent thought the United States deserved another September 11, 2001, and 1 in 2 said he/she would become a suicide bomber if forced to live like a Palestinian.
From Leeds in Britain to Lyon, France, and from Berlin to Barcelona, pro-al Qaeda literature can be found in kiosks and Muslim reading rooms. Europe’s 20 million Muslims are, for the most part, moderate and simply want to get on with their lives. But the second- and third-generation Muslims, in their teens or early 20s, mostly jobless, are coalescing as Europe’s new angry generation. European security services estimate potential terrorists at 5,000 to 15,000. Some terrorist experts put the number much higher: 10 percent, or 2 million, are believed to be devout fundamentalists, and 1 percent, or 200,000, potential terrorists.
Britain’s Tony Blair plans to call an international conference of countries affected by international terrorism to discuss how to battle extreme Islamist ideology. What is finally sinking in is that al Qaeda is now more than a terrorist group. It is an anti-American, antidemocratic, politico-religious movement that spans the globe. Western democracies never tire of repeating they are not at war with Islam.
The new paradigm, obvious to most terrorist experts in the Western world since September 11: radical Islam is at war with Western democracies. Only a Muslim Martin Luther, or at least a Muslim Martin Luther King can turn Islam away from the clash of civilizations the extremists seek.
The paradigm is not found in top-secret documents among competing intelligence and security services. Open Source Information (OS) has long been the missing dimension of classified intelligence.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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