‘Must find trigger for these acts’

LONDON: The intellectual professions and the foreign origins of the perpetrators of the failed car bombs in Glasgow and London have pointed decisively to the disenchantment with British foreign policy and the Iraq war as the main motive behind the attacks.

Many academics and intellectuals believe that until now the link between foreign policy and terror acts was not as crystal clear.

“There have been arguments that foreign policies of the USA and the UK have acted as engine of radicalisation but the argument was not as easily applied,” Dr Farzana Shaikh, Associate Fellow at Chatham House told DNA. Chatham House is a reputable think tank on strategic studies.

People on the left of the political spectrum like the 1960s red rebel and author Tariq Ali have been saying even since the 7/7 London blasts two years ago that British foreign policy was a major motive for Muslims becoming radicalised, but now the theory has got greater coinage.

The ringleader of the 7/7 attacks Mohammed Siddque Khan in his suicide video had linked foreign policy with his acts but the UK government has been refusing to accept this as it goes against their involvement in Iraq.

“The 7/7 bombers motives could be linked to political and economic alienation and marginalisation of British Asians as they were all British born, but the current attacks point decisively at foreign policy disenchantment and anger at the Iraq war,” explained Dr Shaikh.

However, Professor David Canter said that doctors plotting mass murder was not as new as one might think pointing to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden’s second in command being a surgeon.

“Their true objectives are not mass destruction but making a big enough bang to make the news,” explained Canter, professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool. “We should see these acts as the arrogance of mediocre individuals who wish to claim heroic status for cowardly acts against undefended innocents,” said Canter.

The govt’s new Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism is also engaged trying to solve the million-dollar riddle. “We need to find the “trigger point” that pushes ordinary Muslims into carrying out terrorist plotsagainst the state,” said a govt source.

Dr Shaikh said the radicalisation of young professionals stemmed from two reasons. “It could come from a feeling of middle-class guilt amongst professionals from the third world countries compensating for the advantages that they enjoy as opposed to the desperate lives their co-religionists live in other parts of the world,” explained Shaikh, who is from Pakistan. “Or it can be symptomatic of a wave of religious resurgence,” she added.