Secret Affairs by Mark Curtis

Author:Mark Curtis [Curtis, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE LONDON BOMBINGS

The four coordinated London bombings constituted the worst single terrorist atrocity ever in Britain, killing 52 people and injuring 700. They were the first ‘successful’ Islamist terrorist attacks in the country and were conducted by four British-born Muslims, three of them of Pakistani origin living in Yorkshire, one of Jamaican origin living in Buckinghamshire. The bombings came two years after the invasion of Iraq and followed concerns voiced by some security officials that the country was likely to be attacked by ‘home-grown’ terrorists.30

That the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 would inspire British Islamists to target Britain was recognised by British planners. Three months before the London bombings, the Joint Intelligence Committee stated in a classified report, leaked the following year, that:

There is a clear consensus within the UK extremist community that Iraq is a legitimate jihad and should be supported. Iraq has re-energised and refocused a wide range of networks in the UK … The conflict in Iraq has exacerbated the threat from international terrorism and will continue to have an impact in the long term. It has reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West and motivated others who were not.31

This report followed a joint Home Office–Foreign Office analysis in 2004 – called ‘Young Muslims and Extremism’ – which was leaked in 2005. This stated that:

A particularly strong cause of disillusionment amongst Muslims … is a perceived ‘double standard’ in the foreign policy of Western governments (and often those of Muslim governments), in particular Britain and the US … This perception seems to have become more acute post 9/11. The perception is that passive ‘oppression’, as demonstrated in British foreign policy, e.g. non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to ‘active oppression’ – the War on Terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam.32

This ‘double standard’ had been pointed out by Osama Bin Laden in a speech five years before 7/7, in 2000. He had said:

The British are responsible for destroying the caliphate system. They are the ones who created the Palestinian problem. They are the ones who created the Kashmiri problem. They are the ones who put the arms embargo on the Muslims of Bosnia so that 2 million Muslims were killed. They are the ones who are starving the Iraqi children. And they are continuously dropping bombs on these innocent Iraqi children.33

Bin Laden’s views had a degree of accuracy about them, far more so than the justifications for the London bombings put forward by the ringleader of the gang, Mohammed Siddique Khan. A few months after 7/7, the TV station, al-Jazeera, broadcast a video made by Khan on the eve of the attacks. He claimed that they had been timed to coincide with the anniversary of Britain ignoring a truce offer from Bin Laden to withdraw troops from Iraq or else face a terror campaign.34 But Khan also made the argument that ordinary Londoners were

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