Richard M Bennett
In the shocked aftermath of the latest terrorist attempt to bring death and destruction to major British cities on successive days, questions are automatically being asked about the effectiveness of the United Kingdom’s security apparatus.
Britain dodged a bullet when loaded car bombs were discovered in London’s entertainment district before exploding. The next day, terrorists tried to ram a car bomb into Glasgow International Airport. As of this writing, a nationwide dragnet had netted five suspects, with more arrests anticipated.
Once again the British Security Service (commonly known as MI5, for Military Intelligence, Section 5) was taken by surprise by coordinated attacks by a home-grown Islamic terrorist group that managed to get in “under the radar”.
Despite the official protestations that there was no warning of any sort, it has to be pointed out that on April 22 the London Sunday Times published an article by Dipesh Gadher that appeared to be based on information from security sources.
Headlined “Al-Qaeda planning big British attack”, it said, “Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning the first ‘large-scale’ terrorist attacks on Britain and other Western targets [since July 7, 2005] with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report. Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki’ in an attempt to ‘shake the Roman throne’, a reference to the West.”
Significantly, the article adds, “Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by al-Qaeda planners as a ‘change in the head of the company’.”
While there was obviously no specific intelligence suggesting a time, date or even a place, this was a significant period, with the changeover of the British government’s leadership and the opening of the Scottish Parliament by Queen Elizabeth II. It must therefore have been flagged as likely to attract al-Qaeda’s attention.
Taken together with a reported increase in the level of al-Qaeda communications “chatter”, a substantially raised level of security awareness and precautions would have been expected at the very least. However, it is not yet clear just how seriously the authorities took the potential threat.
Terrorist threat at ‘critical’ level
With the obvious links between the failed London and Glasgow attacks, there is a growing realization that Britain may now be facing a nationwide terrorist threat.
Indeed, late on Saturday the Home Office raised the threat level to Critical in response to advice from MI5’s terrorist analysis center. This suggests that the intelligence services now believe an attack is “imminent” and may occur in the lead-up to the anniversary of the July 7, 2005, attacks on London’s transport system.
The Security Service must now accept the unpalatable fact that significant elements of the terrorist cells that carried out the attacks in the capital two years ago escaped detection and have now returned to the urban battlefield with new tactics and weapons.
The fact that the first of this new wave of attempts at mass murder failed should not lull the authorities or general public into a false sense of security. These attacks prove that the terrorists can get through, and anywhere in Britain is now vulnerable. The next target might be a hospital, a school, a bus or railway station, or even a supermarket.
So, did the authorities take their eye off the ball, or were they looking at the wrong people? Is it simply that MI5 is not up to the job, or is it being asked to do the impossible? Is the Security Service ever really going to cope?
The Security Service has admitted that it currently has some 2,000 Islamic “targets” under suspicion. To this must be added the remaining unreconstructed elements of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other terrorist and extremist movements ranging from animal rights to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
It now has to deal with increasing Russian and Chinese espionage, fast approaching Cold War levels. This does not take into account all the other more mundane duties of the Security Service.
Despite the fact that the Security Service will have increased its staffing levels from about 1,800 in 2001 to probably in excess of 3,000 by 2010, it will remain woefully inadequate in numbers to deal with even the current level of threat.
Even at its new maximum strength, the Security Service would probably still only be able to deploy about 800 officers for active surveillance or as agent handlers.
MI5: Under-strength and under-funded
To conduct counter-terrorism and counterespionage operations to a high level would require a minimum of 5,000 field officers and a Security Service of no fewer than 12,000 people in total. That is four times the projected total strength for 2010.
Even if you added in the strength of the Metropolitan Police SO15 (Specialist Operations) Counter-Terrorism Command and the combined SO12 Special Branch and SO13 Anti-Terrorist Unit, you would still fail by a long way to make up the required numbers.
Simply put, both the International Terrorism (G) Branch and the Domestic Terrorism (T) Branch of the Security Service are being asked to do a vitally important job with a mere fraction of the resources, both personnel and financial, necessary to carry out fully the duties required of them. This sad state of affairs could easily apply to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and to most other security services within the developed world as well.
Certainly, MI5 has considerably enhanced its capability since September 11, 2001: more than 1,000 new staff; improved equipment; new covert-surveillance facilities and additional offices in West London and seven or eight small regional MI5 offices are being opened, usually co-located with important police headquarters.
Home-grown terrorism a genuine threat
However, during the past six years the Islamic terrorist threat has moved from being almost entirely external in origin to something much more significantly dangerous - home-grown. Britain now faces a growing network of dedicated Islamic terrorist cells deeply implanted among local Muslim communities over much of London, the Midlands, the north of England and central Scotland in particular.
This is a threat that years of neglect by the Security Service have left it ill-equipped to deal with. A lack of language specialists and officers of the right ethnic background, along with little or no knowledge of the culture, habits or beliefs of more than a million Muslim British citizens, leaves MI5 bereft of the vital intelligence and understanding needed to fight this new form of terrorism.
To add to this, the Security Service has been instructed by the government to continue close surveillance of the rejectionist elements of the IRA and will still have to cope with a massive growth of traditional espionage operations, by Russia and China in particular.
In the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European communism in the early 1990s, an ill-judged purge of battle-hardened and highly professional MI5 officers left the service critically short of the very officers and middle management now so desperately needed to train, advise and direct the new intake of inexperienced staff.
The Security Service, by so quickly rejecting the very men and women who had played such a major role in defeating Soviet communism, seriously undermined its ability to tackle the growing menace of Islamic extremism. MI5 was not alone in this. The Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and, in the US, the Central Intelligence Agency and FBI all shed large numbers of staff who had been tempered by long, hard operational experience against the Soviet secret service (KGB) and its allies.
Though all these services, in common with those of their Western allies, are quite evidently working hard and fast to repair the damage, it will still take some years before the new recruits can be welded into highly effective and truly professional officers.
Will al-Qaeda and the wider Islamic extremist movement be generous enough to give the West the time to put its security house back in order? I think not. Would any government pay the true price of security?
“The first responsibility of any government is to provide security for its citizens,” noted a recent US counter-terrorism briefing. Indeed, without such security from external aggression or internal revolt, there can be no viable foundation on which to build the economic and social life of the nation.
But with so many demands on often severely limited national budgets from education, health services, pensions and a hundred other areas, would any government be prepared to fund a vast increase in spending on intelligence and security?
Few Western politicians would really wish to be responsible for the imposition of a virtual police state; nor would they wish to be responsible for a savage rise in taxation and risk the wrath of the general public at the next national election.
Even if they chose to do so there is no certainly that throwing money at the problem would solve anything or, indeed, make the nation very much safer, only poorer. Larger security services are simply not an answer in themselves.
The communist leaders in the Kremlin believed they could hide safely behind the vast state security structure they had created over 70 years. History proved them wrong; even 250,000 KGB operatives weren’t enough.
If a government doesn’t have the support of the majority of its citizens, no amount of secret police will prevent its inevitable demise. Is this what the ordinary British citizen really wants?
Is the general public really prepared for the drastic measures likely to be imposed by a government in any serious attempt to reach a realistic, viable level of security?
The terrorist threat at its most apparent in the aftermath of an actual or attempted attack is frightening and disruptive. However, this state usually lasts for no more than a few days or so, allowing a semblance of normalcy to return quickly even to bomb-blasted streets.
The draconian counter-terrorist measures needed to have any meaningful impact on the threat of extremist action would seriously affect the day-to-day lives of countless millions of ordinary citizens, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and for the foreseeable future.
The denial of basic human rights, restrictions on travel and financial dealings and the slow demise of liberty may soon be considered far too high a price to pay to prevent the frightful, but occasional, terrorist outrage.
Indeed, many civil libertarians would no doubt argue that any such attempt to clamp down on the present threat, with the unavoidable challenges this must bring to a civilized lifestyle, simply plays the terrorist game and is exactly what al-Qaeda and the rest want the West to do.
Even worse, such strong anti-democratic measures would still be quite unable to guarantee safety; the determined terrorist would still get through the defenses every so often. But more important, the Western world would have voluntarily given up the cherished aspects of our way of life we were apparently seeking to protect: human rights, freedom, liberty - perhaps even the raison d’etre for our very survival.
Perhaps for many, a form of terrorism-weariness simply creeps in - it is just another problem to ignore like debt, divorce, crime or cancer. Take reasonable precautions, but otherwise simply shrug your shoulders and get on with your life.
Today’s Islamic terrorist is not only clever, dedicated, determined, patient and utterly ruthless, he has another major, but little spoken of, advantage.
In medieval times no doubt, nations would have linked the fate of the Muslims living among them to the continuing “good behavior” of their extremist co-religionists, wherever they may be. This sort of response is quite rightly denied to modern civilized governments. Yet it provides a crucial operational capability for al-Qaeda followers who are therefore free to operate within Muslim minorities in Europe and North America certain that their appalling acts of violence pose no long-term threat to the survival of those communities - sure too that Western governments will usually and sometimes reluctantly refrain from emulating the depraved and inhuman actions so beloved of the extremist.
The West must fight back
That is not to say that there is nothing the West can do, that there is no way to fight back effectively. Many Muslim nations, including some purported allies of the West, know far more about Islamic terrorist movements than they care to admit.
Despite constant denials from their governments, it is a sad fact that counter-terrorism cooperation with many of the Muslim security services is limited and often unproductive. Information is simply not shared; action is not being taken to prevent terrorists training and obtaining weapons and money; effective restrictions on travel are not in place; active surveillance is not even attempted in many cases; and highly important intelligence on terrorists’ planned actions is not reaching the West in time.
While admitting that there is no “quick fix” for the Middle East, to many security observers there remain viable options open and underused by the Western powers. Much greater emphasis must be placed on active cooperation between Muslim countries and the West.
Those Islamic governments still failing to take positive action to prevent either their own citizens or foreign nationals based within their borders from indulging in terrorist activities should be positively encouraged to change their stance, helped financially, politically and even militarily if required. If all else fails, they should face tough internationally agreed sanctions.
The writer is painfully aware that there are many other critically important social, financial, religious, political, geographical and indeed historical factors at play in both the Middle East in general and Islamic-Western relations in particular. It is imperative that these issues receive a much wider level of thoughtful, unbiased and positive discussion at all levels of society, both in the Western nations and those of Islam. However, the writer feels they fall outside the scope of this article.
Whatever else may be said, it is probably true that success against the terrorist will only be achieved by a long-term commitment, and there are simply no easy or quick solutions.
If the Western powers want success, then they had better be prepared to stump up the financial and human resources to enable the intelligence and security services to do the job, and significantly, the general public will need a high level of both courage and patience. Anything else will hand a victory to the terrorist bomber and gunman.
