Though it no longer seems real to far too many citizens of America, Great Britain, Canada, and much of the rest of the West, the terrorist threat facing us has not gone away, and has, on repeated occasions, shown itself in (largely thwarted, thankfully) plots against each of our nations and their citizens.
The most recent – and perhaps most bone-chilling – plot came to light just last week in the “Balti triangle” of Birmingham (a heavily Pakistani area about 120 miles north of London), when nine Muslim men, of combined British and Pakistani origin, were arrested in what the British Home Office called a “nationwide operation” and “a reminder of the real and serious nature of the terrorist threat we [all still] face.”
The plot contrived by these would-be terrorists was to abduct an individual British soldier – a Muslim male in his early 20s, who had served in Afghanistan – off the streets of Birmingham (the site of multiple military hospitals where many wounded British troops are currently receiving inpatient and outpatient care) in broad daylight. The captive was to be filmed being tortured and begging both for his life and for Prime Minister Tony Blair to order a complete withdrawal of British forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of Blair’s response, though, the soldier was eventually to be beheaded by his captors – again, on film.
The arrests marked the end of six months of surveillance by MI5, and were carried out at this time because, according to a source in the British security service, the suspects “were ready to go.” Their first target, whose name was (correctly) not released, is now in protective custody, and police are currently in the midst of what West Midlands assistant chief constable David Shaw called a “very, very major investigation” that would take “days, if not weeks” to complete.
The kidnapping – and public torture and execution – of one soldier would have had a catastrophic effect on the people of Britain, both military (who now have cause to fear for their life, both on and off duty, even though the plot was unsuccessful) and civilian. Further intelligence recovered from the arrest sites, though, revealed a list of no fewer that thirty targets for abduction – all male soldiers in their 20s, all Muslim.
“Lessons are being learned from what terrorists such as [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi [have been] doing elsewhere and the impact they have,” said Peter Neumann, director of defense studies at King’s College in London. “You don’t require any resources or bomb-making techniques; all you need to do is to kidnap someone. Taking a hostage requires very little resource or preparation, just two or three determined individuals prepared to execute someone and put it on the internet.”
“The whole point of terrorism is to frighten and terrorize people,” Neumann continued. “As we saw in Iraq with the kidnappings carried about by Zarqawi, you get weeks of exposure with very little effort and only a small risk after the initial hostage-taking. … A gruesome public execution creates a huge impact.”
The horrific, videotaped abductions, torturings, and beheadings of civilians and soldiers alike in Iraq have long demonstrated Islamic terrorists’ understanding of their trade, and of how to best get our attention – and they have exploited that understanding (and the complicity of our media) to the fullest. However, the fact that these events have almost exclusively taken place halfway around the world, combined with the fact that, with a simple click of the remote control, any further information on, or consideration of, such brutal actions can be altogether avoided, has likely made the gravity – and gruesomeness – of these atrocities far less real to the Western public than it would be if they were taking place here at home.
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