DAR AL HARB - U.K.: MOSLEMS NEED TO DO MORE

We need Muslims to do more
By Philip Johnston

This Saturday is the second anniversary of the murderous attacks on the London transport system that killed 52 travellers and four suicide bombers. It is only thanks to luck, and an apparent lack of expertise on the terrorists' part, that dozens more families are not mourning the loss of their loved ones. The failed car bombs in London, and what seems to have been a suicide attack at Glasgow airport, are an alarming escalation in the campaign being waged by fanatical Islamists principally, for the moment, against this country. So concerned are the counter-terrorist agencies that the threat level has been raised to "critical" - the highest grade, last reached after the July 7 atrocities.

It goes without saying that we have a serious problem here. But consider how serious it really is. Although they were only jailed recently, the terrorists who planned to use a fertiliser bomb to target nightclubs and shopping centres were operating in 2003-4, more than a year before the London attacks. So, too, was the jihadi cell led by Dhiren Barot, a hardened and experienced al-Qa'eda operative, whose plot - possibly to detonate a "dirty bomb" - was thwarted only because arrests in Pakistan alerted Western intelligence services to what was going on.

Last summer's alleged airline plot, smashed by MI5's Operation Overt, could have caused the most appalling carnage, as well as halting transatlantic flights and leading America to impose even more Draconian travel restrictions than are already in place. The London car bombs, had they gone off, could have killed or maimed many revellers in the heart of the West End. There is a pattern emerging here of good intelligence intercepting a number of conspiracies; of inexperienced, almost exclusively home-grown, terrorists who have yet to acquire the expertise to make each attack work; and of a co-ordinated, al-Qa'eda-inspired campaign that is seeking to ratchet up the scale of the terror every time.

What the al-Qa'eda commanders based in the Pakistan border areas want is a "spectacular" attack, and they are getting perilously close to pulling one off. They have evidently created a sophisticated cell structure, using the large Pakistani community living in Britain as cover, because those within it who are prepared to carry out terror attacks can come and go as they please between the two countries.

MI5 is watching a lot of these cells, unsure which are false leads and which are the ones that will go live. According to the Security Service, nearly 2,000 Britons linked to al-Qa'eda are under surveillance, and as many as 30 potential terrorist plots are being tracked. We can only assume that the cell that carried out the latest attacks was not under close observation, since its members would have been intercepted before planting their bombs. In other words, despite the extraordinary number of suspects being watched, there will inevitably be potential terrorists of whom MI5 is unaware.

But the police and intelligence agencies are only as good as the information they receive. There is an increasingly important role to be played here by the Muslim community. It was notable yesterday that when Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, spoke about the Glasgow attack, he was at pains to say it should not lead to suspicion falling on the Muslim community. "Individuals are responsible for their actions, not communities," he said.

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Pertinent Links:

1) We need Muslims to do more