Pursuant to Prevent: British Community Counter-Terrorism Strategy; Past, Present [ISPU]
July 7, 2011
As I expect most people in the United Kingdom do, I clearly remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news of the attacks on London on the 7th of July 2005: at my desk on the Warwick university campus taking a well-deserved break. A month earlier, I had defended my doctoral thesis, an analysis of various issues around Muslim European communities, and was looking forward to taking up a regular academic post. In my work, I had chosen the British Muslims for a case study of European Muslim communities on the basis that the UK had proven to be of great interest for European partners and elsewhere with regards to integrating Muslims. After all, it has one of the oldest and demographically significant Muslim presences in the West.
On the 7th of July 2005, however, all of that changed. I could not have foreseen how much more interesting the UK would be after that day, and certainly for less enviable reasons than the UK might have wished. Nor could I have predicted that my own work, which had been started for purely academic – even esoteric – reasons, would suddenly become relevant to a much wider and more policy-oriented audience.
I was not the only person in this regard. Many of my academic colleagues who had been involved in studying various individuals within the UK’s different Muslim communities, found themselves suddenly drawn into the corridors of power in Westminster to provide specialist opinion on diverse issues. Indeed, Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) went beyond speaking to experts who had a strong background in the area. To the detriment of the entire counterterrorism effort, the state began to consult individuals who had little or no expertise in any truly associated area, whose main qualification was their ability to reach people in positions of power.
And people in those positions certainly had good reason to be especially concerned about the 7/7 attacks. Since Britain had been bracing itself for an attack on its shores for quite some time, the fact that it had finally happened was not particularly shocking or surprising to people within the policy establishment or to the wider public. One key aspect, however, definitely took the country by surprise: the identity of the attackers. This is what brought people like myself, who had previously not been involved in security affairs, into the arena.
While the Security Service had warned about the emergence of a domestic terrorist threat prior to 7/7, until that day in July 2005 few seemed to have taken it particularly seriously. When it emerged that four young Muslim Britons had attacked the UK, the nation was shocked. It was one thing to come up with policy initiatives designed to target terrorism overseas carried out by foreign nationals – after all, Britain had been doing that for years, both before and after 9/11, as had its various partners across the Atlantic and in Europe. But it was quite another matter to consider that a terrorist menace existed domestically – and moreover, from Britons themselves.
Suddenly, questions began to arise: What was this Muslim community? What was going on in it that could have transformed these young men into terrorists? What had we, as a society, failed to miss? We needed to learn as much as we could about this community in order to ensure that Britons would never again be responsible for attacking the UK.
One set of questions sought to understand this community so we could ensure that we, as a society, had not failed. Another set of questions, however, boiled down to a single query: Who could we engage with, within the Muslim community, to combat the forces of violent extremism and radicalization that produced the 7/7 bombers? Who could we work with to gather accurate intelligence to appropriately intervene in existing plots?
These two sets of questions were indelibly linked, for the latter could be answered only after the former had been dealt with sufficiently. As such, academics and researchers who had worked on the Muslim community, such as myself, were brought into the counterterrorism arena. But in order to properly formulate and execute a “community-based approach” to counterterrorism, this community’s inner workings needed to be understood as much as possible.
Prior to 7/7, the government had already accepted that community engagement for the purpose of counterterrorism was a worthwhile endeavor; however, it was still not emphasized. This changed radically after 7/7, and the ensuing consequences still dictate how the UK engages in strategies relating to community cohesion and counterterrorism.
In that respect, it is important to note that the UK’s own counterterrorism strategies also impinge upon the formulations of other country’s strategies in the same area. For example, the United States and Canada observe its movements in this area very closely and often with a great deal of interest. Individual European countries also engage with it on these issues, as do Australia and various Muslim and non-Muslim countries. As such, the importance of the UK’s approaches to counterterrorism extends far beyond its own evaluation of them.
After the 7/7 bombings, a full and engaged community counterterrorism strategy was developed. Eventually entitled “Prevent” in 2006, it sought to prevent any indigenous Muslims from embracing violent extremism. Community engagement, whether done by the police, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, or the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), was vital. Yet the strategy itself was constantly fraught with changes, debates, and discussions about the “proper direction” to be pursued. Between July 2005 and May 2010, the ruling Labour government was divided over the best approach to these matters. Once a minister was changed (e.g., the Minister for the DCLG), the strategy could take an entirely different direction. As the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 bombings drew near, it was clear that Prevent had become so controversial that unless crucial changes were implemented, its very existence could not be guaranteed.
Change remains in the air in this respect. In May 2010, the British people elected a new coalition government made up of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. This coalition is an entirely new experiment, for the country has not seen a coalition government for decades, and certainly not a coalition government made up of such different parties. The left-leaning Liberal Democrats and the right-leaning Conservatives have more often than not been at loggerheads with each other on political issues.
While these election results made a coalition the most attractive option for both parties, they have left British counterterrorism strategy in something of a flux. It is still not really clear where the UK is headed, for a government governed by a single party can often be divided on a critical issue. This was clear with regard to the Prevent strategy during the Labour years. But within a coalition made up of even more diverse viewpoints, it becomes even harder to identify just what the overarching strategy actually is.
Nevertheless, some trends can be discerned. The new government has already carried out some actions that point to some key assumptions and theories that underpin its thinking. I hope to contribute to a better understanding of these trends by exploring their meaning. In other words, what lessons can we learn from our past and present in order to effect good for our country in the future? Such lessons remain deeply important not just for Britons, but also for the many other countries that also learn from our experiences.