The town that grew the suicide bombers

In the British government report on last year's London terror bombings, a section is titled: "Social Life of the Young in Beeston."

The heading has the clinical tone of an anthropological treatise on a distant tribe but Beeston is just a drab and derelict neighborhood in Leeds, three hours north of London, where three of the four London suicide bombers were born and raised.

In the days after the bombing, dozens of journalists, myself included, descended into Beeston's narrow streets looking for some sort of insight into what drove the homegrown terrorists to commit their heinous acts.

Driving up Beeston Hill past grimy red brick homes, I initially got the same gut feeling as I had driving along an Appalachian hollow, though this was an urban version. Drying laundry fluttered over tiny weed gardens. A pregnant woman with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other watched a police car drive by.

But it was the teenagers, British Muslims of Pakistani descent, who stood at street corners, smoking and laughing and taunting police investigators, who offered clues to the "social life" of Beeston.

They wore tracksuits and gold chains or imitation designer jeans and tank-tops, and their hair was gelled and well groomed. They had grown up around the bombers, and the thought was, maybe their experiences could offer some insights into what turned locals into eligible suicide bombers.

Did the alienation, cultural clashes and malaise play a role? Did it make the killers easy prey to al-Qaida recruiters? Or could it have been any place, anywhere, any hard luck town with a pub at the bottom of the hill and a mosque down the street?

Mixed neighborhood
Beeston, a poor racially mixed community, is lined with small row houses built in another era to house the factory workers who were one of the cornerstones of the British industry. The neighborhood has long accommodated immigrant communities — from Asia in the 1960’s to Eastern Europe and Africa today. Reportedly, almost half the households now are on some sort of state assistance.

The house of Hasib Hussain's family was better tended then most in the neighborhood, with flowers on the windowsill. At 18, Hussain was the youngest of the suicide bombers, and had killed 13 innocent people with his bomb on a double-decker bus.

A man dressed in a black t-shirt and slacks squatted on the ground leaning against a lamppost. He said he was Hussain's cousin, but didn't want his name used.

Hussain's relative was drinking a beer there on the sidewalk. "I'm a Muslim," he told me, "I'm just not a good one," he said, lifting the can up. It was Budweiser.

He seemed numb from grief, or perhaps he was drunk. I asked him if his cousin, had become more religious recently, and he nodded. For the family, which was somewhat secular, that had been treated as a confusing but quite positive development.

His acknowledgement reflected a trend that was evident among the groups of Pakistani-British teens — even these irreverent young men were attentive to the pious men of the neighborhood, and to their friends as they became more studious.

One youngster told me that when Shehzad Tanweer, who blew himself up near London’s Liverpool Station killing seven other people, appeared to be getting more religious, that had widely been regarded with admiration.

Tanweer, 22, was an integral part of the neighborhood. His father was a local businessman who owned a fish and chips shop and was considered prosperous.

In fact Tanweer, a strapping gregarious fellow, was so outwardly well-adjusted that the very day before the bombing he was playing cricket in the Cross Flatt's park, just down the street. It was a gracious park, with old trees and pleasant footpaths around large fields where boys could play soccer.

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