Category Archives: National Security

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Government, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, National Security, Society, Syria, United States

Britain’s terror threat…

BRITAIN AND THE THREAT OF TERRORISM FROM ISLAMIC MILITANTS

The words of the Prime Minister that the British people face a ‘greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before’ are chilling. David Cameron has said that this could last for ‘years and probably decades’, sentiments which should trouble us enormously because ordinary members of the public are now threatened as political figureheads. Disturbing, because the public will only have a sketchy understanding of why the probability of a terrorist attack has now been assessed as ‘highly likely’ within these shores.

The threat of an outrage of murder and mayhem on our streets in the UK stems from the exponential rise in Syria and Iraq of the murderous Islamic State (IS) group, whose wholesale executions of men, women and children – for failing to support their extreme and distorted interpretation of Islam – has made them unparalleled in their savage and brutal desire for bloodlust.

Intelligence suggests that more than 500 radical British Muslims have travelled to the Middle East war zone and that many, if not most of them, have joined the ranks of IS and have become steeped in its methods and ideology. Of real concern to the Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) is that about half of these are believed to have returned to Britain and that a few could be intent on waging their ruthless campaign on these shores.

Cynics are likely to argue that there is another agenda here. Government and military heads from NATO countries will shortly be meeting at Celtic manor in south Wales; President Obama is canvassing support for American air strikes; and, David Cameron is thought to want parliamentary backing for the RAF to bomb IS.

Yet, this theory hardly stands up to scrutiny. Terror threat levels are assessed independently of government by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. Such analysis may well have drawn upon the intelligence that came in from the intensive effort made by SIS to identify the British executioner of US photojournalist James Foley.

If defeating IS in the Middle East would cut off access to its training camps and weapons by new recruits and those intent on joining in the future, that would not deal with those returning to the UK nor the possibility of IS springing up again in another part of the Middle East. A region that is divisive and fractured will always be luring to militants intent on carrying out barbaric acts.

No part of the UK should see themselves as being on the periphery, or a spectator on the edge of trouble that could strike at any time. We should remember that one jihadist has already been identified as being from Aberdeen and the al-Qaeda inspired attack on Glasgow airport in 2007 should not be forgotten. Terror fuelled zealotry is no respecter of borders or boundaries.

The most obvious sign of what the raised terror threat means will be the increased visibility and intensity of armed police patrols at vulnerable locations. Further preventative measures will depend on unseen and diligent intelligence-gathering on likely perpetrators and intercepting IS fundamentalists as they attempt to enter the country. The maintenance of an uneasy calm should be allayed with the strenuous efforts being made by our security services in deterring IS attacks in the UK.

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  • 02 September, 2014

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has said that groups in Iraq and Syria are planning attacks on the West and that, ‘some of these plots are likely to involve foreign fighters who have travelled there from the UK’. Whilst the intelligence services say that 500 British born nationals have travelled to the Middle East, with half of them returning, other sources indicated that up to 2000 radicalised British Muslims have travelled to the warzone with more than half of them returning. The British Government says that every effort must be made to thwart their twisted and illogical agenda.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced a series of new measures to combat this threat. That is wholly appropriate. New legislation will be drawn up to give the police the power to confiscate the passports of suspected terrorists at Britain’s borders. This is a sensible move given that young men can become truly battle-hardened before returning home and committing terrorist atrocities on our streets. It is all to the good if they can be prevented from travelling there in the first place. But Parliament should be concerned that any attempt by the courts to water down this power would be openly embraced by the extremists themselves. Human rights are an issue for all of us.

Plans were also announced to block suspected British terrorists from returning to the UK. This will be drawn up on a ‘cross-party’ basis. However, whilst promising, this is likely to be more problematic, especially where it concerns those who do not have dual citizenship with another country. It is against international law to render any individual stateless. None the less, the Prime Minister is surely right to say that ‘adhering to British values is not an option or a choice’, but a duty to those who want to reside here. Quite clearly, if a British extremist pledges their firm allegiance to a terrorist organisation in a foreign land, it makes sense that they be asked some searching questions before they are allowed to roam freely in the UK.

Together, the combined effect of these new measures will make life more difficult for Britons who subscribe to the poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism.

We should not forget that those who do travel to Iraq and Syria to fight will have been exposed to radical Islam here in the UK first – either online, or indoctrinated in their communities. Tragically, as many cases have shown, this has been happening at school or on the campuses of our universities. The Cantle Report on community cohesion, first published in 2001, is worth reflecting upon. It stated that such individuals will have often lived ‘parallel lives’ to their peers, with little or no experience of modern British values. Unless this root cause of extremism is dealt with and fixed, the UK (and others) will be dealing with the risk of terrorist threats for decades to come.

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  • 03 September, 2014

David Cameron has opened the door for Britain to join US air strikes against Islamic State forces in Iraq without Parliament’s prior approval.

The Prime Minister has given his strongest hint yet that he is considering supporting Washington’s attempts to build a coalition to expand air assaults on the jihadists.

Previously, he told MPs Britain would ‘look very favourably’ on a request for help from Kurdish forces fighting extremists in Iraq, so they are ‘properly armed and equipped’.

Downing Street has been wary about joining military strikes following Mr Cameron’s humiliating Commons defeat last year when he sought support for air strikes in Syria.

But, in a noticeable change of attitude, the Prime Minister has suggested he could order action against jihadists without MPs’ approval in advance.

He said: ‘If there was a direct threat to British national interests, or if … we had to act very rapidly to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, the British Government must reserve the right to act immediately and inform the House of Commons afterwards.’

Officials insist no decisions have yet been made, but Mr Cameron said this week’s summit of NATO leaders in Wales will include a ‘review of the effectiveness of the international response so far’ and a discussion of ‘what more we should do to help the region’.

‘Britain will continue to consider what further role is in our national interests, including any further diplomatic, humanitarian or indeed military measures we might take.’

‘We support American air strikes. I do not think that we should rule anything out. We should act … to promote the British national interest and to help keep our people safe. We should consider everything.’

While at least 500 people have travelled from the UK to fight in the region, it is also believed that 700 from France, 400 from Germany and hundreds of others from countries including the US, Canada, Austria, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia have embarked for the warzone.

Mr Cameron told MPs the world was ‘shocked and sickened by the barbarism’ seen in Iraq this summer, including the slaughter of Muslims by Muslims, persecution of religious minorities, enslavement and rape of women, and the beheading of US journalist James Foley by an apparently British terrorist.

The prime minister’s message came as British forces flew more than nine tons of assault rifle ammunition to Kurdish forces in Iraq. Two RAF planes landed in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq, to deliver the ammunition as well as body armour, helmets and sleeping bags.

US President Barack Obama said last month that America was seeking to build a coalition to ‘take the fight to these barbaric terrorists’. However, according to a recent ComRes survey, only 35 per cent of people believe the UK should join air strikes.

Former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said IS was a ‘substantial threat to the continued integrity of Iraq’ and that US air strikes have been ‘successful in halting its further advance’. He added: ‘Would it not be better for the RAF to join in that measure?’

Conservative MP Colonel Bob Stewart, said: ‘Tragically, the only way to defeat people who are determined to carry out appalling acts, despite reason, politics, economic sanctions or whatever, is to defeat them on the battlefield.’

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  • 04 September, 2014

Video verifications are hard to come by. But another sickening video released by Islamic State militants would appear to show the brutal beheading and execution of another US journalist. The family of Steven Sotloff had feared the worst following the receipt of ransom demands from the terrorists and the staged execution of James Foley two weeks ago. Their worst fears have been confirmed with an almost identical brutal killing.

Following the death of Mr Foley, the end of the video which captured his decapitation was a gruesomely efficient PR stunt. Many of those recruited to IS are known to be well versed in the power of social media and film production. The videos are troubling and deeply graphic and one wonders how in the name of religion these acts of grave depravity are attracting others to a cause that appears to have no bounds. IS had warned that Mr Sotloff would face a similar fate if President Barack Obama did not call off US airstrikes on IS positions in Syria and Iraq.

Mr Obama was never likely to accede to these demands. To do so would have simply allowed IS greater freedom to continue its violent and murderous progress towards establishing a regional caliphate, mercilessly slaughtering those who did not fit with its strictures on who that caliphate should encompass.

Mr Obama had no choice but to press on with his military operation, knowing full well that IS would, in all likelihood, carry out its threats of beheading Western hostages. The surety and knowledge of these events happening will have been hard for the U.S. to carry. IS poses enormous challenges for the West, and one where it shows little sign of how it might rise to the task.

This is not a group, either, that reserves its brutality for Westerners with high propaganda value, who can be presented and perceived as the representatives of a free democratic culture these jihadists so abhor. Its mentality is more hardwired than that, meting out violence just as mercilessly to fellow Muslims and fellow Arabs, often with no compunction.

The West is faced with a difficult challenge that requires a sophisticated response. It must now be a high priority in dealing with the threats posed by Islamic State.

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Britain, Defence, Economic, European Union, Government, Military, National Security, NATO, Politics

Defence spending and the ‘peace dividend’…

DEFENCE SPENDING

Throughout history, defence spending has always gone up and down, and has responded largely to the perceived level of threat at the time.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War expectations were high for a so-called ‘peace dividend’. This led to the British military, along with its NATO partners, assuming they would no longer have to maintain a massive defence capability in central Europe as a bulwark against the Russians. Tank squadrons, for example, on the German plain were drastically reduced as the threat from the Russian bear showing its claws no longer existed.

This, it was generally agreed, was a good thing. There was never any shortage of other priorities on which politicians could spend otherwise huge sums of money that had previously been spent on defence.

However, the question now, according to General Sir Richard Shirreff, who recently stepped down as NATO deputy supreme commander, is whether a new and heightened level of threat should now require an increase in defence capability, and therefore defence spending.

General Shirreff is eminently qualified to make such a judgment, of that few will doubt. He has said that the dismantling of the West’s presence in mainland Europe has gone too far, leaving us vulnerable and exposed in the face of a renewed Russian threat.

The facts tend to support his case. A recent defence analyst’s report, for instance, revealed that Britain now had fewer tanks than Switzerland.

And there can be little doubt that the threat level facing mainland Europe is now significantly different to what it was a decade ago. Russia has annexed Crimea and the Kremlin is making less pretence about the fact that it is at war with Ukraine.

NATO’s primary role is to defend its members from military threat and attack. Shirreff questions whether NATO is able to perform that key function, at current strength.

Highlighting ‘the reality’, Shirreff says that NATO would be very hard-pressed and they would find it very difficult to put into the field the means required, particularly on land, to counter any form of ‘Russian adventurism’.

Undoubtedly, the signal General Shirreff gives amounts to a stark warning, and one that deserves to be the start of a serious debate.

At a time of continuing financial and economic austerity, this will be the last thing that many European political leaders will want to hear. The ‘peace dividend’ has been taken for granted for a quarter of a century. Even in Britain, following recent bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have not led to a reversal in political thinking that says Britain needs fewer soldiers and fewer sophisticated weapons.

The focus of efforts in keeping the UK safe has moved away from hard power and more towards intelligence and security led measures in tackling jihadist terror groups – at home and abroad.

While this is bound to remain the key priority, the challenges being posed elsewhere by an expansionist President Putin can no longer be ignored. Putin’s threat to eastern Ukraine as well as to Western concerns over Russian interests in the Baltic States are proof enough that NATO requires and needs an adequate defence capability in dealing with challenges it could be called upon in dealing with. The security of the wider world surely depends on it.

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Britain, European Court, Government, Human Rights, Legal, National Security, Politics, Society

Surveillance legislation: Conflicts exist between freedom and security…

SNOOPING LAWS

The announcement of a new surveillance law has fostered the suspicion that a voracious security state is elbowing aside the rights of civilians to communicate in private. There may well be cause for mistrust – but such concerns lie in the manner of the law’s introduction, and much less so the provisions it contains.

The UK Government justifies bringing in ‘emergency’ legislation as it intends to keep a full-blown register (a ‘who’s who of public enemies) that will shore up the power of government bodies to gather data on British citizens.

This is a law which has been agreed upon in principle by party leaders at Westminster behind closed doors. The speed of its introduction has raised many eyebrows, not least because this is a process that has not been open to public consultation and one which clearly adds to the impression that the Government is seizing for itself unwarranted powers.

In reality, though, the ‘emergency’ being enacted upon is more banal. In a few years, the law may actually benefit the libertarian cause. The exact cause for adopting parliamentary legislation in the first place is down to a legal case launched by the Open Rights group. Although the organisation is temporarily dormant, it has been made active following an April ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ). That ruling would have lifted the requirement for telecommunications companies to keep a wide range of billing data on their customers for a period of 12 months.

Keeping this data available to the authorities is the reason for instigating emergency legislation. This is preferable than to suddenly ‘going dark’, and appears to require no immediate development in changing the status of our security. Important concessions have been conceded: an independent privacy and civil liberties board is to be created, and there will be a review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This sets the limit on digital surveillance. The emergency amendments will also expire in 2016, so that new laws can be created once the review has been completed and appraised.

Some critics argue that what we need is smarter surveillance, not yet more of it. This far reaching extension of government spying on our daily lives, they say, would be illiberal and possibly ineffective.

Since this Bill is also about interception (and not just retention of data) many people will want to know what the additional protections will be if we are to have any confidence in such powers. One requirement is greater transparency so that we know how and why this data is being used. Government openness around surveillance can be improved without compromising security.

The Government has promised an annual transparency report. The concerns of libertarians will be whether it is sufficiently comprehensive, but that can only be deduced once the full details are known. In his annual report, the Interception Communications Commissioner, Sir Anthony May, said: ‘The unreliability and inadequacy of the statistical requirements is a significant problem which requires attention.’ Sir Anthony also expressed ‘considerable sympathy’ with those who are hazy and unsure about the details and implications of snooping legislation.

The Government has made a strong case for law enforcement agencies to be given access to communications traffic (which precludes its content as this would require a warrant) in the investigation of serious crime and terrorism.

The Coalition remains divided over how wide the new powers should be. The Prime Minister has indicated that he favours revisiting the option of wider snooping powers, but Nick Clegg remains opposed. But however surveillance legislation evolves it is right that a sunset clause exists in the Bill to curtail its powers in 2016. That forces a renewal by the next Parliament – but only after a wider democratic debate about how best to strike the balance between privacy and security.

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