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Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism: a Threat to Europe?

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Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism: a Threat to Europe? © Rubbettino Centro Militare di Studi Strategici - Roma © Rubbettino Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism: A threat to Europe? Maria do Céu Pinto (University of Minho Portugal) Rubbettino © Rubbettino Copyright © by CeMiSS Centro Militare di Studi Strategici Piazza della Rovere, 83 - 00165 Roma (RM) e-mail: [email protected] © 2004 - Rubbettino Editore 88049 Soveria Mannelli - Viale Rosario Rubbettino, 10 -Tel. (0968) 662034 www.rubbettino.it © Rubbettino Index Abstract: 7 Introduction 9 I Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism in Europe: The Background 11 I.1. Palestinian Terrorism 11 I.2. Iranian Terrorism 17 II New Patterns of Islamist Terrorism in the 1990s 21 II.1. A New Age of Terrorism 21 II.2. Religious Terrorism 22 III The Web of Terror in Europe 31 III.1. Interlocking Terror Plots 31 III.2. Al-Qaeda: an Umbrella Network 32 III.3. Mosques: Recruitment and Indoctrination 36 IV Groups and Activities of Islamic Terrorists in Europe 41 IV.1. England 41 IV.2. France And Belgium 49 IV.3. Italy 53 IV.4. Germany 62 IV.5. Spain 65 IV.6. The Netherlands 71 V Evaluating the Terrorist Threat to Europe’s Security 75 V.1. Al-Qaeda’s European Infrastructure after 11th September 75 V.2. Islamic Communities in Europe: A Breeding Ground of Terrorists? 76 Conclusion 77 Bibliography 79 © Rubbettino 5 © Rubbettino Abstract During three decades Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe was largely a spillover from problems in the Middle East. Europe was a preferential oper- ational area for Arab, Palestinian and Iranian terrorists fighting each other. In the 1990s, a new Islamic threat emerged as a result of the activities of “ad hoc” terrorist groups, which lack a well-established organisational identity and tend to decentralise and compartmentalise their activities. These new groups, be- longing to the al-Qaeda transnational network, seek to punish the West by in- flicting heavy civilian casualties. The 11th September hijackers are prime ex- amples of this new breed of radical, transnational, Islamic terrorists. These groups are well funded, and some have developed sophisticated international support networks that provide them great freedom of movement and increase their opportunities to attack on a global basis. Since the September 11th ter- rorist attacks, police and prosecutors in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Ger- many, Spain and the Netherlands have made scores of arrests and uncovered what they suspect is a large and interconnected network of Muslim terrorists. America may be the primary target of Islamist terrorism, but Europe has proved to be the breeding ground of the networks. Europe has played host to a sprawling network of terror groups whose activists were crucial to the 11th September terror or were part of al-Qaeda plots. European police believe they now hold some of the key players in what may have been a planned second wave of terror attacks in Europe. There are large Muslim expatriate commu- nities in most EU countries. This also includes the large student populations and businessmen who frequently travel to Europe. Geographically, Europe sits in a strategic part of the world, with good communication links to the Middle East, Asia and the United States. It itself offers attractive targets for terrorists. They can take advantage of the lack of intrusiveness of the author- ities into ordinary peoples’ lives. This makes it easy for Islamic terrorists to send in operational elements. The tolerant and liberal European societies of- fer an ideal environment for al-Qaeda operatives seeking to blend into their © Rubbettino 7 surroundings and, thus, evade detection by the authorities. They can pass un- noticed in the Muslim communities but they can also receive cover, shelter, lo- gistical aid from sympathisers and in-country support elements, who in turn, are a potential pool of recruits. 8 © Rubbettino Introduction The Middle East has been, since 1984, the major stage and/or source of international terrorism on the world scene.1 Middle Eastern and Islamist ter- rorism remains a complex phenomenon spawned by a combination of factors and motivations. Both traditional state-sponsored international Middle East- ern terrorism and that carried out by loosely organised groups of radical Is- lamists operate in a troubled national and regional environment: a context of regional and factional rivalries, economic crisis, lack of political legitimacy, de- teriorating climate due to the failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process. All these factors fuel frustration and desperation and the belief that the political stalemate can only be overcome through the use of violence: those perceptions increasingly find expression in acts of terrorism. In the aftermath of the Soviet bloc’s demise, the secure bipolar view of the world collapsed, leaving, in its place, many uncertainties and unstable reali- ties. Furthermore, the growing invasion of globalisation, with its unifying drive, has impacted negatively on many cultures and has generated local re- sistance. The “terrorist spectaculars” that have characterised the last decade of the XXth century and the first years of the XXIth century are the graphic illustration of a deeply transformed world. Religious terrorism has emerged as the foremost expression of political violence against the prevailing political or- der. It could represent a symptomatic reaction to the global shifts in the struc- turing of the international political order after the end of the Cold War. In its violent outburst, it is the synthesis of real experiences of political oppression, economic destitution and inability to assimilate to the modern world. The new fact about Middle Eastern terrorism is that ready access to in- formation and information technologies, coupled with the ability to commu- nicate globally via the Internet, fax, and other media, provides terrorists with new tools for targeting, fund-raising, propaganda dissemination, and opera- tional communication. Members of al-Qaeda, the worldwide umbrella organ- * Europe is employed here in the strict sense of European Union (EU) members. 1 Cecilia Albino, “The Politics of Terrorism: A Contemporary Survey”, in Barry Rubin, The Politics of Terrorism: Terror as a State and Revolutionary Strategy, Washington, D.C., The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, 1989, p. 222. © Rubbettino 9 isation for Islamic terrorism, actively use the Internet in some manner: to com- municate with each other, organise actions (often through the use of pass- words and encryption to limit access to members and friends), rally support- ers and sympathisers, enlist new members, advertise successful actions, hon- our fallen comrades, and to convey grievances, threats and demands to their targets at home and abroad. 10 © Rubbettino I. Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism in Europe: The Background I.1. Palestinian Terrorism In the past four decades, sponsor states (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran) have played a major role in terrorist activities in the region and abroad, namely in Western Europe. In the late 1960s, a large number of Palestinian guerrilla groups had come into being. Libya, Syria, Iraq, the U.S.S.R. and China spon- sored specific groups1. Some groups, including major ones with several thou- sand members, received simultaneous Libyan, Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian and oth- er support. Those states supported international terrorism either by engaging in terrorist activity themselves, or by providing arms, training, safe havens, diplomatic facilities, financial backing and logistic support to terrorists. In the case of Palestinian and PLO terrorism, state sponsoring was crucial to its durability and success2. For Arab states, international terrorism has been “mere- ly an extension of their domestic policies”3. For states, such as Libya and Syria, “small and weak states”, “terrorist strategies” help “gain international attention and further overly ambitious foreign policy goals”. Those countries contributed to numerous terrorist actions in Europe: in the case of Libya, mainly through the Abu Nidal group, and, in the case of Syria, using Palestinian terrorists4. The golden era of Palestinian terror was initiated on 23rd July, 1968. On that day, three armed Palestinian terrorists from a Popular Front for the Lib- 1 The PLO joined a global network of guerrilla and terrorist groups and built valuable links to the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. Palestinian operatives were sent to train in the Soviet bloc, China and North Korea for training in guerrilla warfare that was often directly transferable to terrorist skills. 2 “Terrorism after the Cold War: Trends and Challenges”, Orbis, vol. 46, nº 2, Spring 2002, p. 158. 3 B. Rubin, “The Political Uses of Terrorism in the Middle East”, in Rubin, The Politics of Terrorism, p. 30. 4 Albin, op. cit., pp. 225-30. © Rubbettino 11 eration of Palestine (PFLP)5 cell hijacked a plane en route from Rome to Lod airport in Tel Aviv and diverted it to Algeria6. That event ushered in modern terrorism in its form of “internationalization of terrorism” as a territorial and media phenomenon. Technological advances in the field of transportation al- lowed terrorists to travel with ease and to move around, inflinging human and material damages on countries other than their own7. Furthermore, television gave terrorists a worldwide audience, which had a tremendous impact on the resonance and psychological effect of terrorist acts, sometimes bestowing po- litical legitimacy or respectability on terrorists8. The PFLP was among the first of the Palestinian
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