Hydra-headed foe

In the age of terror, the price of peace is eternal vigilance

THE revelation that four men from the Caribbean nations of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago were charged with conspiring to blow up the pipelines of John F. Kennedy Airport has again exposed the hydra-headed threat posed by Islamist terrorists.

When al-Qa'ida crashed planes into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, most of the world had not even heard of the organisation. Since then, the West has learned to it horror that al-Qa'ida and its offshoots are operating not just in Afghanistan, but in Indonesia, The Philippines, Iraq, Palestinian camps in northern Lebanon and now, possibly, in the Caribbean.

As the murky connections of the JFK conspirators emerge, a spotlight has been thrown on al-Qa'ida connections on the US's doorstep. Saudi-born Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el-Shukrijumah _ whose aliases came up in interviews with September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and were also found in documents of the Oklahoma flight school that trained Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of conspiracy in the attacks _ travels on a Guyanese passport.

One of the JFK conspirators, Abdul Kadir, was a former business partner of Yasin Abu Bakr, who together with his group, Jamaat al Muslimeen, led a coup attempt against the government of Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 in which 24 people were killed, and is preparing to stand trial on terrorism charges. Abdul Kadir studied Islam in Iran in the 1990s and is a Shia cleric.
The US had experienced political Islam in its part of the world long before September 11, 2001. It is nothing new for black Americans to convert to Islam and to use their religion as a basis to attack American society. Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan come to mind. What is different now is the adoption of extremist Islamist views that followers use to justify mass terror attacks on civilians. Those, like terrorism expert Robert Pape, who argue that Islamist terror is a response to occupation by foreign forces, will have trouble explaining the activities of the JFK conspirators. The Muslim population of Guyana is only 9 per cent, and of Trinidad and Tobago not even 6 per cent, and they are not the subject of occupation. Neither for that matter is Lebanon, where the forces of al-Qa'ida have infiltrated Palestinian refugee camps in the north of the country and are now in conflict with Lebanese troops. The truth is that the Islamist terrorist threat is now far more complex and far more dangerous than the ``blame ourselves'' lobby concedes. Like Britain and Australia, the US is not immune to homegrown terror. Four plots by Islamists living in the US and influenced by jihadist propaganda have been uncovered in the last 24 months. Six men in New Jersey allegedly plotted to attack Fort Dix, another cell plotted to blow up New York train tunnels and a fourth group was plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower. In the age of Islamist terror threats, which are emerging both at home and abroad, the price of peace is eternal vigilance.