Mumbai-like terror attack on European cities foiled

Fox News reports that the CIA had stepped up drone strikes in Pakistan, directed at locations where the organizers of the plot and the people trained to carry it out were gathering. The more than twenty strikes this month represent a monthly record, according to a tally by the New America Foundation.

A counterterrorism official, who is familiar with the drone strikes and the details of the Europe terror plots, is quoted by Fox News to have said Tuesday that the missile strikes in Pakistan are “a product of precise intelligence and precise weapons. We’ve been hitting targets that pose a threat to our troops in Afghanistan and terrorists plotting attacks in South Asia and beyond.”

While officials declined to comment on specific plots in Europe or elsewhere, they acknowledged that drone strikes in Pakistan were meant to disrupt militant networks planning attacks.

Sky News’s Marshall added: “I am led to believe a number of these (drone) attacks were designed against the leadership of this particular plot, which had an al Qaeda and possibly some sort of Taliban connection projecting into Europe. And they have killed several of the leaders - which is why the terror threat has not risen.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman notes that the stepped-up U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan have widely met with silence among European governments, despite criticism of the actions by the media and human-rights groups. “People in Europe have expressed concerns about the use of drones, but governments in Europe have been quiet about it,” said Alexander Nicoll of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

Officials, diplomats, and analysts cite several reasons for the muted reactions. Governments are broadly sympathetic to use of drones to attack al Qaeda terrorist camps and Taliban positions inside Pakistan, from which raids are launched into Afghanistan. As Western forces exit Afghanistan, their governments will want to preserve the capability to attack terrorist cells in the region, and unmanned aerial vehicles offer an efficient way to do that, officials said.

Gorman notes that some countries, including the United Kingdom and France, are themselves developing drones with missile-carrying capabilities.

Another issue quieting criticism, said a senior European diplomat, is that some drones used in U.S. attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas abutting Afghanistan are the same used in strikes carried out against Taliban by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which they are members.

Reactions in Europe

• United Kingdom. The government raised its international terrorism threat level to “severe” — the second highest level of alert in the five-tier system. The last time Britain raised its international terrorism threat level was in January. On 16 September, head of MI5 Jonathan Evans said there remained “a serious risk of a lethal attack taking place” (“MI5: U.K. facing a new wave of terrorist attacks from jihadists, IRA,” 17 September 2010 HSNW). The BBC reports that government officials say there are no plans to raise it to the highest level of critical, and they do not expect to see an imminent wave of arrests.
• France. On Tuesday, the Eiffel Tower and the surrounding Champ de Mars park were evacuated briefly because of a bomb alert. It was the fourth such alert in the Paris area in as many weeks. French interior minister Brice Hortefeux said on 20 September that France faced a real terrorism threat due to a backlash from al Qaeda militants in North Africa. He said there were growing fears of an attack from home-grown terrorist cells within French borders.
• Germany. Germany said on Wednesday that it was aware of a “long-term” aim by al-Qaeda to attack Western targets, but it had no evidence of any “concrete” plans. It said its security alert level was unchanged.

First impressions

The BBC’s Gardner makes these points:

• The fact that details have leaked out through the U.S. media is a mixed blessing for Western security officials. On the one hand, the supposed plotters will now be unlikely to go ahead as planned. But on the other, it has probably wrecked any chances of making arrests and bringing suspects to trial.
• Either way, this does mark a new departure for aspiring jihadists — using firearms against civilians in a crowded place in Europe rather than assembling and detonating a bomb.