The True Face of Terror in London and Baghdad

Governments and the media are fond of saying that terrorism has no face. But it does. It was in the face of Jassim Hassan whom The Daily Star showed grieving over the body of his five-year-old daughter Ikhlas after she was killed in cross-fire between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in Tikrit last month. It was in the face of 12-year-old Laith Falah, whose picture we also showed as his leg was brutally blown off in a bomb attack in Baghdad. And yesterday it was in the faces of the working people of various colors and creeds who were going about their everyday business in London only to find themselves caught up in a disaster of nightmare proportions.

The world will focus on yesterday's attack on London in a way that it no longer bothers to focus on the daily carnage in Iraq. We have sadly become immune to similar barbarity and outrageous acts on our own doorstep. But let us be clear: An attack by extremists, be it in London or Baghdad, or anywhere in the world, is an attack on all mankind and is the ultimate proof of the poverty of argument these bombers have to offer the Islamic world.

These attacks, on what politicians often call "ordinary people" have no agenda. US President George W. Bush's clarion call to establish democracy across the Arab world was almost certainly an afterthought to gain global support for hitting back after the apocalyptic attacks of September 11, 2001, but at least it offers the Arab world a future. What on earth does the indiscriminate targeting of innocent people offer us? How on earth does this attack and the countless others that are occurring on a daily basis in Iraq further a cause? What agenda do these bombers represent other than a death cult?

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, correctly summed up the sheer bankruptcy of the attackers when he said "This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners."

These ordinary working-class Londoners are a myriad of racial groups, nationalities and religions, who have made their home in the most truly cosmopolitan city in the world. The site of the first bomb in Aldgate, on the edge of London's and indeed Europe's financial center, is just a stone's throw away from one of the largest Muslim areas in the U.K., a place incidentally where until last year my sister and her husband lived.

As the son of immigrants who settled in London I can vouchsafe the tolerance of the capital's seven million inhabitants who were targeted yesterday. Tolerance is a word that is out of fashion nowadays. The watchword for what is called "racial awareness" among the chattering classes has became respect. Yet tolerance is the most magnificent word. The British people as a whole, and Londoners in particular, have always been happy to rub along with the raft of immigrant groups who have found their way to the U.K.'s capital over the last 100 or so years in a way that shames other countries I've lived and worked in including the US, France, Germany and Ireland.

Londoners are a stoic bunch. They have lived with IRA violence throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties. My father, a proud Ulster republican who made his home in London after arriving to work during World War II often told me about what historians are fond of calling the "Blitz Spirit" which he experienced first hand during World War II German air raids on the capital.

The people of Lebanon know all about this kind of stoicism. And having lived through a 15-year Civil War they will know that Londoners, and indeed the wider the British public will not be cowed by yesterday's tragic events anymore than Lebanese or Palestinians have been cowed by years of oppression and attacks.

In the wake of the Madrid bombing security everywhere in Europe was increased. Clearly the attack on London bears the hallmarks of not just last year's bomb blast in Madrid which killed almost 200 people, but also the attacks in Bali, Istanbul and Casablanca.

The U.K.'s foreign secretary candidly said last night that the attack had "all the hallmarks" of Al-Qaeda, adding credence to the claim by a hitherto unknown branch of Al-Qaeda calling themselves the Secret Organisation Group of Al-Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe that they had carried out the outrage.

So like Iraq, we know who is behind the evil. But how do we stop it? Ultimately no democracy can ever be safe from these attacks. The freedoms we cherish are easily exploited by terrorists. Earlier this year, the U.K. government rightly faced a barrage of criticism as it passed a terrorism law which allows the police to effectively right roughshod over the civil rights of people suspected, note not charged, just suspected of terror activities. It has also been criticized for wanting to introduce identity cards. Who would criticize it today?

The West has a choice it seems. Either commit its resources, not just its armies, but its cash and political pressure, to ensuring a better future for the Middle East or condemn us all to more outrages like yesterday's. It's ordinary people paying the price. Perhaps it's time we made our "democratic governments" listen.