A summer night, London, 2017

What can happen on any given Saturday, during a summer night in a European capital? Everything could be full of armed police, storming through pubs, barking at everyone to immediately lie on the ground, because it is possible that a bomb could explode at any moment. SMS are sent to colleagues working in a certain district to ask if they are safe. Friends call each other to help and figure out which "no-go" zones to avoid. At the same time, the Twitter feed is constantly updated. Some who stayed at home simply remain glued to the news. The BBC reports of an "incident with a van at a bridge". A euphemism, of course. But everyone knows what that means, what just happened, and who is responsible for it. No one in civilized circles openly talks about it, and certainly not the BBC. It is a peaceful society, behaving like a war zone. The police themselves tweet and ask the public: "run, hide and tell". That same police force that simultaneously wants hundreds of revelers to late at night march away in line with raised hands, so that their palms are visible. This is a scenario that would be much more familiar to us if we were to see it in Kashmir or Xinjiang. And this is happening in the same country that defeated the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, and Hitler. All of this leaves the sense of a hideous, ignominious defeat.

UPDATE: London Ambulance Service has taken over 30 patients to hospitals after terror attacks; at least 6 killed. https://t.co/4N3Y7fLA7D pic.twitter.com/dd6ulBQckJ

— ABC News (@ABC) June 4, 2017

I was born in India. I have seen far more Islamist terrorism than the average Westerner. I can explain what your media avoids mentioning. The I word. There is a difference between terrorism and "insurgency." Forget all the otherwise predictable answers. Forget the suit types and apologists on TV who blame all crimes on colonialism, poverty, racism, the rise of Islamophobia, Katie Hopkins, Alt Right, on just about everything under the sun, except the most obvious. Forget hijab-wearing feminists who blame all guilt on Israel and the Palestinian problem. Forget the scripted speeches of political leaders talking about the goodness of human nature or the evil of "international terrorism." And forget laminated posters with "I heart * current city under attack *," forget FB profile flags, hipsters "sending love and good vibes," tea lights, oceans of lights, all the empty platitudes.

Theory of Insurgency

One must understand the nature of this "insurgency." An insurgency is movement. The insurgency does not need to be coordinated or centrally planned. One of the most well-researched rebel groups, the Naxalite movement, operated as a circle of Maoist radicals engaged in a decade-long war with the Indian government before this movement could reach its peak. It was neither centralized nor coordinated. Many of the local insurgents had very different operational skills, theories, and speeds of action. In addition, there were small groups mainly housed in ultra-leftist universities, poisoned by a common ideology, that planned to overthrow a system they considered undignified.

However, Budapest, Prague, or Bratislava is not what awaits London, Paris, Brussels, and St. Petersburg. Or in the case of Kashmir, Xinjiang, or Manila. Lone Wolf Terrorism is a myth. There are sleeper cells in every major Western city. The immediate hard-right or hard-left response would be to blame all the guilt of terrorism on immigration or the history of colonialism. But let's be blunt: how many Indians, Chinese, or Koreans are there who bomb any city in the world? How many Russians, Georgians, or Ukrainians mow down eight-year-old children? There are conflicts in each of these countries, a history of poverty, colonialism, and authoritarian thinking in each of these societies. However, all these factors are irrelevant when it comes to developments related to Islamism. Colonialism does not produce Islamist terrorism, otherwise Manila would not be targeted by ISIS.

Once the smoke clears, the same voices will surely call for interventions in the Middle East. The 37th time the same magic. Last time the North African coastline was successfully devastated between the perennially burning Middle East and a destitute continent; however, it did not yield good results, to put it kindly. Those on the other side will then claim that the "War on Terror" has failed from the start. But we have never fought a war against terror, we have fought wars against tyrants. Against tyrants who have fought against terrorists with brutal violence for much longer than we have.

Those with no identity seek a new one

Most Western terrorists are from the second generation living in the West and come from almost completely closed communities. They have self-radicalized, moved away, and pledged allegiance to a different entity, a different state, and its ideology. They have done this because they could never identify with the nation they were born into. Because a healthy civil nationalism in Western countries is shunned by the ruling (borderless) elite. People need the identity of a tribe. A flag to wave. If that is denied to them, suddenly they are non-tribal. They simply choose a different identity. Millions once chose the red flag and swore allegiance to it, millions now choose a black flag. And Britain is now broken: should the Union Jack fly or the European flag?

Europe does not have a bright future ahead. Thomas Hegghammer already pointed out in a thesis in 2016, four factors that lead to Europe now becoming a battleground: there is a single, specific group of second-generation migrants who are overall economically underperforming and therefore will continue to radicalize. This development is fueled by a growing number of Jihad entrepreneurs, or simply put, recruiters of Islamists and imams in ghettos and mosques funded by our partners in the Gulf, to whom we have sold millions of dollars worth of weapons to continue civil wars and further destabilize the Middle East. All this leads to ongoing conflicts in the Muslim world, while we lack digital penetration of this world.

Time for Counterinsurgency?

Of course, none of these arguments will be found in the mainstream media, because that would mean accepting hard, politically incorrect facts. That would mean accepting that the "winning hearts and minds" strategy has failed. That would mean, no, we in the West are not united, and, yes, a fellow countryman could be planning an attack on that nearest nightclub where your daughter goes every Friday night. The hashtags have failed. Candlelight vigils have failed. Assuming this is an insurgency, it would be necessary to accept that the only option is to implement classical counterinsurgency strategies, to have eyes and ears in every community, to penetrate and monitor everything. In short, the debate between freedom and security would need to be decided – at least temporarily – in the name of security. That means less taxpayer money for throwing KAB500 (Note: Russian precision bombs) on white Toyota trucks in Syria, fewer British troops stationed in Lithuania, and significantly more money for armed neighborhood police patrolling their district regularly. It would also mean more money for monitoring communities – as much as there has been since "The Troubles" – and more Royal Navy in action against human trafficking and against NGOs collaborating with human traffickers.

The state's foremost duty is to protect its citizens.

As someone from a country that has been in a state of war with Islamist terrorism since the mid-1980s, I can tell you what I have seen and what could soon reach the West. The state's foremost duty is to protect its citizens. Nothing else. It does not have to pursue alleged hate speeches, morally support drug addicts, or explain idiotic microaggressions. But it must provide security to those who pay taxes. If a state cannot do that, citizens arm themselves. And I can tell you, you do not want to see that in your country.

SUMANTRA MAITRA is a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham (UK), researching great power politics and neo-realism, with a focus on Russia. He writes for "War on the Rocks" and "The National Interest" and is an analyst for "The Centre for Land Warfare Studies," India. He holds both a Master of Journalism and Mass Communication and a Master of International Studies, both with distinction. The article first appeared on QUILLETTE, reproduced with the author's kind permission.

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— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) June 3, 2017