Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: New York Sun
Date: May 18, 2004
Whence comes the main danger to
homeland security in North America and Western Europe?
With the exception of the Oklahoma
City bombing of 1995, notes Al-Qaeda authority Rohan Gunaratna, all major
terrorist attacks of the past decade in the West have been carried out
by immigrants. A closer look finds that these were not just any immigrants
but invariably from a specific background: Of the 212 suspected and convicted
terrorist perpetrators during 1993-2003, 86% were Muslim immigrants and
the remainder mainly converts to Islam.
"In Western countries jihad has
grown mainly via Muslim immigration," concludes Robert S. Leiken, a specialist
on immigration and national security issues, in an important new monograph,
Bearers of Global Jihad: Immigration and National Security after 9/11 (published
by the Washington-based Nixon Center, where Leiken is employed). Leiken's
research offers valuable insights.
Violent acts against the West, he
finds, "have been carried out largely through two methods of terrorist
attack: the sleeper cell and the hit squad."
Hit squads - foreign nationals who
enter the country with a specific mission, such as the 9/11 hijackers -
threaten from without. Sleeper cells consist of elements quietly embedded
in immigrant communities; Pierre de Bousquet, head of France's counterintelligence
service, says "they do not seem suspicious. They work. They have kids.
They have fixed addresses. They pay the rent." Sleepers either run terrorism
support networks of "Muslim charities, foundations, conferences, academic
groups, NGOs and private corporations" (prime example: Sami Al-Arian of
the University of South Florida) or initiate violence on a signal (like
the Moroccans who killed 191 people in Madrid this March).
That said, Muslim life in Western
Europe and North America is strikingly different. The former has seen the
emergence of a culturally alienated, socially marginalized, and economically
unemployed Muslim second generation whose pathologies have led to "a surge
of gang rapes, anti-Semitic attacks and anti-American violence," not to
speak of raging radical ideologies and terrorism.
North American Muslims are not as
alienated, marginalized, and economically stressed. Accordingly, Mr. Leiken
finds, they show less inclination to anti-social behavior, including Islamist
violence. Those of them supporting jihad usually fund terrorism rather
than personally engage in it. Therefore, most jihadist violence in North
America is carried out by hit squads from abroad.
And, contrary to expectation, these
come predominantly not from countries like Iran or Syria, or even Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, for the simple reason that their nationals undergo extra
scrutiny. Islamist terrorists are not dumb; they note this special attention
and now recruit intensively from citizens of the 27 countries - mostly
European - who, thanks to the Visa Waiver Program, can enter America for
90 days without a visa.
But even so, there are Frenchmen
and there are Frenchmen. One named Zacarias Moussaoui, an Algerian immigrant,
attracts more attention than one named Michael Christian Ganczarski, a
Polish immigrant of German extraction - making a convert like Ganczarski
the more potent jihadist. He is now sitting in a French jail, charged with
a major role in the April 2002 bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia that killed
19 people.
To a lesser extent, the same pattern
applies to Israel. Hezbullah has made efforts to recruit Europeans like
German convert Steven Smyrek, caught before he could strap on a bomb. Hamas
deployed Britons Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who murdered
three people at a Tel Aviv bar. The same pattern also applies to Australia
- such as the case of French convert and would-be jihadist Willie Brigitte.)
Mr. Leiken's insights lead to important
conclusions for counterterrorism.
*
Assimilating indigenous Muslim populations
is critical to the West's long-term security.
*
Given that the Islamist threat in
the West "emanates principally from Europe," European and North American
security services should recognize they face basically different problems:
one primarily internal, the other mainly external.
*
Constructing immigration systems
that keep out sleepers and hit squads while allowing normal business and
pleasure travel should be a priority for Washington and Ottawa.
*
For Americans, adjusting the Visa
Waiver Program and controlling land borders with Canada and Mexico are
higher priorities than worrying about Iranians and Syrians.
Mr. Leiken's research guides Westerners
to real homeland security. But achieving this will be a challenge, for
acknowledging the European Islamist source of violence means giving up
today's easy reliance on euphemisms.
