This morning, the Los Angeles Times gave the most behind the scenes story to date (that I’ve see at least), about the second bomber cell in London, the one that failed to carry out it’s mission:
The suspects had sharpened their radicalism in the streets, mosques and housing projects of rough ethnic neighborhoods, investigators, witnesses and friends say. They were brazen voices in an unsuspecting city, marginalized East Africans who lived by their wits, dabbling in street crime and reportedly manipulating the immigration and welfare systems. During workouts at a West London gym, they channeled their private rage into public diatribes.
Brothers Ramzi and Wharbi Mohammed sold Islamic literature and recited religious verses on a gritty North Kensington street of antiques stores and cafes, skirmishing with a shop owner who chased them away. Hamdi Issac, now jailed in Rome, belonged to a gang of extremists who waged a belligerent campaign to take over a mosque in South London. Roommates Muktar Said Ibrahim and Yasin Hassan Omar were loud militants, praising Osama bin Laden to neighbors at the rundown building where Ibrahim is accused of preparing five backpack bombs.
Their agitation allegedly gave way to action after July 7, when four young British Muslims, three from the northern city of Leeds, ignited bombs on three subway cars and a bus, killing themselves and 52 others. Issac claims that his group struck two weeks later in an improvised, independent tribute to the dead bombers. Despite similar methods and targets, British authorities say they have found no link between the two plots.
That last sentence is the most chilling. This wasn’t a second Al Qaeda cell activated and timed to strike a couple weeks after the first. The second group was simply “inspired” by the first to act on their own. In case there is any doubt as to what they claimed their motivation was, Italian investigators provide the answer:
“He’s calm — he seems scared,” said the Italian official, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. “He’s open, gentle, polite; he doesn’t get mad even when you provoke him. But when you ask him why he did it, he starts with the speech about Iraq: They are killing women and children, no one’s doing anything about it, on and on. That’s when you can see there has been a brainwashing.”
As I recall, this was one of the reasons many moderates who despised Saddam and wanted him dead, nonetheless disagreed with the Neocons and their pre-war “swamp draining” arguments. You can’t change the culture and habits of people at the barrel of a gun and spread democracy like you are Johhny Appleseed spreading apple trees. The Neocons thought a regime change in Iraq would help start a chain reaction. They were right. They have provided the enemy with enough propaganda to recruit for a generation. I don’t advocate pulling out of Iraq with our job left unfinished, but hopefully Neocons and their hubris have now been defeated for at least one generation.
There was another story last week that I noticed didn’t get much press. On August 9th the China Daily reported that a suicide bomber blew up a bus in East China’s Fujian Province:
The suspected bomber, Huang Maojin, died on the spot.Huang, 42, was a farmer from Fujian’s Gutian County.
According to a suicide note found by police, he had been suffering from lung cancer for about two years.
In the letter, Huang said he had a dispute with one of his neighbours in 2002. He claimed he had been unfairly treated by the local public security department and was sentenced to jail until the end of 2003.
Now this worries me greatly. The idea of suicide bombing has so saturated the public consciousness that it has become “the thing to do.” Obviously this had nothing to do with Iraq, but stemmed from a local dispute. Because all reports in the Chinese media are censored we’ll never know what inspired him to go out the way he did. It’s pretty obvious though that bus bombings seem to get one noticed.
Huang Maojin… Further reporting on the background of the suicide bomber, how he built his bomb and what drove him to despair, appears to have been quashed in national media… The curious case has generated a stream of comments on the Internet, which serves as an office water cooler in China. Some chat-room posts blamed the rising cost of health care in China and the widening gap between rich and poor. Others paint Huang simply as a madman… Further reporting on the background of the suicide bomber, how he built his bomb and what drove him to despair, appears to have been quashed in national media. [Link]
