There was a newspaper article yesterday I think about how Canada will probably be the next target by Al Queda because Canada is on the list of the 5 Christian countries that Al Queda will target. Sure Canada isn’t part of the Iraq conflict but they are in Afghanistan. USA, UK, Spain (all been bombed) only remaining is Australia & Canada…and maybe Italy too.
Do you think Canada’s number is up soon?
I fear that Italy will be next. Europe is a much easier target for radical Islamicists, Italy was a nominal supporter of the war in Iraq, and they will be hosting the winter Olympics.
It makes my skin crawl to speculate about this, but that’s how I see it. Let’s hope we’re all wrong about who is next…
I vote Paris.
There was an article in the paper yesterday commenting on how the other major candidates for hosting the olympics were all “cousins in suffering”. New York, Madrid, Moscow and now London all have “fresh memories of terror, and victms that had to be buried”. Mike Lopresti, who writes for Gannett News Service is the author of the article, I think he’s a sports columnist- but I could be wrong.
It’s entirely possible, but I doubt it. I’m not convinced that list of “five christian countries” really means much beyond being a scare tactic.
We’re not in Iraq. We’re in Afghanistan, but not to the degree that Americans are. We’re a lot less vocal about “The War on Terror” than the Americans and Brits. I suspect that it’s a lot more convenient to get the necessary explosives/chemicals/biologicals to the appropriate places in Europe; it’s a little tricky to drive from the Middle East to Canada!
Like I said, possible, but unlikely.
Could be Canada. Could be Italy. Could be France. Could be the USA again.
If it was easy to figure this stuff out, it would always get stopped before it happened.
Canada is a Christian country? Who knew? Does that mean that they’re going to target rural Alberta specifically?
Well, nobody notice if they target Manitoba or Saskatchewan. 
I doubt it will be Canada. That would be as pointless as targeting Iceland. Of couse, that’s granting a GREAT BIG ASSUMPTION that these acts have any supportable logic.
I’m thinking Italy. 
*::feeling neglected:: *
heh. There was a poll on a Dutch site on which you could vote who would be next.
The choices were: Amsterdam, Amsterdam or Amsterdam.
Strangely enough most votes went to Amsterdam.
I’m trying to decide if I should resent this comment, or be glad about its implication in our probable ranking on the likely targets list.
Most of the world supported the war in Afganistan, so saying Al’Queda will target one of those countries doesn’t really help narrow things down. I would imagine that they will continue targeting countries in Europe that supported the war in Iraq, especially those where support for the war amongst the public was already soft. This is also more or less what the web site claiming responsibility for the attacks said they would do (attack Denmark or Italy).
Also I’d imagine that the sites of these attacks are based on 10% geopolitical strategizing and 90% on the logistics of what western country they can get enough willing bombers and explosives togeather to carry out the attack. The site of the next attack might be Turkey, France or Germany not necessarily because these offer the most strategic targets but because they are allies of the US and might happen to have enough willing groups of guys with explosives to make an attack feasable.
As an aside, it’s interesting that we never think of the terrorists striking our eastern allies. If memory serves, S. Korea became the largest contributers of troops in Iraq after the US and UK after the withdrawl of Spain. Japan has also been a supporter (though I think only w/ non-combat troops), one would think these countries must have some muslium communites from Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers.
Its pretty sad when citizens want to get attacked in the hopes that it validates them on the world stage…
I realize there isn’t much point trying to apply logic to terrorism, but I can’t see any reason for an attack in Canada, when the US is just accross the river–litterally. From what I can tell, these guys REALLY hate the US. So they could either set off bombs in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, OR they could just drive one hour south and set off explosives in Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, or Seattle.
Canada just isn’t significant enough for the effort, sorry guys.
With all due respect to our Spanish brethren, Spain isn’t a particularly important player on the world stage, either.
The next attack is not going to be determined through a really logical algorithm of what the most important enemy of al-Qaida is; if that’s the way they did it, EVERY attack would be in the United States.
These attacks are going to occur wherever there’s al-Qaida sympathizers, or wherever they can get past Immigration, and wherever they can get together enough bomb parts and volunteers to pull off the attacks. Attacks of this nature are very much a matter of what the easiest target is, not the most important. Why do you think al-Qaida bombed the USA in a place like Kenya? I mean, of all the American targets, the embassy in Kenya? It happened to be an easy target.
If it should happen that some al-Qaida dudes find some easily acquired bomb parts in Montreal, the next target may well be Montreal.
Italy is next. Its far easier and more acessible. Politically the chances of Berlusconi losing his job after an attack are much greater plus his loud mouth has spoken way too many things.
I don’t know how much of a muslim population they have. I do bet that Italy probably doesn’t have as good a security as Spain and UK. The same guys that did Madrid probably did London… they are in Europe already. Canada is far.
I wanted to post exactly what John Mace said. It’s much easier for AQ to operate in Europe because there are so many more Muslims there. I don’t know how much of an Islamic community exists in Canada. If Al Qaeda is as decentralized these days as we are hearing, then it is a mistake to think about this topic like they have a list of priorities. More likely, different groups are just working in their own countries, and the question of which country gets hit first is mostly a question of timing.
Berlusconi said in March he will pull out Italian troops by September. So I don’t think Italy is being targetted. In fact, many countries stated in March they were thinking of pulling out by the end of the year, including Bulgaria and Japan. The numbers I was able to dig up on troop strengths in March (I don’t think it’s changed much since then):
US: 150,000
UK: 8,000
South Korea: 3,600
Italy: 3,085
Poland: 1,700
Ukraine: 1,600
Georgia: 898
Romania: 730
Japan: 550
Denmark: 496
Bulgaria: 450
Australia: 400
It’s hard to imagine terrorists being able to do anything in a lot of these countries, like Poland and South Korea, which have homogenous populations and few to no Muslims.
Also, Al-Qaeda doesn’t seem to be concerning itself with Afghanistan at all. When Spanish troops withdrew from Iraq, Spain doubled it’s troop commitment to Afghanistan. It’s in Iraq that they can mobilize terrorists, due to proximity with Saudia Arabia and Syria (and maybe Jordan matters too). So anything they can do to strain American forces there, particularly by making their allies leave, helps them acheive their “goals” there, mostly to instigate chaos and foreign troop withdrawal.
FYI, Canada’s Muslim population is estimated at 2%, which is comparable to Italy(1.7%), Spain (2.5%) and the UK (2.7%).
I doubt if Canada will be attacked for several reasons. The first is that it seems to me that al-Qaida’s strategy is to try to separate the countries that supported the Iraq war from those who didn’t, and to try to crumble that coalition. Therefore, the countries that are at the greatest risk are European countries that are easy to gain access to, that have weak governments, and that supported the war. Spain, Italy, the U.K.
The other reason is that Canada is across the ocean and far from the current struggle. On the other hand, our lax immigration and fairly large Muslim population makes it quite likely that there are already al-Qaida cells set up here.
On the other hand…
I’ve been listening to terrorism experts lately saying that al-Qaida has morphed. It used to have a fairly rigid top-down structure, with Bin Laden at the top, his deputies below, and major attacks coordinated by them. But the U.S. has actually been pretty good at smashing this up. A number of high-ranking al-Qaida people are captured or dead. The others are probably so deep in hiding that it’s hard for them to plan day-to-day activities. So al-Qaida has metasticized. The various cells around the world are now on their own, planning their own attacks without central control. The general strategy is still laid out from the top and distributed on web sites and other communications networks, but it’s up to various splinter groups and cells to decide where, when, and how to attack.
This would also explain why the latest attacks haven’t been as deadly or sophisticated - the local groups just don’t have the resources Bin Laden had before. So instead of huge, spectacular attacks once every few years we could be looking at kind of a steady-state level of smaller attacks. Any idiot with an internet connection can learn how to make bombs. So we’ll see fewer sophisticated coordinated attacks and more bombings.
So whether Canada gets hit soon or not could have less to do with the al-Qaida ‘master plan’, and more to do with pure chance - if there’s a cell here that happens to have a good target and enough resources to pull off an attack, we’ll be hit. If not, we won’t.
Now I know. The attempted LAX Millennium bombing involved a guy trying to drive down from Canada, so I imagine terrorists up there are trying.
Out of curiosity, what’s the source of your numbers?
Also, I suspect that the muslim population of European countries is mostly of M.E. or North African ethinic origin, wheres in the US and Canada the muslim population is more varied. If we’re trying to pin down the “recruitment base” for al Qaeda type groups, the ethnic origin of the muslim population is a key factor. Thus, even if the US/Canada had similar % of muslims as European countries, the Europeans would have a larger “recruitment base” (ie, muslims of M.E. or N. African origin). Pakistan can’t be considered a M.E. country, but I’d include ethnic Pakastanis in that group as well.
Also, I have to wonder if there is a difference in assimilation between European and North American muslim populations. Are Europena muslims more likel to be lower class, economically, and thus more marginalized? In the US, a lot of the Middle Eastern muslims who’ve immigrated here are highly educated, more secular and more assimilated-- there was never a “guest worker” type program like Germany.
I’m speculating to a degree, though, so if anyone has facts that either support that or disprove it, I’d be interested in seeing them. In short, I don’t think raw numbers tell you very much-- you have to look into the nature of the muslim populations and how they fit into the societies where they live.
Note: Please do not take anything in this post to mean muslim = terrorist. When I use the term “recruitment base”, I mean that out of the larger popluation, some small subset is sympathetic to the goals of al Qaeda, not that the populations as a whole would be sympathetic.
Do you have a cite for Japan thinking about pulling out? That surprises me.