Conflict Blotter

It looks like the ring leaders of the London terror plot were a Jordanian and Iraqi doctor. The obvious question is now whether or not these guys track back to the insurgency in Iraq, to Zarqawi and to Tawhid w’al Jihad, or other such groups. If so this could be the first direct example of the long feared Iraq blowback. To date there haven’t been any terror attacks outside of Iraq with a direct Iraq tie.

In Washington it sounds like these guys aren’t being taken too seriously since they so bungled the operation. It would appear they lacked the sort of operational mastermind, the equivalent of 9/11’s Mohammad Atta or the London subway bombings’ Sidique Khan, with the expertise necessary to bring off the operation without a hitch.

One option is that they were simply a group of amateurs who were radicalized and came together in England and learned how to put the attack together through the internet and other such sources. This is a frightening scenario because is shows how easily these things can be done. The next group won’t necessarily make the same mistakes as these guys.

The other scenario is that there was a central leadership, Al Qaeda or its ilk, that brough this group together and provided the necessary support for the attack.

Jordan has bred its share of radicals. Zarqawi was of course Jordanian, as was his mentor Abu Mohammad al Maqdissi who now sits in a Jordanian jail. Abu Zubaida, one of the first high value targets nabbed in Pakistan post-9/11 was a Jordanian-Palestinian, just like Mohammad Asha, the doctor arrested on London’s M6 after Saturday’s failed attacks. Osama Bin Laden’s spiritual leader Abdullah Azzam was also a Jordanian of Palestinian origins.