Countering International Terrorism: Protecting the public
25. The Government keeps under review the range of potential terrorist threats that may arise in the United Kingdom and to our citizens and interests overseas. The principal terrorist threat is currently from radicalised individuals who are using a distorted and unrepresentative interpretation of the Islamic faith to justify violence. Such people are referred to here as Islamist terrorists [1]. This paper focuses on that threat and on the responses to it.
26. In any response to this threat, it is important to recognise that terrorists using these distorted readings of Islam are a tiny minority within Muslim communities. Muslim communities themselves do not threaten our security - in fact, we rely on the huge contribution they make to the economic, cultural, and social life of the UK. Muslims are as much at risk from terrorism as anyone else, as was shown by those who were killed or injured in the attacks on 7 July 2005. But Muslims themselves are aware of the risk of radicalisation within certain offshoots of their communities and we must work in partnership with communities to identify and respond to the risks that extremism poses.
27. During the 1990s Islamist terrorist groups carried out numerous attacks in a variety of countries. A bomb attack against the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 and the Paris Metro attacks in 1995 were amongst the earliest of these, but later in the decade many more attacks were made in other countries, including in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tanzania and Kenya, and Yemen.
28. In the event, the most serious of these attacks came in September 2001, when four simultaneous actions in the eastern USA killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 British citizens, making it the worst terrorist incident of modern times.
29. Since then, there have been further significant attacks: in predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Tunisia, Morocco, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia - including the bombing of a nightclub in Bali in October 2002, in which over 190 people were killed, including 28 British citizens - and Turkey; in India; as well as more attacks in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. There have also been significant attacks in Europe: multiple attacks on the Madrid train network in March 2004 and attacks in the United Kingdom in July 2005, when nearly simultaneous explosions on the Underground network and a bus in London killed 52 innocent people and injured over 700 others.
30. Many intended terrorist actions in this period, however, were disrupted or unsuccessful. These are discussed further below.
31. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. For example, the UK experienced repeated domestic terrorist attacks as a result of the long-running troubles in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, the threat that we currently face does have certain distinctive characteristics.
32. First, the threat is genuinely international. Compared with earlier terrorist threats, attacks have been carried out, or attempted, against a very wide range of targets in many countries. Sometimes these attacks are carried out by individuals from the country concerned and sometimes by outsiders, so the domestic and international dimensions of this threat are closely interlinked. The terrorists also make maximum use of the freedoms and possibilities of modern life - especially the ease of travel and the ease with which information and money flows across the world.
33. Second, the threat comes from a variety of groups, networks and individuals. These range from larger groups organised around clear hierarchic and bureaucratic structures, to much looser and smaller groups of like-minded individuals. These different elements often cooperate and assist each other, but often also pursue separate goals.
34. In the past, terrorists have sometimes sought protection or sponsorship from states, as was provided in the 1990s in Sudan and under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They continue to seek out places where governments and security forces are weak as 'havens' for training and other activities. These terrorists are, however, essentially non-state actors - they do not need state support to operate.
35. Third, these terrorists intend to cause mass casualties. They are indiscriminate: aiming to cause the most death and destruction that they can, regardless of the age, nationality, or religion of their victims. Whilst they do aim at governmental targets, such as embassies and units of the armed forces, or those with symbolic value, such as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one distinctive feature of their attacks is that these often deliberately strike at ordinary people going about their lives. Other terrorist groups have done this in the past, but not on such a scale.
36. And these terrorists are often prepared to kill themselves as a means of killing many others. This is not unique to these groups, but it has not been a feature of previous threats that the UK has faced.
37. Fourth, the people involved in these terrorist attacks are driven by particular violent and extremist beliefs. A common thread connecting many of the planned or successful terrorist attacks in the UK, the rest of Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and North America over the past decade has been that those involved have claimed to be acting in defence of Islam. However, the great majority of Muslims in the UK and abroad reject both extremism and violence. What the terrorists in fact draw on is a particular and distorted form of Islam, sometimes referred to as Islamist extremism, which they say encourages or obliges its adherents to carry out acts of violence against those that they identify as their enemies.
The individuals who have carried out terrorist attacks which they claim are in defence of Islam do not in fact adhere to a single set of beliefs: they may appear to outsiders to hold similar views, but can nevertheless have quite distinct opinions and approaches on particular issues. Overall, however, it is possible to identify certain common themes.
First, the terrorists adopt a particular and malignant misinterpretation of Islamic teaching which they believe places an obligation on believers to fight and explicitly to kill to achieve their aims. This interpretation, which they believe legitimises their terrorist acts, is sometimes referred to as Jihadism. [2] It is not accepted by most Muslims.
Second, the terrorists brand the current governments of many Muslim states as 'apostate' - that is as having turned away from true Islam - on the basis that those states do not conform to the terrorists' idea of how a Muslim state should be run. By labelling existing Muslim states in this way, the terrorists believe they can justify taking violent action against the governments and citizens of those states, even though they are coreligionists.
Third, the terrorists seek to remove what they believe are un-Islamic and alien 'Western' influences from the Muslim world. This approach includes resistance to secular institutions, to certain human rights, and to Muslim religious practices of which they disapprove.
Fourth, the terrorists argue that Islam itself is facing an active, sustained, and long-term attack from what they characterise as the Christian and Jewish inspired, but secular, West. This illusion is sustained by characterising relations between Muslims and Westerners as a long history of injustices and grievances, whilst downplaying any evidence to the contrary. [3] These claims are used to justify indiscriminate attacks against ordinary innocent people.
Taken together, these four elements amount to an intolerant pursuit of narrowly framed beliefs, coupled with an implacable hostility to the West and its peoples - and to Muslims whose religious practices diverge from their own - and a rejection of basic human rights and values, backed up by a willingness to commit extreme violence in pursuit of their aims.
Al Qa'ida, led by Usama Bin Ladin and his deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri, is a radical Islamist terrorist network that particularly espouses these views.
The threat to the United Kingdom
38. The threat to the UK comes from different quarters. As we saw in the tragic events of 7 July 2005, terrorists inspired by Islamist extremism may come from within British communities - the bombers were British citizens brought up in this country. However, those charged in connection with the incidents on 21 July 2005 are of African origin. In recent years, terrorist suspects investigated in the UK have come originally from countries as diverse as Libya, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere - as well as those who have lived most or all of their lives in the UK.
39. The Government assesses that the current threat in the UK from Islamist terrorism is serious and sustained. British citizens also face the threat of terrorist attacks when abroad. Overall, we judge that the scale of the threat is potentially still increasing and is not likely to diminish significantly for some years.
40. The UK has achieved some significant successes in dealing with potential attacks by Islamist terrorists, since before 2001. A number of credible plans to cause loss of life have been disrupted; in many cases the individuals involved have either been successfully prosecuted and imprisoned or are awaiting trial. However, as the tragic attacks of 7 July 2005 have shown, it is not possible to eliminate completely the threat of terrorist attacks in this country. The rest of this paper describes what is being done to minimise that risk.
[1] The majority of groups usually referred to as Islamists are not terrorists. Islamism is a term with no universally agreed definition, but which is usually used to suggest that a particular group or movement is seeking to build political structures it deems Islamic. (return)
[2] The term "jihad" refers primarily to non-violent struggle, for example the spiritual struggle to lead a good life. It may also be used to mean military struggle, but the vast majority of Muslims do not consider today's terrorism to be legitimate, military jihad. (return)
[3] This is sometimes referred to as 'the single narrative'. (return)
