GLEE OF THE CALIPHATE
COMMENTARY by John R Bradley
ACAR driven at high speed into a dozen pedestrians. The knifewielding terrorist driving it determined to go out in a blaze of glory while killing a police officer. And all this horror symbolically carried out within a stone’s throw of the Houses of Parliament.
Of course, we do not yet know who carried out this attack. But it has all the hallmarks of the many terrorist assaults that have come to plague continental Europe in particular with sickening regularity, all carried out in the name of Islamic State. More than once, the oh-so-simple tactic of driving a vehicle into civilians at speed has proved ruthlessly effective.
The carnage on Westminster Bridge is highly likely to have been a calculated attempt by jihadis to prove to their followers in this country that they can strike successfully in Britain, too – wherever and whenever they choose.
And make no mistake: Their ideological leaders in the Islamic ‘caliphate’ will be rubbing their hands in glee, whether or not they had a direct hand in the blood-soaked chaos on London’s streets.
From their perspective, this was a spectacularly successful attack, and not least because it was executed inside what is supposedly the most secure and protected square mile of any capital city on earth.
Now, amid the grief and anger, we must face up to a worst-case scenario: Namely, that this could turn out to be merely the opening salvo in a wave of copycat terror assaults throughout the country by homegrown jihadis.
After all, those earlier Islamist attacks in Europe – most spectacularly in Germany’s Christmas market, at Brussels airport and in Nice – have become as frequent as they have been consistently barbaric.
They have left hundreds dead and injured, and France in a per- manent state of emergency. As a result, the political and social status quo which had prevailed in Western Europe since the end of the Second World War is being shaken to the core.
So the experience of Europe warns us against giving in to any suggestion of complacency when it comes to facing down the threat of jihadist terror in our own midst.
It also suggests that we should look at this threat in a much broader context that just homegrown Islamic radicalism, or more precisely how such home-grown terror feeds off the global agenda of the Islamic State.
The slaughter in Europe is being carried out, we should not forget, by footsoldiers of IS, sent on their bloodthirsty missions from the terror group’s self-declared caliphate, which straddles war-torn northern Iraq and Syria.
THEsuicidal ringleaders of attacks on the Continent arrived in Europe by exploiting, with utter cynicism, the chaos created by the migrant crisis, then teamed up with homegrown jihadis in France and Belgium – all drawn together by a steely determination to wreak havoc and sow panic in the name of the caliphate. The assumption among our political leaders and intelligence services must be that the stomach-wrenching outrage in London was also at least inspired by – if not carried out directly on the orders of – those who have pledged their allegiance to the IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
If true, that means Islamic State’s global jihad has just arrived, with almost unimaginable horror, in the very heart of our democracy – posing a brazen challenge to the freedoms and values of the British way of life.
Perhaps most troublingly in terms of what lies ahead, this attack comes in the wake of a call by a close aide – and the possible successor – of the IS leader for just these kinds of ‘lone wolf’ atrocities in the US and Europe.
They are, he declared in an audio recording late last year, ‘dearer to us than the biggest action by us’ in Iraq and Syria.
‘If one of you hoped to reach the Islamic State, we wish we were in your place to punish the crusaders day and night,’ he added.
Did the attacker yesterday, frustrated at his inability to travel to the caliphate itself, heed that call to strike at home? And was his intention not only to kill and maim, but to inspire other radicalised Muslims to follow his example?
There is no denying that there are many other potential jihadis in this country who are also burning with hatred for our Western values, and are equally determined to do the rest of us harm.
Indeed, the Government has confirmed that dozens of terrorist attacks here have been thwarted over the past few years, most of them orchestrated by Islamist radicals. Moreover, hundreds of Muslim Britons travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the caliphate, and while dozens have returned, official figures show that only one in eight of the latter have been convicted.
The fact that the days of the caliphate are numbered – as a coalition of forces slowly crush Islamic State in battle – may turn out to be a curse in disguise.
For even as the dream of global jihadist expansion and conquest goes up in smoke, a new strategy will emerge: To keep alive the apocalyptic dream by inspiring attacks throughout the Western world, like that which brought such fear and bloodshed to the nation’s capital yesterday.