Terrorism in Europe: In the Crosshairs Again

By Patrick Cockburn

An award-winning foreign affairs correspondent examines twenty-first century terrorism in Europe and its relationship to terror campaigns of the past.

As conflicts rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Europe has faced an unprecedented threat from homegrown extremists. In Terrorism in Europe, veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn examines the new wave of European terrorism, and how it relates to previous eras of terrorist violence in the region.

Cockburn looks at current attacks inspired by jihadis and ISIS, such as the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris and the 2016 bombings in Brussels. He also looks back at the terror campaigns of nationalist groups like the Irish Republican Army and Spain’s Basque Nationalist Separatist Party. Examining the patterns, motives and responses to terror threats across decades, Cockburn provides insight into what strategies work—and don’t work—in preventing future attacks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781633534483

Patrick Cockburn

Patrick Cockburn is Iraq correspondent for the Independent in London. He has received the Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting, the James Cameron Award, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism. He is the author of Muqtada, about war and rebellion in Iraq; The Occupation (shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007); The Broken Boy, a memoir; and with Andrew Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein.

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Library of Congress Cataloging

Names: Cockburn, Patrick

Title: Terrorism In Europe / by Patrick Cockburn and journalists of The Independent

Library of Congress Control Number:  2016917890

ISBN 9781633534490 (paperback), ISBN 9781633534483 (eBook)

BISAC Category Code: POL037000 POLITICAL SCIENCE/Terrorism

Front Cover Image: Tatiana53/Shutterstock.com

Back Cover Images:  ThamKC/Shutterstock.com, ver0nicka/Shutterstock.com, and Kiev.Victor/Shutterstock.com

TERRORISM IN EUROPE:  In the Crosshairs Again

ISBN: 978-1-63353-449-0

Printed in the United States of America

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

– Mark Twain

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

SPREADING REIGN OF TERROR

INTRODUCTION

‘WE LOVE DEATH’

CHAPTER 1

TERRORISM

MORE DEADLY IN THE 1970s & 80s

SAME STORY, DIFFERENT ACTORS

CAUSES RARELY SIMPLE

CHAPTER 2

SHAPING THE NEW TERROR AGE

BLACK SEPTEMBER

THE PROTOTYPE FOR MODERN TERRORISM

MUNICH MASTERMIND

‘NOT JUST A HOSTAGE STORY’

CHAPTER 3

‘CELEBRITY’ TERRORISTS

CARLOS THE JACKAL

SENTENCED TO LIFE

MEETING CARLOS FOR ONE LAST TIME

ON TRIAL FOR TERRORISM

EAST GERMANY SANCTUARY

APPEALING LIFE IMPRISONMENT

ABU NIDAL

TERRORIST FOR HIRE

CHAPTER 4

STATE TERRORISM

LIBYA

PAN-AM 103, LOCKERBIE, SCOTLAND

IRAN

NUMBER ONE STATE SPONSOR OF TERRORISM

CHAPTER 5

NATIONALISTS/SEPARATISTS

BASQUE NATIONALIST SEPARATIST ORGANIZATION (ETA)

HISTORY OF ETA

PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT?

‘PERMANENT’ END TO VIOLENCE?

IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY (IRA)

ARMED STRUGGLE

REAL LIFE IRA

COLLUSION BETWEEN MI5 AND THE IRA

THE NEW IRA

CHAPTER 6

PRELUDE TO ISLAMIC TERROR

ROOTS OF TERROR

ROOTS IN FRANCE PLANTED 20 YEARS AGO

SOWING THE SEEDS OF THE THREAT WE FACE

BEEN THROUGH IT BEFORE

THE BLITZ

THE IRA CAMPAIGN

SINGLE WORST TERROR ATROCITY ON BRITISH SOIL

7/7 LONDON BOMBINGS A YEAR LATER

CHAPTER 7

STRIKING EUROPE

BRUSSELS, 24 MAY 2014

THE CRAZIES ‘ARE TRULY IN EUROPE NOW’

JIHADIST MURDERS IN BELGIUM

PARIS, 7 JANUARY 2015

MURDERING A NATION’S JESTERS

CHARLIE HEBDO TERROR TRACED BACK TO ALGERIA 1954

BLOWBACK FROM WARS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

PARIS, 13 NOVEMBER 2015

KILL AS MANY AS POSSIBLE

FRANCE’S 11/13

BELGIUM AT THE HEART OF EUROPEAN TERROR WAVE

BRUSSELS, 22 MARCH 2016

‘WHAT WE FEARED, HAS HAPPENED’

AUDACIOUS ATTACK ON AIRPORT AND METRO

TRAGIC IRONY

SCRAMBLING TO COME UP WITH A EU-WIDE STRATEGY

MUSLIM TAXI DRIVER’S GOOD DEED

WHY BRUSSELS?

THREAT TO EUROPE BECOMES LESS ABSTRACT

NICE, 14 JULY 2016

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

BASTILLE DAY

IN PLANNING SINCE 2015

MUNICH, 22 JULY 2016

MUNICH TERROR ACTS PLANNED FOR OVER A YEAR

ANSBACH, GERMANY, 24 JULY 2016

HE KILLS THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TRYING TO HELP HIM

SURGE OF ISIS-INSPIRED ATTACKS ACROSS EUROPE

SAINT-ÉTIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, FRANCE, 26 JULY 2016

HORROR AT THE ALTER

CULT OF DEATH

CHAPTER 8

ISLAMIC STATE

‘GREATEST THREAT TO CIVILIZATION SINCE THE LAST GREATEST THREAT’

ISIS GLOBAL NETWORK

‘ISIS WILL WIN’, EVEN IF DEFEATED MILITARILY

CHAPTER 9

FIGHTING TERRORISTS

A DEADLY VENGENCE

HOW TO PREVENT TERROR ATTACKS

POLITICIANS MUST STOP PLAYING INTO THE HANDS OF ISIS

CHAPTER 10

LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR?

‘ATROCITY FATIGUE’

NO REAL PLAN

CREATING A GENERATION OF TERRORISTS

HOW POLITICIANS DUCK THE BLAME FOR TERRORISM

TIME BOMB ON EUROPE’S DOORSTEP

AFTERWORD

EU LEADERS ARE DELUDING THEMSELVES

PHOTO CAPTIONS AND COPYRIGHTS

FOREWORD

Saturday, 16 July 2016

SPREADING REIGN OF TERROR

It was near inevitable that Isis should organise or inspire another atrocity in Western Europe after a string of defeats culminating in the loss of Fallujah to Iraqi government forces. Isis has always used acts of mass terrorism directed against civilians as a way of showing its strength and dominating the news agenda. It is part of its repertoire of tactics at all times, but particularly when it is suffering losses and hopes are rising that it is not only retreating but has gone into irreversible decline.

Isis had already reacted to defeat at Fallujah by sending a vehicle packed with explosives into the Karada district of Baghdad, where it exploded, killing 292 people. This happened just as the Iraqi government was congratulating itself on taking the city which people in the Iraqi capital believed was the source of many of the bombs that have slaughtered them over the last three years.

Isis now claims that Mohammed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who drove his truck through crowds of people in Nice, was one of their soldiers. It is possible that they did not know what was going to happen until it was over, but the attack has all the hallmarks of an Isis mass killing: it was directed against civilians in a very public place and its savagery was so extreme that it inevitably instils fear and dominates the world news agenda for days on end. All that was needed to carry it out was a fanatical perpetrator willing to be killed as a proof of his faith.

This was the tactic of al-Qa’ida, shown most famously on 9/11, but Isis has used it on a greater scale and, even when it is on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, it can mobilise bombers swiftly and effectively.

The Isis attack on Ataturk Istanbul International Airport was carried out by gunmen and bombers from Central Asia, whom Turkish security had not identified as a threat because it supposed they were committed to overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad and his regime in Syria. What gives Isis’ terrorism its relentless quality is that it is backed by a well-organised, if battered, state machine in the form of the so-called caliphate, that can mobilise men, equipment, expertise and money.

Isis is under pressure on almost every front in Iraq and Syria. It cannot withstand ground attacks backed by precision bombing from the US-led air armada and the same is true of the Syrian army supported by Russian bombers. This may weaken Isis, but does not put it permanently out of business because it can revert to guerrilla warfare and wait for its numerous enemies to fall out, as they invariably do. The Iraqi and Syrian governments are short of good combat troops and have difficulty occupying the territory they have taken.

It is often said that there can be no peace in Iraq without conciliating the Sunni Arabs, the community from which Isis draws its strength, but this is to underestimate the sectarian and ethnic cleansing now being carried out by all sides in the civil war engulfing Iraq and Syria. An increasing number of the Sunni Arab community in both countries – one-fifth of the population in Iraq and three-fifths in Syria – are being permanently displaced and are unlikely to go home.

The sectarian map of this part of the Middle East is being permanently redrawn, which can only intensify the fighting. Isis is a long way from total defeat, but it is giving up population centres and has not made a successful counter-attack for over a year. It will seek to spread its networks of militants to other countries and make sure that its retreats are masked by further atrocities like the ones in Baghdad and Nice.

Patrick Cockburn

INTRODUCTION

Black Flag of Jihad

Saturday, 15 March 2008

‘WE LOVE DEATH’

The al-Qa'ida spokesman who, following the 2004 Madrid train bombings, told the West, You love life and we love death articulated a chilling truth. It's clear in Michael Burleigh's book, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, that death has always been the terrorist's trump card. It's not only the targeted assassinations, indiscriminate mass murders and tit-for-tat killings that spread fear; so too does the passion with which certain terrorists embrace their own annihilation. Their mindset seems so bewilderingly alien.

In this bracingly opinionated account, the author argues that all terrorists are morally insane. From playboys to psychopaths, narcissists to n'er-do-wells, the milieu of terrorists is invariably morally squalid, when it is not merely criminal. Slaughter costs, and money laundering, peddling drugs, extortion and armed robbery all fall within the job description.

Burleigh defines terrorism as a tactic. It's also a lifestyle choice which is neither glamorous nor admirable, as Burleigh sets out to show. Spanning the last 150 years, Burleigh examines ideologically-inspired movements (Nihilists, revolutionaries, Red Brigadists, the Baader-Meinhof gang) and nationalist/separatist activists: Fenians, ETA, FLN and OAS, the PLO and various Middle East factions, the ANC, Irish Republicans and Loyalists).

Each informative and absorbing chapter could stand alone, whether it's detailing Algeria's fight for independence or the continuing armed struggle of the Basques. Devoting the final portion of the book to Islamic terrorism, the historian explains why Islamofascist or Islamobolshevik are terms to be avoided. (Jihadi-Salafists is more accurate). Latin American and Sri Lankan terrorists don't figure but the weird Japanese Red Army does, whose operatives embarked on missions with Rimbaud poems and origami dolls tucked inside their pockets.

Burleigh's searing anger isn't just directed at terrorists but the way in which he thinks we deal with them. Britain's tradition of offering sanctuary to foreign radicals is partly answerable for our present status as Londonistan. If we believe him, it's liberal apologists who started making life easy for terrorists as far back as the 19th century. Around the time the Russian Kadet Party was sympathising with their violent acts, French poet Tailharde was declaring What do the victims matter, as long as the gesture is beautiful?. Since then, other useful idiots have included lawyers who abet their terrorist clients, pundits quick to hog the microphone and terror-groupies such as that loathsome academic enthusiast for the purifying effects of political violence, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Not only have terrorists consistently exploited the media, but their love affair with technology isn't new, either. Once the superiority of dynamite over gunpowder had been established, Fenian and anarchist newspapers gave tips on handling explosives and advertised bomb-making classes. Today the details are available on the internet. The Red Brigades were already filming their executions in 1980. Blowing up London Transport may seem like a sinister new development; however, Fenians dropped bombs on the Metropolitan Line in 1883. Russian anarchists, meanwhile, were carrying out suicide bombing as early as 1904. Long-haired Nihilists with their tinted glasses may not have been anticipating 72 virgins, but they subscribed to the ultimate meaningless act in a world which (for them) had no meaning.

The refugee camp and the occupied homeland have produced generations of brutalised people with nothing to lose. But Bin Laden and Carlos the Jackal both hailed from the super-rich, and there have been scores of guilty white kids, the offspring of lawyers, architects and judges who have grabbed guns and joined the fray. The youth who murdered Russia's Prime Minister in 1911 rejected a future of nothing but an endless number of cutlets. Thirty years earlier, Vera Figner abandoned her privileged position as a beautiful doll to help assassinate Tsar Alexander II. The Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof had beautiful dolls too, ruthlessly exploiting their middle-class connections.

Vanity is never in short supply among terrorists. The charismatic peasant and maniac Serge Nechaev basked in the admiration of socially smart women. High on amphetamines in his tight trousers, Andreas Baader also surrounded himself with a harem of radical chicks. The macho Ali Hassan Salameh of Black September liked gold-medallions and a beauty queen on his arm, while the Northern Irish loyalist-cum-drug-dealer Mad Dog Adair opted for arms pumped full of horse steroids and a shaved head polished with Mr Sheen.

Burleigh doesn't spare us the details in a world where punishments and spats are settled with acid in the face, kneecappings, chisels and knives. A sense of the ridiculous occasionally dilutes the horror. There's something comic, for instance, about some of the Baader-Meinhof antics, such as Ulrike Meinhof unscrewing a hand grenade, not realising she was supposed to toss it away. In jail, Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe were given communicating cells. After three weeks, Raspe pleaded for the door to be bricked up again.

Engaging and provocative, Burleigh is master of the caustic putdown. Radical cleric Abu Hamza stuck to bomb-making in Afghanistan being too bulky to romp easily up and down mountains. Gerry Adams has the tone of a sociology lecturer at a provincial university; Bin Laden resembles those self-righteous superannuated rock stars with delusions of grandeur who harangue world leaders about Africa.

Perceiving Islamist terrorism with its Crusader-Zionist fixation as a real threat to civilisation, Burleigh nevertheless ends on a positive note. We need to entice extremists back to normality and he suggests several things we could do: stop identifying ourselves with repressive states; promote democracy; encourage a true dialogue between western and Islamic cultures. Only then will Jihadist- Salafism, like other terrorist movements, begin its death throes.

A review of: Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, by Michael Burleigh.

Marianne Brace

CHAPTER 1

TERRORISM

MORE DEADLY IN THE 1970s & 80s

Source: Statista from Global Terrorism Database.

Sunday, 11 January 2015

SAME STORY, DIFFFERENT ACTORS

They say that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. The Charlie Hebdo atrocities of last week are many things; frightening, terrifying, atrocious, a horror, an attack on what we stand for. But, as a phenomenon they are not new, or exceptional or uniquely Muslim.

You do not have to be a young Muslim living in the 21 century to be subject to radicalisation. It has always, down the ages been possible to persuade young men (and a few – a very few young women) of all faiths and none to the believe that is noble to kill innocent people in pursuit of what they have been persuaded is a great cause. As far back as the first century, the Jewish Zealots did it against Roman rule. In the 11 century the Shia Muslim Hashashin added another word – assassin – to our vocabulary of terror by their attacks on the Persian Government of the day. In our own time we have had to deal with our own home grown so called Catholic terrorists of the IRA (who by the way killed and destroyed far more than the current wave of jihadist outrages) – as well as the outrages perpetrated by the anti-imperialist urban terrorism of young middle class white Germans in the Bader-Meinhof Gang and its successor the Rot Armee Fraktion.

Perhaps the closest parallel to what we are seeing now is the Anarchist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All entirely home grown and without any kind of formal command structures, they too were a collection of lone wolves inspired by texts and prepared to kill and maim to abolish states and replace them with borderless self-governed entities which, leaving aside that they were based on a political idea rather than a religious one, bear a striking similarity to the caliphate model of today.

In pursuit of what they called the propaganda of the deed, they too killed and maimed by bomb and gun, large numbers of innocents – as well as an extraordinary number of the most powerful and prominent. On June 2 1919 simultaneous bombs attacks in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Patterson in New Jersey killed a mayor, a state legislator, three judges, two businessmen a policeman and a catholic priest. A year later perhaps the earliest car bomb blew up outside Wall Street killing 39 and injuring hundreds more. These were no more than the last lethal splutterings of a spate of anarchist attacks which had been going on for more than 30 years. In 1893 an anarchist bomb in Barcelona’s opera house killed or injured 72. That same year, a hungry, vagabond, socially outcast Frenchman threw a bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies. A year later another Frenchman threw a bomb hidden in a lunch box into a café killing or wounding more than 20 perfectly innocent diners. He died shouting We who hand out death know how to take it.

Among the very ordinary casualties of the anarchist years, were also some very prominent ones, too. Those assassinated included a US President, a Russian Tsar, the empress of Austria, the President of France, the King of Spain on his wedding day, the heir to the Austrian empire on the corner of a Sarajevo street, the King of Italy and countless European Ministers of the Interior.

Then, too as now the security forces complained they needed more powers to tackle the threat. After a bomb in the city, the Chicago police, even went so far as to recycle the same piece of gas piping as evidence to support the fact that they had foiled three subsequent bomb outrages.

None of this of course is to say that recent events are not serious. Or that we are not under threat. Or that we do not now have to respond in a serious and thoughtful manner.

But if we are to react as we should, then it is as well to remember that what we face is NOT new. And it is not unique and it is not just Islamic and we have been through this before and we should not panic or over-react. Almost every recent generation has had to respond to these kind of phenomenon.

And almost every recent generation has managed to do so without fundamentally undermining our freedoms or setting our societies at war with themselves.

It is worth recalling that throughout those same bloody anarchist years around the end of the nineteenth century, the long march towards the European ideal of states founded on individual liberty, tolerance and human rights, continued unchecked. Defending the Charlie Hebdo principle means refusing to allow either terrorism or our fear of it to deflect us from that path.

Paddy Ashdown

Monday, 25 July 2016

CAUSES RARELY SIMPLE

Everyone remembers great headlines. They also recall, with re-lived astonishment, the terrible ones. The Sun has probably provided more than its fair share of the former, but also a few of the latter. A memorable example to have sparked outrage reported that the boxer Frank Bruno had been taken to a psychiatric hospital: Bonkers Bruno Locked Up. For good measure, the story that followed described Bruno as a nut.

In the years that followed that 2003 error of judgement, media coverage of mental health was subjected to considerable scrutiny. It also improved significantly. Prejudicial descriptions of people suffering mental ill-health – nutter, bonkers, loony – began to lose their prominence in the tabloid lexicon. Vitally, the media came to a better understanding that mental illness and violence are not inextricably linked. Scare stories that lead readers into thinking that any person diagnosed