As information slowly emerges about the Thursday’s tragic events of this morning in London, there is naturally a good deal of speculation about who the perpetrators of these attacks are, were, whether could anything could have been done to prevent these attacks them and what the response of both the British people and government will be.

Unfortunately It does look as if what has long been predicted since September 11 2001 has finally happened. The UK has suffered a significant attack terrorist attack that, at these very early stages, has all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda. However, it is too soon for the government to reach such a conclusion.

The experience of the Spanish government in wrongly identifying Eta as the culprit of the Madrid bombings remains a salutary lesson; and the question of al-Qaeda’s involvement now will only be confirmed over time as the evidence is slowly gathered. However, its co-ordinated and indiscriminate nature and the relative stability in Northern Ireland point away from that Irish republican terrorists that being the source of these barbaric acts.

If this proves to be an al-Qaeda or an associated group is responsible, operation then this tragedy has actually been on a scale far lower than many feared. Brutal as this statement reads, it is worth remembering that the casualty levels wrought on September 11 2001 in in the US, in Madrid last year and also in the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 were larger.

The key thing now is to understand who conducted the operation and why they did it in this matter. manner. As Terrorist incidents they are inevitably undertaken with a view to maximising the political impact.effect. they have.

The timing of the attack is more likely to be directly linked to the beginning of the Group of Eight summit as a statement to its leaders. However, there is the possibility that it the timing was deliberately timed to coincide with in the wake of London’s successful bid to win the 2012 Olympics, thus maximising the publicity. of this atrocity within this context.

The choice of targets – because that is how the perpetrators of these acts will view the bus and trains – and the manner of the attacks will have been deliberately carefully chosen. Ultimately, the goal of the attacks is political and it will have been chosen to have the maximum political effect on the UK and elsewhere. The attacks targets were against relatively soft targets – i.e. ones that are difficult to protect and not directly part of the political or security apparatus.

There has already been some speculation that the attacks were also timed for when a significant amount of the Britain’s security capabilities were engaged in protecting the G8 summit in Scotland, thus leaving other areas, such as London, less well protected. Inevitably There are only finite resources invested in the provision of security and a good number of police officers have been deployed to Gleneagles for to support the summit. This means that Resources in the capital are more thinly spread. Nevertheless, the emergency services co-ordinated by the Metropolitan Police have long planned for this eventuality and the response appears to have been well-handled. The security presence in London has remained high and it is other areas of policing that are more likely to have lost personnel. The reality is that it is simply impossible to provide full-proof fool-proof security even for obvious targets, as the gate-crashing of Prince Harry’s birthday celebrations at Windsor Castle showed. Guaranteeing a similar level Guaranteeing the of security for of every bus and train is not practical; the focus has to be on intercepting the bombs before they are planted.

The choice of targets also raises interesting questions about the scale and threat posed by capability of the terrorists operating in the UK. Two possible conclusions might explain this. Firstly, the capability of al-Qaeda or its associates have within the UK is far less than many have estimated. If this is true then this would indicate that the security forces may have been relatively successful in combating the threat posed. Given the Earlier attempts to develop ricin and in combating terrorism. The closeness small area in which the attacks took place also of the targets suggests that there may only have been a handful of perpetrators. this might give some support to this argument with relatively few people involved. ??????????

The alternative scenario is that this was an operation put on at relatively short notice and without the care usually associated with al-Qaeda. This would mean that the targeting may have been directly linked to the successful Olympic bid. If this was the case, the choice of target – London or Paris – was dependent on yesterday’s decision by the International Olympic Committee. and al-Qaeda may, like so many others, have assumed that their targets would be in Paris and had to re-adjust.

So what happens next? Partly this depends on the government; and more significantly it depends on the British people’s support for a firm double-edged approach. Al-Qaeda and its like are a reflection of perceived and real injustices around the world. Ironically, this was part of the G8 agenda. Ultimately these groups will only be defeated if they are separated from the populations from which they draw recruits and support. This requires needs Britain to remain engaged in what President George W. Bush has called referred to as the “global war on terrorism”, at the same time helping to resolve disputes such as the Israel-Palestine issue conflict and also seeking to address tackle the inequalities that the Make Poverty History campaign has been seeking to address.

The writer is senior lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College, London