London
***Updated 6/4/17, 11:05***
On Saturday night, three terrorists murdered seven people and hospitalized at least 48 more in vehicular and knife attacks on London Bridge and nearby Borough Market. The attackers’ identities are as yet unknown, but early on Sunday morning police arrested fourteen in raids in East London. No organization has claimed their attacks, either. An eyewitness on London Bridge told the BBC that the terrorists had shouted, “This is for Allah.”
On Saturday night, just after 10:00 pm local time, a white van accelerated off the roadway of London Bridge at a speed estimated as 50 mph, mowing down pedestrians on the sidewalk. An eyewitness told the BBC that three men jumped out and after “kicking” and “punching” the injured pedestrians who lay on the ground, drew knives and ran towards the pubs and restaurants of nearby Borough Market, stabbing people as they went. Amid panicking crowds, armed police arrived within minutes and shot three men dead. At least one of them reportedly had a canister strapped to his chest—possibly a dummy bomb.
Police have evacuated all buildings in the London Bridge area, including hotels, the iconic Shard building, and the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. A large area of central London remains closed. The six hospitals where the injured were taken are under lockdown.
The details will trickle in over the next day or two, but the killers, their methods, and their targets are grimly familiar: The use of a car as a weapon and the butchery with knives are reminiscent of the events of March, when Khalid Masood mowed down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, and then attacked police at the gates of the Houses of Parliament. And ordinary people on a night out have become a staple target of the Islamists (see the Paris attacks of 2015).
Over the next day or two, we shall see a biographical parade of those who died or were horribly wounded because they went out for a drink, a flirt, or a dance. We shall also become familiar with the three men who attacked them. Inevitably, the biographies of the murdered will be eclipsed by the biographies of their murderers. For we already know why the victims died, why dozens more were run over, slashed, and stabbed. They had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Meanwhile—and despite the contempt that familiarity breeds—we shall puzzle out the motivations of the perpetrators. This will matter not just because it dissipates the unbounded fear that is terrorism’s dividend. It will matter because this attack is the second in a major British city in two weeks—and the second in three months in central London.
For more than a decade, Britain has been less harmed by Islamist terrorism than France or Belgium. There have been several minor attacks, but no major attack has succeeded since the 7/7 bombings of July 2005 when 4 Islamists killed 52 commuters and wounded some 700 more. After the Manchester bombing, government “sources” claimed to have foiled five Islamist plots since March alone. Three successful attacks in three months—Westminster, Manchester, and now London Bridge—suggest either that the security services are overwhelmed by the number of suspects, or that Britain’s anti-terror strategy is faltering.
The next question will be the attackers’ connections. By definition, an assault by three people cannot be the work of a “lone wolf,” or a “misfit,” or any other walking euphemism. Three people are a cell, an organized, collaborative unit. How were they able to lay their plans without attracting the attention of the security services, friends and families, or the British government’s Prevent strategy of community-based spying?
And what if, as in the case of Salman Abedi (the Manchester bomber) the trail leads abroad?
After the Manchester bombing, home secretary Amber Rudd announced that the government would be issuing “temporary exclusion orders,” to prevent British citizens from returning from training as terrorists or fighting abroad. These orders had been in the government’s arsenal since 2015. In the two years between then and the Manchester bombing, only one such order was issued. Perhaps the government should have handed out a few more.
The London Bridge attack was also the second during this year’s general election campaign. The election is this coming Thursday, five days from now. The parties will probably take a short break from campaigning, and issue identically fatuous statements about the alleged cowardice of the attackers and the imperturbable bravery and tolerance of the British public. Then they will go back to accusing each other of being soft on terrorism, or careless of civil liberties.
This attack will not influence the election. The Manchester attack had already focused the voters’ minds on security and immigration. Saturday’s attack may intensify that focus, but it is unlikely to shift it in any fundamental way. Perhaps this will benefit Theresa May and the Conservatives, if only because it will remind voters that Jeremy Corbyn and his friends have long embraced every species of terrorist and Islamist as fellow strugglers in the war against Western capitalism.
Regardless of the outcome, by Friday next we will be told that the very fact of the election represents a triumph of civilized values. This is not untrue. But it is not the point. It would be a triumph of civilized values if the kind of people who have wrought murder in Manchester and London, and in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Toulouse, and San Bernardino too, were kept off the streets in the first place.
Updated 6/4/17, 11:15 am to reflect increased death toll, injuries, and arrests.
