Friday, September 11, 2009 

Al-Qaida is dead. Long live al-Qaida.

Al-Qaida faces recruitment crisis, claims the Graun.  One has to wonder if this isn't just to do with all the associated problems currently facing them in Pakistan, with the army apparently ready or getting ready to move into Waziristan, but rather because Ayman al-Zawahiri is an increasingly derided figure within jihadi circles while bin Laden may as well be dead, even if he isn't, such is his current input.

As well as that to contend with, it's the simple truth that al-Qaida in Pakistan is on the back foot.  Young idealistic fighters aren't attracted to lost causes, hence why Iraq has also now dropped down the list of places that most wished to travel and fight in.  Afghanistan suddenly looks attractive again, while probably the biggest success now is al-Shabaab in Somalia, a triumph for which American interference, in the form of the Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu a couple of years back can be squarely linked to.  Al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb, formerly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat is also apparently proposing.  The key here also is that these are nationalist struggles, not global ones.  They might fight with the intention one day of going global, but nationalism rather than globalism can still motivate the locals far more than the utopian idealism of a global caliphate can.

Finally, there's also the fact that this could, despite so much academic concern, just be a fad, somewhat like the left-wing terrorism of the 70s and 80s in Europe was.  There's also the fact that 9/11 is now to those who were only say, 10 at the time and are now entering adulthood, almost ancient history.  Bin Laden?  Who's he?  There will be others, surely, to take his place, like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi already has to an extent in jihadist idealism, but bin Laden himself is not getting any younger.  New heroes emerge as the old ones decay.  The real thing to fear might well be the next generation of Islamic extremists, just as deadly in their ambition as Zarqawi, and with even less qualms about things like shedding blood, definitely including that of fellow Muslims.  The old al-Qaida might be withering away, but a new one or a successor will surely take its place.

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9/11/2009 09:35:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 

The sense of impending doom returns.

Did you notice anything missing over the past few months?  That slight feeling of dread which you could constantly feel in the marrow of your bones?  That cloud of doom which had hung over the country ever since 7/7, being whipped up at least once a year by either further supposed disruptions of supposed plots or by newspapers demanding that we wrap ourselves in the flag in the face of such unmitigated horror as two idiots succeeding in only setting themselves on fire.

For a while this year, since the Manchester raids turned out to be the latest example of "security sources" briefing their poisonous hyperbole to an ever compliant media, we've actually had something approaching a thaw, helped along both by the actual reduction in the supposed threat level from severe to substantial, and also MI5's own acknowledgement that there are now less "active" plots than there were previously.  Considering the claims that there was up to 30 active plots and 2,000 individuals dedicated, presumably, to the militant variety of radical Islam, this was a sudden turn around and still remains so.  In line with this, we've had less blatant scaremongering, including from the worst offender, the Sun.  The recession and expenses scandal have of course helped also.

It was perhaps to be expected then that when the verdicts were finally returned in the retrial of the "liquid doom" plotters, with this time round the three ringleaders all being convicted of conspiracy to murder on airplanes that the headless chicken act would return once again.  Yesterday we warned to be alert that al-Qaida would try to bomb aircraft again, as clearly they don't learn from both their successes and mistakes, while today the Sun has attempted to do something approaching investigative journalism by discovering that, shock horror, those convicted of terrorism offences or offences related are being released from prison when they've served their sentences.

OK, perhaps that's a little unfair to the Sun, but not by much.  As per usual though, the story doesn't live up to its billing:

FORTY convicted Islamic terrorists are back on the streets after being released from jail, a Sun investigation has revealed.

"Islamic terrorists" as a description is being used rather loosely here.  Almost all the "big names", which is another loose description, have not been released yet, as we'll come to.  In fact, the biggest name that has already been released is Abu Bakr Mansha, a quite clearly deadly individual.  When arrested, Mansha had a blank firing pistol, which someone had been attempting to convert to fire live ammunition, a balaclava, a Sun newspaper article on a soldier who had won the military cross, and the soldier's former home address, as well as the expected radical material.  Mansha though also happens to have an IQ of 69, and allegedly gave the "intelligence" which led to the Forest Gate raid.   Truly someone to worry about.

The others already released are in much the same category, and so dangerous that the Sun doesn't actually name them.  According to the paper, at least three of those convicted in connection with the 21/7 attacks have been released.  This would be surprising for the fact that as far as I'm aware, the shortest sentence passed was six years and nine months, which even with the deductions made for current overcrowding and for time spent on remand would seem to have been released early, although the sentences could have been reduced on appeal.  None of these individuals were charged with directly helping with the bombings; they provided sanctuary or helped after they had failed, while others were either relatives or wives that helped.  The vast majority of these are unlikely to be "fanatics" but helped out of friendship or even because they were under pressure to.  The organisers of the Danish embassy protests have also been released, unsurprisingly, given that however disgraceful the views expressed, there was no action behind the words, and considering that they seem to be from the usual suspects who are all mouth and no trousers.  Others include those involved on the periphery of the Birmingham beheading plot, on similar charges to the 21/7 accomplices of not disclosing what they knew even if they weren't involved, while one was convicted of having the "Encyclopaedia Jihad".  Two had helped the ringleader, who has not been released, with supplying equipment to fighters in Pakistan, but again that doesn't specifically involve any sort of violent threat in this country.  Those involved with an Islamic school in Sussex have also been released, such an important set of convictions that there seems to be very little on it anywhere.  That doesn't begin to add up to 40 but we'll let the Sun off.

How about those soon to be released then?  We'll, there's Sohail Qureshi, not to be confused with the Canadian "terror suspect".  Qureshi was arrested when attempting to travel to Pakistan, and had night vision equipment, medical supplies and £9,000 in cash in his bag.  Material was found where he talked of hopefully "kill[ing] many", and presumably hoped to join fighters in Afghanistan.  Sentenced to four and a half years, with time on remand and reductions, he's meant to be released next month, which will still mean he's served 3 years.  The judge said his offences were at the "lower end of the scale", and while undoubtedly he could be a threat, with careful supervision and the confiscation of his passport there doesn't seem to be any reason why he shouldn't be released.  Much the same is the case with the next person mentioned, "[H]ulking thug Andrew Rowe", who Peter Clarke, that former king of hyperbole as anti-terrorist chief at the Met, called a "global terrorist".  In reality the evidence against him amounted to the usual radical material, supposed code referring to attacks and a guide on how to fire mortars.  Oh, and don't forget the socks bearing traces of high explosive.  How dangerous he truly was or is is anyone's guess, as he was under careful police supervision prior to his conviction.

Next up is the other "shoe bomber", Saajid Badat, who had meant to carry out an attack on a plane at the same time as Richard Reid, but pulled out at the last minute, also cutting himself off from his handler in Pakistan.  Considering that he failed to go through with the attack and also seems to have been about to settle down when he was arrested, the threat he poses seems low to negligible.  Finally, we have Kazi Nurur Rahman, who had links to the fertiliser bomb plotters, and probably the most serious risk as a result.  He was however entrapped by the police and security services, and there was no evidence whatsoever that he actually had the money to buy the weapons beyond the 3 Uzis which he agreed to purchase.  Again though, there is no reason why he shouldn't be able to be handled by MAPPA.

There are other problems with the Sun's story beyond the actual facts.  Does anyone really believe that a "senior security source" genuinely told the Sun this?:

If this was the United States, a great many of these people coming out soon would have been sentenced to 99 years and locked away for the rest of their lives.

But in this country much weaker sentences have been handed down and a large percentage of them have received reductions from the Appeal Court.

As a result, we are faced with an extremely worrying situation. We have got to hope these people come out without violent extremist views. But the likelihood of that is slim.

This simply isn't true in any case: Jose Padilla for example, convicted of charges similar to some of those here, received 17 years and four months. The wife of one of the 21/7 bombers received 15 years just for the help she provided.

Then of course we have the views of the contacted politicians, including the egregious Chris Grayling:

IT'S time to get tough on the extremists.

Yawn.

It's time we stopped these people from operating in our society. Yet the preachers of hate continue to preach.

Who? Where, Chris? The idea that it's still preachers of hate behind most of the radicalisation is years out of date.

It's also time we outlawed radical groups who propagate extremist views and in doing so incite violence against innocent people.

So you're going to ban the BNP and other neo-Nazis are you Chris? Good luck!  As for the Sun's editorial, it calls those released and soon to be released a "Terror army".  I don't think they're going to be challenging any of the more famous fighting units any time soon.

There were two other more important terrorism stories yesterday which didn't make the Sun's front page.  There was, oh, err, a huge fucking bomb discovered on the Northern Ireland border, twice the size of the one which caused the largest single loss of life during the Troubles in Omagh in 1998.  The Real IRA just aren't as sexy or as terrifying as the "terror army" though.  Or there was Neil Lewington, given an indeterminate sentence with a minimum of 6 years for carrying what were glorified Molotov cocktails with him, supposedly on the cusp of a "terror campaign".  He though was white and a neo-Nazi, even though he was actually more prepared and ready to carry out attacks than the liquid bomb plotters were, who hadn't constructed any devices while some didn't even have passports.  Terror though no longer just corresponds to individual nutters and old, boring causes: it's planes exploding one after another however implausible and however well covered they are by the security services.  If we're left meant to be fearing those who were stupid enough to get caught once, then we really are scared of the wrong people.

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9/09/2009 11:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 08, 2009 

Crying over spilt liquid part 94.

Congratulations are then in order to the Crown Prosecution Service for second time around managing to convince a jury that the three main ringleaders of the "liquid explosives plot" had indeed intended to target airplanes.  There was never much doubt that they had indeed been plotting an attack; the devil was in the detail of just what they were planning to target, and the case that it was to be transatlantic flights was flimsy at best, amounting it still seems to little more than the fact that when arrested Abdulla Ahmed Ali had a USB memory stick with flight times on it, as well as an e-mail, supposedly written in code to a handler in Pakistan where Ali made clear that all he had to do was "sort out opening timetable and bookings".

Not that you would have noticed from the celebrations from the authorities and also from the press that the "liquid doom" plot was indeed viable, but this second trial was also a miserable failure in as far as convincing a jury again that the underlings, including those who recorded "martyrdom videos" were guilty not only of conspiracy to murder on aircraft, but also conspiracy to murder persons unknown.  Only Umar Islam was convicted of the second charge, the jury hung on the first; the three others were cleared of the first charge while they were hung on the second, and lastly Donald Stewart-Whyte, who had only converted to Islam four months before his arrest, was cleared of any involvement in the plot.  This, it's worth remembering, is what the police are again calling "the strongest terrorism case ever presented to a court".  This strongest ever case has now been presented to a jury twice, and it's still only succeeded in convicting 3 individuals of conspiracy to murder on two separate charges, and one on a single charge.

Also interesting is that this time round everyone is openly accusing Rashid Rauf of being the plotters' main conduit to al-Qaida, which just shows how you can smear the dead, or rather, supposedly dead, of anything you like.  Suddenly Rauf is the new Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of international jihadist terrorism, not just helping the liquid plotters but also the 7/7 and 21/7 crews.  Rauf, of course, mysteriously disappeared from Pakistani custody while visiting a mosque, then equally mysteriously turned up, apparently dead, in a missile strike.  His family, quite reasonably considering that no body has been forthcoming, think that he's either still alive and his "death" is to cover up Pakistani embarrassment, or that Rauf has instead entered the American "black" system, or at least the parts which haven't been shut down, a view that I'm partial to, even if I dislike believing in a conspiracy theory.

It remains the fact that there was no need whatsoever to retry the main three convicted again today; the sentences that they would have received, which have been deferred and they will presumably now receive, likely to run concurrently with the sentences to be handed down for the new convictions, would have been substantial, likely to be in the 30 year range.  The real reason for doing so was two-fold: both to prove that there definitely had been a "liquid bomb" plot, regardless of whether or not it could actually have been carried out, and also to ensure that the government and security services were not embarrassed again for hyping up a plot out of all proportion, ala the ricin fiasco and the other plots which haven't even got past the arrest stage.  Hence tomorrow the Telegraph is running with the front page legend that up to 10,000 could have died, despite the fact that only four people have actually been convicted.  They keep claiming that up to 18 could have taken part in the attacks, but where are these supposed people and how can they even begin to suggest that was possible when they can't even convince a jury that those whom recorded videos were out to commit "mass-murder on an unimaginable" scale as John Reid so famously put it?

It would be even worse if the government were to use today's verdicts to rally support for the war in Afghanistan as Alan Johnson already seems to be doing.  The whole plot in fact illustrates the folly of what we are doing in that benighted country.  Not only does the exact foreign policy we continue to insist on enrage the likes of Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar, if not radicalising them entirely then sowing the seeds which lead to them coming into contact with those of like minds who then poison them further, the policy is even further counter-productive because it's in the wrong country.  What's happening in Afghanistan is a civil war which we still seem to imagine is a global one; what's happening in Pakistan rather, is a civil war with global dimensions.  This isn't even to begin to suggest that what we're doing in Afghanistan we should start doing across the border, but it is about being honest both with ourselves and with them that the real problem is in the autonomous areas of the Pakistani state where they do still exist safe havens.  We need to help Pakistan without getting ourselves fully involved.  Tackling Salafist ideology involves not walking into exactly what it feeds upon: Western states acting like bulls in a china shop.  When we finally learn that we might not have to keep pretending that we're all doomed by 500ml bottles of soft drinks.

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9/08/2009 12:03:00 AM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 

An improvement, but more still to be done.

Whenever the government hypes something up, you can almost guarantee that the end result will be less than the sum of its parts. So it is with the latest attempt by the Home Office to get to grips with something approaching an anti-terrorism strategy, which they have christened alliteratively pursue, prevent, protect and prepare, promoted heavily at the weekend by both Brown himself and Jacqui Smith. Using the protect word might well have taken something approaching balls: many minds still associate that with the ominous protect and survive booklets issued in the 80s, which matter of factly went through building a fallout shelter in the basement and wrapping up dead loved ones in black plastic bags, the eeriness and doom of the cartoons which accompanied the booklets still highly memorable now.

While in the past such doommongering, both from politicians and police was regular, this latest document mainly eschews scaremongering, as have the politicians promoting it. With the exception of the potentially worse than useless training of up to 60,000 people in how to act should they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a terrorist attack, which in reality amounts to an around 3 hour seminar session for business people, which only seems likely to be quickly forgotten or alternatively make all those involved even more paranoid than they may have been, and the emphasis that has been put on the threat of some variety of "dirty" attack being launched increasing, it mostly keeps things in something approaching prospective. One of the first facts it points out is that over 3,500 people died between 1969 and 1998 as a result of "Irish-related terrorism", which is something well worth pointing out the next time someone tries telling you that the threat level posed by Islamic terrorists is far beyond that the IRA did; al-Qaida has after all as yet made no attempts whatsoever to murder political figures in the West, attempts on the life of former Pakistan president Musharraf not withstanding, while the IRA came incredibly close to killing much of the Thatcher government in Brighton in 1984.

In fact, the thing that perhaps undermines the entire document the most is that the government is essentially being forced to admit that the threat level is actually diminishing. After years of telling us that things were getting worse, that the "sky was dark" and that an attack could happen at any time, back in January we had the head of MI5 admitting that al-Qaida had no semi-autonomous structure in the country at this time, and that rather than attacks being actively planned, they only had the "intention to launch an attack here". Partly this may well be down to al-Qaida having to re-examine exactly where it's going at this moment in time: with the "Islamic State of Iraq" all but defeated in that country, it being essentially flushed out of Saudi Arabia and with the only real encouraging signs for the organisation being the increased activity in places like Yemen, Algeria and Somalia, with there being a contradictory situation in Pakistan of the Pakistani Taliban increasingly in strength while the drone attacks have succeeded in killing many senior figures in the hierarchy, its supporters in Europe might well be their last concerns at the moment. The document makes clear that should things continue the way they are, it may well be possible by next year to reduce the threat level, which has stayed at severe since 7/7 and gone up to critical on two separate occasions, to substantial.

While the document then continues to claim that the main threat remains "al-Qaida central", i.e. the remnants of the original organisation now in hiding most likely in Pakistan, of increasing importance is the threat from al-Qaida's "franchises", such as the former Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, now known after pledging allegiance to bin Laden as al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb. Almost mentioned is al-Qaida in the Arabian penisula, despite its effective defeat, the aforementioned ISI and al-Qaida in Yemen. Perhaps most notable though is the new importance given to "self-starting" networks, or even lone individuals, motivated by the extreme salafist takfirist jihadist ideology, but whom have no connection whatsoever to al-Qaida central, such as Nicky Reilly. Mentioned last is groups that have a similar ideology to al-Qaida, but whom have their own identity and regional agenda, perhaps thinking of the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The first part of the document is entirely given over to a narrative detailing the effective rise of international terrorism, from the initial actions of Palestinian groups and their attacks during the 70s, up to the founding of Hizbullah and finally the genesis of al-Qaida itself. Interestingly, it directly links the bombings in Istanbul in 2003 against the British consulate and a British bank to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organisation in Iraq, before his group had become part of al-Qaida, which is either new or something I had otherwise missed. This section doesn't tell you anything you probably don't already know, but for the government to be setting it out in such a way, and doing so matter of factly, without anything approaching spin, is itself a sign of progress, even if it is very much the establishment version of events. The part on radicalisation which follows on draws heavily on the leaked MI5 document on understanding extremism in this country. This made clear that there was no single underlying cause, while at the same time dismantling the myths that had built up that it was all the work of extremist preachers. The main threat remains the small groupings which build up, often around a charismatic local leader voiced in radical Islam, whose influence on those around him is worth about 10 of any radical on the internet.

The only main parts where the document noticeably falls down is in the "principles" section and on the reasoning behind the idea that "dirty" attacks are becoming more likely. It's impossible not to snigger at the very first principle in countering international terrorism:

Our approach to national security in general and to counter-terrorism in particular is grounded in a set of core values. They include human rights, the rule of law, legitimate and accountable government, justice, freedom, tolerance and opportunity for all.

This would be the same government currently up to its eyeballs in claims regarding security service collusion in torture of "terrorist suspects" abroad; which completely ignored the rule of law in detaining foreign suspects indefinitely without charged; which continues to defend the permanent deprivation of liberty associated with control orders as well as ensuring that those under them cannot properly find out what they are accused of or challenge that evidence; and which only gave in over extending the detention limit to 42 days after it became clear that it had no chance of pushing it through the House of Lords. If the government has any shame over any of this, it doesn't show it.

Like the initial section of the report, the part on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons is a narrative stating the background. This mentions the Japanese underground Sarin attack, then goes on with claims on how al-Qaida has experimented with CBRN weapons, almost all rudimentary poisons. It details the alleged 2003 plot to release hydrogen cyanide on the New York underground, strangely called off by Zawahiri, and then less realistically lists good old Dhiren Barot's coke-can and smoke alarm bomb plans, which even if he could have got hold of the material involved would likely have been as effective as gas canisters to bring down buildings plan turned out in practice. For good measure it also lists the Islamic State of Iraq's experiments with including chlorine gas canisters with its suicide car/truck bombs, which is again about as rudimentary as you can get, and which they stopped doing some time ago. The three factors listed for the increased threat are "a significant increase" in the trafficking of such materials, that the internet has made information on them much more widely available, and that CBRN materials can be used for legitimate purposes, in case you didn't know. All round, this is pretty woeful stuff. As terrorist groups are incredibly unlikely to get access to enriched uranium any time soon, the main threat posed is from them combining machines from hospitals containing such materials with bombs, and letting the air do the rest of the work. The main threat from this would not be the material itself, but from the panic that would ensue and the subsequent decontamination. Even this has most likely been vastly exaggerated: even the polonium of the type which killed Alexander Litvinenko would be unlikely to kill many, if any, if used in a bomb. The document then mentions IEDs of the type constructed in Iraq and increasingly being used in Afghanistan, concerning the intent to "experiment with novel explosives". Discounting the combination of suicide bombs with chlorine, most of the explosives used in Iraq were actually old regime stockpiles which came in extremely handy, and which only in the last couple of years were exhausted, which itself has probably contributed to the drops in such attacks. The innovations have occurred in the ways in which to trigger them and to get around equipment which is meant to disarm them. Quite why it's even bringing this up is unclear: there have been no signs whatsoever that groups in this country intend to start making roadside bombs, and as the past few attacks have shown, explosives themselves are incredibly difficult to obtain, let alone to then use correctly. You have to wonder if the claims surrounding dirty bombs are ones which they know the media won't bother to investigate, and which instead turn on the horror reflex, hence the Sun's illustration to their report. With the threat diminishing, the unusual threats column is the only one remaining which they can highlight.

While the government then deserves some acclaim for setting out clearly the origins of the threat, not dismissing out of hand the fact that foreign policy clearly has a distinct influence on it, and for also admitting that if anything it's diminishing, all signs that the spin and playing politics with terrorism which flourished under Blair and which continued for a time under Brown might now have finally been decided to have been counter-productive, more work is still needed on really getting to grips with the origins of extremism, while also not denouncing but challenging those that hold views which can be seen as stepping stones towards full-blown Islamic fundamentalism. Not overreacting stupidly to a dozen protesters at a homecoming parade would be a start, but to do that they would also have to challenge the media's completely unhelpful obsession with extremists under the bed, something they have shown no intention of doing.

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3/24/2009 11:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 

Well, that went well...

You would be forgiven for thinking that the liquid doom trial accused just aren't meant to be found guilty of conspiring to murder by blowing apart airliners - just a day after their retrial began, the jury ends up being discharged for "legal reasons". We can only speculate as to why, as if it was only something affecting one juror they could possibly have been replaced, considering the very early stage the trial was at. As noted yesterday, the security services and government must really be hoping that it's third time lucky.

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2/18/2009 11:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 

It's deja vu all over again.

The retrial of the men accused of masterminding the liquid doom plot has duly commenced, not that you'd know it was a retrial because none of the news reports have deigned to mention that fact, which is curious in itself. Last time round the prosecution failed to convince the jury that the target for the bombings was to be transatlantic flights, to the disbelief of those who hadn't bothered to note that about the only evidence directly linking them to planes was the routes highlighted on a memory stick, along with diary notes written by one of the men which hinted at getting through security of some kind.

The biggest quandary concerning the retrial was whether new evidence would be introduced against the men, and while we can't tell what else the prosecution might yet have in store, the opening statement by Peter Wright QC doesn't seem to suggest that there will be. Still the prosecution is using the claim that the attacks could have caused deaths on a "unprecedented scale", when they know full well that the men hadn't even came close to actually assembling a viable device. The closest they had reached was the bomb-maker, Sarwar, apparently boiling down the hydrogen peroxide to the required dilution, but there is still a long way from there to exploding it on an airplane and successfully destroying it and killing all on board. Possibly new is the claim that others involved were overheard discussing targeting different flights from different terminals, but if it was left out the first trial that would be a remarkable oversight, and if it wasn't, it still wasn't enough to convince the first jury to convict.

All of which raises the question of what happens if this trial also ends in the jury failing to be convinced that planes were the target. Only three of the men were previously convicted of conspiracy to murder, Ali, Sarwar and Hussain, while all the others had already pleaded guilty to plotting to cause a public nuisance. Will the state keep trying until it gets the result it wants, be satisfied with the doubtless lengthy sentences still to be handed down, or go with imposing control orders? All of these options have the pitfall of exposing the initial certainty of all involved that this was the terror plot to end all terror plots as fraudlent. Despite all the survelliance of the men, the following and the huge amount of evidence sifted through, is there really nothing that conclusively links them to blowing up airliners? If so, it will be just another case of hyperbole and exaggeration about "the threat" designed to cause even greater fear in the general public, with the ban on liquids on airliners, which has always been ridiculous, even more absurd. This jury may yet convict, and the security services and the government must be desperately hoping that they do.

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2/17/2009 11:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 05, 2009 

Scum-watch: More anti al-Qaida psy-ops.

On occasion, you fail to see the wood for the trees. Doing my daily pathetic trawl of the Sun's website, I came across Tom Newton Dunn's exclusive "Al-Qaeda in gay rape horror" and just dismissed it as the typical Sun nonsense which isn't worth bothering with or challenging. The excellent jihadica though has joined together the dots:

I would not normally bother with this kind of nonsense were it not for the fact that it sheds light on the recent reports about AQIM’s alleged plague experiments, covered previously on Jihadica. Both stories were broken in the West by The Sun, and both stories relied on Algerian security sources. We are most likely dealing here with an anti-al-Qaida psy-op, and a very poor one at that.

Which I also had covered and dismissed as most likely being complete and utter nonsense. I didn't however note that the story had been officially denied by the Algerians and also the WHO, despite a separate report appearing in the equally authoritative Washington Times claiming that it had been the result of a failed weaponising attempt.

It is indeed, as jihadica suggests, a very poor psy-op. The idea that al-Qaida and its connected franchises have to rape their recruits in order to shame them into becoming suicide bombers is completely absurd; there are, as Iraq and Afghanistan have sadly made all too clear, more than enough willing "martyrdom seekers" without them having to descend to such tactics. This isn't to discount the idea that, like with many other organisations, especially ones where young men spend plenty of time together and are encouraged to become fraternal brothers, even those who thelogically consider homosexuality to be abhorrent, that such relationships might develop, but it doesn't seem very likely. There have been cases where young teenage boys have been suicide bombers, but they still seem likely to be the products of madrasas and careful personal radicalisation rather than sexual abuse.

The Algeria connection does however seem to be the key. Perhaps borne out of the fear that al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb is growing in strength, these stories seem to be meant to further demonise them and nip in the bud any support both within Algeria and the outside world for them. Likewise, the idea that al-Qaida is running out of recruits, as "experts believe", is nonsense. In Iraq maybe, where the jihad has fallen on hard times, mainly as result of the other insurgent groups joining the Awakening councils having became tired of the Islamic State of Iraq's brutality, and where the routes which the foreign fighters came in on have been closed, but elsewhere the Taliban is growing in strength, as is the insurgency in Somalia, both now more favoured among jihadists than Iraq.

Again, we have to question why these stories are being passed to the Sun if indeed they are anything approaching accurate. It seems simply that the Sun's being given them both because they'll print them and because no one else with any sense or with an authority they want to keep will. As we saw with the plague story, none of that bothers the rabid jihadist watchers, or the Muslim-bashers who are inclined to take such accounts at face value, and that may be all that matters.

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2/05/2009 11:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, January 19, 2009 

Scum-watch: Terrorists dead? Good! Terrorists dead from plague? Better!

Imagine for a moment you're some sort of security asset. You have a major story: 40 militants linked to al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb (formerly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) have apparently died of the plague. Either they were the victims of diseases inherent to living in the middle of nowhere in Africa, where outbreaks of plague are still reasonably regular, or, more frighteningly, they were possibly experimenting with weaponising plague, and were struck down themselves in the process. Whatever the truth, it's still a reasonably big story. Who then do you leak this to? A well-respected newspaper, such as the Times, Telegraph or Guardian? Or, on the other hand, the Sun?

Silly question, really. As you might expect, the report splashed on today's Sun front page reeks to high heaven. All the signs that it's either propaganda or complete nonsense are apparent: firstly, that it's been handed to the newspaper over the weekend, to go in the paper on the slowest and generally least busy news day of the week, Monday. Second, it seems to be based on a single source. Third, it's a story which is completely impossible to verify: you could try talking to government health sources in Algeria and see if there have been any recent cases of plague reported to them or which they're aware of and go from there, but that's a lot of effort, especially for today's churnalists. Lastly, the actual details are sketchy while the background information is remarkably, for the Sun, rather well defined: it hasn't just described them as al-Qaida fighters but correctly as AQIM, it directly names the area where they were when apparently infected as Tizi Ouzou province, and where they apparently fled to, and names their leader correctly, even using his less well-known real name Abdelmalek Droudkal rather than his nom de guerre Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud.

In short, it provides you with everything except actual evidence. It claims that up to 40 were killed by the plague, yet apparently only one body was actually found, and rather conveniently by the roadside, while the others are meant to be in mass graves in Yakouren forest. There are no photographs, and no confirmation of what type of plague the man had died from. The article claims that plague can kill in hours, but this is only true of the rarest form, pneumonic plague, which if not treated within 24 hours of symptoms developing greatly increases the chances of death. Bubonic plague, the most common, can be treated, and due to its longer incubation period of 2 to 6 days and well-known symptoms is often identified in time. While all forms are increasingly rare in the West, there are still usually a few cases each year in the United States, a recent one of which killed a biologist in the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, apparently contracting pneumonic plague after performing an autopsy on a mountain lion.

Algeria last had a major outbreak in 2003, where there were a total of 11 confirmed cases and 7 suspected, all of bubonic plague with 2 later developing into septicemia. A later study trapped rats in the area of the outbreak and found 9 of the 95 fleas collected to be infected with Yersinia pestis. Despite this attesting that the country most likely still has such fleas and rats in abundance, especially in the apparent remote forest where the fighters were supposedly training, not to mention the possibility of it spreading from southern Africa where it is even more prevalent, all the far from paranoid self-cast jihad watchers have immediately jumped to the conclusion that this means they just must have been experimenting with plague as a weapon. The Sun has nobly followed-up such speculation in tomorrow's edition, with the paper contacting Dr Igor Khrupinov, of Georgia University, who immediately without the slightest of information further suggests this could be the case.

There are just a few problems with this. Firstly, if al-Qaida was experimenting with biological weapons again as it has very amateurishly done in the past, why would one of the least respected and smallest of its groups have been given the "contract" to do so? Moreover, plague is incredibly difficult to weaponise: the United States never managed it, although the Russians did. Famously, it has been used crudely in the past: first at Caffa and later by the Japanese, who dropped ceramic bombs filled with infected fleas on China in the early 1940s. The idea of weaponising plague, or at least bubonic plague has fallen down the list of feared outbreaks, mainly because of the relative ease with which it is treated. It would cause panic certainly, and some deaths most probably, but nothing on the scale of which al-Qaida would be interested in, especially considering the difficulties in spreading it in the wild. Pneumonic plague would be of more interest, especially if it could be spread by aerosol, but fears of its high infection rate have possibly been exaggerated: a study of an outbreak in Uganda in 2004 found a transmittance rate of only 8%. One of the authors had previously published a paper analysing the risk of person to person infection, which also appears to have come to a similar conclusion. That knocks the idea on the head of "suicide" infected walking around cities spreading the disease merely by coughing, and considering the quick onset of symptoms of pneumonic plague, also greatly reduces the time in which to spread it. That none of those involved apparently sought treatment gives the inclination that they were behaving deviously, but again that's if we believe that there are 40 bodies buried in a mass grave, when only 1 body has supposedly been definitively identified, with again no indication of the plague type.

If there was an outbreak then, and as could have been easily established by using the trusty Occam's razor, the most likely cause would have been our old friend Rattus rattus and his pals the fleas. It doesn't quite answer why they wouldn't have sought treatment, as not all of them would probably have been identified as militants, although they could have been "discouraged" from leaving.

That is of course if we accept the story at all. To return to the beginning, why would the Sun be given such a scoop? One answer might have been pay, naturally, not available from the more respected papers, but it still means that if it is completely false and instead an example of the tabloids being supplied with propaganda, that a significant minority, if not majority, are not going to believe a word of it. Why also has it been supplied now? When we last examined what seemed an almost certainly similar piece of unverifiable propaganda, it came at a time when the war in Afghanistan was going through a rough patch. Likewise, the threat from al-Qaida has been talked down of late, including by the head of MI5 himself. This doesn't suit the agenda of some politicians and security officials, who rely on the continuation of the "war on terror" or whatever name it is now masquearding as for both their own dubious ends and for their own employment. Only last week David Miliband was talking about the phrase "war on terror" being a mistake, something which the Sun itself denounced. It's also doubtless a coincidence that Barack Obama becomes US president tomorrow, and with it new policies on that very same war. Even better if the Sun itself doesn't immediately spin on how they might have been experimenting, with the outbreak being the result of weapons tests; let the jihadist watching blogs and forums do that.

Propaganda or not, the story has of course spread like the proverbial plague itself, all without anyone bothering to check it, although an article in the notoriously accurate Moonie-owned Washington Times is building on the story with another "intelligence source", claiming it was a weapons experiment that went wrong, which is helped by the article referring to the non-existent ricin plot without mentioning it being err, non-existent. Churnalism has done its work again, and because it spreads to more respected sites like the Torygraph, even if the story is based entirely on the Sun's original, it becomes more based in fact that it otherwise would. Either way, it's a good news story. Dead terrorists = good. Dead terrorists messing about with plague = good and SCARY, which is even better. The more you loathe the press, the more you come to respect its potential as a propaganda tool, and this article only furthers that.

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1/19/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 

Threat level diminishing? Say it ain't so...

Sometimes the headlines used in different newspapers on the same story can be instructive: while the Guardian headlined their report of the interview with MI5 head Jonathan Evans "al-Qaida threat diminished but not over", the Telegraph went with the more alarming "MI5 chief warns of threat from global recession". Little of what he said really hinted at any imminent security threat as a direct result of the recession, more a gradual shifting of power from the West potentially to the East, but it made for a better story than the much more important revelation that the threat level has diminished.

Whether this is, as Evans argued, a result of the last couple of years of prosecutions or rather down to the changing priorities of those becoming radicalised, with Evans suggesting that Somalia is becoming an increasingly attractive place to join the jihad is impossible to know. It is however very encouraging and informative that according to Evans al-Qaida appears to have no "semi-autonomous structured hierarchy" currently in place in this country. This suggests that if there are going to be attacks, or attempted attacks, they're more likely to be of the variety provided by Abu Beavis and Abu Butthead outside the Tiger Tiger and at Glasgow airport, where incompetence and lack of funding combined with an apparently automonous decision to launch an attack, although allegations of links to the Islamic State of Iraq, rather than al-Qaida "central" in Pakistan have been made.

Without saying as much, Evans more or less admitted that since the Glasgow attack there has been no serious, imminent plot to disrupt. He also more or less suggested that the number of active sympathisers, said by himself to be around 2,000, a figure which has never been adequately quantified, has also declined, although whether this is due to recantation or those previously identified leaving the country is again impossible to know. From attacks supposedly being imminent, or actively being planned, Evans only said that "they have the intention to mount an attack here", which is a long way from some of the blood-curdling rhetoric and outright fearmongering we have heard from politicians and police in the past. It also directly contradicts the recent remarks made by Lord West that "another great plot is building up again".

Evans' interview ought to raise the question of why the "official threat level" continues to remain at "severe", which is meant to mean that an attack is highly likely. By his comments, a more suitable level would be the next one down, which is "substantial", with an attack a strong possibility. One of the factors involved is surely that prior to 7/7 there were discussions about lowering the threat level to "substantial", only for the attack to apparently occur from out of the blue, catching police and security services off-guard, although it subsequently became clear that MI5 had known about two of the attackers, previously described as "clean skins". Potential criticism for messing around with the threat level is probably part of why it hasn't been brought down, but also surely a factor is that Labour ministers themselves continue to scaremonger at every given opportunity, regardless of the reality. Keeping it at "severe" helps them to be able to continue sell the ever continuing casual dilutions of liberty and the new plans for databases, all supposedly to make us safer while apparently doing nothing other than properly prosecuting and monitoring plots has up to now stood us in apparently good stead.

Evans did mention the mega-database plan, or at least something similar to it, although his main concern appeared to be calls made over Skype, which they seem to currently have difficulties intercepting. Far less impressive was his defence of the Intelligence and Security Committee, for the obvious reason being that it is about as inefficient and hopeless as a watchdog over the security services as any parliamentary committee. From its whitewash over MI6's involvement in rendition, which changed the descriptions of what constituted an "extraordinary rendition" so that MI6 was found innocent, to its pathetic censored reports which may as well not be issued for all the enlightenment they offer, both MI5 and MI6 need to have a fully independent organisation which monitors them, similar to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which although flawed, is far better than the ISC currently is. Neither political party however is interested in opening up the security services any further than they currently have been, and they'll continue to be able to do more or less as they please for years to come. They may have cleaned up their act considerably on the home front, but abroad and especially regards to suspects in Pakistan and elsewhere they seem as dependent on torture and the unannounced, shadowy visits as they ever have.

Outside of that, what we ought to take from the interviews with Evans is that the sky is not about to fall, despite so many relentlessly predicting just that. The one real concern is in fact that the assaults on Gaza by Israel seem to be successfully radicalising not just those living in the occupied territories, but those outside it as well. All those defending Israel to the hilt ought to take note of that; when we refuse to recognise that such disproportionate attacks on an impoverished people far away can have such an effect on our own streets, it imposes on all of us an obligation to push ever harder for a peaceful settlement. And one thing that can be guaranteed is that the massacres we have seen over the last couple of weeks are only likely to put that further away.

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1/07/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 

Abu Beavis does prison (having already done al-Qaida in Iraq?)

There seems to be a surprising lack of comment regarding Bilal Abdulla, convicted yesterday of his role as Abu Beavis in the Beavis and Abu Butthead do jihad plot and today sentenced to 32 years in prison. Surprising because, on the surface at least, Abdulla is the first verifiable example of genuine blowback against this country as a result of our involvement in the war against Iraq.

Unlike the 7/7 bombers and others since who have blamed their actions on foreign policy, Abdulla is the only actual Iraqi to have so far played any discernible part in terrorism plots in this country. Born here, but having gone back to live in Saddam's Iraq when he was 5, he personally witnessed the sanctions regime which crippled the country, resulting in the deaths arguably of 500,000 children, a figure which the US secretary of state at the time, Madeleine Albright, described as worth it. It doesn't seem however that he was fully radicalised until the invasion in 2003, losing at least one friend from university in the sectarian violence which emerged in the anarchy created by the development of the insurgency. He blamed not just the Americans, but the Shia also, according to one of his friends in Cambridge being fully supportive of sectarian warfare, as long as it targeted Iraq's long subjugated majority.

At the end of 2004 he came to study, as mentioned above, in Cambridge. Here's where it's difficult to know when his full radicalisation took place: it's known that he was a member or at least associated with the radical Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, but HuT usually serves as a stepping stone between the caliphate which HuT supports and the murderous, worldwide caliphate which appeals to the takfirists of al-Qaida. In any event, it was in Cambridge that he met Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian born Muslim also apparently radicalised, but more by the usual methods of alienation and anger over the perceived treatment of Muslims worldwide, as well as the inequality and injustice often served to the Muslim minority in his homeland. Together they would they come up with the plot to target the Tiger Tiger nightclub, using incredibly amateurish bombs that failed to detonate, in one case because it lacked an oxidiser and in another because the wiring had come loose. When that failed, they settled on an apparent suicide mission which succeeded in as much as Ahmed died, but sadly for their chances of receiving the much debated 72 virgins, without killing anyone else.

Most of interest here though is just what links Abdulla had with the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq, or as it was formerly known, al-Qaida in Iraq. Accounts seem to differ: the Guardian and BBC seem to discount the idea that Abdulla had anything more than a passing acquittance with the group, apparently in contact with some representatives of it online, and who might have helped, while the Times, quoting those all important security sources, claims that Abdulla during his time at Baghdad University came into contact with the forebears of al-Qaida in Iraq, even fighting with them before he left to come to Cambridge. This seems less believable: al-Qaida in Iraq at the time was still establishing itself, by no means yet the group which managed up until the middle of last year to control vast swathes of the "Sunni Triangle", still mostly a sect centred around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His group did not pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden until late 2004, just the time that Abdulla was leaving to come to this country.

More feasible was the prosecution evidence that in May 2006 Abdulla had returned to Iraq and stayed there for three months. Their case was that it was during this time that he joined up with the now far more powerful al-Qaida in Iraq, known at the time as the Mujahideen Shura Council. Again, there is conflicting stories of just how involved he was: the Guardian reports that Scotland Yard found little evidence he was personally involved in the insurgency, while the Times' sources suggest that he had planned to be a suicide bomber, only for his handlers to decide that with his qualifications and passport he should instead target this country. The evidence that he was the first member of al-Qaida in Iraq to attack this country rests mainly on his will, which was directed to the "Soldiers of the Islamic State of Iraq", and on an audiotape, released only a couple of months back featuring the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, in which the group very belatedly claimed responsibility for the London and Glasgow failed attacks, even ascribing the failure to a mistake made by the bomb-maker, which, as it turns out, is in at least one of the cases eerily accurate. At the time I was suspicious that the group should so belatedly, and mid-trial claim responsibility for the attack, especially as the ISI has been so emasculated over the last year, reduced to only a fraction of its former power. With the additional evidence now though, the claim looks far more credible.

Worth mentioning at this point is the fact that Abdulla was a doctor and Ahmed was an engineer, something that attracted more comment than it probably should have. While few of those dedicated to al-Qaida's ideological bent are as well qualified or with such bright potential prospects as Abdulla and Ahmed, poverty and poor qualifications are not generally good signifers of radicalisation, as the leaked MI5 document suggested. As Majjid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation pointed out on Newsnight, Osama bin Laden is an engineer, following in his father's footsteps, while Ayman al-Zahawiri is a doctor. Intellectuals with similar interests to Abdulla and Ahmed have often been well represented in the jihadi movement, it's just that as is often the case in other armies and terrorist groups, it tends to be those considered expendable that do the actual fighting. Hence Abdulla was considered too good to be a suicide bomber, or at least in Iraq, especially when at that point there was still more than enough willing young "martyrdom seekers" without such credentials.

Regardless of Abdulla's alleged links to al-Qaida in Iraq, it seems he received little in actual funding, if any, from the group itself. Nor did he apparently learn to make bombs whilst there; it was Ahmed instead who apparently set himself that task, experimenting in India. The bombs were originally described as similar to those used by AQI, but this was erroneous; AQI had resources far removed from patio gas canisters, hence their horrific and continued success at car and suicide bombs, and considering how unlikely it was that Abdulla would get his hands on actual explosives, it would probably have been wasted anyway. They instead settled on a plan which was always going to be difficult to pull off, and as a demonstration by the BBC's resident explosives expert showed, even if the bombs had gone off, it seems hardly likely that they would have resulted in the carnage which the prosecution itself claimed, let alone the "thousands" of deaths even more sensational press coverage has suggested. If they had succeeded in getting the 4x4 into Glasgow Airport, and the car bomb had successfully ignited, there could have been a very dangerous fire which could have quickly raged out of control. People could have died in the panic and smoke, but most likely not in the numbers claimed. This was a suicide mission where those most likely to die were the two men in the car, as it so proved.

There will obviously be debate about whether Abdulla did have links with AQI prior to coming to Britain, and where and when he moved beyond simple anger and hatred of American and Britons, from being a passive Islamic radical to being a radicalised jihadist prepared to kill people, but no one is denying that our role in Iraq had a substantial role in his radicalisation, perhaps even providing the catalyst that persuaded him that violence and murder could be justified as revenge for the calamity that Iraq was between 2004 and mid-2007 when he launched his assault. This should not be seen as being an argument for not involving ourselves in action like that in Iraq again, or as a veto on action because terrorists might attack us as a result, but as the evidence that has long been disputed by those in power who ignored those, both outside government and inside it who warned that the invasion of Iraq would result in more insecurity and more terrorism, not less, and that al-Qaida itself would win a massive propaganda victory, with more recruits than it could ever than have imagined. That has long been their modus operandi: they know they cannot possibly defeat this country or the United States, but what they can do is draw us in where they can attack and kill the "infidels" and "crusaders" far easier than they can ever manage in our own countries. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaida in that country did not exist. We created it just as much as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did.

The good or bad news, depending on your perspective, is that Abdulla, if he was involved with AQI, was poorly trained and that he picked a partner in jihad whose bomb making skills were just as poor. Undoubtedly however other Brits have fought with AQI, and might well have already returned, far better "educated" in the "university of terrorism" than they were, also potentially without wider links to al-Qaida central or other known extremists. While the threat remains often exaggerated, what is clear is that those who apparently slip through the net such as Abdulla are potentially far more dangerous than those trained in Pakistan/Afghanistan and known about. We cannot be blamed for the situation in Pakistan, however much grievance you imbibe; we can for what we have created in Iraq. Abdulla may be a one off; he might be just the beginning.

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12/17/2008 10:41:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 

Film review: The Baader-Meinhof Complex.

In these times of apparently unstoppable mass-casualty extremist Islamist terrorism, the likes of the Baader-Meinhof gang, as they were known, or the Red Army Faction, as they called themselves, appear almost quaint by comparison. This might well be partly because in the UK we have never experienced much in the way of overt left-wing terrorism, our quota for targeted explosions having been filled by the IRA; doubtless their victims in Germany feel differently. Whilst the film only makes brief allusions to our modern-day reality, the one exemplary message which it puts across is that terrorism, regardless of who it is committed by or why, can only be defeated through legitimate, legal means. Much else is muddled and ambiguous.

The makers of the Baader-Meinhof Complex claim that every scene is historically accurate, and with it being based upon the book by Stefan Aust, a contemporary of some of those who made up the group, you would have thought you could have at least some faith in the adaptation. This is in fact stretched to breaking point from the very beginning, where it is at least heavily implied that Benno Ohnesorg, the student shot dead while protesting against a visit by the Shah of Iran, was murdered by Josef Bachmann, a right-wing extremist who went on to make an assassination attempt on the leader of the students' movement, Rudi Dutschke, who never fully recovered. The shooting of Ohnesorg, combined with the breaking up of the protest by pro-Shah elements while the police first looked on and then joined in the orgy of violence, was the catalyst that sparked the coming together of the RAF.

Concentrating, unsurprisingly, on Baader and Meinhof, we never get really past the point of superficiality with any of the main players. Baader, played by Moritz Bleibtreu, is the charismatic former petty criminal that is depicted straight out of the box as a hypocrite, egomaniac, possible psychopath and with no real ideological bearing whatsoever. Meinhof, played by Martina Gedeck opens the film proper, with a scene on a nude beach, her daughters and husband playing in the surf whilst she sits alone and clothed. If the implication is that throughout she was the outsider, the radical journalist that abandons just the pen and takes up the gun, but is still never really accepted by her comrades, then her explanation for doing so is also rendered, like much else, as ambiguous. One of the conceits is that her husband is obviously cheating on her, with a gorgeous blonde no less, who walks by on the beach, stops for a chat and then saunters off. She takes the children when she inevitably finds him up to the hilt inside her, and if anything it is her husband's betrayal as much as her convictions that results in her joining the comparative youngsters in the RAF. Even less satisfying is the way Meinhof, after declaring her love for her children and saying she'd never give them up, suddenly decides to do just that, surrendering them to go and live in the Palestinian refugee camps of Jordan.

If Baader provided the romance, then Meinhof provided the RAF's ideological underpinning, writing the Urban Guerilla Concept, and while the group thrashed out incoherently at a whole series of injustices, not just protesting violently against the complicity of the late 60s/early 70s West German government with Nazism, when many lower-level officials were still ex-fascists, but against American imperialism in Vietnam and the plight of the Palestinians in Israel amongst other things, the film also falls majorly short on providing us with any real examples of the members arguing or debating such issues. The closest we come is Gudrun Ensslin, played by Johanna Wokalek, sitting in a steaming bath reading Trotsky. Meinhof's justifications for the various bombs and assassinations are played out along with the violence, but their crudity would for the most part shame even our modern vacuous suicide bombers and their gloating messages from the beyond.

Instead what we have is a group of sexy young people doing essentially, sexy young, impulsive things. The key line is from when the group decamp to Jordan to train with the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine, where they reject the strictures placed on them by their faintly religious hosts and spend most of their time sunbathing naked on the roof of their quarters, which goes down well with the agog young sex-starved fighters that have most likely never seen such an abundance of naked white flesh before, but further shows the contempt they have for those they are supposed to be in solidarity with. Ensslin shouts, when challenged, "that shooting and fucking are the same thing", and for them that much is true. Baader himself, again you have to wonder how realistically, is shown to be a bigot, and objects to having to crawl under barbed wire in the sand "as they are urban guerrillas", which while a good point, rather undermines their reasoning behind attending the camp in the first place.

Some of these complaints can be answered with the fact that the film doesn't set out to delve too deeply into why the RAF did what they did; rather, it is an objective account, almost a slightly fictionalised record of the original founders of the group from 68 to 77, and that to have gone any further would have extended the already 2hr30mins running time. What you're getting is what you see, and very little else. Irrespective of that, this opens up the allegation that the film as a result romanticises, even sexualises terrorism, one made in Germany itself, and while undoubtedly those involved are impossibly good looking, endlessly alluring, wear the most chic clothes, all long legs, perfect plump bodies and accurate hair-styles, it doesn't quite reach that low.

One of the things that saves it from doing that is the more than sympathetic portrayal, alongside the inexorable action, which is as crisply photographed and choreographed as anything Hollywood can manage, of Horst Herold (Googlish biography), the police chief charged with tracking down and stopping the group's members in their tracks, played by Bruno Ganz, most well known for his turn as Hitler in Downfall. Coming across as a firm authoritative but determined liberal, again making you wonder wholly about the reality, he makes allowances for the group and their actions in ways which no one could get away with doing for jihadists now. He realises that when the momentum behind the student movement starts to subside, the RAF itself will only step up its campaign, which is exactly what happens. He knows that the martyrdom of their members will only further the sympathy which the group engendered, especially among the German youth, which nonetheless happened when the hunger striker Holger Meins succumbed, partially as a result of prison brutality, which inspires the second generation of the RAF to take their revenge, almost completely independently of the leadership in Stammheim prison.

The film finally falls completely apart in the last half hour, the strands frayed almost beyond comprehension as the second generation of members enters with even less back-story and explanation. Undoubtedly this is partly because the leaders of the original group themselves knew next to nothing about them, but it does nothing to help any ignorant in the audience follow what's going on. Also frustrating is again the way it keeps open the possibility that Meinhof did not take her life by her own hand, hinting at the way she had been ostracised by the others for apparently beginning to find her conscience, or alternatively, for drifting into mental illness.

It's the implication though of the second, even third generation of RAF fighters that Baader alludes to, all springing up independently of the leadership with just the group's schizophrenic ideals as their motivation that has the message for us today. The RAF after all did not formally disband until 1998, more than 20 years after the original leaders killed themselves; the leaders of al-Qaida, of which the second generation (third if you count al-Qaida's origins towards the end of the jihad against the Soviets) has learned its trade not in the camps of Afghanistan but in Iraq and now increasingly in Pakistan, have not been even captured or killed yet. Even if they are, the militant ideology behind al-Qaida is far stronger and far more encompassing than anything the RAF ever came up with, and while the death of bin Laden especially would be a huge blow, providing the romance to the movement while Zawahiri provides the ideology, it will undoubtedly continue to prosper for some time yet. We however have not had the wisdom of a Horst Herold in our fight against it, and instead the almost as insane likes of Melanie Phillips and Jihad Watch have the monopoly on the analysis. The analogy is obviously not completely apposite: the anti-authoritarianism, almost anarchy of the RAF is the opposite of what al-Qaida wishes to impose, and the RAF probably had more sympathy then than al-Qaida has now, especially among the general population, although surveys of Muslims students show some tendency towards some of their solutions, which is again indicative more of the radicalism of those at University than something to be really worried about.

Ultimately, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a contradiction in terms, as one of the things it is not is complex. It's instead as superficial as the group itself was. If however you're not looking for an in-depth study of the group and instead want a general, possibly given poetic licence account of their rise and fall, it's as good as one as we're likely to get.

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11/19/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

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