Terrorists of the third tier

So what motivates people in the United Kingdom to bomb? Attention has immediately focused on the attitudes of the “British Muslim” community. This is a new idea in Britain, born at and after the attacks in America on September 11, 2001. Prior to that time, it was common to speak of “British Asians” without particular reference to religious identity. Indeed, coinciding with the election of Tony Blair in 1997, all things South Asian were fashionable in Britain: music, film, literature, style. Often referred to as “Indian” as well as “South Asian”, these interests also included a business interest in the main economy of the region, and led to the Blair government and the British Council “rebranding” Britain’s image into one celebrating multiculturalism.

Those days seem long ago. Now Britons worry about multiculturalism: has it provided cover for the growth of extremism in the heart of the country? In parts of Britain’s inner cities, the racist and fascist British National Party (BNP) grows in strength, gaining support from disaffected white voters. But their influence should not be overestimated. The BNP is still incredibly marginal nationally, and relatively marginal even in its electoral strongholds in northern English cities and in east London.

Britons are not turning to the political right in response to these attacks. But they are asking what the “British Muslim” community knows about extremism, and what it can do to prevent it. Representatives of Britain’s Muslim community have been in the forefront of condemning the bombs, of asking the community to help the police, and in meeting with Blair to begin some process of defining clearly the boundaries of behaviour.

That which is most incendiary in the debate, however, is the role of the war in Iraq in radicalising opinion. Suggestions that the war had made the terrorist threat greater are everywhere in the British debate: in a report leaked by British intelligence to newspapers; in a report published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Responding to the latter, Jack Straw, foreign secretary, warned of those who were acting as apologists for terror. But the link is everywhere. It represents that which is being said both by radical groups, but also by many “British Muslims”. For the former, the solution is terrorism; for the overwhelming majority — the latter — the solution is a change in political direction. Dissatisfaction of “British Muslims” with the government’s policy in Iraq was manifested in the general election, not least in East London where a prominent Labour MP was defeated by George Galloway, on the issue of the war.

The debate, however, is on the role of Pakistan. Should Pakistan take some responsibility for the London bombing? Three of the four suspected bombers made trips to Pakistan over the past year; they seemed, according to family and friends, to have had radicalising experiences in Pakistani madrassas. Has the massive expansion of the Pakistani madrassa system allowed for the radicalisation of some; do some teach terror; has that led to this bombing? These, and other questions, are at the forefront of public debate today.

They are important questions. But, in some ways, they are the wrong questions. The key question is: how does the ideology espoused by Osama bin Laden become so attractive to western born and raised men? For it is not an ideology of war by Muslims on non-believers. Muslims were killed in America on September 11, in the Istanbul bombing, in the London bombing, and have been and are being killed in very large numbers on a regular basis in Iraq. There is something particular about the belief that Islam is being offended, and that injustice upon Islam is a western policy. Into that the war in Iraq must be fed. Do Al Qaeda and its affiliates really attack the West because of what the West is; or because of what they think the West does in the Islamic world? Clear analysis has to be the basis of policy.

The argument that the war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of terrorism in Britain does not lead necessarily to the view that the war was wrong. There would have been far less violence in Britain and in those countries that Britain had at the time given itself responsibility for, had the country not gone to war for Poland in 1939. That would not, however, have been the right political choice. The war of 2003 was very unlike that of ’39; but the point is that public safety, though vitally important, is only one value in political calculation. Nor does it lead to a view that says Britain should withdraw its troops from Iraq now; it is difficult to see how that would aid either the security situation, or the development of democracy.

London’s British bombers have raised questions about the nature of British society and the role of Britain in the world. But what they have not done is to change the behaviour of the British. London still functions normally; even after the second bomb scare; even after an innocent man was suspected of being one of the terrorists and shot dead by police. When 20,000 people had to be cleared from the centre of Birmingham two days after the London blasts due to a bomb alert, this was achieved quickly and peacefully. This shows that the questions raised in the aftermath of the bombs were already there in British society; that the bombs underlined them; but that the British are not going to allow their behaviour to be changed by terror.

The writer is a professor of International Relations, University of Birmingham, and director of a research programme on new security challenges