British Anti-Terrorist Program ‘Alienating’ Say MPs

British government fights against terrorism.
British Anti-Terrorist Program ‘Alienating’ Say MPs
4/1/2010
Updated:
4/1/2010
LONDON—Using soft-power in the fight against terrorism was meant to turn the hearts and minds of potential home-grown suicide bombers away from radical Islam.

But the British government’s program to tackle extremist ideology was built on false presumptions and has back-fired amid allegations of spying on Muslim communities, concludes a report by MPs.

The all-party report into the Prevent program says it is “stigmatizing” and “alienating” the very people it was intending to engage and criticizes the government’s understanding of the causes of radicalization.

“We conclude that there has been a preoccupation with the theological basis of radicalization, when the evidence seems to indicate that politics, policy, and socio-economics may be more important factors in the process,” says the report.

The Prevent program was rolled out with intention of “winning hearts and minds” by tackling the root of extremist ideology by engaging communities and conducting debates. The government spent £140 million (US$214 million) on Prevent in 2008 and 2009.

A Guardian article last year accused the government of using the program to gather intelligence about innocent people who are not suspected of terrorist involvement.

Civil liberties organization, Liberty, has described it as the “biggest spying program in Britain in modern times.”

While the report by The Committee for Communities and Local Government does not confirm these allegations, it concludes that suspicion of spying is central to the failure of the program.

“We believe that this work can be successful only if untainted by the negative association with a counterterrorism agenda,” the report states. “Despite rebuttals, the allegations of spying retain widespread credibility within certain sections of the Muslim community. If the government wants to improve confidence in the Prevent program, it should commission an independent investigation into the allegations made.”

According to the report, the reputation of the Prevent program has become so blackened that its involvement has “tainted many positive community cohesion projects.”

“There is a sense that government has sought to engineer a ‘moderate’ form of Islam, promoting and funding only those groups which conform to this model,” says the report.

The report also questioned the appropriateness of what is essentially a crime prevention program to come under the umbrella of the Department for Communities and Local Government.