Details of the foiled terrorist plot to blow up aircraft over the Atlantic point to an ominous new development in the pattern of international terrorism, writes Jonathan Eyal.
The thwarting of a plot to destroy up to 10 aircraft in mid-flight over the Atlantic has given British police and the country's security services a much-needed morale-booster. After the failure to stop the suicide bombings on London's underground last June and the bungled anti-terrorist arrests in the British capital two months ago, the current achievement can hardly be doubted. Essentially, Britain foiled what could have been the biggest terrorist attack in its history, "mass murder on an unimaginable scale", as Paul Stephenson, the deputy chief of London's Metropolitan police put it.
As always after such events, facts are slow to emerge and some - such as the actual techniques used to identify the alleged culprits - will never be revealed. Caution must also be exercised about the welter of revelations now pouring out from unattributed "security sources"; much of these will subsequently be discarded either as figments of someone's imagination, or as media suppositions. Nevertheless, two conclusions are already obvious. Co-operation between national intelligence services is getting better, and is starting to produce real results. But, at the same time, the challenge facing the West remains deeply entrenched, and may actually be growing.
The first leads of the suspicious activity which ultimately grew into the aircraft plot were picked up by MI5, Britain's internal security service, a year ago. Initially, this looked like a normal surveillance operation, of the kind security services regularly undertake. Yet by December 2005, it became clear that the British had stumbled over the plans of "a large group", as Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, described them yesterday.
Nevertheless, while evidence of suspicious activity mounted, the British were still unaware of what the specific target could be, or when the group planned to strike. Key anti-terrorist officers were therefore allowed to take their summer leave undisturbed this August. As Tony Blair's assistants have now admitted, the British prime minister would have not gone on holiday to the Caribbean had he known just how immediate the threat was. In short, while intelligence evidence accumulated, it remained patchy until fairly late in the day.
The Pakistani government now claims that it was its recent arrest of a few terror suspects, and particularly those linked to Laskhar-e-Tayyaba, the militant Islamist group that India accuses of sending hundreds of Pakistanis to fight in Kashmir, which provided the final evidence on both the target and timing. Perhaps. But British security sources, while acknowledging some Pakistani assistance, point to another source: electronic interception of messages between the alleged terrorists in Britain and their handlers somewhere at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet again, the evidence emerged slowly. However, at some point last week, the British obtained precise information about the purpose of the operation. And, by early this week, they apparently intercepted the final evidence that the terrorist cells had been told to execute their orders. Piecing together the sequence of events remains important, for it provides us with a rare glimpse into the progress made in the global fight against terrorism. The eavesdropping capabilities of Western governments have now scored notable successes.
Nevertheless, this still remains a hit-and-miss affair, more a matter of luck rather than design.
Either way, there is no question that the British acted earlier than they originally intended to. A rushed meeting of the "Cobra" group - the key government committee dealing with major crises - was convened in London at midnight on Wednesday; it sat through the early hours of Thursday morning in order to coordinate the arrests. The frenzied nature of the security measures implemented at various airports is another indication that, ultimately, the operation had to be hurried along. And the partial suspension of flights from key European capitals into London during Thursday provides evidence of the authorities' fear that some of the plotters may still be at large. John Reid, Britain's Home Secretary, claims that all the "main players" are now under arrest. Yet there is little doubt that at least some of the long-distance plotters of the operation remain free. In short, the British scored a very big success, but it was probably not as complete as the country's intelligence services wanted it to be.
AND, DESPITE THE officially expressed satisfaction, almost every other known detail of the foiled operation points to an ominous new development in the pattern of international terrorism, with huge consequences for global security.
The strategy of blowing up planes in mid-air is not exactly new. Nor is the idea of assembling the explosive devices after the plane has taken off. However, the substances which the terrorists planned to use - liquids carried in hand luggage - certainly present new security challenges. Hand luggage was always a weak spot in airport security which is designed to process large numbers of passengers very quickly. The technology relies on identifying suspicious items by calculating the density of compounds, picking up smells, evaluating reflected light, or just shapes of objects. The material which the alleged terrorists planned to use was designed to foil all these measures; it was "sophisticated and very effective", as the British police claims.
London's decision to ban passengers from carrying any liquid on board - including even eye lenses' cleaning fluid - may be just temporary. But it may also be the start of a wider overhaul of airport security.
A much more significant question is, who may be the mastermind behind this planned atrocity? The plot bears a striking resemblance to an attack hatched 12 years ago by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was to become Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, and Ramzi Yousef, who was the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
Codenamed Operation Bojinka (after a Serb word meaning "big bang", a fashionable term among the men of violence during the long years of the Yugoslav wars at that time), it envisaged the destruction of 12 aircraft over the Pacific, by smuggling liquid explosives on board.
The plot was accidentally discovered in the Philippines capital of Manila in 1995, but its blueprint is almost identical to the one attempted in London. There are, however, two subtle differences. The compound which the terrorists planned to use in Operation Bojinka more than a decade ago was nitrocellulose and a few of its derivatives, a highly flammable agent which is fairly unstable but which can be mixed with high explosives in order to produce a fairly major explosion. Those who planned the current attack, however, appear to have considered a peroxide-based substance, also unstable but difficult to detect during normal security checks and easy to detonate with an electrical charge from any computer or music-playing device. Furthermore, while Operation Bojinka was planned by a long-standing terrorist network of seasoned fighters, the one in London appears to have been composed of fresh recruits.
The obvious conclusion is that al- Qaeda is behind the current episode.
The large number of people involved in the London plot is one indication; few other organisations have comparable reach. The high number of potential suicide bombers (up to 20 of those arrested in Britain were apparently ready to go down with their planes), may also indicate al-Qaeda's hand.
Recruiting suicide bombers is a highly complicated affair. People rarely just volunteer to die, and those who do volunteer from the start are usually regarded as suspicious, potential plants by intelligence services. Any organisation which wants to use suicide bombers therefore vets its candidates, and needs a relatively long time to "prime" them, both psychologically and physically. An entire procedure is designed for this purpose, including the taping of video messages to be played after the action, the sort of "final testimony", a ritual which is meant to strengthen the bonds between suicide bombers and provide a psychological justification for their mission. Typically, only a tiny minority of those who pledge their death for a cause actually go ahead and do it. But those arrested in Britain seem to have gone through all the stages of preparation for their suicide attacks. Yet again, this is not something many organisations - apart from al-Qaeda - can accomplish. And then, there is the timing: on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
BUT POINTING THE finger at al-Qaeda is not very illuminating. First, the organisation has been under constant surveillance and, although not eliminated, it is clearly under siege. It may not have been able to plan such an operation, and carry it through with such precision almost to its successful conclusion. More importantly, Bin Laden's creation was never a monolithic organisation: as its Arabic name suggests, it was always a network of kindred-spirit splinter groups, sharing funding and expertise in South East Asia or the Middle East. The Operation Bojinka blueprint from the 1990s is widely known and publicly available; it has been the stuff of legends among extremist Islamic organisations for years. So, the London operation could have been just a copycat exercise, a rehash of an old plan, adapted to today's circumstances.
If the ultimate conclusion is that the London operation was the result of a splinter group which was merely inspired, rather than directed, by al-Qaeda, then the future looks grim. European governments have long known that among their overwhelmingly peaceful Muslim minorities, a few will be tempted to resort to violence. And yet, a year after the suicide attacks in London which shook Britain's Muslim community, tens of young British citizens - mostly middle class, educated and living in fairly prosperous areas - apparently got together to plot a massive wave of suicide attacks.
The episode will reconfirm American fears about Europe; US intelligence agencies have long regarded Britain and France as fertile ground for radical Islamist groups. So, while Britain and the US stood together this week and praised their joint efforts to foil the atrocity, the gulf between North America and Europe may be widening. For the US, the terrorist threat remains external: violence perpetrated by people who live outside America's frontiers. But for the Europeans, the danger is now internal. And it appears to be growing.
Furthermore, the terrorists can look at the aftermath of this British intelligence success and take some comfort. Their operation has failed, but the people of Europe and the US are still paying a price. As the major aim of terrorism is to force people to change their habits and values while they live in fear, Thursday's failed attack was a partial victory for violence. The collapsed share prices for airline and travel companies, the hundreds of cancelled flights in and out of Heathrow Airport, and the stringent new security regulations which were imposed have affected hundreds of thousands. And the damage to race relations on the European continent could be even more severe.
Governments, however, have no other choice but to soldier on. Security services are working well together, and have made great strides in electronic surveillance. But the hydra of international terrorism looks set to spring up many more heads. It is not a war which can be won. But it remains one which must be fought.
Jonathan Eyal is Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London