On 7 July 2005, four suicide-bombers attacked the London transport system, killing fifty-two people and wounding 700 in a series of coordinated bomb blasts three on underground trains and one on a bus. The attacks were not on the scale of Madrid, Bali, the Mombasa and Dar es Salaam embassy bombings or New York, but they had a considerable effect on public opinion in Britain. At the time the British government denied strongly that there was any connection between the motivation of the bombers and the war in Iraq, and it has maintained this view rigorously ever since.
In the past week, three reports about the attacks have been published. The most substantial was from the intelligence and security committee (ISC), a semi-independent cross-party select committee drawn from both houses of parliament. This was followed almost immediately by a document from the home office on the sequence of events before and after the attacks, coupled with some analysis of the background and motivations of the bombers. Finally, the government published a brief response to the ISC's report.
In around a hundred pages of documentation in total, there is scarcely a mention of Iraq. The question was raised the day after the reports were published in an interview with the new home secretary (and former defence minister) John Reid, who repeated the denial of any serious connection between the motivations of the bombers and the situation in Iraq.
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This assessment contrasts markedly with the experience of many journalists and researchers questioning young people (especially those of Pakistani origin) in several of Britain's cities after the explosions. It was particularly noticeable in west Yorkshire, northern of England, whose principal city of Leeds was home to three of the bombers (the fourth spent his childhood in the nearby town of Huddersfield). When this local connection became clear in the wake of the bombings, young people from Asian communities (almost without exception) responded to the media swarm descending on their districts with two sentiments: expressing strong condemnation of the bombers and dismay and disgust at what had happened; and, often in the same breath, asking "but what about Iraq? Look what you are doing there."
To be fair, the intelligence and security committee at least does touch on this issue as part of a long analysis of the motivations behind the London attacks, including the effects of political radicalisation. It calls, in particular, for far more attention to be given to the reasons why the views of apparently ordinary young Muslims could become so changed, sometimes in the space of a few months, and even with little or no contact with radical elements overseas.
The committee's report emphasises the video taken of one of the bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, and his own justification for the attacks:
"Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security, you will be our targets. And until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight."
It is difficult to see any way in which this could not be taken to include Iraq, yet John Reid denies the connection because Khan does not specifically cite Iraq in his list of attacks. What is more surprising is that one of the few mentions of Iraq in the ISC document is actually a quotation from a previously restricted summary of an analysis from the British government's own joint terrorism analysis centre (JTAC) made before the London bombings which states that " events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the UK."
The committee itself touches on the lack of understanding of motivation when it concludes that: "We remain concerned that across the whole of the counter-terrorism community the development of the home-grown threat and the radicalisation of British citizens were not fully understood or applied to strategic thinking."
A state of denial
How has the government responded to numerous claims of an Iraq linkage? The home-office report has a substantial section on motivation, but concentrates almost entirely on two issues a degree of marginalisation in the communities from where the bombers came, and the radicalising role of a political interpretation of Islam. It highlights Khan's video as the best indicator of the group's motivation and acknowledges that "the focus of the video is on perceived injustices carried out by the West against Muslims justifying violence through his own twisted interpretation of Islam"; but the emphasis is on "perceived" and there is not a single mention of Iraq in the entire section.
What is particularly noticeable here is the sharp difference in approach between London and Washington. For the British government there is no connection between Iraq and the wider war on terror. It is completely unacceptable to make such a connection because that would mean that Britain is at risk of attacks such as the London bombings because of its commitment to United States policy in Iraq. There may have been well over 40,000 civilian deaths since the occupation began; around 100,000 people may have been detained without trial across the world since 9/11, some for more than four years; and torture, rendition and prisoner abuse may be widespread but there is no connection between these accumulated experiences and the possible motives behind the London bombings, for the injustices are merely "perceived". In this mindset, the idea that the Iraq occupation is a gift to al-Qaida recruiting-sergeants and is actually making matters worse is nonsensical if not pernicious.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here
A collection of Paul Rogers's Oxford Research Group briefings, Iraq and the War on Terror: Twelve Months of Insurgency, 2004-05 is published by IB Tauris
(October 2005)
This contrasts sharply with the Washington view where an increasingly unpopular war means that it is absolutely essential to link Iraq directly with the war on terror. Indeed, the United States is said to be engaged in Iraq precisely because of the linkage the Iraq war is even frequently represented as a direct response to 9/11. Furthermore, it would be an utter disaster for the United States to pull out of Iraq as this would leave a failing state as a breeding-ground for new generations of al-Qaida-linked jihadists.
There are numerous people across the security and intelligence services in Britain who, at least in private, do not share the official line about the irrelevance of Iraq to the London attacks. But as long as the government persists in its refusal to accept any serious criticism of the conduct of the war on terror, it is not possible for government reports to offer realistic assessments of this issue. The home office's response to the ISC report is significant here. It contains a statement on its approaches to Islamic radicalisation, which include a number of programmes: empowering "mainstream Islam" among young British Muslims, engaging more effectively with influential Muslims and the international Islamic media, and undertaking intensive efforts to explain British foreign policy in Britain itself and across the Islamic world. But no consideration is given to the question of whether British foreign policy is even remotely a part of the problem.
An earlier column in this series ("The London bombs in the wider war", 8 July 2005), published the day after the London bombings, made the following point:
"The images of Fallujah and other degraded towns and cities in Iraq from Baghdad to Najaf, from Baquba to Ramadi are as familiar in the middle east as are those of the London bombings in the British press today. A real tragedy of the London bombings, to put alongside all the raw human losses and wounds, is that very few people in Britain will make the connection between the two realities; yet, as with Madrid, the war on terror has come to those of us living in Europe."
Almost a year later, the British government appears to have learnt nothing.
