Europe's jihadist dilemma

Survival

Volumn 48, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 71-84

  Neumann, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33747591179     PISSN: 00396338     EISSN: 14682699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00396330600765518     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. See Irwin M. Stelzer, 'Letter from Londonistan', Weekly Standard, 1 August 2005.
2. Cited in Gary Younge, 'Newspapers Warn of Threat to Americans from "Londonistan"', The Guardian, 12 July 2005.
3. Pervez Musharraf, cited in 'The New Al Qaeda', BBC2, 9 August 2005.
4. Lorenzo Vidino, Al Qaeda in Europe (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005), p. 368.
5. See, for example, Rohan Gunaratna, 'The Post-Madrid Face of Al Qaeda', The Washington Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, Summer 2004, pp. 91-100; Peter Bergen, 'They Will Strike Again', Los Angeles Times, 12 December 2004.
6. Salafism is an ideological orientation that seeks to purge Islam of all outside influences. Jihadists have opted for advancing their ideological aims through violent means. See Olivier Roy, 'Britain: Homegrown Terror', Le Monde Diplomatique, August 2005. I use 'al-Qaeda' to refer to the network established by Osama bin Laden, which operated until the removal of the safe haven of Afghanistan in late 2001. The individuals involved in al- Qaeda-type terrorism will be referred to as 'salafi jihadists', reflecting the loose nature of the network through which they interact. See also Fidel Sendagorta, 'Jihad in Europe: The Wider Context', Survival, vol. 47, no. 3, Autumn 2005, pp. 63-72.
7. See 'European Militant Network Shut Down', Associated Press, 18 December 2003; 'BND: Al-Tawhid gibt es auch in Tschechien', Radio Praha, 5 November 2003.
8. Petter Nesser, 'Jihad in Europe: A Survey of the Motivations for Sunni Islamist Terror in Post-Millennium Europe', FFI Rapport, 2004, pp. 23-7; available at http://www.mil.no/multimedia/archive/00039/ Jihad_in_Europe_39602a.pdf. For a more extensive account, see Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
9. Recruitment for the Jihad in the Netherlands: From Incident to Trend, AIVD Briefing Paper, December 2002; available at https://www.aivd.nl/ actueel_publicaties/aivd-publicaties/recruitment_for_the. See also Michael Taarnby, Recruitment of Islamist Terrorists in Europe: Trends and Perspectives, Research Report funded by the Danish Ministry of Justice, January 2005, pp. 29-37, available at http://www.jm.dk/image.asp?page=image&objno=73027.
10. See Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004), pp. 126-30.
11. Robert Leiken believes that the American way of integrating immigrants into society contrasts positively with the European approach. This view, however, ignores the fact that there is no one 'European model'; the European approaches differ greatly from country to country. One may also argue that the American treatment of 'cheap labour' from Hispanic countries is not altogether different from the European attitudes towards 'guest workers' in previous decades, and that the United States would experience similar problems if its own immigrant population was Muslim rather than Catholic. See Robert S. Leiken, 'Europe's Angry Muslims', Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005, pp. 120-35.
12. See Vidino, Al Qaeda, pp. 114-15.
13. Thomas Hegghammer, 'Global Jihadism after the Iraq War', Middle East Journal, vol. 60, no. 1, Winter 2006, p. 14.
14. Ibid., p. 15
15. Nesser provides a list of all known terrorist plots in Europe between 2000 and early 2004. For the period between October 2002 and March 2004, he counts 15 terrorist attacks and known plots, of which 11 were directed at Coalition countries (especially the United States, UK, Spain and Italy) and only three at others (Russia and Turkey). In one case - a plan to blow up ferries across the continent - it was impossible to discern any particular country. See Nesser, Jihad in Europe, pp. 78-83.
16. 'Blair Calls for Task Force to Combat "Evil Ideology"', The Guardian, 19 July 2005. A Home Office report, to be published in April or May 2006 but leaked in early April, concedes that the Iraq war inspired the 7/7 bombers. Mark Townsend, 'Official: Iraq War Led to July Bombings', The Observer, 2 April 2006.
17. Roy, 'Britain'.
18. Ibid.
19. Olivier Roy, 'Terrorism and Deculturation', in Peter R. Neumann and Louise Richardson (eds), The Roots of Terror (New York: Routledge, 2006). Also Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam (New York: Columbia, 2005), esp. chs 3, 4 and 7.
20. Taarnby, Recruitment, p. 36.
21. Caroline Davies, 'Muslims Use Vote to Vent Fury over War', Daily Telegraph, 6 May 2005.
22. Roy, 'Britain'.
23. ICM 'British Muslims' poll, March 2004. See http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2004/ guardian-muslims-march-2004.asp.
24. Ayman al-Zawahiri, quoted in Hegghammer, 'Global Jihadism'. See also 'The Mujahideen's Roadmap', quoted in Reuven Paz, 'The Impact of the War in Iraq on the Global Jihad', in Hillel Fradkin, Husain Hawwani and Eric Brown (eds), Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Volume 1 (Washington DC: Hudson Institute, 2005), p. 42.
25. Foreign Office memo, quoted in 'Leaked Memo Shows Blair Told of Iraq War Terror Link', The Observer, 28 August 2005.
26. Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Bericht 2004 (Cologne: BfV, 2005), p. 185; available at http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/download/de/ publikationen/verfassungsschutzbericht/vsbericht_2004/vsbericht_2004. pdf.
27. Bruce Curley, 'Homeland Insecurity', Time Europe, 30 January 2005. These numbers match the figures provided by the FBI; see Sebastian Rotella, 'Iraq War Being Used to Recruit Disaffected Muslims', Seattle Times, 5 April 2005.
28. Ricard, quoted in 'French Moslem Terrorists in Iraq', New York Times, 23 October 2004.
29. Vidino, Al Qaeda, p. 275. According to the Times, the figure is closer to 150-200; see Sarah Baxter, 'Iraq Terror Chief Recruits Britons', Sunday Times, 12 December 2004.
30. Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein, quoted in Craig Whitlock, 'In Europe, New Force for Recruiting Radicals', Washington Post, 17 February 2005.
31. Mark Danner, 'Fighting the war Al Qaeda sought on 9/11', International Herald Tribune, 10 September 2005
32. See Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2005), chs 2 and 3. The only known case of 'self-radicalisation' is that of Ahmed el Bakiouli and Kalil el Hassnaoui, two third-generation immigrants from the Netherlands who wanted to fight in Afghanistan, but upon failing to obtain any assistance in crossing the border from Pakistan, decided to go to Kashmir, where they were shot dead by Indian Border Security almost immediately after they arrived. See Emerson Vermaat, Bin Laden's Terror Networks in Europe, Mackenzie Occasional Paper, May 2002; available at http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/2002/2002_Bin_Ladens_Networks.html.
33. Paul Harris and Martin Bright, 'Britain "Next in Line" for Terror Attack', The Observer, 17 November 2002.
34. For the Madrid network, see Javier Jordan and Nicola Horsburgh, 'Mapping Jihadist Terrorism in Spain', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 28, no. 3, May-June 2005, pp. 169-91.
35. Peter Beaumont, 'Insurgents Trawl Europe for Recruits', The Observer, 19 June 2005.
36. Verfassungsschutz des Landes Nordhrein-Westfalen, Zwischenbericht 2005 (Düsseldorf: LfV, 2005); available at http://www.im.nrw.de/sch/ doks/vs/zwischenbericht_2005.pdf.
37. 'Die Anschlaggefahr rückt näher', Report München, December 2004.
38. 'Germany Examines Allawi Assassination Plot', Deutsche Welle, 7 December 2004.
39. This is the main conclusion of a recent report by the CIA director's think tank. See National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future (Langley, VA: CIA, 2005); available at http://www.cia.gov/nic/ NIC_globaltrend2020.html.
40. Edwin E. Bakker, 'The Cracks in EU Anti-terrorism Co-operation that Invite Attack', Europe's World, vol. 1, no. 1, 2005, p. 133.
41. See Leiken, 'Europe's Angry', p. 124.
42. Colin Cramphorn, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, conversation with author, 12 January 2006.
43. For example, Imad Yarkas, the leader of an important Spanish network whose activities were known to the local authorities, had traveled to meet jihadist leaders in London about 20 times prior to November 2001, when most members of his cell were arrested by the Spanish authorities. See Taarnby, Recruitment, p. 43.
44. See Mirjam Dittrich, Facing the Global Terrorist Threat: A European Response (Brussels: European Policy Centre, 2005), esp. ch. 3.
45. See the contributions of Jülrgen Storbeck ('Policing') and Brian M. Jenkins ('Intelligence') in Club de Madrid (ed.), Confronting Terrorism: Working Papers (Madrid: Club de Madrid, 2005), pp. 7-19, available at http://media.clubmadrid.org/docs/CdM-Series-on-Terrorism-Vol-2.pdf.
46. Brian M. Jenkins, The Potential for Nuclear Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1977), p. 8.
47. Motassadeq was a member of the Hamburg cell, who assisted in the planning of the 11 September attacks. His conviction for being an accessory to 3,000 counts of murder was overturned on appeal, and he eventually received a seven-year sentence for being member of a terrorist organisation. The Madrid trial of 24 alleged conspirators ended with just three convictions, ranging from six to 27 years in jail. See Vidino, Al Qaeda, ch 3.
48. For an overview, see Council of Europe (ed.), Terrorism: Special Investigation Techniques (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2005).
49. Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (New York: Knopf, 2002), pp. 5-20.