Capítulo III Análisis e Integración de Resultados
3.4 Análisis integrador de los resultados obtenidos
Between 2003 and 2006, Al-Qaeda operatives directed at least four terrorist conspiracies targeting the UK. The British Muslims who operated at the behest of Al- Qaeda in these atrocities were previously radicalised through their involvement with the Islamic fundamentalist movement. It is therefore important to understand how Al- Qaeda emerged and why the organisation has attracted followers in the UK, most notably Omar Bakri Mohammed, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the organisation during the late 1990s. The origins of Al-Qaeda are often glossed over by those who advocate western interference in the Middle East. Specifically, because this terrorist organisation is widely considered the result of US led support for the Afghan mujahedeen. Through an alliance with Saudi Arabia, the United States helped equip Sunni Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the last years of the Cold War. At the time, the United States interpreted its own national security interests almost exclusively through the prism of a Cold War conflict and therefore it served their interests to ally themselves with the Sunnis, at least in the short term. Promoting the same doctrine that now directs thousands of young Muslims to take up arms against the west, the United States and Saudi Arabia encouraged Sunni fundamentalists to fight the Godless communists in Afghanistan. Writing for Global Research in 2012, Benjamin Schett has argued, ‘Saudi backed archaic ideology served as an incentive to thousands of confused young men to receive military training in Pakistan in the 1980’s, from where they were sent to Afghanistan in order to kill Russians’.47 While Sunni Muslims were busy fighting Soviet conscripts using state of the art military hardware, Iranian backed Shia militants were diligently carrying out acts of terrorism against the United States. This included the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut as well as the 1984 torture and killing of two American citizens in the same city.48
As the world adjusted to a post-communist era, the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussain, exploited the power vacuum to fulfil this countries long-nurtured ambition to
47 B. Schett, ‘US Sponsored Islamic Fundamentalism: The roots of the US-Wahhabi Alliance’, Global Research, 7th September 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/us- sponsored-islamic-fundamentalism-the-roots-of-the-us-wahhabi-
alliance/5303558?print=1, (accessed 9th October 2014)
48 B. Stephens, ‘Stephens: Iran's Unrequited War’, The Wall Street Journal, 22nd October 2012,
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702036306045780724524434475682, (accessed 7th October 2014)
annex neighbouring Kuwait. With the former Soviet Union in turmoil, the United States dominated the UN Security Council. This allowed them to achieve a resolution authorising the use of force to liberate the small but oil rich state of Kuwait. US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia quickly overran the Iraqi army leading to heavy losses as they retreated to Baghdad. Unknown at the time, wealthy Saudi Arabian, Osama Bin Laden, took particular offence to the markedly increased presence of western soldiers on historical Muslim land. He accused the Saudi Arabian Royal Family of apostasy and of being illegitimate custodians of the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina. Also denounced by Islamic fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan, the ruling Saudi elite quickly became the primary target of Islamic revolutionaries, many of whom had received support, directly or indirectly from the House of Saud. How best to overthrow them however, continues to divide fundamentalists.
Accordingly, from the mid-1990s, two different insurgent groups emerged from Afghanistan, both representing a serious threat to western interests. The first of these groups focused on the “Near Enemy”, that is to say, they sought to directly overthrow Muslim leaders in their own country who failed to rule according to Sharia. Observers describe this approach as classic insurgency. The second group, made notorious by the actions of Al-Qaeda, sought to achieve the same objective but indirectly by targeting foreign supporters. In order to remove the apostate Saudi royal family, Al-Qaeda reasoned that it was far more effective to cut off the support base keeping them in power. Bin Laden resolved that without US aid, domestic fundamentalists would feel empowered enough to rise up and implement regime change on their own. He urged all Muslims to focus their attention on the “Far Enemy”, the United States, without whose hidden support, all the apostate regimes would crumble. Many radical Muslim groups rejected Bin Laden’s approach, arguing that it would increase American support to their local enemies and retard Islamic interests.49
In contrast to the fight against the Soviets, Al-Qaeda decided the best approach to take against the US would be a war of attrition. Consequently, acts of terrorism against non-combatants became the organisations preferred means to achieve their objective. The campaign began in 1993 when Khalid Sheikh
49 F. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005
Mohammed, an associate of Osama Bid Laden, financed a successful bomb attack against the World Trade Centre in New York.50 Sunni fundamentalists, who had previously collaborated with the US during the 1980’s, were now engaged in all out war with the west. Further bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 quickly placed Bin Laden on America’s list of most wanted terrorists. These attacks were sporadic but underlined the way in which Bin Laden sought to build a global coalition. Support for Al-Qaeda amongst British Muslims came from an alignment between fundamentalist ideology and the goals exposed by the organisation, in particular their long-term objective to establish an Islamic Caliphate. In order to understand why Al- Qaeda proved popular within Muslim communities across the UK (four terrorist plots carried out by British Muslims between 2003 and 2006 were directed by Al-Qaeda) the next section examines key events relevant to the British Muslim community which helped lay the foundations for Al-Qaeda’s virulent anti-western political ideology.