Al Qaeda in Europe

CNN reports on the group claiming responsibility for the London transport bombings:

A previously unknown group calling itself the “Secret Organization group al Qaeda Organization in Europe” released a statement Thursday claiming responsibility for the subway and bus bombings in London earlier in the day… CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a Web site connected to Islamic radicals…. The claim of responsibility from the group said it had repeatedly warned Britain. “The mujahedeen heroes have launched a blessed attack in London,” the statement said. “Here is Britain burning now out of fear and horror in its north, south east and west. We have often and repeatedly warned the British government and people.” The statement said the group had carried out the attack after exerting “strenuous efforts … over a long period of time to guarantee” its success. “We still warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the crusader governments that they will receive the same punishment if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan,” it said. “We gave the warning, so we should not be blamed.”

Click here for dueling translations of the short statement.. The clumsy-sounding name (at least in English) of this group makes me wonder if this is another of Al Qaeda’s local subcontractees. UPDATE: Stephen Flynn has some thoughts at the Council on Foreign Relations home page that sound this theme as well. Some highlights:

[This attack] tells us that al Qaeda is increasingly more of a movement than it is an organization. There are splinter groups and it would appear, in this instance, that many of these groups are homegrown–that is, they’re made up of U.K. citizens rather than foreign fighters who have arrived on British soil…. I don’t have a lot of detail, obviously–but what I’ve picked up from the web and the bit of reporting I’ve heard from Scotland Yard indicates that is likely the case. Many of the folks who are setting up these [Qaeda-affiliated] organizations carry a European Union passport. In some instances, they are first generation. Others are established citizens living in the cities, as opposed to Saudis who come in to carry out these attacks. Of course, that was the case with [the March 2004 al Qaeda bombings of commuter trains in] Madrid as well…. [I]n the aftermath of the London attacks, it’s likely that very quickly you’ll see law enforcement identify the responsible parties and to start to roll up their organization. In Madrid, the group responsible for the attacks was rolled up relatively quickly. Terrorist groups have to be careful about carrying out attacks. They have to be successful, because they put their organization at high risk whenever they carry out an attack. It’s impossible not to leave bread crumbs. The scale of the forensic evidence for this kind of coordinated, large-scale attack endangers an organization. It suggests that attacks, when they happen, are more likely to be of this sophisticated, coordinated nature, not a single event.

Read the whole thing. LAST UPDATE: Steve Coll and Susan B. Glasser make a similar point to Flynn’s in the Washington Post:

Now more a brand than a tight-knit group, al Qaeda has responded to four years of intense pressure from the United States and its allies by dispersing its surviving operatives, distributing its ideology and techniques for mass-casualty attacks to a wide audience on the Internet, and encouraging new adherents to act spontaneously in its name. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, terrorism experts in and out of government have warned that the movement has appeared to gain ground, particularly in Europe, where a large, mobile, technology-savvy and well-educated Muslim population includes some angry and alienated young people attracted to the call of holy war against the West. The simultaneous bombings of four rush-hour commuter trains in Madrid on March 11, 2004, the shooting death of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh last November and recent preemptive arrests made by European police suggest a less top-down, more grass-roots-driven al Qaeda. The movement’s ability to carry off sophisticated, border-crossing attacks such as those Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants mounted against New York and the Pentagon almost four years ago appears diminished, some experts say. Yet al Qaeda’s chief ideologues — bin Laden, his lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri, and more recently, the Internet-fluent Abu Musab Zarqawi, have been able to communicate freely to their followers, even while in hiding. In the past 18 months, they have persuaded dozens of like-minded young men, operating independently of the core al Qaeda leadership, to assemble and deliver suicide or conventional bombs in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Spain, Egypt and now apparently London.