The Kent and Sussex Courier is the archetypal regional conservative daily. It reflects an area that returns Conservative candidates for Parliament and Council like Alabamans would return ‘yellow dog’ Democrats.
One recent police raid in ‘the war on terror’ was on an Islamic school, Jameah Islamiya, in Crowborough, East Sussex.([1])It is possible that the authorities’ hands had been forced by a lurid media campaign that can be traced back to at least February 2006 and which was designed to force the UK authorities into dramatic action. ([2]) The raid on the school coincided with a raid on a London restaurant.
The Kent & Sussex Courier reported in detail on the raid. If you had relied on the national media, the matter would have seemed cut and dried: a bunch of mad mullahs skulking in secret in the Weald planning terror acts. But what does the local paper actually say over several pages of excellent reporting within days of the raid?([3]) The salient facts were that nothing hazardous was found and no one was actually arrested. The teachers were said to have been ‘fully co-operative’, were moved to an undisclosed hotel (in fact, in Bournemouth) and, after some days of de facto incarceration, found themselves back home with all searches completed.
My concern here is not to second guess or judge whether the promoters of the action were right in thinking that there is a recruitment network for ‘jihadists’ that is capable of terrorist activity. This is for the police and due legal process to uncover and punish if it exists. My concern is that the authorities seem to be bounced into fishing expeditions by politically motivated media campaigns; and may be using significant amounts of public money without any clear focus. ([4]) The media are also becoming increasingly complicit in a programme of work to label dissident Islamist political opinion as automatically terrorist. This should cause concern because it may be distracting resources away from focused security towards creating a climate of intimidation. It is as if the authorities have no idea precisely what they should do and are leaping maniacally and preemptively to the tune of any wild rumour that comes along.([5]) In this case, accusations were flying around that Islamists were using the school’s grounds for terror training. If they had, they clearly did so without the knowledge of the school’s owners, as the police admitted readily enough.
A local weekly worshipper revealed that the imam had told him directly that there was no justification for suicide bombing. ‘Diversity specialists’ from Sussex Police had been sent to the school as part of their training, and the school had made no charge for these visits. This ‘terror school’ was even going to have an open day on 16 September to which the public had been invited. To his credit, the Chief Officer of the Wealden Federation of Voluntary Organisations told the local paper that he was ‘in no hurry to pull the plug’. Crowborough Churches Together pledged support to the Muslim community. A year before, a local reporter was entertained at the school. The assistant to the principal had launched into a ‘passionate’ attack on the 7/7 bombers and said that they were no longer Muslims. He had repeatedly insisted that Islam expressly forbade the killing of innocents. This was then repeated by the imam in the Friday prayers that day. The reporter refers to a ‘relaxed and friendly’ atmosphere and the lads at the prayers (remember this was one year ago) denouncing Abu Hamza.
There was more of this sort. The reporter who had visited one year ago asserted his belief that there was no ‘PR cover-up, no smokescreen and no play acting. Their disgust at acts of terrorism were … [he is convinced] … genuine.’
Hate figure
The problem was that a national ‘hate figure’, Abu Hamza, had visited the location. He had allegedly booked a weekend retreat after seeing an advertisement in a London mosque.([6]) If there was a problem, it was an issue of due diligence by the school in its efforts to raise funds by attracting visitors. The school asked him not to come again because, in effect, he disturbed the neighbours.
I have laboured all this to help remove any doubt that these Muslims were not the subject of an ill-conceived and disruptive raid in which their names were blackened unfairly.
This particular performance will have damaged an Islamic establishment unnecessarily, discouraged Muslims from integrating into the countryside, increased national fear of Islamic establishments and threatened to disrupt community relationships; and, more than likely, alienated young Muslims even more and turned some of them to direct action.
Of course, it may have been necessary to use valuable law enforcement resources in this way because of the scale of the threat elsewhere. But it is clear that very many such ‘honest mistakes’ are taking place and that judges and juries are beginning to take a dim view of matters.([7])Similarly, the scale of the threat still remains an assertion rather than a fact although I do not minimise this. In Iraq, we have estimates of deaths in the region of 300,000600,000 since 2003 ([8])and, in Afghanistan, bombing raids still kill civilians.([9])If we are at war with insurgents, then the fear of the authorities that they might strike at us is simply the reflection of the dreadful fact that what ‘we’ are doing may well, one day, return to bite us. This is not a justification for terror but a request that we all ask why terror is being used against us and how we can mobilise Muslims to work with the rest of us to reduce the risk.
Trials that will take place in the next two years will establish whether the judicial system shares the opinion of the state. Time will tell how serious a threat we face. But there is good reason to believe that natural justice may be skating on very thin ice. This is not to say that there are not serious concerns and the possibility of plots designed to kill innocent people is very real. I am not one of those purists who would condemn the authorities for using extreme methods in extreme and immediate cases where many innocent lives may be at stake; but it is becoming clearer by the day that something is going on that indicates consistently poor intelligence and repeated blundering by the Metropolitan Police and the homeland security services.
What we should be particularly wary of is the effect of ‘fishing expeditions’ and of the sort of cultural warfare that seems designed to frighten all but the most hardy radical. Since what ‘does not kill, strengthens’, all that we may be doing is using a form of political Darwinian selection to toughen and harden those most determined to act and to kill.
In mid-October, the High Court heard there was ‘not a shred of evidence’ against an Algerian pilot who was detained for five months after being accused of training the September 11 pilots.([10])Other disturbing cases are emerging of prima facie injustice against Muslims arrested in the first wave of crack-downs.([11]) Muslims have faced the threat of years in jail on the basis of claims related to a non-existent substance (red mercury);([12]) and situations are emerging where it is becoming clear that ‘glorification of terrorism’ is meant to criminalise angry, young men who have been letting off steam on the internet, in meetings or even in casual conversation. As with the onslaught on Muslim dress sense, the aim is to bend behaviour and language towards the acceptable so that only the most determined and courageous enemy of the state will continue on their path to destruction. Unfortunately, when you set up barriers like these, the last men standing are going to see the pathway as one to paradise.
The incident in Crowborough is important because it presaged what we saw more recently in the so-called debate over ‘veils’. The indigenous population, whose instincts are cautiously tolerant, are presented with ‘facts’ that constantly imply an enemy within. But is there more to this than meets the eye?
The French ‘spook’ trade newsletter, Intelligence Online (edition 531, 10 September) contained details of increases expected in European R&D expenditures in the security sector. There was an odd entry in the new European system. Alongside all the funny-sounding private equity-backed innovation companies was the Sussex Police Authority, developing the Petra.net system for creating a ‘genuine community of end users of security technologies’. Coincidentally, this police authority was the one involved in monitoring and raiding the ‘Islamic terror school’ in Crowborough. So was that a legitimate investigation, or an exercise? Or disruption of an exercise in bringing community end-users together? Certainly the Sussex Police Authority seems a bit miffed that the Met turned up out of the blue and cost them £1.2m. Intelligence Online also reports that ‘human rights friendly’ security solutions will be tested ‘in several European countries to see how the public reacts’. But let us give Sussex Police Authority the benefit of the doubt:([13])they seem to be as much the victim of Met enthusiasm as the Jameah Islamiya school.
Not long after the raids, I also noted that a national terrorism ‘tsar’ was to be appointed to oversee the ten regional squads in the UK. A wave of raids and arrests a month before this announcement was highly convenient. What was interesting was the admission that there had been tensions between Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch and regional forces.([14]) Was this because regional police forces are embedded in community relations whereas Scotland Yard lives in a world of plots and schemes and politics?
A new quasi-secret police?
This new co-ordinated system will, we are told, be expected to work closely with MI5. We may have, in effect, a new quasi-secret police in place, with community police officers possibly being transformed into part-time intelligence officers. SO15 (as it is called) will expand the Met operation from 1,000 to perhaps 1,500 or so men across the country. The report suggesting these reforms also advises an increase in community policing, which, of course, will now have a more ambiguous role in society.
Critics of the softie wing of the Home Office have long been asserting that the security system is not dealing with the real problem a much smaller group of clearly identifiable and known extremist terrorists. They often suggest that these are being protected for political reasons. It is very hard to see where the truth lies but it is probable that the government is much more concerned with home grown or autonomous ‘movement’ radicalism emerging from a disgruntled community than with the ‘bunch of known nutters’ that may need watching every day. Perhaps central authority sees intimidation and cultural war as methods of social control whereas regional police authorities prefer to engage Muslims in the community. Or is it that small town, suburban and rural Muslims can be integrated into the community through sensitive policing whereas the radicalisation of urban Muslims is undercutting the Labour vote in the big cities and ‘something must be done’?
I am beyond my competency in second-guessing either the politicians or the security services but there has to be an implicit tension (given shortage of resources) between strategies that centre on intelligence-based containment of known threats and politically-driven campaigns to keep the public from becoming ‘complacent’. There is reason to believe that the political dynamic a complex of competition for appropriations, power struggles in the last days of the Prime Minister’s regime, anxiety about looking as if every angle is squared in case the ‘big one’ happens on their watch, the need to support ‘moderate’ Muslim political allies against political competitors and the very complex politics of the international war on terrorism is politicising police and security away from the ‘simple’ task of making best judgements on the protection of the public against violence.
Cleaning up after the politicians
The determination never to discuss ’causes’ including foreign policy, the commitment to globalisation and the collapse of investment in social infrastructure leaves the honest policeman stuck with the task of cleaning up after the politicians. The politicians’ sole response is the reassertion of their policies and the increased centralisation of power, combined with a cultural war on anyone who dares question their authority.
The factional struggles within the security services are opaque and even if I got briefed I would be inclined not to believe the briefer that is what you get from working in a world of smoke and mirrors. But what we do know is that the terror threat is being seen very much in the context of the exchange of intelligence materials internationally. Some of this is just sensible data-sharing. Some is extracted through torture.
We are still taking data from a variety of governments who are talking up the threat in order to get Western governments to crack down on their dissidents. It transpired that the Crowborough/Chinese restaurant farrago originated from Yemeni sources of long-standing, whose reports of meetings of radicals in the countryside (true, if exaggerated) had elided into reports of a particular terror camp (false). There may indeed be terror camps but not in Crowborough. Similarly, the August airline bomb plot was originally exposed by Pakistani reports in peculiar political circumstances, which should make us wary of jumping to conclusions of any type. There seems to be a pattern: the legitimate precautionary monitoring of radical groups, without necessarily infringing on their human rights, seems to be constantly disrupted by the deliberate use of information from overseas for political purposes.
Arab dictatorships are very frightened and not for reasons entirely to be despised. They are of course self-serving, but so are all governments. Yet, as we have seen in Iraq, when central authority goes, sectarian violence soon follows. Any means are permitted, they believe, to stop the West from pushing democracy down their throats and to contain or even imprison dissidents. I do not believe that we should criticise Algeria, Yemen, Egypt or Pakistan for ‘trying it on’ nor the US and France but we have every right to criticise our elected representatives and civil servants for naively accepting what they are told without checking. The war on terror has been both a threat and a gift to Arab allies. It can now identify Islamists automatically with terrorism (not completely absurd given the migration of suicidal techniques from Iran to Palestine and thence to Iraq and to Afghanistan, but still a major analytical leap that is not justified by the facts). Carefully placed warnings derived from torture-derived intelligence, or just downright disinformation, can then put Western security forces into a thorough tizzy.
The French role
It gets worse. Inside the West, there are the usual ‘you-never-listened-to-us’ factions from pre-9/11 and hard-liners whose psychological flaws are those of the authoritarian personality. There are also rival active proponents of a strategy of engagement with Political Islam. The hardliners will do almost anything to block what they see as ‘appeasement’. Internationally, the origin of this hardline school of thought is not so much Israel (though it plays its role) but France, which has honed its anti-Islamism on Algeria and support for its Arab allies. France is still trying to preserve its imperial pretensions. North Africa is a tinderbox from Cairo to Rabat and for some French security elements, this is also about gloire, national identity, secularism, republicanism, trade, energy and culture. The ‘republican right wing’ mentality travels easily into both US neo-conservative and radical liberal circles in the UK. The Murdoch papers used to love the dossiers that the hard-liners would deliver to them from way before 9/11.
Harassment of legitimate dissent?
Recent raids suggest that some British activity is getting very close to political harassment of legitimate dissent. In this respect, it is mimicking Arab secular and French strategies. After all, France has only recently fired a number of baggage handlers simply because they are Muslimand, therefore, quite obviously, potential terrorists. The Tunisians have no compunction in banning the hijab and France banned the headscarf (not the veil) in schools as early as 2004. This is a world where the citizen is, in extremis, the plaything of the state ‘in his own interest’ and in the interest of ‘order’.
Only the judicial process will eventually be able to tell us what plots are real and whether the law is being used to deal with differences of opinion rather than intent. Only future historians will be able to tell us whether such tactics are working or are fuelling the movement. But readers should be in no doubt about what is at stake here morally. We may have to look into our very souls one day and ask whether we should have asked more questions.
Are we prepared to take some risk that terror events will slip through rather than demonise tens of thousands of innocent fellow citizens? Or do we think we have every right to force these people into conformity in order to isolate the virus of terror? Forget the possibility that the methods used by the hardliners may not actually work in any case and just think about the journey we are taking. How might we have acted towards the Jews in 1934 because of the threat they allegedly represented? And many Germans were then (hard though this is to believe) morally sure that Jews were a threat to their country.([15]) Government action is still very much on the right side of ‘dodgy’. People are not yet disappearing (except when the government loses them).([16]) British citizenship still confers protections. But we are clearly skirting the edge of a serious justice problem here. We should certainly be wary of external manipulation of the British security agenda. US briefings at the time of the alleged airline plot in August 2006 indicated that the US considered the UK to be a ‘weak link’ in the ‘war on terror’.([17])
Conspiracy theorists might see the extremely swift briefings on this aspect as indicating some remarkable planning in the PR management of the case. Either the US had an exceptionally well-honed communications capability or it had some advance inkling of what was about to happen. Two sleepless British government ministers next morning clearly did not. You make your own mind up.
Washington’s objective
What was more important was the message. The subtext of coverage from the US was that Europeans should be more aggressive about their Muslim communities (no doubt supported by French anti-Islamists and by the hardline elements to be found in all security services). The objective of Washington became rather blatant in briefings to the media: support for MI5, a halt to being soft on civil liberties, more crackdowns on the Islamists in the UK, praise for France, more sense of Muslims as the ‘enemy within’. We can reverse engineer the briefings to see MI5 and France as sharing a common ideology with US homeland security. (The exclusion of MI6 may be an oversight or meaningful.)
This is the agenda of the international ‘war on terror’ lobby in a nutshell but it may have overplayed its hand. Initial reactions here were not calls for more draconian legislation but scepticism and caution in leaping to conclusions. The Financial Times‘ editorial response ([18] ) was pretty moderate and will not have pleased Washington. First (it said) we need a foreign policy that saps terrorists of support and second we must retain a sense of proportion. It condemned Scotland Yard for using alarmist language (‘even if true’ [sic]) that the plot would have caused ‘mass murder on an unimaginable scale’. It is the job of journalists and terrorists to engage in hyperbole (it said), not the police. This pragmatic response will not be what the hardliners wanted to hear in the premier business newspaper. Unintentionally perhaps, the editorial might suggest that when the authorities encourage the press in their outbursts of emotionalism, then they must realise what the consequences will be. If we compare the sensible management of public information after 7/7([19] ) with the August 2006 events, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that a ‘performance’ worthy of Sarah Bernhardt was under way.
Pakistan, too, was keen to prove that it was a reliable ally in the war on terror. It needed to get the West off its back in Afghanistan and the borderlands. Following the Mumbai bombing, Indian-Pakistani relations were (and are) in serious crisis and it would have been a matter of high policy to reassure the West that Pakistan was not implicated in terror acts. Pakistan was also looking for a bilateral trade pact with the US to counter unemployment, so the timing of the uncovering of the plot all looks very ‘convenient’.
Something does not ring true
This drawing together of events and commentary is precisely what creates caution in my assessments of the timing of an announcement of a plot. A remarkably small amount of information came out of the British side of the case, while American and Pakistani authorities were ‘singing like canaries’. Something does not ring true.
Serious plots do take place. Nor do I suggest that our own government is necessarily devious. The signs are more often that it is sometimes not quite sure what it is doing and that its own internal factionalism and disorganisation can permit third parties to manipulate it. It is also culturally disposed to use manipulation to get itself out of a hole when the straight and narrow path might, in fact, be better. My strong suspicion is that the Government is now preparing the ground for a ‘perfect storm’ next year. There is the linkage between the flow of heroin from Afghanistan,([20] ) consequent crime rates and flows of funds into Muslim organised crime on the one hand; and discontent over foreign policy, Blair’s refusal to stand down early and the failure to hold the line in Afghanistan and Iraq on the other. October 20 saw important arrests in Italy of Pakistanis allegedly linked to the drugs trade routed from Afghanistan through Kosovo and Albania. ([21]) It was not a terrorist-related raid, but those arrested were allegedly radical in politics as well as Muslims. The ‘perfect storm’ might well see a convergence of criminal and terror networks. Or so some security analysts fear.
The key issue in many recent arrests would seem to be to stop the trickle of recruits to insurgencies before it starts in earnest. Once networks are in place, flows of funds become more substantial. The fear is not only that a corps of British (and European) Muslims emerges from within the region but that they return radicalised, on either defeat or victory, to wreak havoc at home. This construction of a cadre for a movement is what really frightens the security apparat and so it should. Current plots will be as nothing to an underground in the cities, slums and banlieues of Europe. Those with a knowledge of the history of Arab national liberation see the trajectory of Algeria reproduced wherever there are disadvantaged and angry Muslim communities. The rest of us need only mug up on Pontecorvo’s drama-documentary, The Battle of Algiers, to get a feel for what we may be in for.
From threat to movement?
Some are now saying the unsayable: that, as with the IRA, talks will eventually be required with Al-Qaeda. That would be a sign of failure. My view is that talks should long ago have started with the non-terrorist elements in Political Islam about support for regional reform and the withdrawal of Western forces. Now, we reap what we have sown. If we fail to talk to moderate Political Islam now, we will be talking to Al-Qaeda in
twenty years. All in all, it is clear that we are in the middle of a crisis. Our government has pursued a quixotic foreign policy without the resources or the public commitment necessary to wage war. This foreign policy has not created the terrorist threat but it has taken it to the point where it might well become a ‘movement’. The government response has been to go into denial on its contribution to the crisis and to expend increasing resources on alternately browbeating dissident Muslim opinion, frightening the public and undertaking police actions where a threat looks real enough. Meanwhile, the stakes are so high in the struggle for power internationally that some foreign security services are determined to pull the UK ever more fully into line as an anti-Islamist force, regardless of its national interest as shared home for a very large Pakistani minority. Others feel able to manipulate the timing of the ‘war’ agenda to their own requirements in an atmosphere where a Secretary of State can divert resources on an urban myth, and Muslims can be prosecuted on the basis of a conspiracy theory about a non-existent substance.
The right response would be to admit errors in our alliances, to collaborate within the law with our European partners, to build bridges with non-violent Islamism without conceding on our core liberal values, to develop a communications strategy that is based on accountability and transparency; and to ensure that our police and security services are properly resourced, removed from political interference and accountable in every respect to Parliament.
Regrettably our current Prime Minister and his preferred ministers seem incapable of understanding this.
Appendix 1 the media and sources on terror
The trajectory of the story in The Observer and The Guardian and their statements on sourcing are worth review. I choose the Observer/Guardian only because it makes certain implicit claims for integrity and is a ‘quality newspaper’. I have not bothered to try to demonstrate how the story of the Crowborough School was portrayed in the tabloid media. In February 2006, we were told that :
‘Former British soldiers taught Abu Hamza’s followers to use guns at a camp in Wales as part of an ad hoc terror training network set up by the jailed cleric… Evidence collected by the American agencies shows that, as early as 1997, Hamza was organising terror camps… [amongst other locations] at an old monastery in Tunbridge Wells, Kent… The training camps in Tunbridge Wells, at which no ex-soldiers were present, were held in 1997 and 1998 and were attended by about 30 people who were trained to use AK47 rifles, hand guns and a mock rocket launcher.’ ([22] )
The sources were unnamed US intelligence agencies who were clearly miffed that the British were not taking their reports seriously. The newspaper, clearly distrustful of Guantanamo evidence at that stage, spoke of corroboration from ‘several witnesses’ (surely not witnesses coming up for the third time from ‘waterboarding’).
In August 2006, Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor were talking about terror camps in the English National Parks ([23]) thanks to input from unknown ‘sources’, which rather suggests a sudden rush of shyness about intelligence agency input. The story in the immediate aftermath of the raid (3 September) opened with the fear that a network of ‘terror training camps across Britain…..are nurturing a new wave of home-grown Islamic extremists.’ It is worth looking at this story and its sister article, noting how usually solid and reliable journalism can still find itself complicit in creating a climate of fear that the facts did not warrant. Five separate journalists contributed to the last two pieces but none seemed able to establish the facts for themselves by picking up the telephone and checking with the ‘local rag’, The Kent and Sussex Courier, whose man on the spot had visited the site a year before.
The link of Abu Hamza to alleged terror camps in the Brecon Beacons was widely covered at the time of his trial but I was intrigued to find that, in answer to a question from the local MP : ‘The Ministry of Defence has today refused to confirm or deny reports that convicted radical cleric Abu Hamza organised terror training camps in the Brecon Beacons in the late 1990s.’ ([24])You can take this either way: it was a matter of state security so why bother to tell a Liberal Democrat MP who was never going to be in charge of the Ministry; or the MoD was as much in the dark as the rest of us.
But we should also look critically at claims on sources. By September we have references to Guantanamo testimonies which were ‘read’ to the journalists concerned and then accepted as fact, without any analysis conveyed to the public of the circumstances in which the information might have been gathered (we are all aware of the possibility of torture behind every Islamist testimonial), and without asking questions for us, the reader, about the provenance of the documentation and the ‘chain of production’. How far back up the line did they go to check? Who drafted the text? How far down the line from the original testimony was the source? We simply are not told.
Presumably for ‘national security’ reasons, in September (though there is more information in February), we are never told what organisation is providing the testimony on what terms. It is reasonable that the names of individuals involved in the security services should not be revealed but it is not reasonable that organisations are not revealed. If the testimony was read out to journalists, then we need to know by whose authority; not by way of some generalised term like ‘US intelligence agencies’ who, in any case, disappear somewhere between February and September as named networks. There is really no reason not to name a specific intelligence agency as the source who had acquired the information (regardless of how) from a named type of source; e.g. that MI5 (say) provided the intelligence from an overseas intelligence agency with access to Guantanamo testimony. This would enable two levels of critique: should we trust MI5? And can we trust testimony provided from Guantanamo interrogations? It gives us, the readers, the chance to ask cui bono? and make our own judgement before being inflected with ‘spin’.
The reliability and accountability of information is going to be very different if it is from an accredited British intelligence agent, a Home Office civil servant, the Met, the Sussex Police Authority, someone from Number Ten (all theoretically ultimately answerable to the Commons at some stage) or an agent of a foreign intelligence or security service or even someone associated with the shadowy Alliance Base. ([25] ) Counter Terrorist Intelligence Centre’s ‘secret’ team in London is a candidate for briefings to the media on various alleged Islamists; and, if so, it beats me why the press might collude in keeping its existence (rather than its personnel) secret. This network has been operating since 2002 and has motive and means for anti-Islamist propaganda operations and for the laundering of Guantanamo and Arab states’ security and intelligence information. It is allegedly a Franco-US funded operation.
Given what we know about political warfare techniques, it is reasonable to ask why the media insists on being complicit in this lack of accountability. Is it, as I suspect, the fear that if they do not take this propaganda on issuer terms, then it will simply be handed to a rival who will? Is it patriotism? Is it that they have undertaken the due diligence, cannot tell us how they did it and now ask us to trust them? Or is it lack of resources under pressure to get the story? Whatever it is, the comparison of the story in The Observer as constructed over several months and the story provided by The Kent and Sussex Courier on the spot suggests that someone is not doing their homework.
Worse, this is bringing our security services into disrepute. If information is being provided by an overseas intelligence agency exploiting the panic and the data proves to be politically motivated or ill-researched, and the overseas intelligence agency is not exposed in a misguided attempt to maintain the ‘coalition’, then British popular trust in its police and security services will be what suffers. Are overseas interests trying to force our political class to ‘take on’ Muslim political organisation regardless of its actual danger to the Defence of the Realm? Is this level of aggression, taken up so eagerly by New Labour politicians, creating some of the very dangers we most fear?
New Labour’s entire ‘Gramscian world view’ is predicated on the idea that power can be used to bend the rules to change conduct. This is a psychologically flawed model, legally unsound and dragging the government into the gutter. A far better model is to change conduct in government to give no cause to moderate men to think like extremists. But that would be a revolution too far for the rigid minds that have put a certain alliance ahead of the national interest.
Appendix 2 – police politics and terrorist threat
Tension between the Metropolitan Police and local police forces seems to be following on from the earlier attempt to part-centralise the British police under the Home Secretary Charles Clarke through mergers and rationalisation.([26]) The latest press rumour (at time of writing) was in The Sunday Times of 29 October: ‘Police chiefs fall out over national terror squad’. David Leppard’s piece was explicit: ‘Provincial police chiefs fear that to give the Met “primacy” over investigations into Al-Qaeda could risk further blunders.’ The Chief Constable of Gloucestershire said, ‘Local officers may fear another debacle which will set community relations back years.’
The O’Connor Review ([27]) made dramatic claims about a growing number of Islamic terror cells. After recent ‘blunders’, perhaps it is time for a second opinion on the sources of this assessment and to define what precisely is meant by an ‘Islamic terror cell’. Are we talking about the equivalent of an organised crime network with proven roots in the Middle East, or are we talking about the projection of political concerns about home grown radicalisation? The first is definitely an intelligence and police matter and requires full public support. The second is a political matter and requires more public debate. My concern is thus not with the formal proposals, which may be sensible, but which may require further critical assessment in terms of sources of information (given the unfortunate experience of intelligence-gathering around Iraqi WMD). Does ‘reform’ risk turning community-based policing into an intelligence-based, quasi-secret police with room for the use of some de facto political powers against dissident opinion? It is not the Met we might fear (certainly compared to MI5 in the past) but the type of orders that may be given to the Met by the Home Office as reforms get ‘finessed’ under political pressure. The conduct of the New Labour administration is not reassuring to date.
Notes
[1] There are some basic BBC reports of the Crowborough incident as it appeared on the weekend of 2/3 September at:
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5308626.stm
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5309604.stm
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/5310522.stm
The picture given by Gordon Corera was not quite the picture of AK47s in the Weald that were being rumoured in February : ‘Here in the UK it’s more forms of bonding and getting groups together as well as radicalising those taking part’ … er, political education rather than terror training. The distinction is important because either all this police activity is designed to stop terror acts in the act of planning or they are designed to disrupt the political organization of people we disagree with. The idea of terror training being political discussion is a little different from terror training in the use of weapons and bomb equipment. There is also a world of difference between activity in 1996 (see appendix 1) and activity in 2005/2006 in terms of assessing immediate threat . Neither of these aspects of the case, the lack of weapons training or the near-decade delay in taking action, seemed to stop the tabloids from suggesting the worst.
[2] Some aspects of the media response to this story are discussed in detail in Appendix 1 at the end of this essay.
[3] The Kent and Sussex Courier reports on which this article is based can be found in the edition of 8 September The police handed the keys back to the owners on 23 September and the latter stayed silent for a while because of the negative publicity. In an exclusive interview with the Courier, the Islamic School thanked both the local community (‘for not having jumped on the bandwagon and for not pointing the finger of guilt at them’) and the local MP, Charles Hendry, Con.; and criticized the ‘melodramatic’ way in which the investigation was handled. The spokesman said that the national media had portrayed it in a way ‘demeaning’ for Muslims in general. They praised the local Sussex police for their fair conduct in all respects excepting only the melo-drama of the raid which may have been down to the Met in any case.
[4] The Daily Telegraph has reported that the Crowborough Raid cost the local police authority £1.2 million and it is seeking compensation from the Metropolitan Police. <www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ news/2006/10/21/upolice.xml>
[5] It is a cheap shot perhaps to refer to the Blunkett urban myth story – <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6090918.stm>
[6] In fact the school corrected earlier statements about Hamza in the Courier report of 13 October. Hamza, it seems, had not actually been at the site since 1997 long before 9/11 but had visited twice for the opening ceremony and for the camping weekend. So, it would seem that the Guantanamo Bay evidence referred to connections made nearly a decade ago and are thoroughly garbled with regard to this particular school.
[7] From the three months since the August ‘bomb plot’ alone we have seen: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/ 6068018.stm> where Lord Phillips expressed commitment to the Human Rights Act as a weapon in the war on terror; <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6042872.stm> on judicial criticism of the way MI5 has used intelligence; <http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/ hi/uk/5398882.stm> on unprecedented juror support for Algerians cleared in the ricin case in the attempt to deport them. None of this implies that judges and the public are soft on terror but they are clearly interested in issues of justice.
[8] The Iraq deaths figure is highly controversial but the Lancet estimate is at <www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1920167,00.html> There is criticism of the higher-end figures at <www.guardian.co.uk/ international/story/0,,1929817,00.html> However, the point is that, to many Muslims, regardless of the final figure, Srebenica and other deaths in Bosnia, the deaths in Chechnya, the disproportionate deaths of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, the deaths in Iraq (even if, say, 25% of the Lancet figure), the civilian deaths in Lebanon and the deaths in air strikes in Afghanistan tend to accumulate as a charge sheet against the West To claim no link between ‘extremist’ views and the situation in the region is either stupid or self-serving or insane.
[9] For example, a NATO air strike killed at least 12 (possibly 25 or even more, according to later reports) civilians on 26 October < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_ asia/6091474.stm> Similarly, no one would claim that NATO ever deliberately targeted civilians. But the .accumulation of deaths in many theatres and the perception of children dying from war-related malnutrition and lack of healthcare (as under the Iraqi sanctions regime and in Gaza) needs to be taken account of in understanding why many Muslims, without Western means of death-dealing by remote control, look more lightly than we do on techniques that liberated 10 million or so poor Algerians faced with the superior resources of one million or so pieds noirs. If the Government wishes to consider the mere expression of this fact as ‘glorification of terrorism’, then they are welcome to argue the case in court. Terrorism should be condemned but proportionately to all forms of politically inspired murder and torture.
[10]See <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6040814.stm>. This case alone should cause us to stop and think before accepting the panicked intelligence assessments of foreign intelligence services. The restraint of a Muslim community under almost permanent executive siege in order to make second-rate Ministers look decisive and strong should be worthy of our regard.
[11] For legal reasons, I am reluctant to reference any current cases where I have ‘suspicions’ but I can suggest that we should look out for the following patterns: cases where the authorities are looking for convictions because they do not like the beliefs of the individuals charged; and cases where fear and panic about threat in general leads to over-egging, testosterone-driven bragging as criminal intent. Special attention should be given to the publicity surrounding any case where a foreign government has decided that they want to acquire a suspect and the British ‘national interest’ indicates that it might be a good idea if this was arranged. We have been here before with wrongful convictions of Irish subjects of the Crown and it could happen again.
[12] It is fair to question how any responsible prosecuting authority could take seriously any plot involving claims of ‘red mercury’. Compare <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5176382.stm> with <http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Red_mercury> Like so much in the homeland security legal strategy the case was deeply flawed. Resources are being expended on trying to frighten the politically motivated Muslim community with the threat that any open discussion of violent methods or support for violent methods in the region, regardless of how far down the process of actually organizing anything a radical may be, might result in a lengthy prison sentence. This is not how the world works, but it fits in with the ‘zero tolerance’ mentality inherited from US security contacts and the belief that politics can be changed by ‘making an example’ of the few to change the behaviour of the many.
[13] Petra.net is not a secret. See <http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/security/doc/ project_flyers/766-06_petra.pdf> Statewatch’s reference is at <www.statewatch.org/news/ 2005/aug/com-security-res.pdf>. This makes it clearer that Sussex Police Authority is Project Leader but the jargon tells you nothing about its use.
[14] See <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/ 5393578.stm>. The Financial Times report , Jimmy Burns, ‘Anti-terror policing to be streamlined’, 30 September, emphasizes the support of the Prime Minister and places the proposals in the context of John Reid’s potential as challenger for the Labour Party leadership. It also hinted at concerns in MI5 and MI6 and it is hard not to see a Home Office/Metropolitan Police pitch for resources and power at the expense of virtually everyone else. The consultation appeared to have lasted all of five days. See <www. guardian.co.uk/ terrorism/ story/0,,1886288,00.html>. The official account of SO15 is at <www.met.police.uk/ so/counter _terrorism.htm>. For more on the issues in this footnote see Appendix 2.
[15] The ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend recounted at <http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Dolchsto%C3%9Flegende> provides some idea of how this could come about. The emotional content of this myth should be compared with the emotional content of Islamophobia at <http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia>. No one should accuse the current government of Islamophobia (it is exemplary in its attempts to reach out to Islam in its ‘moderate’ aspects) but the drive to raise debates about (say) the niqab is double-edged: a genuine debate about when, how and where the ‘gaze’ should be tolerated in British culture is not on offer. The recent ‘debate’ was a front for a risky attempt to force migrants into something closer to the French model of ‘republican virtue’. It is also muddied by the leadership ambitions of particular politicians and their determination to capture the populist high ground for electoral reasons. An intellectual review of what is permissible rapidly declined into seediness and into the tone of the playground bully.
[16] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6057612.stm>
[17] Demetri Sevastopolo, ‘UK seen as weak link by US’, Financial Times, 11 August 2006.
[18] Leader: ‘The Most Powerful Response to Terrorism’, Financial Times, 11 August 2006.
[19] I reviewed the use of information in 7/7 in a paper, versions of which can be read at <www.tppr.co.uk/pia3.pdf> and at <www.pendrywhite. com/paper1.pdf>.
[20] Latest reports suggest that the government has had to abandon a strategy of poppy field destruction; which rather removes any national interest reason to be there in the first place
[21] Adrian Michaels in Milan and Jimmy Burns in London, ‘Italy arrests seven in push to curb laundering of drug cash’, Financial Times, [20] October 20 2006.
[22] <www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1708095,00.html>
[23] <www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1844156,00.html> (front page).
[24] <www.epolitix.com/EN/MPWebsites/Roger+Williams/849087ed-d5ce-4acc-a481-baa3b4a7573a.htm>
[25] See <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2005/07/02/ AR2005070201361.html> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Alliance_ Base> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Counterterrorist_ Intelligence _ Center>
[26] <www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1819140,00.html>
[27] A confidential report by Denis O’Connor, a Home Office inspector of constabulary, urging a shake-up in policing the terror threat.. <www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2426772,00.html>