Al Qaeda in Europe Read online

  Those on the far left admire fundamentalist Islam's strong opposition to bastions of capitalism like the United States. Radical Islamic organizations are well aware of such affinities and try to use them to their advantage. Anjem Choudray, chairman of the radical al Muhajiroun movement, has spoken openly of appealing to radical leftists:

  Al-Muhajiroun has one goal. We would like to see the implementation of the sharia law in the UK. Under our rule this country would be known as the Islamic Republic of Great Britain. To do that, attracting young Asians is not enough. So we are making a conscious effort to recruit large numbers of non-Muslims. Whites, Chinese, Japanese and Indians in this country are all bored with the capitalist system. It's a bankrupt ideal. We have found that young non-Muslims, like our Asian followers, want something new. You can tell that from the anti-globalisation movement. So we're offering them something pure: a religious mission, the values of sharia law and jihad.21

  On the opposite side of the political spectrum, radical right-wingers are also fascinated with fundamentalist Islam's opposition to capitalism, its martial discipline, and its profound hatred of Jews. Several members of European fascist and Nazi organizations expressed their support for the 9/11 attacks, and there have been reports of contacts between their groups and radical Islamic organizations. Though their numbers are still small, some of these extremists have converted to Islam and embraced the religion's most vicious interpretation.

  One of them is Steven Smyrek, a German neo-Nazi who converted to Islam, trained in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, and reportedly traveled to Israel with the intention of carrying out a suicide attack.29 Israeli security services arrested him in 1997 and released him in 2004, after he signed a document renouncing violence. Back in Europe, Smyrek was interviewed by a documentary filmmaker: "It's an honor to die for Islam and for Allah," he said. "When the order comes you have to carry it out and there's no time to ask if there is a God or not, or to think what will happen after you're dead, without feeling you simply have to lay down your life as Allah decreed." 30

  A significant subgroup of those who turned to radical Islam are children born into a mixed marriage-one parent a native of a Muslim country, the other a European. Such children often struggle to find their identity and while some ultimately find their diverse background enriching, others remain conflicted. In some cases, during their struggles to bridge the two cultures, they fall under the influence of extremists who draw them to radical Islam.

  One well-known example is Said Bahaji, the son of a Moroccan immigrant and a German mother who was the only German citizen in the infamous Hamburg cell of the 9/11 plot. Bahaji spent his childhood and teens traveling between Morocco and Germany. Bahaji's mother described her son's uneasiness with both cultures: "In the eyes of the Moroccans he was obviously a foreigner, just as he'd been in Germany."3' Bahaji settled in Germany to study electrical engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. "What a shame Hamburg students are so boring. They can't open their mouths unless they're drunk," wrote a lonely Bahaji on his home page after a few months of school.32 At the university, Bahaji met Mohammed Atta and others who attended the radical al Quds mosque, the center of Hamburg's Islamist scene. Bahaji, whom the 9/11 Commission described as "an insecure follower with no personality and with limited knowledge of Islam," easily bought into the radical rhetoric of Atta and the other members of the Hamburg cell.33 Within a few months, he had moved in with Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh, two of the masterminds of 9/11, and he allegedly helped them prepare for the attacks. After providing logistical support for months, and knowing that the attacks were imminent, Bahaji left Hamburg for Pakistan just a few days before September 11 in order to escape arrest.34

  Children of mixed marriages, like converts, often know little about Islam and its teachings. Cunning preachers can therefore easily persuade them to accept a distorted interpretation of the religion, one in which a violent jihad against all non-Muslims is presented as a direct command from Allah. "The problem is that the less you know about Islam when you come into it, the easier it is for someone to present you with the `forgotten obligation' of jihad," explains Steven Simon, a former top US counterterrorism official.35

  But Muslims born in the West can be equally vulnerable. Indeed, young European Muslims are the fundamentalists' easiest prey. Many of these teenagers or young men are confused by the two worlds they have to straddle. At home, they find a conservative and pious environment, as most of the families that have moved to Europe as workers over the past four decades have emigrated from rural and backward areas of North Africa or Southeast Asia. The larger European society in which they find themselves is secular, and often crassly sexualized. Their economic possibilities are scant, as unemployment rates for young Muslims throughout Europe are two to five times those of native Europeans. Most live in grimy immigrant neighborhoods where crime is rampant and violence is everywhere.

  Thus dangerously high percentages of second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants live at the margins of European societies, trapped between unemployment and petty crime. Although they hold French, Dutch, or British passports, they have no attachment to their country, where they feel like foreigners. Whether this troubling situation is rooted in Europe's reluctance to fully accept newcomers or in some Muslims' inflexibility when faced with new circumstances is hard to say. Nevertheless, given the burgeoning numbers of Muslims now being born and still immigrating to Europe, the social repercussions of this lack of integration are potentially explosive.

  "After things didn't work out with work, I decided to devote myself to the Koran," explained a militant interviewed by the German magazine Der Spiegel.36 As they see no economic future for themselves and search for acceptance and identity, many young European Muslims turn to their ancestral religion. Some of them take comfort in the peaceful teachings of their rediscovered faith, but others adopt the most belligerent interpretation of Islam and embark in a holy war against their own country.

  Particularly telling is the story of Khaled Kelkal. Born in Algeria in 1971, at age two Kelkal came to France with his family, as part of a wave of North Africans looking for menial jobs in the industries based in the country's urban areas.37 The Kelkals settled in a depressing slum at the doors of Lyon, France's second-largest city. Vaulx-en-Velin was the quintessential French immigrant suburb: ugly, poor, and ridden with violence -and Kelkal grew up as its typical product.

  When he was nineteen, he told German sociologist Dietmar Loch that he "didn't stay the course" in high school. "I had the ability to succeed, but I could not fit in because I told myself it would be impossible to become totally integrated. As for them, they had never seen an Arab in their class. I started to skip lessons. That is where the trouble started."38 Loch, who in 1992 interviewed young French Muslims for a study on immigration, could not have imagined that, three years later, one of his subjects would become France's public enemy number one.

  After leaving school, Kelkal became involved with petty crime. His largely Muslim neighborhood, as he described it to Loch, was dominated by anarchy, not the state's law: "Here 70 percent of people are into stealing because their parents cannot afford to buy them things when there are six children. When you steal, you feel free. It's a game, which either you win or lose."39 In the mid1990s, almost half of Vaulx-en-Velin was under twenty-four years old, vividly exemplifying the demographic revolution still sweeping Europe; 24 percent of those between eighteen and twenty-four were unemployed.40

  Kelkal's conduct soon landed him in prison. And, like many other young European Muslims, it was in prison that Kelkal changed his life, turning to radical Islam. Embracing the religion gave Kelkal, who had always felt out of place in French society, a sense of belonging to a big family, a group of trusted brothers. He told Loch: "I'm neither Arab nor French. I'm Muslim. ... When I walk into a mosque, I'm at ease. They shake your hand, they treat you like an old friend. No suspicion, no prejudices.... When I see another Muslim in the street, he smiles, and we stop
and talk. We recognize each other as brothers, even if we never met before."41

  Kelkal, once released from jail, combined his newfound faith with his past as a hoodlum, recruiting a few of his childhood friends and creating a full-fledged terrorist cell. According to French authorities, in the spring of 1995 Kelkal met with Boualem Bensaid'42 a representative of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), a terrorist organization then battling the Algerian government in a bloody civil war. He was on a mission to recruit operatives to carry out attacks against France, as the GIA wanted to punish the French government for its support of the Algerian regime. Bensaid could not have found better candidates than Kelkal and his crew.

  In the summer of 1995, the streets of France were bloodied by an unprecedented string of attacks. At the end of July, a bomb exploded in a Paris metro station, killing seven people. In the following weeks, other devices either blew up or were defused by French bomb experts throughout the country.43 On August 26, French investigators found Kelkal's fingerprints on an unexploded device that had been placed along the tracks of the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse), the high-speed train that is the pride of France.44 The frantic manhunt that followed ended on September 29, when, before the cameras of French national television, French gendarmes killed Kelkal after a spectacular gunfight.45 The images shocked the French public, as policemen were heard shouting to each other, "Finish him, finish him!" and were shown kicking Kelkal's body to make sure he was dead .41

  Kelkal's dramatic killing triggered riots in Vaulx-en-Velin, where hundreds of cars and trash cans were burned by groups of angry French Muslims.47 The riots quickly spread to the immigrant suburbs of other French cities, including Mulhouse, Strasbourg, and Paris.48 Elements of the country's First Infantry Division had to be brought in to quell the protests.49 Such riots, which were not new to France, demonstrate the social and racial tensions afflicting the country. In his interview with Loch, Kelkal himself had commented on the race riots that erupted in Vaulx-en-Velin in 1990: "This is just the beginning. It's going to heat up, and then it will be too late."so

  Clearly, Kelkal had become some kind of folk hero for the disillusioned young Muslims of the suburbs. Some young Muslim men were reportedly aware of Kelkal's activities but did not report them to the police.51 Their sense of anger toward French society made them sympathize with a man who was, in his brutal way, fighting the system. According to a French intelligence report, radical Islam represents for some French Muslims "a vehicle of protest against ... problems of access to employment and housing, discrimination of various sorts, the very negative image of Islam in public opinion."52

  Jean Louis Bruguiere, a senior French counterterrorism judge, explains how easily young French-born Muslims are lured to radical Islam: "They have no job. They have no information, no hope for the future. One day they meet a guy who is interesting, who has good knowledge of Islam. They tell him: `I can give you something, a task for you, for the future.' They explain Islam. They bring a global conception of their life, teach them a skill and they say: `We have a goal for you in the future.' They say, `you can continue to deceive, continue to forge papers, but now you do it as a sign of the measure of God, for Allah."53

  European security officials are painfully aware that the suburbs of the Continent's big cities are the breeding grounds for thousands of jihad candidates. And while this radicalization often takes place in mosques and Islamic centers, officials recognize that European prisons are another main place of recruitment. An official at the French Ministry of Interiors worries, "Prison is a good indoctrination center for the Islamic radicals, much better than the outside. There are about 300 Islamic radicals in prisons in Paris, and they spend a lot of time converting the criminals to Islam."54

  Though no official statistics are provided by the government, most reports put Muslims at between 50 and 70 percent of France's prison population. These thousands of angry and alienated young men constitute the ideal raw material for creating terrorists. Khaled Kelkal spoke for many European Muslims when he described the process to Loch: "After prison I realized I was a 100 percent loser but I told myself I didn't regret it. I know that in prison I learned a lot of things. I even learned my own language. I shared a cell with a Muslim. It was there that I learned Arabic and my religion, Islam. I learned a great opening of the mind by discovering Islam. The freedom to be yourself, the freedom to be with a good friend, getting on well, a group, a tight-knit group. That was the most important thing."55

  France, with its six million Muslims and its astonishingly high percentage of Muslim inmates, is the country that is most intently monitoring its penitentiary system, but its neighbors have similar problems. In Spain, where one in ten inmates is of Moroccan or Algerian descent, Islamic radicals have been actively recruiting in jail for the past ten years. In October 2004, Spanish authorities dismantled a cell that was planning a bloody sequel to the March 11 Madrid bombings-an attack on the Audiencia Nacional, Spain's national criminal court. Most of the men, who called themselves the Martyrs of Morocco, had been recruited in jail, where they were being detained for credit card fraud and other common crimes.56

  Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge conducting the investigation, explains how Muslim inmates are lured into fundamentalist views: "They are initially exposed to the extremist vision of Islam as a means of atonement for their previous sins."57 Recruiters play on their disillusionment and offer radical Islam to them as a means of purification, a way to wash away their earlier misdeeds in the world of the "infidels." Young men who have grown up in Muslim families with only a very superficial knowledge of Islam are taught the basics about the religion and then, as soon as they are seen to be responsive, its extremist interpretation.

  Recruiters also prey on the bitterness that young Muslim prisoners often feel about life in a Western country. Non-Muslims are portrayed as enemies; Europeans as racists who hate Islam. Radicals know that their vitriolic rhetoric will be welcome in prisons, and, reportedly, some recruiters even deliberately try to get arrested to gain access to this matchless pool of potential recruits.58 Once the re-Islamization behind bars is complete, the new recruit is given contacts of other radicals in the outside world. The men are ready to complete their "purification" by working for the cause and, in some cases, by sacrificing their life for it. Such was the intention of Richard Reid, the Englishman who converted to radical Islam in jail and then attempted to blow up a jet flying from Paris to Miami by igniting the explosives hidden in his tennis shoes.

  Critics of European integration policies use stories like those of Kelkal and hundreds of other radicals from the immigrant neighborhoods of cities from Madrid to Copenhagen to link Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism to poverty and segregation. Intelligent young men, feeling unjustly excluded from society and often victimized by racism, are radicalized only because they see no future. Many claim that offering these youths a genuine possibility of getting out of their slums and gaining economic success would have kept them from taking the path of fundamentalism. Though such analysts point to real problems experienced by immigrants in Europe, their equation of militancy with poverty is simplistic and, indeed, disproved by the evidence. Many European-born Muslim extremists that have been involved with terrorism came from solid families, were financially stable, and were completely immersed in the mainstream of European society. At least on the surface, they seemed to epitomize full integration.

  Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, for example, the British-born son of a wealthy Pakistani clothes merchant, grew up in the affluent London suburb of Wanstead.59 Sheikh attended the Forest School in East London, a prestigious private institution where he was well liked by the other mostly white and native English pupils. A spokesman at Forest described him as a model student, "a good all-round, solid and very supportive pupil."60 After three years in Pakistan, where he attended Aitchison College, a school favored by the Pakistani elite, Sheikh returned to Forest. His peers admired him for his good humor and strength-he had become a member of the Britis
h arm-wrestling squad, and he was always ready to show off against other students .61

  In October 1992, after graduating from Forest with excellent grades, Sheikh began studying statistics at the London School of Economics, one of Europe's top universities.62 But after a year he left school and traveled to Bosnia, where war was raging among Croats, Serbs, and Bosnian Mus liras. It was the beginning of Sheikh's adventurous life as a world-famous Islamic terrorist. Sheikh subsequently traveled to Kashmir, where he allegedly fought alongside Muslim rebels against the Indian Army.63 In 1994 Indian police arrested him for his crucial role in the kidnapping of several British and American tourists; his reassuring British accent had tricked them into trusting him. In 1999 he was one of the three men freed from Indian prisons in exchange for the release of the hostages on an Indian Airlines flight that had been hijacked by terrorists.64 Sheikh's name resurfaced in 2002, when he was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court for his involvement in the gruesome beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.65 The son of a prosperous tradesman, the recipient of an excellent and expensive education, Sheikh had become, for no apparent reason, one of the world's best-known terrorists.

  And Omar Sheikh is hardly unique. In March 2004, Scotland Yard broke up a cell of nine men who were allegedly plotting attacks inside England. Police discovered that the men were holding nearly 500 kilograms of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in a self-storage facility in West London.66 Just half that amount had been enough to kill two hundred Western tourists in the October 2002 bombing of a Bali night club.67 The British public was shocked to learn that all the men were British-born young Muslims of Pakistani descent. Three in the cell were teenagers, all of whom were described as coming from respectable families and as living contentedly in the middle-class suburbs of Crawley.68 One of them, Omar Khyam, was a computer student who had captained the Sussex Under-18 cricket team and was seen as likely to play for the English national team.69 Others were said to be regular students and big Manchester United fans. But in 2000, the eighteen-year-old Omar, after telling his parents he was going to France for study, traveled instead to Pakistan and then Afghanistan, the primary destination for terrorist wannabes.70 From that time on, the group of young Muslims kept in contact with militants in Pakistan and, while enjoying fish and chips, cricket, and cheering for their soccer heroes, made plans to strike their native country.