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Euros struggling to thwart next terrorist attack
I question a lot of this "no direct links" stuff, incidentally. The group that carried out the 3/11 attack was part of the same North African jihadi network that was involved in the Casablanca attacks and had done a lot of logistics work on the side for mujahideen in Chechnya, Iraq, and Bosnia, to say nothing of their ties to Yarkas and the 9/11 attacks. As for the 7/7 bombings, the UK authorities want to claim there wasn't any direct connection to organized groups as an excuse to keep them from cleaning up Londonistan or going after the LeT. In each case, the governments probably believe that they are delaying action until they're ready and preventing panic, but what they're actually doing, ironically enough, is providing more than ample fodder to anyone who wants to argue that all Muslims are actual if not potential security threats and should be viewed as such by the authorities, though I doubt such thoughts have crossed their minds at this point.European intelligence networks have thrown a blanket of surveillance over a small but fiercely violent cast of Islamic militants, many homegrown with no direct links to al-Qaida, whose fingerprints they expect to find on the Continent's next big terrorist attack. Senior security officials across Europe warned in interviews with The Associated Press that the relative ease and low cost of an attack, combined with the anger and isolation felt by Muslim populations, mean more bloodshed is almost inevitable. The officials painted a picture of a diverse group of militants with competing agendas, vastly different social and educational backgrounds and a litany of gripes that makes it difficult to predict their next move. While they may be motivated by Osama bin Laden's call for worldwide jihad, they mostly operate independently of al-Qaida's leadership, the officials said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-05-30 |
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