26 July 2005The Guardian
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's revived proposal, endorsed by Tony Blair, for an international conference on combating terrorism reflects a human need for solidarity in the aftermath of dreadful events. It is also a way for politicians to show they are doing something.
But this sort of international coordination has been attempted before, notably through the UN in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
The uncomfortable reality facing British investigators into the London bombings is that key foreign governments have their own political perspectives on the nature of the threat; or are preoccupied as Egypt is now with their own terrorist emergencies.
Political leaders in the Arab and Muslim spheres may also be privately disinclined to go out of their way to help a British government whose policies they deplore and whose wounds they regard as partly self-inflicted.
The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is one obvious cause of such reluctance, just as it is a prime motivator for the terrorists themselves.
But a suddenly needful Britain may also be beginning to pay the price for a range of heedless, subservient or self-defeating overseas policies that extend beyond Baghdad to Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Chechnya and back to Bosnia.
After a circumstantial Pakistan connection emerged in the wake of the July 7 attacks, General Pervez Musharraf, the country's unelected president, ordered a wave of arrests of Islamist militants. But the crackdown has yielded no confirmed suspects so far and has meanwhile provoked a nationalist backlash.
Gen Musharraf's lack of a democratic mandate has been winked at in Washington and London in return for his support for the 2001 Afghanistan invasion and Washington's "global war on terror". Britain backed a Commonwealth decision last year to end Pakistan's post-1999 coup suspension and Mr Blair invited him to Downing Street last December.
But the weakness of Gen Musharraf's position was underscored last week when he acknowledged that his previous efforts to proscribe jihadist groups had been ineffective.
An estimated two-thirds of Pakistan's 30,000 religious schools or madrasas, the focus of recent media attention, have ignored his January 2002 edict that they submit to government regulation to prevent extremist teaching.
These failures did not prevent him from joining the Saudi government in urging Mr Blair to put his own house in order and move against "Londonistan's" Islamist exiles.
Gen Musharraf is also aggrieved, like his countrymen and many among Britain's ethnic Pakistani population, that Britain and the US have not done more to help end terrorism in Kashmir and push India towards genuine self-determination there.
British investigators thus face the possibility that Pakistan's overstretched government lacks the domestic political authority, the means and the drive to get to the bottom of any 7/7 connection.
This situation carries echoes of the US experience in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida commanders after the Afghan invasion - and continuing suspicions in Kabul of collusion between Pakistani security elements and their old Taliban clients.
Egypt, where another possible link to the London atrocities briefly emerged, is a different case - but also presents problems for Britain. As the Arab world's leading nation, Egypt pursues a regional role. It is working hard, for example, to ensure the success of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza next month.
But it remains highly critical of US and British policy in the Middle East, which senior officials see as unbalanced in Palestine, unduly threatening in relation to Iran and Syria, and little short of disastrous in Iraq.
Egyptian public opinion is even more hostile. Yet it is these voters that Mr Mubarak, under western pressure to democratise, must woo in September elections while trying to prevent further terror attacks on Egyptian soil. For these reasons among others, Britain's concerns are not top of his agenda.
Other considerations are in play. Some Muslim political leaders may privately hope that London's lesson is sharp enough to persuade Mr Blair to avoid further American-inspired military adventures and will lead Britain, like Italy, to set an Iraq withdrawal timetable.
Arab leaders see Washington's highly autonomous conduct of the "war on terror" as unconducive to enhanced collaboration. The US, for its part, is unlikely to welcome an international conference that challenges its freedom of action.
Britain's European neighbours will also be keeping a wary eye even as they offer their solidarity to London. They fear that some within their own Muslim communities, enraged by some future supposedly anti-Islamic western act, could also turn against their hosts.
As the French author Gilles Kepel noted last year, "the most important battle in the war for Muslim minds during the next decade will be fought not in Palestine or Iraq but in communities of believers on the outskirts of London, Paris and other European cities".
But winning this battle at home could necessitate big shifts in British policies abroad.
