Terror Bombing in Sweden: Troops, Cartoons, a Widow, and Questions

I haven't written much about Sweden.

In a blog like this one, that's a good thing.

It looks like folks in Sweden, and folks here in central Minnesota, celebrate the Christmas season in about the same way. No big surprise there, considering how many Scandinavians live in this part of the world. I'm half-Norwegian, myself - and that's another topic. Sort of.

That explains why folks were doing a particular sort of shopping in Stockholm last Saturday.

Holiday Shopping: Snow, Festive Decorations, and a Botched Bombing

"Eyewitnesses have told of the moment an apparent suicide bomber blew himself up just a stone's throw from Stockholm's busiest shopping street on Saturday.

• Stockholm attack follows terror warnings (12 Dec 10)
• One dead after suicide bombing in Stockholm (11 Dec 10)

" 'We were scared to death,' said one local resident.

"The man died on the intersection of the Drottninggatan thoroughfare and Bryggargatan, a side street.

"An eyewitness interviewed by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper (DN) said something appeared to have blown up against the man's abdomen.

" 'He had no injuries to his face or the rest of his body and the shops around him were not damaged,' he said.

"The eyewitness, a paramedic identified only as Pascal, said he removed a 'Palestinian scarf' from the man's face in an attempt to free up his airways. Next to the man's body was a two-metre piece of metal piping...."
(The Local)

Good news: Only one person died. Bad news: somebody died.

Well, as we say here in Minnesota, "it could be worse."

A Wannabe Murderer, a Widow, and Lots of Questions

The wannabe mass murderer has been identified. He's Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly: a married man whose death left a widow and lots of questions.

Like whether someone else is likely to have a shot at killing holiday shoppers. That's not an unreasonable question, in my opinion. The impression I get from the news is that Swedish law enforcement and related officials are walking through a common-sense investigation. Which, as of Sunday, pointed to the bombing being a one-man act:

"Police said on Sunday they were treating bomb blasts in Stockholm as an act of terrorism by a lone attacker that followed an emailed threat referring to Sweden's troops in Afghanistan and to cartoons of Mohammad.

"Police stopped short of calling Saturday afternoon's blasts, which killed the suspected bomber and wounded two people, a suicide attack. A car blew up in a busy shopping area, followed minutes later by a second explosion nearby.

"Shortly before the blasts, Swedish news agency TT received a threatening letter referring to Sweden's presence in Afghanistan and caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad drawn by a Swedish cartoonist. The letter included digital sound files with a recording in broken Swedish and in Arabic....

"...TT said the letter promised attacks over Sweden's presence in Afghanistan, where it has 500 troops with the U.S.-led NATO force, and the cartoons drawn three years ago by Lars Vilks...."
(Reuters)

Those cartoons keep surfacing, metaphorically speaking: sort of like a dead muskrat in a pond.

That was Sunday. As of yesterday, it's pretty obvious that those Swedes who look after the country's security are still walking through that investigation.

"Some 200 possibly violent Islamic extremists live in Sweden, according to an intelligence report released Wednesday after the country's first-ever suicide bombing narrowly missed Christmas shoppers.

" 'The group of active members ... consists of just under 200 individuals,' the Säpo intelligence agency said in its 126-page report, based on data from 2009 and scheduled to be published before the weekend's attack in central Stockholm...."
(The Swedish Wire)

Swedish Muslims, Numbers, and a Comparison

Two hundred is a biggish number. Compared to Sweden's 9,074,000 or so citizens (As of July this year) , though: not so much. ("Sweden," The World Factbook, CIA (last updated December 8, 2010))
I'd compare the 200-odd hotheads in that group to the number of Swedish Muslims, but that'd take more digging than I've got time for today. The resource I used for Sweden's population says that 87% of folks living in Sweden are Lutheran. The other 13% are "other." That "includes Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist." If all 13% of folks in Sweden who aren't Lutheran followed Islam, that'd be around 1,179,000 people. Still a lot more than 200.

A Wikipedia article says that Islam accounts for about 5% of the Swedish population: around 450,000 to 500,000 Muslims. It's one of the articles that cites references, and five percent of 9,074,000 is about 453,700, so they may be right.

Let's say it's the lower number: 450,000 Muslims. Two hundred or so are in this group. That's 200/450,000, or 1/2,250 of Swedish Muslims.

Abstractions are - abstract. One way I have, for making numbers 'real,' is to use something I'm familiar with as a comparison.

This'll be useful for me: for you, maybe not so much. I share a small town in central Minnesota with about 4,000 other people. If one out of 2,250 of us were part of a nutcase group that wanted to kill people they didn't agree with - there would be two or three people in the group, depending on whether you round up or down.

That'd be a real concern for me and my neighbors: but it would not indicate that the folks living here are dangerous.

"They're All Muslims" - Let's Not Go There

The point? The wannabe murderer almost certainly killed himself for "religious" reasons. Maybe 200 other people in Sweden have the same sort of ideas sloshing around in their heads.

There's little reason to assume that all Muslims in Sweden should be shot on sight, or at least locked up, because "they're all Muslims." (February 15, 2008, December 29, 2007) A case could be built, using that sort of logic, for pointing to what Joseph Burgess did and advocating that all Christians be locked up because they're murderers. He killed people - apparently for "religious" reasons - too. (A Catholic Citizen in America (July 24, 2009))

There are days when I feel that it wouldn't take much of a shove for America, or any other Western country, to start locking up Muslims, Christians, and other terrorists - for the good of the nation, of course. Sounds crazy? So did what a think tank came up with, not all that long ago. (April 4, 2009, April 1, 2009, A Catholic Citizen in America (March 23, 2009))

One of the reasons that I'm rather concerned about how Muslims are treated in countries where they're a religious minority - is that I'm a member of a religious minority myself. Think of it as enlightened self interest.

One More Tangent: Security Cameras, "Privacy," and Getting a Grip

I don't know how most Americans feel about security cameras at intersections and in stores: but apparently quite a few folks in this country's dominant culture don't like them. At all.

It has to do with notions of "privacy," it seems.

As nearly as I can tell, these folks say "privacy," where I'd say "anonymity."

Privacy, Bank Codes, and a Door on the Outhouse

I think "privacy" is a good idea, by the way. A dictionary says it means "the quality of being secluded from the presence or view of others." (Princeton's WordNet) A desire for privacy is part of why we put doors on the outhouse not all that long ago, don't generally have floor-to-ceiling windows in the shower today - and don't, for the most part, tell strangers how to access our bank account.

That sort of privacy make sense. Besides, it gets cold in the winter around here: so those outhouse doors served a practical function, too.

Now, about those cameras in the convenience store.

As I said, I live in a small town in central Minnesota. It's a little bigger than the places where 'if you forget what you did during the day, ask someone: they'll know.' But not by much. I love it here: but this is not a place where I can go out and not be noticed.

Or not go out and not be noticed. Not too long ago a neighbor asked if I'd been okay: that person hadn't seen me for a while.

Like I say, I love it here. But living in a town where a sizable fraction of the population know you by sight and many of those have at least a modest interest in your welfare - obviously isn't for everybody.

Some folks seem to prefer living among tens of thousands of other anonymous faces, where they could disappear and not be missed. Places like that, in my opinion, need security cameras to take up some of the slack when it comes to looking out for folks.

We've got those glass-eyed sentinels here in Sauk Centre, too: in some of the stores and at least one parking lot.

Here's what got me thinking about security cameras, "privacy," and the human condition:

"Police in Sweden are increasingly convinced the Stockholm bomber had an accomplice after fresh analysis of his suicide tape revealed the presence of a second person by his side.

"Experts who have scrutinised the recording say someone can be heard breathing in the background as Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly vows to kill innocent civilians.

"Almost a week after Abdulwahab blew himself up in a shopping street in Stockholm, injuring two people, detectives have also failed to find any trace of explosives in properties linked to the bomber, suggesting someone else could have made the bombs at an unknown location.

"Police hope that if the bomber did meet an accomplice in the days before the bombing, the rendezvous might have been caught on CCTV. Hundreds of hours of recordings from CCTV cameras in Stockholm and his home town of Tranas have been seized and are now being scrutinised by investigators. ..."
(The Telegraph)

Which brings up the subject of conspiracies, real and imagined - and that's another topic.

Related posts:

• Assumptions and stereotypes:
  • "Robin Hood, Hamlet, and Five Severed Heads"
    A Catholic Citizen in America (December 13, 2010)
  • "Who Needs Facts? Cultural Assumptions and Politics"
    (July 24, 2009)
  • "Pray for Neda: And Learn About the Real Iran"
    (June 26, 2009)
  • "Right-Wing Extremists Really Are Terrorists, Sometimes"
    (June 6, 2009)
  • " 'the Catholics are super-duper terrorists': Who Knew?"
    (April 1, 2009)
  • "Pro-Life? You May be a Dangerous Domestic Terrorist! MIAC Says So"
    A Catholic Citizen in America (March 23, 2009)
• Privacy/anonymity
  • "The Right to Privacy and/or Anonymity"
    (July 11, 2007)
  • "Security Cameras, Big Brother, and Good Sense"
    (July 9, 2007)

In the news:

• "Stockholm bomber: police fear accomplice is on the loose"
  Martin Evans, The Telegraph (December 16, 2010)
• "No need for higher terrorism threat level-Sweden"
  Edition: U.S., Reuters (December 16, 2010)
• "200 violence-prone Islamic extremists in Sweden "
  Politics, The Swedish Wire (December 15, 2010)
• "Stockholm bomb 'first in Christmas campaign' "
  Gordon Rayner, The Daily Telegraph, via The Vancouver Sun (December 15, 2010)
• "Police probe Stockholm blasts as act of terrorism"
  Edition: U.S., Reuters (December 12, 2010)
• "Witnesses tell of Stockholm bomb terror"
  The Local (Sweden's News in English) (December 11, 2010)

Bhutto, Bombs, and Curious Coincidences

The blame game has started, after the Bhutto Bombing in Karachi, Pakistan. CBS News said that it looked like Al Qaeda was gunning for Former (and maybe future) Prime Minister Benezir Bhutto, when they heard that she was heading back to Pakistan.

Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander and bigwig in his tribe's territory on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, said that he'd meet Bhutto with suicide bombers. That at least one suicide bomber had a blast in Karachi, an associate of his says the Taliban wasn't involved.

Bhutto thinks there may have been some combination of four groups involved in the attack:

• Taliban elements
• Al-Qaeda
• Pakistani Taliban
  (I'm not sure what the distinction is)
• "A fourth -- a group -- I believe from Karachi," she said

Sounds like the street in Karachi was a sort of shooting gallery, with bombs instead of BB guns.

Pakistani security types say that Bhutto should have stuck to their plan of flying to her speech by helicopter.

With 20-20 hindsight, it's obvious that a helicopter ride would have avoided the street-level attack. On the other hand, helicopters have been known to fall out of the sky, too.

It's 'way too early to know exactly what happened, but the Karachi police seem to be piecing together the evidence. There was at least one suicide bomber: a young man who first lobbed a grenade, and 22 seconds later blew himself up next to a truck.

The bomber's head landed near the rest of the wreckage, and was taken to a forensics lab. Karachi police hope to figure out who he was.

There was a police presence around Bhutto's convoy, including the van that helped shield her from the biggest blast. On the other hand, a broadcast news report said that there was a rather light distribution of police around the route.

Which might help explain why it took the convoy 10 hours to go through Karachi.

Bhutto didn't blame the Pakistani government, but said that individuals in the government might be involved. This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Karachi street lighting failed at sunset, and Bhutto's people couldn't call the national security adviser. Phone service wasn't working, either.

Sometimes conincidences are just that: "A sequence of events that although accidental seems to have been planned or arranged." (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).

Sometimes, though, there are cause-effect links.

Pakistan isn't up to American standards of telecommunications, but they're not doing too badly in the major cities. And, one of the country's three international gateway exchanges is in Karachi - which shows that the major port city isn't a backwater.

Pakistan's national power agency, NEPRA, gives the impression that the Pakistani power grid is in pretty good shape. A claim I take with a grain of salt.

Just the same, I think it's odd that street lights go out and phone service failing in an Islamic country, just as the convoy of a woman who is likely to become president passes through town. With a light police presence.

Related posts, on Individuals and the War on Terror.

Posts about Benazir Bhutto.

Nuclear Stockpile Bombed?

I don't, as a rule, quote entire news articles, but this will be an exception:

"From The Sunday Times
September 16, 2007
Israelis 'blew apart Syrian nuclear cache'
Secret raid on Korean shipment"

That's it, as of 10:20 am, Central time USA, September 16, 2007. Intriguing.

Update: Noon, Central time USA, September, 16, 2007.

This raid seems to be the one made by the Israeli Air Force ten days ago. The target was a set of underground bunkers.

Both the Israeli and Syrian governments are being quiet about what actually happened, but the story is that North Koreans were there, that equipment and/or material from the North Korean nuclear program. And that a network run by AQ Khan might be involved. Mr. Khan created of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and has at best been the victim of a regrettable string of coincidences.

The Sunday Times (UK) says that the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, had "evidence that Syria was seeking to buy a nuclear device from North Korea." A North Korean nuclear bomb on a North Korean Scud-C missile would be bad news for Israel.

Although I suppose Syria should be commended for being a loyal customer.

" 'This was supposed to be a devastating Syrian surprise for Israel,' the Sunday Times quoted an Israeli source as saying. 'We've known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds, but Israel can't live with a nuclear warhead.' "
(Jerusalem Post (September 17, 2007))

I suppose that very intelligent heads might caution Israel that a better approach to hostile neighbors with nuclear weapons would be dialog and peace education efforts .... to weave a world-wide web of Arabs, Jews and others who want to build a new Middle East "based on coexistence and neighborly relations."

That sound like a very nice goal.

Someday, when more countries have decided to stop helping religious fanatics who want to kill Jews and other infidels, I think that a program of dialog and peace education would be a good idea.

Until that day, my sympathy is with those who take firm, practical steps to at least keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of religious nut jobs.