The greatest threat to
the US emanates from Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups
based in Europe, a prominent expert on terrorism told
a congressional committee on Wednesday.
Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation, who is also
CNN’s terrorism expert, in testimony before the
House Committee on International Relations rejected the
common belief that there are terrorist “sleeper
cells” in the Untied States. In fact, there were
such cells in Europe that could be used to mount an attack
on the US, a threat that was likely to increase with the
rise in Europe’s Muslim population. He said the
European terrorist would tend to be educated, unlike his
madrassa-trained counterpart from Pakistan. He pointed
out that European citizens who adopt the Al Qaeda philosophy
could move around easily and have the ability to enter
countries easily. He quoted Gilles Kepel, the French scholar
who said the war for Muslim minds around the world may
turn on the outcome of how European Muslims deal with
Islamist militancy in their midst, and the extent to which
European Muslims can be truly integrated into their host
societies. The 20 million Muslims who live in Europe are
less well treated than their counterparts in America and
in some countries even treated as second-class citizens.
Bergen concentrated on British Muslims who, he pointed
out, are young and poorly integrated into society and,
therefore, vulnerable to extremism. Seventy percent of
them are under 30. Unemployment among them is high, which
leads to anger. Eight out of 10 believe that the war on
terrorism is a war on Islam. They not only represent a
threat to their own homelands but also to the United States,
he added.
Calude Moniquet, director general of the European Strategic
Intelligence and Security Centre, told the Committee that
it is quite difficult to draw a general view of Islamic
extremism in Europe. It was only after 9/11 that Islamist
street demonstrations had been seen in Europe.
There were now Islamist parties everywhere on the Continent,
but none of them has parliamentary representation. Hate-preaching
is common in many mosques and since 9/11 anti-Semitism
has increased, much of it emanating from young Muslims.
Hundreds of young European Muslims had gone to Iraq to
fight. However, the exact Muslim “threat”
was difficult to determine. In a given Muslim population
in France, only five percent can be classed as fundamentalist,
out of which three percent could be considered “dangerous”.
Given the Muslim population of six million, there could
be 0.3 million fundamentalists, 9,000 of them falling
in the “dangerous” category.
Moniquet said there were many causes for Islamic extremism
in Europe. In France, most Muslims were Algerian and until
very recently “absolutely nothing was done to help
them integrate.” The witness added, “This
is the European reality and the European shame. We must
live with it and we are paying for it.” Most Muslim
clerics were trained in Saudi Arabia and have no real
knowledge of the societies in which they find themselves.
Radical clerics had taken advantage of this and begun
advocating radical Islam and attacking Western values.
The threat, the witness said, is “very real and
is both political and terrorist.” Politically, Islamists
are trying to subvert Western society by contesting humanist
values and calling for Sharia tribunals to judge civil
and personal matters. Moniquet disclosed that since 9/11,
20 major Islamist terrorist attacks had been averted in
Europe, but Islamism is asserting itself as a “mutant
virus” and local groups made up of the very young
are emerging. Thanks to al Qaeda, an “International
Islamist Terror” now exists and the threat will
not diminish in the foreseeable future, the witness added.
Lorenzo Vindino of the Investigative Project, Washington,
informed the Committee that in the last 10 years, Europe
has seen a “troubling escalation” of Islamist
terrorist activities because of lax immigration policies,
radicalisation of segments of a burgeoning Muslim population
and the ineffective role of security agencies. Every single
al Qaeda attack had a European link. Al Qaeda has become
decentralised with cells operating out of Europe. He said
it was not far-fetched to speak of Europe as “a
new Afghanistan.” He blamed political asylums granted
to hundreds of Islamic fundamentalist in Europe during
the 1980s. Some of the worst radicals facing prosecution
in their own countries found a safe haven and new operational
base in Europe. He said these people share the same Salafi
ideology and the common dream of a global Islamic state.
He quoted a French intelligence report that said radical
Islam represents for some Muslims “a vehicle of
protest against problems of access to employment and housing,
discrimination of various sorts, the very negative image
of Islam in public opinion.”
Vindino said the European criminal underworld provides
an excellent recruiting pool, crime also constitutes a
major source of financing for terrorist organisations.
Islamic terrorists have been actively involved in recent
years in human smuggling, as well as in drug trafficking.
Billions of dollars form Moroccan hashish trade are believed
to have gone to these organisations. There are legal difficulties
faced by European authorities in proving terrorism links.
In many countries laws prevent intelligence agencies from
sharing information with prosecutors or law enforcement
officials without a long and complicated procedure. He
warned that the spread of Islamic radicalism in Europe
needs to be closely monitored by the US, because hundreds
of terrorists with European passports can enter the US
with ease.
Matthew A, Levitt of the Washington Institute of Terrorism
Studies, said the rise of global jihadist movements in
Europe was alarming because they were a network, tied
together by individual relationships. Hezbollah, he pointed
out, was active in Europe and had used it as a launching
pad from which to infiltrate operatives into Israel. He
stated that Hamas front organisations in Europe had come
to attention in 2003 when two British South Asian Muslims
carried out a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. Various
charities in Europe, such as the Aqsa International Foundation,
were run to raise money for Hamas and its operations.
He quoted form an interview conducted by Jessica Stern
in Pakistan where the leader of a jehadi outfit told her
that there were person-to-person contacts with other groups,
and “sometimes fighters from Hamas and Hezbollah
help us.
He added that a good place to meet was Iran. “We
don’t involve other organisations, just individuals,”
he explained. Levitt told the hearing, “Counterterrorism
is not about defeating terrorism, it is about constricting
the environment in which terrorists operate – making
it harder for them to do what they want to do at every
level: conducting operations, procuring and transferring
false documents, ferrying fugitives from one place to
another, financing, raising and laundering funds. It is
about making it more difficult for terrorists to conduct
their operational, logistical and financial activities.”
