Those who have experience dealing with homegrown terrorism are looking for more effective ways to counter “radicalization,” whereby a young person is lured into adopting an ideology that eventually leads to perpetrating violence on his countrymen. A symposium, “U.K. and U.S. Approaches in Countering Radicalization,” was held April 1 at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss how to counter this homegrown Islamic radicalization.
Terrorism should not be viewed as only “a foreign menace that comes from overseas to strike at our cities,” said Pauline Neville-Jones, Great Britain’s minister of state for Security and Counterterrorism. “It can and does come from within our countries and from inside our own populations,” she said.
U.K. National Coordinator of Terrorist Investigations Peter Clarke, said homegrown terrorism is “serious and enduring.”
No doubt, the problem of terrorism at home will be with us for the foreseeable future. The British had their own version of 9/11, named 7/7, which refers to July 7, 2005, when four suicide bombers attacked three of London’s underground trains and one bus, killing 52 and injuring over 700.
Charles Allen, formerly undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis, said the number of cases of persons indicted for terrorism is relatively small, but growing. Between 2001 and 2010, there were only 176 cases, based on a RAND study. From 2009 to 2010, there were 35 cases, which exceeds the rate of cases each year from 2001 to 2010.
Extreme Islamic Ideology vs. Islam
Speaking as a member of the Conservative led government and a confidante to the current prime minister, Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones explained Britain’s strategy for combating homegrown terrorism. Sometimes their policies differed from the previous Labor government’s policies. Their strategies have made some people uncomfortable about issues of privacy and civil liberties. Similar concerns have emerged in the United States, although the policies have not been as controversial as in the U.K.
The chief concept in the security minister’s strategy is finding effective de-radicalization interventions for the individuals who are on the path to violent terrorist activity. One way to do this is to challenge the ideology of Islamic extremism, which is “perverse and pernicious,”she said.
The British concept of how terrorist violence happens is that there is an acceptance of an ideology that says that Muslims around the world are being “oppressed.” Individuals with personal vulnerabilities may find this ideology attractive and compelling. Called upon to protect the faith, the believer accepts violence as legitimate.
Confronting the extremist ideology must never be confounded with objecting to the religion of Islam, which is not the problem, Neville-Jones says. Indeed, their approach is to “work with mainstream Islam.”
The approach of the new British government is to try to integrate Muslims into the wider community to instill a sense of national identity. Neville-Jones complimented the United Staes for having that—the American Dream that immigrant communities can aspire to and accept. She quoted Prime Minister Cameron, who criticized past government policies of “state multiculturalism” that fostered differentiation between communities. Instead, the security minister said the U.K. needs a strategy of “integration,” actively promoting a national identity, which the Conservative government hopes will counter the tendencies for individuals to become isolated and adopt an extremist ideology.
Community Policing
One of the panels at the symposium viewed radicalization and terrorism as not fundamentally different from other criminality. Hence, enlightened law enforcement could be incorporated in the solution and helpful in obtaining good Intelligence.
Clarke said that in an open societies like the United States and the U.K., there is considerable opportunity. His government has programs in place to address the problems, targeted to places where Islamic extremism can incubate and grow—“universities, mosques, and prisons.” Working in prisons, which have a disproportionately large number of persons of the Islamic faith, is the least controversial, but government anti-radicalization programs in the universities and mosques are “hugely controversial,” said Clarke, who formerly worked at the anti-terrorism branch of Scotland Yard.
William Bratton, who has been police chief of both the Los Angeles and New York police departments, said the Islamic extremism and violence needs to be addressed in the same fashion as the gang problem. He said in the 1970s and 1980s, local police were isolated from the community—‘thin blue line’—like an occupying force. But they learned in the late 1980s and 1990s that to deal with crime, police had to develop relationships.
“Who better to deal with the Muslim community than the local police?” asked Bratton.
Applying the lessons learned from gang deterrence, local police in L.A. have dealt with the terrorist issue through the Muslim community and found it is “incredibly diverse like the rest of American society.”
“[Approximately] 80 percent of detected and thwarted terrorist related activities, though the numbers are small, were the result of citizens or local police,” said Bratton. “What seems to be a local crime increasingly may have a nexus to terrorist activity,” he said.
Allen said we need to tackle the problem “from the bottom up,” using the nation’s 18,500 police departments. Law enforcement needs to have a seat at the table with Homeland Security and the FBI. Allen said that after 9/11 we had a slow start in recognizing the role of blending intelligence with law enforcement policing, but now working together is accelerating.
