The European Threat

On November 9, a female suicide bomber attempted to attack a patrol in Iraq, and was killed. A passport she carried identified her. Her husband, Issam Goris, was also killed hours later. (As an aside, it's not clear to me if these same events led to this Baghdad suicide cell being dismantled on Nov 10.)

What is unique about this event is that the female was a white woman, Muriel Degauque, from Belgium.

As this Times article says:

In one of the most extraordinary tales of Islamic radicalisation, she is thought to be the first white Western woman to carry out a suicide bombing

.

This Independent article describes a little bit of her background. A photo accompanies this CNN article.

US forces identified the woman to Belgium, who kept it quiet. This past week though, a French news service identified Degauque. Belgium has expressed its displeasure with the revelation, saying it endangered anti-terror operations. As a result, Belgium moved quickly to roll up a terrorist cell it had been watching.

Police in Belgium and France arrested 15 people on Wednesday in a roundup of suspected Islamist militants believed to be linked to a Belgian woman who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq this month.

The 38-year-old convert to Islam blew herself up on Nov. 9 on the outskirts of Baghdad in what security sources believe was the first suicide attack in Iraq involving a European woman.

Belgian police arrested 14 people and seized documents in raids centred on Brussels and Antwerp. They arrested two Tunisians, three Moroccans and the rest were Belgian nationals, Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor, told Reuters.

The fifteenth suspect was arrested close to Paris.

The group had been under surveillance for four months after Belgium received intelligence about a suspected terrorist cell operating on its soil, but the suicide bomber had slipped out of the country unnoticed.

Among the arrested were another married couple who wanted to follow in the footsteps of Degauque and Goris.

It is a disturbing trend that suicide bombers are being drawn from Europe, and not just the traditional breeding grounds such as Saudi Arabia and North Africa. Yet, it is just one of several troubling signs that radical Islam is becoming an acute, even deadly, threat in Europe.

This NYTimes article describes a Bosnian suicide cell, and its ties to Scandanavian Muslims. (You may recall reading about subsequent related arrests in this Briefing, and in this Briefing, in the Europe sections.)

You will of course recall the train bombings in Madrid, and the London bombigs. Both attacks were carried out by radical Muslims.

In November a trial began in Belgium for 13 Belgians and Moroccans accused of providing logistics support for the Madrid bombings.

The Netherlands, the country where Theo van Gogh was murdered, faces its own problem with Islamic radicals. From this article:

Radical Islam is finding new recruits in the Netherlands among Dutch converts to Islam and young Muslim women, the government said on Friday.

"Along with Muslim youths of foreign descent, several Dutch converts are undergoing a particular process of radicalisation. The police are receiving lots of reports of this," the government said in a report to parliament on fighting terrorism.
....
The trial starts in Amsterdam next week of 14 young men, mostly with Moroccan roots, who are suspected of belonging to a militant Islamist group that was planning attacks.

Last Tuesday, French police arrested six suspected Islamic extremists, including a prison guard, as part of an investigation centered on money-laundering.

There was this report from Spain Nov 23:

Police on Wednesday arrested 11 people suspected of financing and giving logistical support to an Islamic extremist group linked to al-Qaida, Spain's interior minister said.

Heavily armed police detained the suspects in and around three Spanish cities, seizing computer equipment, drugs and $41,200 in cash during morning raids on homes and businesses in largely immigrant neighborhoods, officials said.

The 11 arrested in Alicante, Murcia and Granada were suspected of having ties to the Algeria-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which has declared allegiance to al-Qaida.

In addition, there may be sleeper cells in Spain.

Europe has let the wolf in the door, and it will be extremely difficult to get it back out again. With support in Europe for terror growing, with support for suicide operations in Iraq growing, even attracting Western women, with terrorism-related arrests across Europe, the threat is clear.

This is a war, and if we don't finish it, the radicals will. We can hope it goes away, we can light candles and sing songs and say that if we just leave Iraq all will be well, but the threat in Europe is growing, not receding.

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The Counterterroism Blog has more background about the events in Belgium.