The Sept. 15 terrorist bombing in a crowded London subway station – which injured at least 30 passengers but caused no deaths – was the latest in a string of terrorist attacks in Western Europe in recent years.
In mid-August, attacks in Barcelona and the nearby city of Cambrils killed 16 people and injured more than 130 just a few days before an attacker with a knife in Finland killed two and wounded eight others. Earlier assaults this year in London and Manchester, England, left dozens dead and hundreds more wounded.
Since 2015, there has been a sharp increase in both the number of attacks and deaths caused by terrorism in Europe. As someone who studies European security issues, I see three key factors contributing to this development: Europe’s large and often poorly integrated Muslim population, proximity to unstable regions like the Middle East and North Africa, and terrorists’ new focus on highly vulnerable “soft” targets.
The Sept. 15 bombing was London’s second major train attack in 12 years.
AP Photo/Frank Augstein
Poor integration
The Islamic State claimed on its Amaq news outlet that a “detachment” of its followers were responsible for last week’s London attack.
While terrorism in Europe today is commonly associated with Islamic extremism, since the end of World War II Europe has experienced different waves of terrorist violence. In the 1970s and 1980s, the biggest terrorist threat was secular Marxist groups such as the Red Brigades in Italy and Germany’s Red Army Faction as well as separatist groups such as Spain’s ETA and Northern Ireland’s Irish Republican Army (IRA).
But since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, radical Islam has become the greatest terrorist threat facing Europe.
In many Western European countries today, Muslims make up between 5 and 10 percent of the population. Many second- and third-generation European Muslims have struggled more than their parents or grandparents to assimilate, in part due to unemployment and xenophobia.
Their often poor integration creates a large pool of disaffected young people vulnerable to radicalization and extremist violence, though of course only a small number of them turn to terrorism.
In contrast, the U.S. has a much lower proportion of Muslim residents – about 3.3 million people, or 1 percent of the population – and they tend to be well-integrated into American society, with educational attainment, household income and employment levels comparable to those of the general public.
According to a recent U.S. government study, over a period of more than 15 years, from Sept. 12, 2001, to the end of 2016, radical Islamic extremists killed 119 people in the U.S. in 23 separate attacks – fewer than the number who died in coordinated attacks in and around Paris on the night of Nov. 13, 2015 (an attack that was, for the record, perpetrated by primarily French and Belgian nationals).
The short road to IS
Geography also works against Europe.