Alex at The Yorkshire Ranter and I have been having an ongoing debate over the last couple of months on the general subject of capital to labour ratios in British terrorism. The motivating question’s a quite important one, with a lot of implications for what sort of public policy one might want to support; how much of a danger to us all are radical Muslim organisations and internet bulletin boards? If we take as given[1] the popularly held belief that there are organisations at work in British society which radicalise disaffected youths from the Asian community and persuade them to become supporters of jihadism and terrorism, then well, obviously that’s bad. But how much actual harm does it do – given that the only way of doing anything about these organisations is to impose some quite draconian reductions in overall civil liberties, what’s the trade-off between liberty and security that we’re looking at here?
As I say, I think this question basically comes down to capital/labour ratios.
My outline argument is here; if British terrorists are labour-constrained (ie, they have lots of bombs but a shortage of people to carry them), then jihadi recruitment is very dangerous and probably ought to be cracked down on. If they are capital constrained (ie, they have lots of volunteers and would be suicide bombers, but a shortage of explosives), then recruitment is nothing like as dangerous and the tradeoff much more questionable. My contention is that looking at the actual and attempted terrorist attacks carried out in the UK over the last three years, the evidence suggests that British terrorists are capital-constrained.
There’s a subsidiary argument regarding human capital in the terror industry; I had also advanced the argument that internet recruitment in general was likely to overload the jihadi labour force with volunteers who were not up to the job due to a variety of intellectual and personality defects. I think there’s a decent argument to be made that British jihadism is human capital-constrained, in that it[2] has plenty of damaged and marginal individuals in it but is very short of motivated and organised cadre, and even shorter on the technical specialists in bomb-making, money-laundering and other vital skills that a terrorist movement needs[3].
The opposing view, of course, is that labour can be substituted for capital of both physical and human kinds quite a long way up the production process[4]; even people who couldn’t be trusted for anything else can probably be sent on errands round the country with something dangerous in the back of their car in order to maximise the efficient use of time by the short supply of skilled jihadis, then the last hundred yards to the target can be the job of the worst and least brightest. I think that managing this sort of long supply chain would require an organisational ability that’s quite rare even in legitimate businesses, but others might differ.
And I think both sides of the argument can claim qualified support from the latest mini-incident in Exeter. On the one hand, it fits Alex’s model pretty well; attack carried out by a mentally ill guy who was apparently[5] “recruited and radicalised” by an unspecified sect. On the other hand, there’s a clear shortage of physical capital in the form of explosives here; the bomb concerned had just about enough power to hurt the bomber (but not kill him) and seemingly did very little damage otherwise.
Between this and the 21/7 bombings, it appears to me that British jihadi terrorists are working off some sort of flour-and-peroxide Anarchist’s Cookbook type recipe that either doesn’t work, or requires more precise manufacture and handling than they’re capable of (if I had to make a bet, it would be that “doesn’t work” is the correct interpretation, and that the guy in Exeter put his bombs together himself from instructions downloaded off the internet, rather than being the tip of a long supply chain). I don’t think that they could do very much more than they’re doing now, even if they had a thousand mentally ill recently radicalised converts to work with. On the other hand, the 7/7 attacks show that there is at least potentially a network that is capable of bringing proper explosives into the UK if it links up with a well-organised and credible jihadi cell (note of course that the Beeston cell were not mentally ill or dysfunctional individuals; quite the opposite). For that reason if no other, it makes no sense to be dogmatic about this – at present I’m not convinced of any case that there’s a threat to Britain from jihadi recruitment[6], but I could change my mind.
[1] Taking this as given might be a very big mistake as I’ve seen surprisingly little serious analysis of the actual prevalence of these institutions, as opposed to sensational (although not necessarily by that token inaccurate) documentary films, and research reports from thinktanks with a clear political axe to grind. However, it’s the mainstream view and I haven’t done anything like enough research myself to gainsay it.
[2] Repeating a point made in one of the linked posts, reifying “British Jihadism” and treating it as a single entity is almost certainly a mistake and one likely to cause serious analytical error. Industry structure always matters, and there are any number of scenarios you could construct in which the jihadi milieu as a whole has all the resources it needs to massively increase its operations, but has structural and organisational deficiencies which prevent these being brought to work together.
[3] Alex quotes an account by Kevin Myers which suggests that the IRA’s bomb-makers learned their craft as electricians in the telecoms system, where they ended up because skilled jobs elsewhere in the economy wouldn’t hire Catholics.
[4] Literally, of course, terrorism is a destructive activity rather than a productive one, but constantly referring to it as a “destruction process” would be distracting.
[5] Standard caveat regarding police accounts of this sort applies; it’s not that one necessarily suspects the authorities of lying, but there are always so few specific details (often for understandable reasons) that it’s impossible to check anything.
[6] Of course, even if I do change my mind, I am unlikely to uncritically accept calls for a ban on Hizb-ut-Tahrir or such like. The evidence apparently shows that radicalisation of Muslim youths in the UK takes place through small cells and individuals, not through preachers or political organisations. There’s always a danger that the need to be seen to do something causes one to lose sight of what might actually help.
{ 67 comments }
Daniel 05.23.08 at 2:47 pm
by the way, anyone claiming to observe a Solow residual in terrorist activity gets a slap ;-)
Dave Weeden 05.23.08 at 3:04 pm
I had also advanced the argument that internet recruitment in general was likely to overload the jihadi labour force with volunteers who were not up to the job due to a variety of intellectual and personality defects.
I don’t think that internet recruitment works quite like this. Isn’t the point to funnel potential bombers to certain mosques where they can be assessed and trained? And isn’t this ‘overloading’ actually in the interests of the jihadis? 1) It would make the ‘serious’ recruits more competitive; 2) it would also throw up volunteers who could be used as decoys for the security services.
I think the problem isn’t with potential recruits – disaffected young men after glamour and rebellion are never hard to find. It’s with cell captains, as it were. People who are mad enough to want to plant bombs for such an abstract cause (the IRA cause made much more sense – Catholics really were denied jobs, for instance) yet well-balanced enough to plan, work undercover for long periods, and handle explosives are going to be incredibly rare.
Daniel 05.23.08 at 3:17 pm
Hmmm, a) I don’t think mosques are really involved in this. Even the jihadi-est mosques in Britain are not really very jihadi, and they’re in general big enough and public enough to make them unsuitable as a venue for doing any serious terrorism work.
On your substantial point, I see what you mean but I think it’s what might be called the “talent pool fallacy” – the idea that widening the pool of possible applicants increases your chances of finding the right candidate. In principle if your candidates were coming as random draws from a normal distribution of talent, it would work, but in fact I think this just shows the limitations of this kind of economics-derived reasoning; the limiting case would be something like casting a Hollywood film, where one wouldn’t expect to find a better leading actor than Jack Nicholson simply by having an open casting call for everyone in China.
Obviously the Hollywood example isn’t particularly relevant to jihadi recruiting either, but I think that the talent pool fallacy is a fallacy there too; there is so much friction in the selection, recruitment and training process that it is more likely to get overwhelmed and break down if it gets too many would-be recruits.
abb1 05.23.08 at 3:30 pm
I suspect radicalization is much less the result of any active effort than just watching the garden variety TV news. For that matter, most of the organized effort to radicalize is probably the result of watching the garden variety TV news as well. Go to the source.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 3:47 pm
Marxist historians tend to underemphasize the importance of control of the means of destruction. For example, Engels “Anti-Duhring” assumes that during every era a military required a solid economic base, but historically that was not true. The clinching case is the Mongols, who put together a dominant military with no industrial or agricultural base at all. The key is to win your first battle, and finance subsequent battles with extractions and plunder. This was also the Swedish method during the seventeenth century — though a poor and small nation, they briefly became a major power by financing their wars with plunder and staffing them in considerable part with merenaries.
Great Zamfir 05.23.08 at 3:54 pm
John Emerson, I was under the impression that Sweden was actually one of Europe’s biggest steel and weapons producers in the 17th century, because their iron ore was particularly well suited to the porduction processes of the time.
Tom 05.23.08 at 4:15 pm
Does anyone know how complicated it is to produce the sort of explosive devices jihadis might look to detonate?
If it’s not a task of massive complexity (which I suspect it isn’t), does the capital constrained/do nothing argument not risk labour rich jihadist groups at some point in the future having a Eureka moment and subsequently wreaking havoc with a labour source, mad or not, willing to explode itself in the name of Islam.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 4:18 pm
They had some industry, but they were a poor nation per capita and had a small population.
dsquared 05.23.08 at 4:38 pm
Does anyone know how complicated it is to produce the sort of explosive devices jihadis might look to detonate?
No, and there really isn’t much public information about it (and frankly I am not too keen on really trying hard to find out a lot of details about them, what with being a good middle class burgher who values my liberty). As far as I can tell, what they’re working with is a sort of doughy paste made out of concentrated hydrogen peroxide and flour. It isn’t clear how they go about concentrating the hydrogen peroxide, and the results achieved so far appear to suggest that it’s a bit too tricky for them.
I think a more likely Eureka moment than a manufacturing breakthrough would be developing a connection for large amounts of proper explosives (NB that there are far fewer details in the public domain about the explosives used by the 7/7 bombers than any other attack; the official story is, IIRC, military C4 explosive but not even speculation about where it came from).
But this would require a lot of organisational capital; the IRA managed it but they were a big organisation with a very solid popular base and took advantage of Maommar Qadafi’s policy of subsidising global chaos. And my footnote [2] here refers; given the cell structure of British jihadism, a breakthough in one cell doesn’t necessarily help other cells all that much.
Stuart 05.23.08 at 4:48 pm
It isn’t clear how they go about concentrating the hydrogen peroxide, and the results achieved so far appear to suggest that it’s a bit too tricky for them.
Hydrogen Peroxide boils at 150C, so enough of any dilute source, a hob and a thermometer would seem to be enough to do that. Probably not a particularly safe way to do it, but give plenty of them seem happy to die, I doubt that would put them off.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 4:51 pm
I don’t know about British practice, but in the American West a large bomb can easily be made with only moderate technical knowledge and easily available supplies. McVeigh and Nichols were self-financed and had significantly less than $100,000 to work with, IIRC. A smaller, less dramatic explosion would have been much cheaper and easier (McVeigh used 5000 pounds of explosive), and it could have been equally lethal.
The amount of investment, time, and skill involved in the Oklahoma City bombing were of about the same magnitude as doing a thorough remodel on a house. Terrorism really isn’t that hard, but there really aren’t a lot of people who want to be terrorists.
Jack 05.23.08 at 4:53 pm
In many cults recruits are the source of capital.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 4:59 pm
Ammonium nitrate in large lots is $380 per metric ton. Retail it would be several times that. It’s routinely used as a fertilizer.
Sebastian 05.23.08 at 5:30 pm
“No, and there really isn’t much public information about it (and frankly I am not too keen on really trying hard to find out a lot of details about them, what with being a good middle class burgher who values my liberty). As far as I can tell, what they’re working with is a sort of doughy paste made out of concentrated hydrogen peroxide and flour. It isn’t clear how they go about concentrating the hydrogen peroxide, and the results achieved so far appear to suggest that it’s a bit too tricky for them.”
They do seem to be stuck, but it is from a fortunate lack of imagination (trying what more competent bomb makers of the past did) rather than a real capital limitation. The McVeigh precedent suggests that it really isn’t all that difficult to make a pretty powerful bomb in truck size that can do a large amount of damage. And you can just drive it where you want it and blow it up. The capital requirements of a powerful belt-sized bomb aren’t the same as that of a powerful car-sized bomb. But the reasons for avoiding a powerful car/truck sized bomb don’t seem clear to me (though I certainly hope that it will continue to be the trend for now).
dsquared 05.23.08 at 5:58 pm
actually they’ve changed the regulations on buying large quantitie of fertilizer (and changed the manufacturing process for the fertilizer itself if I remember right), so an ammonium nitrate and fuel oil truck bomb is a lot more difficult to organise than it used to be.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 6:06 pm
McVeigh did not intend to be a suicide bomber. If he had, the fertilizer being tagged and traceable would not have deterred him.
McVeigh’s excessively large bomb would have required 100 50-lb bags. Some organization would be required to buy that much fertilizer two bags at a time over the period of a year or so, but not a lot, and a 20 bags would really be plenty. With five conspirators or a few fake identities it would be easy.
TMI, I suppose.
Dave 05.23.08 at 6:10 pm
Regardless of sources of explosives, it seems to me that these people are afflicted by a critical excess of ‘imagination’, in the sense that they can only imagine big ‘spectaculars’, which many of them seem subsequently to be unable to pull off.
Why don’t they just get a car with a full tank, and a couple of extra cans on the back seat, drive through the Dartford Tunnel at rush-hour, slam on the brakes nearly at the end and set themselves on fire? They could easily kill dozens in the resulting inferno, and paralyse a major transport artery for weeks. Or hire a five-ton van, fill the back with anything that’ll burn, douse themselves in petrol and go head-on into rush-hour traffic at the major junction of your choice… Seems like they’re only interested if it goes bang…
Personally I’m rather glad they seem to thoroughly impractical people incapable of improvisation and lateral thinking…
Dave 05.23.08 at 6:11 pm
…seem to be, of course…
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 6:12 pm
Bank robbery is another example of a noisy, expressive, but unlucrative crime. Various sorts of controls have reduced the possible take enormously, but people who like the drama of it do it anyway.
Great Zamfir 05.23.08 at 6:14 pm
I believe there is a big step between making a working amanteur-type bomb and actually doing a lot of damage. Building demolition workers are very careful in placing the explosives at places where the blast is going to destroy critical parts of a building.
If you just put the explosives in a car outside a building, it is well possible to do little more than glass damage to the building. I can remember multiple news features where car bombs failed to kill any people inside a building, and presumably Arabian car bomb makers have better explosives and more knowledge then you can get from the Internet.
Quo Vadis 05.23.08 at 6:23 pm
Does anyone know how complicated it is to produce the sort of explosive devices jihadis might look to detonate?
I did a little research on the topic a while back just to see what it took. Making the kind of explosives that would be powerful enough to make a good backpack sized bomb from readily available raw materials is actually rather difficult. Liken it to someone who had never cooked anything before creating a sophisticated gourmet meal. For one even moderately experienced individual with perfect instructions, coming up with enough to make a bomb would take a lot of effort and some substantial amount of luck.
There are a number of steps each of which has to be done perfectly to get a usable explosive. Minor mistakes can result in an explosive that fizzles or is too unstable to work with or even in immediate explosion. The explosives have a very short shelf life and are much more difficult and dangerous to make in large batches so accumulating enough for a sizable bomb takes a lot of determination.
In addition to the explosive, you need a detonator powerful enough to reliably initiate the explosion which, depending upon the explosive you’re using, may require a quantity of another homemade explosive mixture and some iffy electrical bits.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 6:25 pm
Building demolition workers have to minimize collateral damage, though, and probably they have other specifications minimizing costs and making the cleanup guys’ jobs easier.
A car bomb in a crowd would do a lot of damage, more than a belt-bomber.
Dan Hardie 05.23.08 at 6:56 pm
The Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal officers have been saying for years now that the sophistication of the jihadis in Iraq is beyond anything that they saw in Northern Ireland. (Devices triggered by passive infra-red, for example, which the Provos never used.) Allowing for a bit of exaggeration, both Sunni and Shi’ite groups in Iraq seem to have had bomb-makers at least up to Provisional IRA standards.
Two conclusions from the Iraq point:
1) as yet, Sunni terrorists in Iraq have not shared their expertise with receptive British jihadis (unless the 7/7 bombers got training and/or devices from someone based in Pakistan who had Afghanistan or Iraq experience, which doesn’t seem impossible). We can’t say why, but there are likely to be multiple causes: security forces (British or, perhaps, Pakistani) preventing the smuggling of explosives or the entry of bomb-makers; a much weaker international jihadist network than we imagine; jihadists simply regarding the UK as a lesser priority than Iraq or Afghanistan.
2)Given that there are a number of Sunni jihadists with excellent bomb-making skills and some stores of explosives, and given that they have obvious motives to murder British citizens, if the UK jihad is capital-constrained, or human capital-constrained, that condition cannot be assumed to last forever.
I’d also say that the radicalisation of British Muslims is a very bad outcome whether or not it leads to a significant terrorist campaign. If a large proportion of people within one quite big community are completely disaffected with Parliamentary democracy and the common law, we have a big problem however they choose to express that disaffection.
And further, as the weak-kneed liberal I am, I’d say that the means to combat such disaffection is almost certainly not to ban this or that website or political group. Free marketplace of ideas, and all that.
Dan Hardie 05.23.08 at 7:12 pm
‘British jihad’ is a silly phrase of mine, since as Dsquared notes that kind of loose talk implies a unity between a bunch of disconnected and in some cases mutually hostile groups.
Fun spot for tinfoil hat types: Richard Clarke- the NSC anti-terrorism expert who served a number of US presidents but left the Bush admin in disgust- noted in ‘Against all enemies’ that it took Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols a long time to put together a truck bomb. They kept failing to make useable explosives, and then were suddenly rewarded with success. He said that shortly before that, Nicholls had visited the Phillippines, where his wife came from. Clarke and his team didn’t discount the possibility that Nicholls had received tuition from an Islamicist bomb-maker, on the ‘my enemy’s enemy’ principle, but they couldn’t prove the theory.
John Emerson 05.23.08 at 7:39 pm
As far as I know it doesn’t take a genius to use AMFO, though.
IKI: It is by far the most widely used explosive in coal mining, quarrying, metal mining, and civil construction: it accounts for an estimated 80% of the 6,000,000,000 pounds (2,700,000 metric tons) of explosive used annually in North America.
You’d just need someone with the relevant experience in one of those fields, but apparently that group didn’t include Nichols or McVeigh.
Quo Vadis 05.23.08 at 7:55 pm
As far as I know it doesn’t take a genius to use AMFO, though.
With ANFO you’re limited to a car bomb or truck bomb and you still need a quantity of high explosive for a reliable detonator. For a belt or backpack bomb you would need nitro glycerin or acetone peroxide or similar.
guthrie 05.23.08 at 8:31 pm
Dave #17- yes, fortunately they lack some imagination. I have a good idea how I would create terrorist mayhem across the country, at minimal risk to myself, but fortunately I don’t want to, what with being an ethical and wimpy minded person.
As for the explosives, having spent some time looking into things, I could easily make several different types of explosives with a fair certaintly that they would work. That is knowledge from old books, some supplementary knowledge from the internet, and a fair bit of work to find the necessary chemical supplies.
Daniel says in his first paragraph that the only way to do anything about these organisations that radicalise youths is damage civil liberties, yet I was under the distinct impression that good old fashioned policework that didn’t require any modern anti-freedom laws and turncoats and moles had in fact negated the majority of the plots from the last 6 years. So in that case I fail to see why any sort of dictatorship enabling laws are the only way to do anything, except of course arrest anti-scientology protestors.
Philip Hunt 05.23.08 at 8:36 pm
@10
Wouldn’t it make more sense to freeze it than boil it? Theere would be less risk of explosion, and I imagine that repeated partial freezings could be used to increase the concentration of H2O2 in H2O.
SG 05.23.08 at 8:37 pm
Dan, I suspect Sunni “jihadis” in Iraq are mostly not sharing their talents with British jihadis because a lot of Sunni “jihadis” are actually just national liberationists, and couldn’t give a toss if British jihadis (or jihadis anywhere else for that matter) were able to blow anything up or not. Plus, a lot of “radical” British muslims are likely to be Pakistani, and have no established contacts with Iraq.
I too have wondered at the terrorist fascination with blowing shit up. Australia is one of the coalition of the willing, and a few years ago its capital almost burnt down in forest fires that started accidentally. I reckon 20 guys, 5 or 10 cars, and a couple of dozen petrol cans and they could ring three Australian (or I suppose West Coast USA) towns in fire. If the towns burnt successfully they could take the credit; if the plan failed they could just slip away. I wonder why they haven’t tried things like that – dirt cheap and effective even if it doesn’t destroy Canberra. There must be a million better ways to do terrorism than bombs…
abb1 05.23.08 at 9:28 pm
@23: And further, as the weak-kneed liberal I am, I’d say that the means to combat such disaffection is almost certainly not to ban this or that website or political group. Free marketplace of ideas, and all that.
You can’t have a free marketplace of ideas when a lot of people are seriously pissed off by what you are doing. There is a simple equilibrium here: the number of seriously pissed off people needs to be matched by the appropriate level of repression, or else your whole society will fall apart.
You need to decide whether what you’re doing (e.g. having troops to Afghanistan or whatever it is) is important enough to justify raising the level of domestic repression. It’s that simple.
Martin Wisse 05.23.08 at 10:27 pm
17, 29: what you overlook is that terrorism doesn’t have the goal of doing as much damage as possible, but to make a political statement. Crashing your car into traffic or setting fire to a forest doesn’t fit.
The September 11 attacks was A Quida showing America that “your most sacred symbols of power aren’t safe from us”, the London Tube bombings were about showing the British public “this is what you did to Iraq and Afghanistan”.
engels 05.23.08 at 11:50 pm
What Martin Wisse said. Eg. in terms of Louise Richardson’s framework terrorists want ‘revenge, renown and reaction’. The kinds of operations you describe might achieve the third but not the first two.
Roy Belmont 05.24.08 at 12:24 am
abb1:
…the number of seriously pissed off people needs to be matched by the appropriate level of repression, or else your whole society will fall apart.
When the repression’s what’s pissing them off to begin with, and your consistent response is to become still more repressive…
The US drug war is like that isn’t it? The ratcheting up of repressive legal responses keeps filling the reservoirs of disaffection, which then overflows into further outlawry. Drawn toward the artificially high profits, pushed from behind by local social destruction.
Beating misbehaving children used to be like that, when it was more common. The ones who weren’t cowed sufficiently often became pathogenic, in the family and in society.
Chris Stiles 05.24.08 at 1:34 am
The US drug war is like that isn’t it?
And is arguably a cause of the current situation in Afghanistan, which even with the presence of NATO troops is providing just the sort of sanctuary for the remanants of Al Qaeda that the US swore to eradicate.
As to the other posts – terrorists are as much a fan of theatre as the average High Anglican or real-ale swilling D&Der. Adjusting for cultural differences they are even drawn from roughly the same constituency.
Witt 05.24.08 at 4:30 am
If I understand this debate correctly, the question is whether terrorists become more powerful because they can recruit more people, or because they have better technical skills/access to specific materials/money. And the reason this is important is that if the answer is a), then we are justified in cracking down on recruitment because, hey, this is the pipeline to more horrific attacks. But if the answer is b), we can safely ignore the recruiting — and thus avoid the civil-liberties-destroying side effects of cracking down — because the real danger is going to come from another direction.
If that is the argument, then I’m mystified. Why are these mutually exclusive? Why wouldn’t it be the case that any infusion of capital makes the pipeline of young, pliable recruits more dangerous? And conversely, that a surge of interest and popularity bringing in new members will itself lead to the donation or development of capital?
Apologies if I’m being dense here, but I am trying to work out the point of the debate, especially from a policy perspective.
magistra 05.24.08 at 7:53 am
On the question of human capital, there’s a clear difference between the traditional (French Resistance/IRA style) cells and the jihadi ones. If you use suicide bombers, the cell’s cover is almost certainly blown after the first successful or unsuccessful attack. If there are dead terrorists left behind whose identities and contacts can be traced, those who are in charge of the cell are likely to be tracked by the police, if not caught. In contrast, a successful traditional terrorist cell can carry out repeated attacks until some members are identified.
Suicide bombing is therefore effective when the cell commanders are somewhere where normal policing isn’t possible, e.g. when they can retreat into Tamil-held territory, chaotic parts of Iraq, West Bank etc. In a country which is well-policed, they’re going to lose proportionally more of their ‘NCOs’ (cell commanders) than conventional terrorists, who may well be the hardest to replace.
abb1 05.24.08 at 8:17 am
Roy, but suppose the action that irritates a large number of people (large enough to threaten stability) is deemed vital for some reason (ideological, religious, financial, moral, etc.) and is supported by a majority of the population. In this case your only choice is to respond to resistance with repression; I don’t see how you can get around it. That is, assuming that it’s positively impossible to re-examine and reject (or at least tone down) the action/policy in question.
All I’m saying is that there is an equilibrium and that “free marketplace of ideas” that Dan suggested is not going to work. If one feels that what his society is doing is the equivalent of gang-raping his sister, he is not going to the marketplace to exchange ideas – he’s too busy teaching his friends to cook nitroglycerin.
Flying Rodent 05.24.08 at 8:30 am
OT (apologies) but I wonder whether Britain’s problem with homegrown jihadists might have anything to do with the fact that we’re one of the few western European nations whose national press routinely tell us that we’re a depraved bunch of drunken, dissolute slappers and scumbags sorely in need of a bloody good thrashing.
I doubt it’s terribly hard for terrorist recruiters to convince stupid young men that Britain is a sewer of moral decay when that’s a regular theme in the print and televised media.
abb1 05.24.08 at 8:35 am
Suicide bombing is therefore effective when the cell commanders are somewhere where normal policing isn’t possible…
But the argument here is, of course, that traditional “normal policing” is ineffective. If you’re the cleric suspected of teaching a guy to blow himself up – in Iraq they will simply drop a bomb on your house – but in London they probably don’t even have enough reason to arrest you. That’s the point. That is why they want new, more and more draconian laws.
SG 05.24.08 at 10:56 am
flying rodent, I think you might be onto something there…
I can see that terrorism is about theatre more than absolute numbers of the dead, but anyone who lives in forest fire prone places knows that they are theatre, of a pretty appalling and disturbing type. And there are other sorts too – driving a petrol truck into the Chelsea flower show this morning would do a pretty good job of shutting down public events in the UK, for example. And the long-term damage to British peoples’ sense of freedom if anti-truck-bomb barriers had to be set up in major streets all around the UK would be obvious and impressive, I think. There has to be more to terror than blowing shit up, and I reckon there’s a serious failing of imagination involved. Or, as dsquared suggests, “jihad” in the west mostly appeals only to crazy people with a fixation on explosions.
Great Zamfir 05.24.08 at 11:15 am
magistra, You might be right about the chance of getting caught after a bombing, but I don’t think the difference with the IRA is in the suicide bombings.
It’s more that the IRA was a much larger organization, and the ‘terrorist’ part that blew up bombing of civilian targets was only a part of it. Most of its activity was a sort of Maffia in Northern Ireland, which was itself part of larger organization, with Sinn Fein etc., which was openly supported by quite a lot of people.
So even if the police had names and evidence of bombers, they still had the possibility to go home and lay low.
Any ‘jihadist’ organization in Britain ( or elsewhere in Europe) would be in a very different situation, where members have to work in secret, away from their family and (former) friends, probably more like the Baander-Meinhof group than the IRA.
dsquared 05.24.08 at 11:38 am
But the argument here is, of course, that traditional “normal policing†is ineffective.
if that’s the argument it’s bollocks. The British police have been doing very well.
abb1 05.24.08 at 12:40 pm
If the police is doing well, then what is all the fuss about? Why are these “draconian reductions in overall civil liberties” being suggested and considered? What is this post about?
Alex 05.24.08 at 1:23 pm
the official story is, IIRC, military C4 explosive but not even speculation about where it came from
???? ISTR extensive reporting about the various outgassings of TATP production killing plants in the front garden.
Anyway, I’ve outsourced comment on this incident to a colleague of mine who remarked that the guy was more a self-harm bomber than a suicide bomber.
Dave 05.24.08 at 3:50 pm
There is the other side to all this, of course, which is the current tendency to attempt to ‘legalise’ widespread repressive measures/coercive interrogation, etc, on an international scale.
I’ve never been quite sure why this was felt to be necessary, since the CIA, UK Military Intel, SDECE, KGB, etc, had been quite happily operating outside any framework of law for decades. One assumes they were quite successful, on their own terms. Why they now need to be publicly allowed to do the things they were doing for all that time, I’m not sure, unless it is some kind of plan for ‘hardening’ the public to face the coming End Times…. [/irony]
Cranky Observer 05.24.08 at 4:47 pm
> As for the explosives, having spent some
> time looking into things, I could easily make
> several different types of explosives with a fair
> certaintly that they would work. That is knowledge
> from old books, some supplementary knowledge from
> the internet,
Semi-OT, but relevant I think: I used to participate in this kind of discussion on bbs/Internet prior to Bush/Cheney. But besides my no longer wanting to give any ideas to potential terrorists with poor imaginations, I have to think that this is exactly the type of conversation which is being scooped up by the AT&T internet vacuum cleaner, processed by Homeland Security (and its British counterparts), and used to build social networking models which are intended for brutal use in the future. I really have no desire to find myself in a prison cell at Gitmo.
Cranky
Phil Beesley 05.24.08 at 5:39 pm
The ability of Iraqi bomb makers to create effective weapons is down to the availability of industrial explosives. The IRA had access to industrial explosives and detonators, but only in limited quantities, hence their development of the fertiliser/diesel car bomb. Another significant difference is that the IRA were not suicide bombers, carrying a bomb on their back.
All news reports of the UK 7/7 bombings indicate that the terrorists used TATP as the primary explosive. TATP can be made from commonly available materials, but the ingredients need to be of high quality and concentration. In the UK at least, it is difficult to buy pure acetone, high conc peroxide or high conc sulphuric and hydrochloric acid in quantity without raising suspicion. You can make TATP from low concentration ingredients, but as the UK 21/7 failed bombers discovered, it is much more difficult. TATP degrades quickly (it requires a cool environment) and the fumes that it creates during this change are identifiable to the human nose. Thus we have to acknowledge that the UK 7/7 bomb maker was a talented chemist with a support team that were able to source industrial quality rather than consumer strength ingredients.
The recent (on-going?) case of the “Tang bombers” is also interesting. The ban on carrying liquids onto air flights is based on the Tang bomb “threat”. Many people speculated that the liquid on planes ban was about making TATP on a plane or in airport toilets, both of which would fail. The Tang bomb requires three ingredients: hydrogen peroxide inside a pop bottle, the sugary powder from a self-mix drink called Tang (there are probably other energy drink powders that would work equally well) and a detonator. The theory is that bombers would assemble the device after passing through security checks (hydrogen peroxide is not detected by most airport scanners) and detonate it close to a window. For a detonator, the Tang bombers chose HMTD extracted from camp fire lighters. However, HMTD is a nitrogen based explosive and is thus detectable by dogs and scanners. In other words, the Tang bomb is a viable, unidentifiable device without a detonator.
Lewis Page at The Register has written some good articles about liquid bombs etc at The Register.
dsquared 05.24.08 at 6:16 pm
ISTR extensive reporting about the various outgassings of TATP production killing plants in the front garden.
The Leeds “bomb factory”, yeah – reporting has been totally contradictory on this in all sorts of directions. But IIRC the official story is a) it was military C4.
Alex 05.24.08 at 6:25 pm
Define “official story”.
dsquared 05.24.08 at 6:44 pm
the actual report of the Forensic Service was never published, but the last word from theMet was that traces of C4 were foun at all four sites. On the other hand, the ISC said homemade peroxide. The issue here is the extent to which the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers are connected, and the extent to which either group had genuine al-Qaeda links, and frankly the transparency has been appalling; this is the sort of thing that would presumably come out at the inquiry which we’re not going to get.
dsquared 05.24.08 at 6:48 pm
All news reports of the UK 7/7 bombings indicate that the terrorists used TATP as the primary explosive.
not so; all reports dated later than May 2006 and the ISC report settled on this story but as I noted above, the original Met line was C4 (which frankly seems more plausible to me as the idea of transporting homemade TATP from Leeds to Luton in the boot of a car has a couple of obvious snags).
in related news, I’ve tipped sugar into H2O2 and believe me, it doesn’t need a detonator.
dsquared 05.24.08 at 6:51 pm
actually forget that last comment – I was thinking of sulphuric acid, which is also great fun to play around with.
Alex 05.24.08 at 7:35 pm
The chemistry of TATP and C4 aka RDX doesn’t look that different – the only major difference is that C4 contains nitrogen. I wonder how well the test distinguishes?
Ben Goff 05.24.08 at 7:46 pm
In the States we have our own brand of terrorist, they are called medical doctors. They manage to kill over thirty thousand a year in such a clever manner that they are never detected making it appear to be simple negligence. The point is terrorists may be dangerous, but there are greater dangers not being addressed.
Kevin Donoghue 05.25.08 at 7:20 am
…actually forget that last comment – I was thinking of sulphuric acid….
I see that ditty is available on a T-shirt now.
stostosto 05.25.08 at 11:20 am
Interesting, dsquared. Nice application of neoclassical economics. Hopefully you’re right in your conclusions – as you say yourself available data is scarce.
But what about your Africa project? They’re rioting against intruding labourers in South Africa.
stostosto 05.25.08 at 11:34 am
Did I say “intruding”? Poor choice of words. Immigrant, of course.
Nordic Mousse 05.25.08 at 11:39 am
rodent:
“I wonder whether Britain’s problem with homegrown jihadists might have anything to do with the fact that we’re one of the few western European nations whose national press routinely tell us that we’re a depraved bunch of drunken, dissolute slappers and scumbags sorely in need of a bloody good thrashing”
The jihadists can read everyone’s press, not just yours
seth edenbaum 05.25.08 at 7:34 pm
Two links: one strictly on topic, the other to a parallel, related discussion.
The Guardian UK Muslim gangs ‘are taking control of prison’
Mark Graber at Balkinization on theory vs pragmatism in the logic of the First Amendment: Free Speech & Human Dignity.
seth edenbaum 05.25.08 at 7:51 pm
Also its interesting to note the different situation of Muslims in Europe and the US. As I’ve noted here in the past, Muslims in the US have a higher than average [or possibly median] income than the general population. For all its assumed social democratic ethos, Europe has not extended that logic to its outsiders. The equivalent debate in the US would be in many ways to gang suppression and community outreach in the native born black and immigrant latino population.
Flying Rodent 05.25.08 at 8:16 pm
The jihadists can read everyone’s press, not just yours.
This is entirely true, but they patently don’t need to, and this rather misses the point about preparing the ground for radicalisation. It’s a possibility that’s almost too obvious to need stating, but I seriously doubt that the Beeston bombers spent their first years falling out of their high-chairs while trying to change the channel to Al-Jazeera.
You really have to live here to appreciate how ingrained the Corruption-of-society-send-in-the-riot-squads message is in the British media. I’ve never seen anything similar anywhere else, although I imagine the Iranians would run them close.
abb1 05.26.08 at 7:21 am
@60: different patterns of immigration, perhaps? European Muslims are more like US Mexicans – to a large extent it’s the most desperate who come in; those doing well in their own countries stay there or prefer to emigrate to the US, take advantage of lower tax rates there. This is just a guess, of course.
Great Zamfir 05.26.08 at 9:09 am
Seth, the ‘American muslims are doing fine’ trope is completely misleading. As ABB1 mentions, the largest muslim groups in Europe were poor migrants from Turkey, North Africa, and in Britain the Indian subcontinent.
The problems are mostly very similar to the ones you see in the US with poor miniorities: gang trouble in some neighbourhoods, anti-immigrant sentiments from people who feel their jobs are threatened. In these circumstances, talking about ‘Muslim’ gangs makes about as much sense as calling Colombian gangs ‘Catholic’.
But the bombs in Spain and Britain, and a political murder here in the Netherlands, have added an extra dimension, including a lot of fuel for anti-immigration groups. Imagine how the amnesty-for-illegal-immigrants debate in the US would have looked if Mexican groups had blown up trains.
SG 05.26.08 at 12:47 pm
seth, little hint from a “British” outsider – when the Tory working class (e.g. prison workers) start whingeing about “the ethnics” controlling a place, take it with a grain of salt. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but if you believed everything the Tory working class said about Britain you’d be arguing for a liberal intervention ala Iraq. The British media love reinforcing this stuff, as flying rodent observed. I read those reports this morning in the Terrorgraph and I’m highly suspicious.
seth edenbaum 05.26.08 at 2:23 pm
“The problems are mostly very similar to the ones you see in the US with poor minorities:”
Isn’t that what I said? And there’s a whole literature on gangs and community. That was my only point.
“In these circumstances, talking about ‘Muslim’ gangs makes about as much sense as calling Colombian gangs ‘Catholic’.”
And the IRA also I guess?
Obviously using such definitions you’ll end up with a hybrid.
As as far as Mexicans in the US there’s a separation between “Chicano” culture, the culture of long term poverty of the Mexican American community in the US, and recent immigrants from Mexico.
“but if you believed everything the Tory working class said about Britain…”
And if you paid more attention to the Tory Working class then they wouldn’t be such a problem.
The issues are economics and class.
SG 05.26.08 at 6:37 pm
seth, if I paid more attention to the Tory working class I’d be murdering gypsies and throwing migrants in labour camps. There’s only so far I’m willing to go for the sake of inclusiveness.
seth edenbaum 05.26.08 at 7:05 pm
The opposite of “pay attention” is “ignore” not “agree with”
The snobbishness of new labor and the academic elite go hand in hand.
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