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28-07-2005 The Scotsman Investigation runs into political wall of denial By Gethin Chamberlain IF THE British government was hoping that the world would unite around its efforts to track down those people behind the London bomb attacks, it is facing bitter disappointment. Denial appears to be the order of the day. After 9/11, no-one dared cross the United States in its furious determination to track down those it blamed for the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. In the days that followed, President Bush rang Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, to ask which side he was on. Yours, Musharraf replied, though he had little choice. America was drawing up a list of people to kick, and it didn't particularly mind who was on that list. But the world is a different place now, and Britain a less formidable foe. The threat of punitive military action can no longer be left hanging over those who do not pull their weight in the war against terrorism. Afghanistan served to encourage co-operation from those who were loath to suffer a similar fate, but Iraq has put paid to that dividend. The detectives involved in the investigation cannot say so in public, but privately they must be shaking their heads in despair to discover that even Britain's Muslim community cannot be relied upon to rally round and get behind them. Senior officers and politicians have gone out of their way to make conciliatory noises about how they are not targeting the whole community, yet their reward has been suspicion and in some cases overt antagonism. One only has to listen to the words of Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, to realise what they are up against. Yesterday, he appeared alongside the local police commander at a meeting intended to appeal for calm. Superintendent Russ Smith promised that anyone taking the law into their own hands would be dealt with robustly, a favourite word of police and government ministers in recent weeks. Dr Naseem responded by rubbishing the way police were conducting their inquiry. He claimed the CIA was behind some of the information coming out about the attacks, implied that Tony Blair was a liar and asserted that he had seen nothing to convince him that the men who blew up themselves and 52 other people on 7 July were to blame for the attacks. He was, in short, a man in denial. And Dr Naseem was not alone in this. People living in the area where the latest arrests were made had their own theories, and they were as wild as those that surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the first bombings. The Americans did not have this problem after 9/11, maybe because those who move to that country find it easier to think of themselves as US citizens - perhaps because the US is a nation of immigrants. But here, it is clear, there are large numbers of people who do not feel that they belong. Maybe it is because they have been made to feel unwelcome, maybe because they have not tried hard enough to integrate, but they regard the state as against them, rather than viewing themselves as part of that state. And if that is the attitude at home, there can be little optimism that countries already suspicious of Britain's international agenda will rush to comply with requests for assistance that may place their own nationals in the spotlight. Over the past few weeks, it has been suggested, particularly in the non-western media, that the bombings were the work of Mossad, the CIA, the British government - anyone, in short, other than those who were palpably responsible. But nowhere is that spirit of denial as strong as it is in Pakistan at the moment. There seems little doubt now that if investigators ever manage to establish who masterminded the London bombing campaign - and with the current level of help they are receiving, there is no guarantee that that will be the case - the trail will lead back to Pakistan. The methods adopted by the bombers have all the hallmarks of established jihadi groups. The thinking behind them, the use of sleeper cells and the visits to Pakistan by the 7 July bombers - all point to the involvement of experienced terrorists from that country. Mohammad Amir Rana, a journalist who has placed his life on the line to investigate the jihadis operating in his country, and in doing so has become Pakistan's foremost expert on al-Qaeda, is certain that the trail will lead back to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba organisation. LeT started life as a Kashmiri terrorist group fighting India in the disputed territory claimed by both Delhi and Islamabad, but has since mutated into a formidable terrorist network. It raises funds from donations in the UK, trains up young men at its madrassas in Pakistan and in recent years has started grooming sleeper cells in the US, Britain and Australia. President Musharraf is well aware of the dangers posed by LeT. Yet for all his much-vaunted crackdown on militants in the wake of the London bombings, LeT remains intact. Perhaps that is because it still has powerful friends in Pakistan; it was, after all, established with the assistance of the country's security forces, and continues to do sterling work in their cause against Indian forces in Kashmir. Perhaps it is too valuable an ally to cut adrift. But LeT is not the only one fomenting violence inside Pakistan's borders. If Osama bin Laden is still alive, the smart money is on him hiding out in the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda has been badly damaged, but it still retains a hard core of leaders holed up in the general's backyard. THE madrassas, too, remain a problem. For all the protestations that they offer the chance of an education to children whose families would otherwise be unable to afford to send them to school, what is taught inside their walls should be of concern to anyone wondering why it is that young men are prepared to blow up not only themselves, but also the people they should now regard as countrymen. When, as the Financial Times reported yesterday, a school textbook used for teaching the history, culture and politics of Pakistan to 15-year-olds contains the line "the most supreme jihad is offering one's life for sacrifice - the reward for which is eternal life for a martyr", it is time for other countries to start asking what is going on. The Pakistani leader is walking a political tightrope. On the face of it, the arrest of as many as 600 militants since 7 July is something that he can hold up as evidence that he is tackling the problem of jihadi extremism that clearly still exist in his country. This is the message that he is keen to send to other leaders. He used a televised address to the nation last week to call for a holy war on those who preached hatred, and he has promised to restrict the activities of the madrassas and their sponsors. Mr Blair appeared grateful for his help: "It is important Britain and Pakistan work on these issues together," he said. But President Musharraf cannot take too many chances at home, where such moves are desperately unpopular. So he has also gone out of his way to insist that the rest of the world should stop blaming Pakistan for terrorist attacks and has warned Britain to look after its own problems before blaming others. Al-Qaeda has been crushed inside Pakistan's borders, he has insisted. And it has been made clear that none of those arrests has anything to do with the 7 July attacks in London. As for his crackdown, it appears to have had the fortunate side-effect of removing a large swathe of political opposition. It is no coincidence that some of those picked up and taken out of circulation are from the mainstream opposition conservative alliance of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal. All this has left British intelligence agencies frustrated and helpless. At a meeting this week between Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Pakistan's interior minister, and Mark Lyall Grant, the UK high commissioner, an agreement was reportedly reached to increase co-operation. Britain's Muslim leaders have also pledged to do what they can to help track down the bombers. But while they and the Pakistani president continue to accompany their words with caveats and prevarications, there is little hope of getting at the roots of the terrorism that has been visited on Britain, and the identities of those ultimately behind the London attacks may never be known.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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