EU a new terrorism hatchery
The foiling of a massive airline hijack plot by Islamist extremists based in Great Britain underscores a growing reality about the fight against terrorism. Europe may well become – it may already be – as important a hatchery for terrorist plots and attacks against the United States as any place in the Middle East.
If so, it will come as something of a shock to many Europeans. In the years since Sept. 11, European sympathy toward America as the target of terrorism has waned dramatically. The days when France’s left-wing daily, Le Monde, would carry a “We are all Americans” headline are long gone.
In part, the change is a hostile reaction to President Bush’s attack on Iraq – seen in much of Western Europe as a rash and irresponsible act that has backfired and worsened the West’s relations with the Islamic world. Also, in the absence of any attack on U.S. soil in five years, it reflects an evolving European view that we’ve become paranoid about terrorism. Western Europeans, when they think about terrorism at all, see themselves as only secondary targets, if at all, and then depending on how closely their country is allied to the Bush administration.
It’s an attitude that I ran across last winter and early spring during visits to Britain, France, Italy and Ireland. And it’s truly surprising in light of Europe’s experience with terrorism.
The bombings of commuter trains in Madrid and the subways in London are recent and fresh examples of Europe’s own encounter with Islamist terrorism. But Western Europe’s experience with transnational terrorism, the kind identified with nonstate actors and obscure organizations rooted in bizarre political ideologies, predates anything America has experienced.
The Red Army Brigades and the Baader-Meinhoff gang, among others, terrorized Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, kidnapping and murdering Italian leader Aldo Moro and taking a number of German business executives hostage. In the late 1970s, I saw tanks and armored cars at night patrolling the streets of Bonn, then the capital of West Germany, to guard against terrorist kidnappings and attacks. It was homegrown terrorism, with purely European grievances and goals involved. It made no impact here.
But Europe has changed since those days in ways that make it an ideal transit point for the Middle East jihadists. Today, it’s a place where they can acquire Western ways and know-how that will let them move more easily in American society. The difference today is the European Union with its common passport, which allows holders to move freely across borders on much of the continent. As a result, monitoring and controlling of movement all across Western Europe has become more difficult. At the same time, Europe’s Muslim population is growing dramatically, further complicating the continent’s security problems.
It’s a problem that can only worsen if Turkey, with its huge Muslim majority, gains admission to the EU, something it is eagerly seeking with Bush administration support.
Europe’s role in the rash of Islamist terrorism is already considerable. Some of those involved in Sept. 11 planned their attack while living in Hamburg, Germany. Robert Reid, the “shoe bomber,” operated from Britain. France is home to Western Europe’s largest and most disaffected Muslim population. And the Netherlands, with a swelling Muslim population, has witnessed the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by one angry Muslim extremist and attacks by others. Britain, because of its colonialist past in Asia, is home to a large influx from Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamist fundamentalism.
The free and largely uncontrolled flow of people across Europe’s national borders has prompted British Home Secretary John Reid to call for a new look at Britain’s ultra-liberal immigration laws.
Thursday, the Times of London, noting that Britain has vastly understated the flood of newcomers from Eastern Europe, including many with bogus visas rubber-stamped by immigration officials, quoted a vexed Reid as saying that “we have to get away from this daft, so-called politically correct notion that anyone who wants to talk about immigration is a racist.” Reid is not alone. Frank Field, a Labor member of Parliament, complained that without change, Britain “will be transformed into a global traffic station” – an ideal situation for terrorists bound for New York.
Europe, it seems, looks like another ideal new home for would-be terrorists aching to hit America. A kind of new Afghanistan maybe, but one not even the Bush administration would dare invade.