Center for a New American Security

Abu Muqawama, master of the deceptively simple question, is wondering about US policy on Pakistan. While I ponder a response. It's worth having a read of a recent post on Reuters' Pakistan blog.

The post looks at Mosharraf Zaidi's very useful article on terrorism and responses in Pakistan.

Zaidi makes an important and much-missed point that:

"The epicentre of religious extremism is the institution of the political articulation of faith in Pakistan."

This is a concept I'll be touching on in a post about to be put up shortly.

The Reuters post then goes on to suggest a list of "influences buffeting Pakistan".

Read and ponder too.

I just got back to Pakistan after a two month stay back in London that was initially only supposed to last two weeks.

I've been catching up on the stack of newspapers that greeted me on my return. Not to mention the dust, cockroaches and dodgy plumbing. With me is Ms. Londonstani, also known as Ms Henley-on-Thames, who is whipping things into shape with fearsome efficiency.

The two biggest events while I've been away have been the attacks in Lahore and Mohmand. The Lahore attack did receive substantial coverage in the Western press, however Mohmand, in most hardcopy newspapers, was buried around page eight. And mostly consisted of reprinted wire copy. I suspect the issue in editorial meetings across the world is how to "refresh" the Pakistan story. How to take it beyond a list of attacks on places with funny names, where the only thing that seems to differ is the number of dead.

I'll be doing some more in-depth analysis of events over the coming weeks. In the meantime, during my reading-in this morning a couple of things caught my eye.

From a very interesting NYT article about US military training Pakistani army people: "The scouts face a battle-hardened enemy that has lived in the mountains around here for decades. "We've been here one-and-a-half years," said Col. Ahsan Raza, the training center's commandant. "They have been preparing for the last 20 years.

I might be wrong about this.. rather, Wikipedia might be wrong about this.. but haven't the Frontier Corps been hanging out in the mountains since 1907?

NYT has had a brilliant series of articles getting to the bottom of the conundrum facing Pakistan-Western relations - namely Pakistani mistrust of US intentions. And yes, Pakistani-Western relations rather than Pakistani-US relations, since the view of the US transfers to the West in general. Which is great...if you are al-Qaeda. I met a former Pakistani law maker from the opposition party. As a young man he had worked in the UK, gotten married there, lived there a good number of years. He was convinced the US wanted to see the break up of Pakistan and was probably sponsoring the Taliban. Did he think the UK was working for the same goal? "The UK is working to America's plan. It's not their aim to break-up Pakistan, but it is their aim to further their relationship with the United States," he said.

Going back to the NYT article, this last one by Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt shows what such views translate to when the two "allies" try to work together.

"Pakistan also restricts the number of American trainers throughout the country to no more than about 120 Special Operations personnel, fearful of being identified too closely with the unpopular United States - even though the Americans reimburse Pakistan more than $1 billion a year for its military operations in the border areas."

"...the American-led war in Afghanistan and its continuing campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas have made the United States suspect at all levels of the military, and among the Pakistani population, as anti-Americanism has hit new heights."

It seems to me that without addressing the image problem, all other Western efforts in Pakistan are in trouble. The drone strikes are no more than a convenient tool when all your other options have been blunted. But in the final analysis, they only serve to stuff the future for the sake of "doing something" in the present.

Looking at Pakistani public opinion from abroad is like reading a Philip Pullman novel. The picture you see resembles the reality you are accustomed to, but somewhere along the line it seems history took a different turn and you are actually looking at something similar but very different. And it's that superficial familiarity that actually make the differences so much more jarring. I haven't been in Pakistan since Faisal Shehzad's attempt to blow up Times Square but Sabrina's article in the New York Times the other day on how Pakistanis see the incident rings accurate.

"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Americans may think that the failed Times Square bomb was planted by a man named Faisal Shahzad. But the view in the Supreme Court Bar Association here in Pakistan's capital is that the culprit was an American 'think tank.'"

Yes, you read it right, "think tank". It looks strange to me seeing that written in black and white, but I'm not really all that surprised. Like any opinion anywhere, Pakistanis' perceptions aren't plucked out of thin air, they are based on the world they see around them and the conclusions they come to in order to try and make sense of events beyond their control.

At the moment, think tanks are all the rage in Pakistan. As opposed to people in Britain and - I'm sure - most people in America, Pakistanis have heard a lot about think tanks recently. Reports published in Washington and London are quoted in Pakistani newspapers and are discussed at length in well-read columns. People understand that ideas that could seriously affect their lives are often today born in think tanks. But like most news consumers anywhere in the world, calm analysis remains for the  less-popular outlets and hysterical arm waving is most commonly order of the day's coverage. Think tanks then are "shadowy" and "powerful", which actually means that they are also mysterious and attractive. For this reason, I have heard many large and small political organisations in Pakistan talking about setting up their own think tanks. (Pakistan already has quite a few good independent ones of its own, check out PIPS for some very interesting reports). Like the furore over Blackwater and other US contractors, Pakistanis are picking up on trends that they see as impacting their lives and applying what they think they know to what they see around them. As Sabrina suggests in the article, the reluctance of US and Pakistani officials to fully communicate with the population along with a very tabloid-centric media environment is not a good mix.

I've heard the phrase "conspiracy theories are a national sport in Pakistan" more times than I looked up the history of coalition governments in the UK. The phrase goes someway to capturing the pervasive nature of this type of thinking in Pakistani society, but it also seems to belittle the seriousness of the situation. It's a phrase used by commentators abroad and in Pakistan as well as by politicians and generals inside the country. It's often accompanied by a wave of the hand and perhaps a bit of eye rolling. I think that is a serious mistake. After all, the same politicians and generals are often the first to play up to it when trying to win votes or discredit opponents. The perceptions of the Pakistani public generate a reality that needs to be responded to. I'd bet the off-the-shelf price of an drone that what Faisal Shahzad was thinking in the weeks before he attempt his attack weren't a million miles away from the opinions expressed in Sabrina's article.

The article should be viewed not as a tale of Pakistani curiousness but a timely pointer towards an under-analyised issue which underlies talk of aid, drone attacks, secure nuclear weapons and terrorism inside and outside Pakistan's borders.

I'd go further than just Pakistan and say that this issue is relevant to most of the Muslim world. My first serious engagement with Muslim conspiracy theories came when I was writing my dissertation at university. Against advice from my lecturers to stick to sensible topics like water rights in the Bekka Valley, I took the tabloid route and decided to compare public opinion in Egypt and Britain over the death of Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed. In that year or so before Sept 11, I learned that conspiracy theories in the Muslim world are built on inaccurate assumptions about the West based on perceptions of how things work at home, resentment towards perceived unfair treatment in a one sided relationship, resentment that unfair practices are not even acknowledged by the stronger party, a desire to "prove" any sort of superiority over the stronger party and many others that have now faded from my memory.

But what I took away from the exercise was the realisation that all the wild theories might sound idiotic but are built on real perceptions. The aftermatch of 9/11 made it clear that those theories create a reality that has very real effects. In the Muslim world over the past few decades, wealth disparities have grown ever wider. One of the knock-on effects of this is that the opportunities and exposure enjoyed by the haves and have nots is widely divergent. Winning over the rulers/elites no longer means gaining over-all compliance. As the have nots are in the vast majority, they set the tone of the discussion. (A good, easy-to-read overview of this process can be found in Whatever Happened to the Egyptians by economist Galal Amin) What policy makers in the West require is a willingness to recognise that public opinion in Muslim countries is important - possibly more important than the compliance of unpopular and unstable regimes - the will to learn what affects this opinion and an understanding that policy needs to take this opinion into account.

But I'm not saying that "policy should be subservient to the mad Jihadi desires of loons in turbans". Governments take all sort of considerations into account when formulating policy. Perhaps a rebalancing is in order between what is needed to bring foreign elites on board and what is needed to placate their populations. 

The situation that Sabrina describes is not inevitable and unchangeable. Over the past few months, I spent a fair amount of time in Islamabad's fashionable drawing rooms, less fashionable roadside stops and quite a few electricity-less villages, and I don't remember speaking to one person who when pressed wouldn't admit that Pakistani society had self inflicted problems that went beyond Western meddling. But there was a frustration that the US seems to want to bully Pakistan and the country's leaders are unable to stand up for its interests.

As a reporter in the Middle East, I found that bounding up to people, announcing myself as a Reuters correspondent with notebook and pen in hand and asking them pointed questions (even in their own language) in a dispasionate manner made me look like the embodiment in that moment of the West. This meant that those I was talking to felt the need to explain their "people". Most of the time, people weren't telling me what they thought, rather what they thought I should know. Having left reporting, I still find myself talking to people about their views and their lives. But as a curious and interested stranger, what I am told is often much more candid, nuanced and revealing, and fuels my optimistic belief that views aren't written in stone.

There is also a good video package to go with this article. Check it out below:

Tom Friedman's column today about how we can build more schools and defeat terrorism is one of those things that sounds right but probably isn't. Leave aside the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- by Friedman's own admission, the only reason he is in Yemen right now -- is a graduate of University College London and the product of a superb secondary education before that. Alan B. Krueger and others have shown that the causal relationship between education and terrorism is weak. Very well-educated men and women can fall under the sway of extremist ideologies and go on to do evil things -- like blow up airliners and buy Coldplay albums.

This is no reason not to build schools. Building schools is a lovely thing, and as the great Greg Mortenson pointed out to me in Kabul once, when you teach little girls to read, you teach entire villages to read. (Because the girls teach their mothers.) And female literacy then leads to a healthy drop in birth rates and less poverty. That's all wonderful. Education transforms societies. But education only has a place in counterinsurgency -- most naturally a subfield of stabilization operations -- if you can prove that a lack of schools is a driver of conflict. And as far as counter-terrorism is concerned, well, the idea that more schools will lead to a drop in terrorism remains one of those things that sounds good when discussed at dinner parties but has yet to be proven and is, if we are to trust our research thus far, most likely false.

[All that having been said, allow me to stress once again that building schools in underdeveloped societies is something we should all support. Maybe not for reasons of counter-terrorism or counterinsurgency but for more altruistic reasons. So everyone buy Greg Mortenson's new book to help the cause, okay?]

As militant violence continues to claim lives throughout Pakistan, the job of finding answers is made impossible by the near-total inability of public opinion to arrive at some common understanding of its root causes. 

In recent weeks, suicide bombs and attacks have claimed between a couple and dozens of lives nearly everyday. The smaller death tolls hardly make it onto the front pages of the local newspapers let alone the international press. The ones most people hear about are the audacious Rawalpindi mosque style suicide-commando attacks or the large bombs like the one today near Waziristan that is reported to have killed nearly 90 people watching a local sporting event.

If the first step to finding a solution to any given problem involves understanding what you face, Pakistan is no where near figuring out how to deal with the spiraling conflict inside the country. This blog has visited the issue of conspiracy theories before. But Londonstani found himself reading a Guardian article on the same issue in Iran that he felt made points that are even more salient in the context of Pakistan. If conspiracy theories cripple Iranians' ability to unravel their politics, in Pakistan they cripple the country's ability to deal with the forces tearing it apart.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that follows Pakistani affairs to hear that popular perception holds India/the United States/Israel ultimately responsible for extremist violence. Some even claim the army and the government carry out attacks to further their own political aims. The Guardian article makes the point that although Iranians have historical reasons for suspecting foreign interference in their affairs, those interventions could not have taken place without a certain level of support or approval from large sections of Iranian society. Basically, foreign intelligence services were not making facts on the ground out of thin air, they were manipulating factors which already existed to try to affect an outcome that was desirable to their own policy aims.

Just as Iranians weren't purely passive bystanders in their history, Pakistan is home to very real factors that feed into what is happening in the country. The conspiracy theories running rampent in Iran and Pakistan, have one thing in common, they allow the audience to believe they have no say, no effect and ultimately no responsibility for what happens to them.

Pakistan has an extremism problem. This is not just limited to the estimated few thousand fighters in FATA (whether they are foreign or Pakistani). The language of extremism is slowly permeating society. This was starkly illustrated to Londonstani when he had dinner with a middle class professional Pakistani friend who told him while drinking a beer that his relatives who observed full veiling and had thrown out their televisions, computers and hi-fi systems were the kind of people who had the strength and moral authority to "fix Pakistan".

However, there are people from all walks of life who recognise that what's happening is a problem.

"The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities," said writer and academic Pervez Hoodbhoy in an article from last year.

The problem is that the immense mistrust of Western motives means anyone expressing such views risks being labelled a traitor and becoming a target. Even religious leaders are not immune from being singled out.

The authorities say that today's attack was probably motivated by the stand locals took against militants in their area. Londonstani suspects though that this was more about the effect militants were having on local political structures rather than a difference in ideology. In a country beset by economic and political catastrophe, the extremist narrative and world view provides easy answers. It asks people who have little control over their surroundings to amend the only thing they still have the power to change - their personal behaviour. By doing this, they earn the intervention of the only actor with the power to improve their reality - God.

Conspiracy theories are born when people have little knowledge of the workings of the powers that control their lives. In Pakistan, anyone looking to enact change - a foreign actor or the government itself - has to overcome conspiracy theories. Without this, money and effort spent by government and organisations will be wasted and probably counterproductive. The answer will involve improving transparency in political processes and persuading politicians and army officers not to stoke the conspiracy pot for short term political expediency... which is, of course, easy to say.

The BBC reports that thousands of people turned up for the funerals of victims of the suicide attack on Shia worshippers in Karachi.

...Keep watching this space.

UPDATE: AFP reports that the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Also, Karachi is still on fire after angry Shia rampaged following the bomb.

"We carried out the suicide bombing in Karachi," Asmatullah Shaheen, a top militant commander based in South Waziristan, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. Shaheen, whose name is on a government list of 19 most-wanted militants, said "he (the bomber) was our man; his name was Hasnain Muawia".

Interestingly, Muawia is the name of the first caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty. He fought Ali, the Prophet Mohammed's cousin, who is revered by Shia as his rightful successor. Muawia's son Yazid is seen as the villain in the events that led to the death of the prophet's grandson Hussain. The Shia worshippers targeted by the Taliban were commemorating Hussain's death at the hands of Yazid's forces when the bomber struck.

A suicide bomber killed around 30 people in Karachi today during traditional Shia Muharram ceremonies. It's not clear at this point whether the attack was part of Karachi's long-simmering sectarian problems, a statement of intent by the Pakistani Taliban to expand into the country's biggest city, or some sort of mixture of the two.

Over the past few weeks, suicide bombs and attacks in Pakistan have slipped from the news agenda. News coverage pays a decreasing amount of attention to events the more often they occur. Even though the loss of innocent life is equally tragic whether it is happening in the first attack of its type or the 100th, the Karachi attack deserves special attention because of its location and timing.

The Muharram ceremonies mark one of the main events in the Shia religious calender. Millions of Shia Muslims across the world mark the death of the Prophet's grandson Hussein in a one-sided battle as emblematic of the eternal struggle for truth and justice against overwhelming odds. Many non-Muslims will recognise Muharram ceremonies from images of bare-chested men flaying themselves in symbolic remorse for not coming to Hussein's aid. 

An eyewitness told local channel Geo News that the suicide bomber detonated himself away from the main procession, which limited the number of casualties. Five security personnel died in the attack as well as a number of children. The explosion happened near a group of scouts who had been taking part in the procession.

Londonstani heard about the attack shortly after meeting a member of the Pakistani military. Predictably, the conversation revolved around the nature of Pakistan's security threat. Who was it exactly the army was fighting? Well, India of course, said the officer. Londonstani's arguments about India's own national interest in Pakistan's stability as well as the international community's stake in Pakistan's wellbeing and prosperity were all brushed aside. The army had proof of India's involvement, said the army man. Pakistanis fighting for the insurgency were illiterate young men led astray by foreigners bent on Pakistan's destruction. Many Pakistani officials Londonstani has met do not connect the country's present conflict to the internal tensions that exist within the country.

It's these tensions that are in danger of being further fanned by the attack in Karachi. Even though the official mindset refuses to accept that Pakistan's very serious social problems might underpin terrorism, many people were expecting the Shia ceremonies to be targeted. The only question was when, where and how bad. Londonstani's money was on Lahore, where a huge procession winds through very narrow streets. Shia leaders in they city's old quarter had told Londonstani that they had received direct threats from militants. Karachi, Londonstani thought, was too risky for the Taliban to target. Karachi is presently thought to be home to more Pashtuns than any other city in Pakistan. At the same time, the movement uses the city to raise funds and move supplies - alongside material moving to Afghanistan for ISAF. It's safe to assume whoever organised the attack had a larger aim.

A suicide attack suggests Taliban-style militants were behind the incident rather than Karachi's local Sunni thugs. Following the attack, enraged Shia worshippers set fire to nearby buildings and cars. As Londonstani writes, Geo News is reporting that fires are still raging in Karachi's commercial areas.

A Karachi resident told Londonstani over the phone; "What you are seeing in Karachi now with all the anger, rioting and burning of buildings is just a taste of what could happen. Karachi is more of a tinderbox than pretty much anywhere else in Pakistan and if someone wants to ignite a Baghdad-type inter-Muslim war in Pakistan, Karachi is the place to do it."

Shia leader Hasan Zafar Naqwi came on a number of the news channels denouncing the attacks. In the clips on the following news bulletins, the editors decided to repeat his comments that the terrorists who talk about countering America are only killing Muslims and damaging Pakistan. However, this was only a small part of what he said. His wider comments were much more telling of Shia reaction to the attacks.

"We have been killed in the hundreds for years. How long are we supposed to tolerate this?...I want to say to the nation, what have we done to deserve this? Lahore, Peshawar and now Karachi have become our Karbala," he said referring to the battleground where Hussein was killed. "We are mistreated yet where is the voice of the nation? When Shia die, no one says anything. The silent support that the terrorists enjoy has to end."

Karachi leaders, Shia as well as Sunni and representatives of various ethnic-based parties are appealing for calm. But Londonstani thinks the Naqwi's expression of anger at what he sees as Pakistan's Sunnis majority's disregard for Shia suffering will more accurately reflect the conversations that go on behind closed doors over the coming days.

Londonstani spent most of the summer on a housing estate clinging to the outskirts of Bristol. The job in hand was to investigate racism for a documentary by living as an immigrant in the kind of area many recent arrivals are housed in by local councils. But the experience also shed light on how the process of radicalisation plays out on the streets of modern Britain. Considering the recent debate about Prevent in the UK, Londonstani thinks it'll be useful to share his observations.

British readers will have little difficulty guessing Londonstani's identity from this post, but he would very much appreciate they keep it to themselves as full disclosure will threaten continued posting from Pakistan.

(preemptive apologies to Ma Exum and Lady Muqawama for some of the language in this post)

I'm used to hearing people in the Muslim world talk about life in Britain as a utopian fantasy. In Pakistan, on a daily basis, i hear rich and poor people talk about Britain's civilised society, it's impartial justice system and the humanitarian founding principles of a health system that provides care for all. Sometimes, I try to inject a little realism into the discussion by pointing out our social problems and the frequent complaints about the deteriorating quality of the country's social services. But I can almost see the words bounce off people's glazed expressions. This is not restricted to Pakistan. Even people in more stable countries like Egypt allow themselves to think of life in a developed economy as a heaven-like dream.

This summer, I saw reality hit home for those few who make it to Britain. I was sitting at a bus stop on the edge of Bristol's Southmead Estate. Beside me was a Sudanese man with his young daughter, who seemed about six years old. We sat on the same bench as he asked her about school and her homework. He had no reason to think I understood his northern Sudanese Arabic dialect, and I felt guilty being an unintended party to a private conversation between a father who looked like he'd just finished a long shift as a security guard at a supermarket and a child, who was plainly excited to be out with her father. 

I reached into the paint-splattered overalls that were meant to make me look like a Pakistani immigrant doing odd jobs to survive in his new home and pulled out a cigarette, hoping that leaning against the bus stop away from the Sudanese family would let me tune out of their conversation. On the other side of the road was another bus stop. A group of local girls, none older than 15, were talking to each other loudly. Amongst all the squealing, the only words I could make out were "fuck", "bastard" and "cunt". Occasionally one of the girls would pull her skirt up at a passing car of boys and the others would cheer and hand her a bottle of brightly coloured liquor to swig from. Every now and again, one of the cars would stop and another girl might stand in front of the passenger window and pull down her top. The boys would try and persuade them to get in. Eventually, two of the girls got into a crowded little car with wide tyres and lowered suspension.

I had been absent mindedly watching the events in front of us. After the car drove away, the Sudanese father turned to his daughter and said; "That's what English girls are like. Never talk to people like that."

A few days later at the same bus stop, two Indian low-grade computer technicians were discussing their new home. They probably assumed I understood their Hindi, but they didn't seem to care. They spoke of near daily verbal abuse and friends who had been attacked by teenage thugs.  England, they decided, wasn't what they thought it was. Just before they got on their bus, a group of teenagers outside the chip shop behind us proved the technicians' point by rounding on a passing elderly local.

"Look out, he's a perv," shouted one boy. Before another pushed the girl standing next to him in front of the old man and said, "I bet you wish you could fuck her". They all then burst into laughter.

Southmead is the Britain that most people do not see. This is perhaps understandable if you live abroad. But judging from comments after the broadcast of the documentary, people in Britain's more affluent areas are unaware of what happens in neighbourhoods literally on their doorsteps. The little attention places like Southmead merit on the public's radar, is inversely proportional to their physical presence. Places like Southmead exist on the borders of every British city and inside the largest ones. A very large proportion of Britain's immigrants live in places like Southmead and a sizeable chunk of the white population has grown up in similar surroundings. 

I saw these surroundings at close quarters. Hundreds of cans of high-strength cider littered the streets every Saturday and Sunday. I saw unemployed drunken youths accost shoppers in the mornings. The green spaces that looked inviting from afar were littered with used condoms, pregnancy test kits and the excrement of pitbull dogs that were popular pets amongst residents. In the daytime, teenage mothers pushed young children around the estate. I saw the partner of one young mother call a toddler a "fucking little shit" before smacking him hard enough on the back of the head to make the child drop to his knees and cover his head in the expectation of further violence. In the early evenings, young teenagers would sit at benches swigging from bottles of cheap alcohol. On one occasion, I became their target.

As an immigrant in Southmead, segregating yourself and your family was an act of self preservation. Two young British-born Pakistani boys I talked to told me earnestly that they were good because "we aint got no white friends". There were many helpful and kind local people living on the estate. But the few I bumped into were often quick to distance themselves from their environment. A retired man who used to try to talk to me every morning at another bus stop would freeze when tatooed men with aggressive dogs walked by. Young mothers who used the same stop would talk about needing to move out "for the sake of the kids".

The impulse to segregate was compounded by the messages that seemed to reinforce the idea that the treatment in Southmead reflected the mood and views of the rest of Britain. "Hundreds of thousands of migrants here for handouts, says senior judge". "Britain paying migrants £1,700 to return home BEFORE they've even got here" "The violent new breed of migrants who will let nothing stop them coming to Britain" These headlines were just three of many that were printed in the Mail, a right-wing daily during my time in Southmead. I don't usually take much notice of the headlines in the Sun and the Mail unless they are truly shocking, but in Southmead the headlines seemed to have an impact on the treatment we received. The level of low-level hostility from adults seemed to be directly linked to the content of the headlines. More outright hostility from younger adults and children followed a day or so later.

Walking around the estate, I often thought of British Pakistani and Somali boys growing up thinking their experiences were an accurate portrayal of what Britain was about. I imagined growing up with such a view of Britain would make the idea of fighting UK forces in Muslim lands seem righteous. On the battlefields of Iraq and/or Afghanistan, the young soldiers they would face would likely include the white youngsters who joined up hoping the army was their way out of Southmead.

But the army wasn't the only way out. There was also religion. If you decide that the dysfunctional reality of Southmead is a product of a permissive society, austere religion is a logical answer.

I met one man from Southmead who had made that decision. A local man had embraced a strict form of Islam. He told me that the problems of the area resulted from weak family values and a moral laxity that allowed the misuse of drugs and alcohol. Islam had provided him a way out and a template for a better life than the one he had seen growing up. Although we talked for literally minutes, it was easy to tell I was talking to a mature adult who made a considered decision that had helped him live as a productive and responsible member of society.

I heard of at least another local man who had embraced Islam. I didn't meet him but I read about him in the newspapers while he was on trial for trying to bomb a shopping centre in the city. When police raided his flat they found a suicide vest and explosives hidden in a biscuit tin.

Andrew Ibrahim is the son of middle class parents, who news reports said were Egyptian Christians. During the trial, a picture emerged of a young man with serious emotional and drug abuse problems. It was a picture I had come across before when looking at a new emerging breed of extremists who came from criminal backgrounds and actively sought out extremist Islam as a way of depicting their activities as more than mere criminality and a route to a new identity as warriors in a cosmic battle.

News reports said Ibrahim described the UK as a "dirty toilet". How much of his view was influenced by the surroundings of his upbringing?

The judge presiding over the trial, which ended with Ibrahim getting a life term, summed up the prosecution's portrayal of Ibrahim as one of a young man who suffered a disturbed adolescence and went on to become lonely, angry and alienated from society. The description could fit any number of young men in Southmead and other places like it. Not all will turn to extremism, but they will likely be drawn to other forms of angry destructive behaviour.

The ingredients that make a British terrorist are numerous, interact with each other in different ways and are changing constantly. Just looking at "Britishness" or identity fails to take into account the growing numbers of extremists that are emerging from non-Muslim backgrounds. But what affects one person doesn't necessarily affect another. Ibrahim's brother Peter was reported to be a Oxbridge educated lawyer. But whatever the ingredients are, it was clear from my time in Southmead that it's easier to find them in places that suffer social deprivation. And the UK has many of them.

The discussion about Muslim immigrants turning to extremism often centres around them not wanting to integrate into British life. But it never addresses the fact that many come with high hopes of a new life, and find reality bitterly dispiriting. They come to take advantage of social mobility and a law-abiding society to build a better life for their families. They end up feeling they need to protect their families from the very society they had idolised. Why don't they go home? Many people I met from more stable parts of the world talked about it "after saving enough". But like others before them, chances are that they will stay. People who had come with a fantasy of Britain ended just seeing it as an opportunity to earn and a contagion to avoid.

Government policy seeks to target resources to fix problems in the most cost effective manner. However, the problem of extremism now involves society as a whole. Pre 9/11 it was limited to a section of a section of the population. That has grown with the advent of the Iraq war and the emergence of an image of Muslim militants as righteous men ready to stand against a superpower and the ability to make the established powers of the world look impotent. It's an image that appeals to people of diverse backgrounds who are disillusioned with their societies. People who aren't necessarily observant Muslims, or even Muslims at all. But at the same time, the increasingly obvious bloodlust of the men and women drawn to the cause has alienated most Muslims.

What does that mean for initiatives like Operation Contest's Prevent aspect? (thanks davidpfbo) On the one hand, allies and partners are easier to identify, but the work that needs to be done has to reach out to more people and address wider issues in our society. Despite the protests of individual voices lobbying for the adoption of their own outlook, work on identity, engagement with more authentic Islamic voices and community work (including seemingly unconnected activities like sports) all have a roll to play. The undertaking is huge and constant fine tuning is vital. It also involves sums that the British government will struggle to find.

The UK's Department of Communities and Local Government is conducting an enquiry into the UK's government's Prevent strategy, one strand of the government's overall plan to tackle terrorism and its causes.

Before relocating to Pakistan, Londonstani spent a fair amount of time looking at extremism in the UK as well as efforts to counter it. Prevent seems to have started out very much as a "work in progress", meaning that the idea was to try a bunch of stuff and see how it played out before fine tuning the strategy. The broadbrush approach has drawn in community partners with differing views on the nature of the problem.

The way to see Prevent, Londonstani thinks, is as an effort by the government to draw in partners to help it understand an issue it realised was beyond its present capacity. The problem is that the partners might have had a snap-shot understanding of the areas in which they operate but who also lacked an overall understanding of the problem. This isn't a criticism of any given group - the problem is vast and the issues involved in it are manifold and constantly evolving.

Among the submissions to the enquiry are some interesting points made by the Quilliam Foundation, an influential think tank in the UK.

The argument that radicalisation is driven by grievances, in particular about foreign policy and the idea that of a "War on Islam", is a popular one but one that is undermined by a comparison between Britain and America. If British foreign policy feeds into a narrative of a "War on Islam" then America's foreign policy must also equally or more so. Yet, despite American Muslims sharing British Muslims' concerns about a "War on Islam"[5], America has seen nothing like the home-grown 7/7 attacks. This can be explained by the greater accessibility immigrants to America have to a shared identity built on universal values than is granted to immigrants to Britain.

Quilliam, to take this example, is very keen on the "inclusive British identity" approach. Others think extremists rise from disadvantaged communities and the main focus should be based on social services that tackle education, social exclusion etc.

However, Quilliam's above statement is a good example of the superficial nature of present extremism analysis. How does the greater accessibility that American universal values are supposed to offer immigrants explain events at Ft. Hood? An isolated incident? Well, what about, Najibullah Zazi, who planned "Mumbai-on-the-Hudson" with help from extremists in Pakistan. Or, Byran Neal Venas, a Hispanic American convert, who was captured in Afghanistan and admitted to helping with initial plans to launch an attack in the US. Or David Hedley, an American who planned to kill an editor at the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Copenhagen. If he had managed, the US would have joined the list of nations that have become a launching pad for extremist violence.

Read Peter Bergen's Foreign Policy article where he outlines these cases and others in more detail and effectively makes the case that the US has basically just been lucky so far. And as we know, luck is no basis from which to argue for policy direction.

Drawing together lots of views and opinions is definitely a good approach, but Londonstani doesn't envy the people who have to navigate all the competing interests and ideologies that underlay the different views and come out with a better policy.

This post follows on from the earlier information about the attacks today in Islamabad:

Three attacks in three days in the Pakistani capital as the Waziristan operation goes on.

The latest is still happening about 2km from where Londonstani is now. Television news is saying an attacker wearing a suicide belt and carrying an AK47 started shooting near the city's courts in the F8 sector. The area is one of Islamabad's upper income districts. Details are confused but it seems the gunman is still on the loose. Police are evacuating the area, saying that he planted an explosive device before fleeing.

Earlier this morning, gunmen opened fire on a passing army jeep carrying a senior officer. Three or four soldiers were killed. Media is reporting most of the attackers escaped.

The day before yesterday, two suicide bombers killed four students at the Islamic University.

More soon....

UPDATE:

Islamabad is in a near state of panic.

A friend said today that a relative of his had rung him in a panic saying that she had seen men with guns pulling people out of cars on one of the main roads. This hasn't been reported anywhere and Londonstani is tempted to think its one of those situations where people are so worried they see one thing and imagine another.

A foreign security official told Londonstani that he had never seen Islamabad in such a state of nervousness. The attack in F8 particularly shook people up. The target seems to have been the courts, but the area is very residential, and pretty well heeled residential at that. Initial reports said the gunman was on the loose. A three mile radius from the central market area of F8 encompasses most of the shops, restaurants and cafes frequented by the local expat residents and Pakistani business and professional types.

Quite a few shop keepers told Londonstani that they were tempted to shut up shop when they heard through their televisions that a desperate armed man wearing a suicide belt could well be heading their way.

There was definitely less life on the street.. but there was still some.

Now, what does this mean for public opinion? As far as Londonstani is concerned it looks like his theory that the downfall of militant Islamists is hardwire into their DNA holds. They always seem to descend into pure bloodlust and lose whatever support they get through articulating popular grievance to Western policy. This is something AQ leadership warned against when they started their enterprise at the end of the Soviet-Afghan war and it's something they reiterated when Zarqawi went postal in Iraq and it's also something Zawahiri had to address in his internet Q&A session 18 months or so ago.

OK, so many Pakistanis feel that somehow the Indians, Americans and/or Israelis might be behind all this. But when the attacks mount up and the residents of your well guarded capital are too afraid to step outside their front doors, public opinion reaches a "I-don't-know-what-it-is-but-I-want-it-stopped" situation.

It's at times like this that the people who support a Taliban-type world view are temporarily silenced. That's not because they have changed their minds. It's because they feel deep down that their "just warriors of Islam" can't possibly be responsible for bombing civilians, eventhough the evidence seems to be mounting up. If that's your worldview, you don't abandon it because of a few bombs. Instead, you go away to figure out how you and square the circle.

Want to see what Londonstani's talking about? Check this out:

"Regarding the most recent bombing at Islamic University in Islamabad, note that the Taliban have not claimed responsibility for it (you can imagine that they’d be a bit pre-occupied to release a statement denying it right now). Despite that, all the govt officials and media outlets are pointing the finger of blame at them (even though they themselves are forced to acknowledge that they have not claimed responsibility for it).

"For those of you who choose to take the word of the Govt and Army (who are currently stooges of the Americans and are falling over themselves to lick their shoes) over that of the mujahideen, consider this: WHY ON EARTH WOULD THE TALIBAN INTENTIONALLY TARGET CIVILIAN AREAS WHEN THEY HAVE NOTHING TO GAIN FROM IT?"

In Londonstani's experience, the answer is pretty simple. Violent groups - no matter what the stated noble aims - tend to attract a far share of complete nutters who need absolutely no justification to kill people. But, hey, if you are offering up one dressed up as God, country, flag or whatever, then, hell yeah, that'll do. And those sorts of people are pretty hard to control or weed out if you are running a professional modern army, let alone a volunteer militia made up of people with disparate aims.

It's also funny how people are quite happy to look for the logic when they are excusing their own side, but the "standard of proof" drops several notches when they are faced with something that confirms their own beliefs.

To give you an idea of that feeling of having had enough, check out this nice little mash up by Pakistani channel Geo. The title translates as "We Are Ready!" Actually, a more idiomatic translation would be, "We are ready for you!".

UPDATE II

As if all that wasn't enough excitment for one day.. we just had a minor earthquake!!