Better a bungled raid than another terrorist outrage
Leader
Sunday June 11, 2006
The Observer
Two years ago, Spanish police tried to storm an apartment in which they believed terrorist suspects were hiding. Preferring death to custody, the fugitives blew themselves up, killing a policeman in the process.
Fear of a similar outcome will have figured in the plans drawn up by British police when they raided a flat in Forest Gate, east London, last week, also tracking suspected terrorists. Police believed the flat contained chemical weapons. No wonder they cleared surrounding streets. No wonder they went in armed. But the intelligence was wrong. There was no bomb factory. Two men arrested in the raid were released without charge, one with a bullet wound in his shoulder. An inquiry is under way.
Also last week, a British citizen was arrested at Manchester airport as he disembarked from a transatlantic flight. Another arrest followed shortly afterwards in West Yorkshire. The operation followed the exposure of a large-scale conspiracy to bomb Canadian institutions, storm the national parliament and behead the Prime Minister. In this case, the intelligence about the Canadian plot, some of it provided by UK secret services, seems to have been right. Catastrophe was averted.
Canadians were shocked by the threat that was revealed to them, much as Britons were on 7 July. Their bombers, like ours, were home-grown. Canada appeared on the al-Qaeda hit-list for the same reasons as Britain - it is a liberal, democratic, secular society. Those who argued after the tube bombings that London had been attacked because of the involvement of British forces in the invasion of Iraq should note that Canada's vociferous objection to the war was clearly of no consequence. The foreign policy of Western states is nimbly woven into the terrorists' rhetoric when it suits them, but it is not the cause of their actions.
Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, is not the main enemy on the ground in Iraq. There was jubilation in Baghdad last week when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born jihadi leader, was killed in an air raid. His extraordinary brutality appalled the vast majority of Iraqis. But the anti-democratic insurgency is a broad coalition, taking in former Saddamists, anti-occupation nationalists and criminal opportunists. Foreign terrorists shopping around for martyrdom wherever they can find it are a relatively small component.
A direct hit in Iraq, a pre-emptive strike in Toronto and a miss in east London - what do these events tell us about the terror threat?
First, that there are no knockout blows, only sequences of tactical victories and setbacks. Second, that terrorism is not a monolithic international movement or ideology but a tool deployed by individuals who can be identified, tracked and stopped. It makes more sense to talk about catching terrorists than waging a 'war on terror'. People, not abstract nouns, kill. Third, the best way to prevent terrorist acts has not changed much in 100 years. It requires traditional policing and espionage, infiltrating terrorist cells, monitoring individuals and gathering evidence.
The cult of martyrdom makes Islamist terror especially dangerous: it is hard to deter someone who craves death. This is why al-Qaeda's preference for indiscriminate mass murder justifies a more pre-emptive approach to arrests. It is better occasionally to kick down the wrong doors than to allow a tragedy for fear of causing offence.
Next month, Britain will mark the first anniversary of the 7 July bombings. We should be thankful that the horror of that day has not been repeated. We can also note that most people's lives have not significantly changed. On that front, at least, the bombers failed. There are no grounds for complacency, but there are grounds for optimism. Terror itself may never be eliminated, but we should have some confidence that the terrorists themselves can be caught.
