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2 Fighting terrorism - but at what
cost? By 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 the US, the
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