How can Britain keep itself safe?

Dr. Mubarak Ahmed

Strategic expert on comparative systems

Hours after his appointment, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid  gave a public interview, in which he confirmed that ‘keeping the country safe’ was his top priority. He said that the threat from terrorism was one of the starkest the UK was facing.

Major challenges, which prompted a fundamental review of counterterrorism strategy in the UK, include:

• ISIS’s success to use social networks and the Internet in recruiting European young people and sending them to war zones in Syria and Iraq. The European Jihadists formed groups, the most notorious of which, was the British-Bengali Association, which attracted British young people and teenagers. Its members were killed in the Ayne al-Arab Kobani in northern Syria in late 2014.
• The threat from terrorism is shifting and evolving in the UK and globally. A marked shift was demonstrated by the appalling attacks in London and Manchester in May last year, which cost the lives of 36 innocent people. ISIS deliberately planned its attacks on vulnerable places, such as concerts, to claim bigger casualties and attract the attention of bigger number of frustrated Muslim young people.
• ISIS’s deployment of ‘lone wolves’ to beat security measures in Britain and EU member states. The lone wolves are British and European fighters, who returned from Syria and Iraq. Forming sleeping cells, they become active in the daylight only after receiving the signal.
• British Jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq are causing a nightmare to the British security authority. The International Counterterrorism Centre, ICCT, estimated the number of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq at 3710, including 2838 from four European countries: Belgium, France, Germany and the UK. ICCT discovered that about 30% of these foreign Jihadists returned to their countries and were representing potential threats to the domestic security.

To counter the new challenges to the British security and the safety of its people, the British government announced on June 4 a thoroughly-reviewed counterterrorism strategy. The British Home Secretary said that the government decided to give counter-terrorism policing a £50 million increase in funding this year – to over three quarters of a billion pounds.

Named CONTEST, the new strategy aims at reducing the risk to the public and denying safe places to terrorists to act. However, it remains uncertain whether the UK’s CONTEST will be appealing to security authorities in different European countries.  The British Home Secretary explained that CONTEST was responding to the scale of the threat and the speed with which plots were developing.

The British government is confident that its CONTEST provides a new, more agile, flexible and co-ordinated approach designed to better prevent, detect and disrupt terrorist attacks, and where attacks get through, to limit the impact and recover swiftly. CONTEST will also help prevent safe spaces for terrorists to operate

Also central to the new strategy is working in partnership at international, national and local level, between government, agencies, the private sector and communities.

The counter-terrorism strategy will be underpinned by new legislation to enable the police and security services to disrupt terrorist threats earlier. This legislation will:

• amend existing terrorism offences to update them for the digital age and to reflect contemporary patterns of radicalisation and to close gaps in their scope, including making it an offence to repeatedly view streamed video content online
• enable further terrorism offences committed overseas to be prosecuted in the UK courts.
• Provide new multi-agency approaches – initially in London, Manchester and the West Midlands – to involve MI5 and the police using and sharing information more widely, working with partners such as local authorities to improve understanding of those at risk of involvement in terrorism and enable a wider range of interventions.

Through Prevent, the government, local authorities, police and communities will continue to safeguard and support vulnerable people from the risk of being drawn into terrorism, working with a wide network of partners to prevent radicalisation and build resilience.

The UK’s CONTEST seeks to encourage those who have already engaged in terrorism to withdraw and rehabilitate. The new counterterrorism philosophy will be further developed, including through the expansion of the Desistance and Disengagement Programme, a new element of Prevent.

Also the British government will work more closely with the private sector on a range of issues including protecting economic and physical infrastructure, gaining faster alerts to suspicious purchases, continuing to make it difficult for terrorists to use the internet for propaganda and ensuring  critical access to communications.

The British government will harness developments in technology including machine learning and quantum computing which have the potential to dramatically change and enhance counter-terror operational capabilities.

According to CONTEST, the sentencing framework for terrorism will be strengthened by increasing the maximum penalty for certain offences, to ensure that the punishment properly reflects the crime and to better prevent re-offending