Thoughts from London

Blair's folly will breed Muslim radicals
When Tony Blair slavishly followed American foreign policy into a war with Iraq he justified it saying the world would have to pay in blood if Saddam Hussein and his feared arsenal were not eliminated.

Blair might not have realised it then but truer words he has never spoken. There is more blood being spilt today, several weeks after the subjugation of Iraq and another autocracy imposed on the Iraqi people in the name of liberation and democracy. In the war that was publicly avowed would give the Iraqi people the freedom of speech long denied them and a voice in running their affairs, 12 journalists were killed or presumed dead.

More journalists were killed in those 20 days of ceaseless bombardment and destruction than in any other war of the same duration. Not just killed. Killed by "friendly-fire" mostly. A very well-known journalist falls off the roof and dies for no apparent reason. A tank fires needlessly at a hotel occupied by journalists killing and maiming several. Missiles hit the al-Jazeera television station office killing a broadcaster while on air. The Abu Dhabi television office takes a hit.

Who could be held responsible for much of what has happened, this curious silencing of news sources? Who else but the dictator with the weapons of mass destruction. Yes, George W Bush for his illegal and unjustifiable war, a blame that should also be shared by his political acolyte in Christendom, Tony Blair.

But Blair has done even more damage to his country by holding hands with Bush. He has not only widened the growing chasm between the British people and Britain's ethnic minorities, particularly its 1.6 million or more Muslims, who marched in their several hundreds of thousands to protest at the then impending war.

Blair's folly is already being exposed in West Asia and elsewhere where an unprecedented number of suicide attacks have claimed the lives of innocent people.
What he has done is to expose Britain to similar attacks not by suicide bombers from outside the country but more dangerously from within.

The reason is very simple. The spate of recent suicide attacks is the reaction of extremist Islamic groups to the Iraqi outrage. London has been spared up to now. But Blair dragged Britain into a war that is becoming increasingly impossible to justify.
This has enraged Britain's Muslim community so much that it has begun to speak out openly as an assault not on terror or on Saddam Hussain but on Islam.

This is turn is beginning to alienate the Muslims from the British public and we are bound to see the rise of still more Islamophobia in the coming months. They faced official harassment and racist slurs in the aftermath of September 11.
If the British Muslims were then suspected of sympathising with the Islamic extremists who struck at the United States, the situation today is perceptibly different.

For the first time two British Muslims have been identified as suicide bombers confirming the worst fears of some politicians and security services that Britain had become a "safe haven" for Muslims from several radical Islamic groups planning terrorist attacks against western and pro-western interests across the globe.

This time with British Muslim involvement established, the Muslim community here is bound to face sharply increased security checks and surveillance and even places of worship such as mosques, considered the breeding ground of Islamic radicals, will not be spared sudden raids by armed police.

Such security checks and raids will affect the Asian and Black communities, too, and heighten racial tensions at a time Britain is sharply divided on its role in the war against Iraq and its aftermath when the raison d'etre for the attack - the weapons of mass destruction - are still to be found.

It is the vast majority of British Muslims who are law abiding residents who will have to bear the brunt of racial discrimination and attacks from gangs of whites who believe that their social deprivation results from the increasing presence of Asian and black minorities and asylum seekers.

The increased number of seats won by the hard right British National Party at the local council elections in early May in the inner cities in northern Britain and the old mill towns where Muslims live in large numbers, is a sign of the growing alienation.

But this alienation will be compounded in the coming months with Britain's Muslims coming under greater official scrutiny and search under tough new anti-terrorist laws that Britain introduced before and after September 11.

Such official behaviour and public reaction is likely to harden the mood, especially among young Muslims, of defiance and resentment. The identification of two British Muslims - Asif Mohammed Hanif (21) and Omar Khan Sharif (27) - in the suicide attack on a Tel Aviv bar earlier this month could act as a catalyst for other young Muslims who regard the US/UK war on terror as a fig leaf for a war on Islam to join radical movements that preach that such sacrifice gains martyrdom.

Earlier Briton Richard Reid tried to blow up a transatlantic aircraft in mid-flight with an explosive in his shoe but failed and was arrested. Also named as the "20th hijacker" in the September 11 attacks was Zacharias Moussaoui who had lived in England. At least seven British citizens are believed to be in custody at the notorious American detention camp in Guantanamo Bay.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the British Government banned several organisations accused of engaging in terrorism. Ahmed Versi, the editor of Muslim News summed it all up at the time in comments to the BBC. Referring to British Muslims he said "They have difficulty in believing what (Prime Minister) Tony Blair says when the reality, since the Terrorism Bill, is that the Muslim community is the target".

"Of the 20-odd organisations prohibited under the Act, 16 to 18 are Muslim groups", he said. Security sources however claim that Omar Khan Sharif, whose bomb failed to explode at the Tel Aviv bar, was a member of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which aims to unite all Muslim states under a single banner. The discovery in the Israel-occupied Arab territories of leaflets published in the British Midlands urging Muslims to become suicide bombers has fuelled speculation that Britain is in fact an important base for extremist Islamic groups including al Qaeda which earlier had key operatives working out of this country.

The leaflets supposedly printed by an organisation named al-Sunnah, a group based in Birmingham's Centre for Islamic Studies. Birmingham is Britain's second largest city and has a large Muslim population. But the vast majority of British Muslims do not share the views of some of their extremist co-religionists.

Yet the radicalisation of young Muslims who see the injustice meted out to the Palestinians and to Islamic regimes ready to stand up to western bullying, the expropriation of Arab resources by global capitalism in the shape of western multinationals, will only be hastened not stopped. Before long there will be locally-bred extremists ready for martyrdom. That is when the Bushes and Blairs will see that payment is indeed in blood. But why should they care? It won't be their blood.

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