‘Religious underpinning’ of attacks ‘must be confronted’
A LEADING Welsh anti-terrorism expert argues the “religious underpinning” of the extremists behind recent terror attacks must be confronted if the killing is to be brought to an end.
Kim Howells, who chaired Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee and served as a foreign minister while Pontypridd’s MP, welcomed Prime Minister Theresa May’s speech in which she argued there was “far too much tolerance of extremism” in the UK.
He said: “I’ve been arguing for a long time that sooner or later society has got to take on the religious underpinning of terrorism.”
Mr Howells said it was essential to secure the help of people in Muslim communities to break up extremist networks, and drew a parallel with the efforts to defeat the IRA.
He said: “The scenes in Manchester, for example, I think indicate many people in Muslim communities have just had enough of these jihadists and extremists... The main source of counterterrorism intelligence comes from those in the Muslim communities who are prepared to tell the police, to tell the agencies, that they are very worried or that they have suspicions about this particular group or community centre.
“Unless you can get that intelligence it’s extremely difficult to counter these people...
“In the end the IRA high command and certainly all of its regional commands were so infiltrated with people who were prepared to pass on information to MI5 and to the police that they just realised they couldn’t operate any more.”
Mr Howells wants online companies to play a full role in stopping communications between extremists and ensuring propaganda is not distributed online.
He said: “The most important civil liberty that any of us have is being able to walk down the street without being murdered or maimed. The terrorists, the Islamic jihadists, have no love of democracy or civil liberties or freedom.
“I count myself as a libertarian, I think people should be free to think and do what they want but without harming others, without murdering other people. And if these individuals are using encoded communication techniques I can’t for the life of me understand why so-called defenders of civil liberties are prepared to see people sacrificed on that altar.”
Arguing that innocent men and women have nothing to fear from action against extremists, he said: “Surely, if people are not involved in illegal or murderous activities, what on earth have they got to worry about? I really don’t understand it.”
Pressing for internet giants to do more, he said: “[These companies] have huge resources and have made massive profits, and they should be putting it back into making sure it’s policed properly and that these beheadings and the rest of this appalling content is not made available to our children and everyone else on the internet.”
Plaid Cymru AM Adam Price, who as MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr was a leading opponent of the war in Iraq, acknowledged the immediate security threat and argued not enough had been done to affirm key values such as respect for life and democracy.
Commenting on Mrs May’s speech, he said: “It is right that ultimately you have to tackle terrorism at its roots... You counter that through affirming the positive values that I think we as a society share in common.
“There hasn’t been enough of that... [They] are values which are as fundamental as the sanctity of human life which is clearly not a value that is shared by the perpetrators of these attacks, but they also include a belief in an open and tolerant and democratic society.”
Mr Price cautioned against “any sort of knee-jerk reaction”, warning: “There are societies that have adopted an authoritarian response to counter terrorists and ultimately that’s self-defeating. It’s that free, open democratic society that we’re trying to defend at the moment.”
Mr Price also stressed the need to understand how radicalisation progresses to the point where an individual is prepared to commit acts of murder.
He said: “We have to understand what is the process of indoctrination that actually gets human beings into a state of mind where they can conduct this level of cold-hearted killing. It takes a level of callousness, doesn’t it, to actually kill somebody with a knife in that way...
“What is the process that leads to this terrible state?”
Mr Price warned against repeating mistakes made in Troubles-era Northern Ireland. Between 1971 and 1975, 1,981 people were detained – the vast majority of whom were from a Catholic background.