We cannot arrest our way out of this problem
OVER the past three months, the UK has experienced an unprecedented surge in Islamist terrorism leading to three attacks and five disrupted plots since the Westminster bridge attack in late March.
Once again, our police have faced down these threats with remarkable skill and speed.
Within eight minutes of the first call to police, all three terrorist suspects in Saturday night’s attack had been shot dead, having been confronted by several on and off-duty unarmed police officers, and then by eight specialist armed officers who fired around 50 rounds
‘Counter-terrorist police and MI5 are under enormous, sustained pressure’
of ammunition at them.
Specialist firearms police in London have now shot dead four Islamist terrorists in London in the Westminster and London Bridge attacks, as well as shooting and injuring Rizlaine Boular, aged 21, in a raid in north London in May who was subsequently charged with serious terrorist offences.
Despite having trained for all of the challenges they have faced this year, the National Police counter terrorism network and MI5 have been under enormous, sustained pressure. Investigative workload is at its highest since the years after 9/11, arrests and searches continue to rise and the number of cases awaiting trial at court mounts.
Political and public expectations are adding to the burden; in the past decade, the country has become accustomed to Islamist terrorist threats being successfully thwarted, leading to more than 200 convicted terrorists being sent to prison; Drummer Lee Rigby was the only fatality in the UK from Islamist terrorism between 2005 and 2016. The past three months have severely damaged this track record, despite a high number of individuals being charged with terrorist offences in 2017.
Fears are growing that military advances on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s headquarters may result in more British foreign fighters returning to the UK, putting yet more pressure on already stretched resources.
When I started in counter-terrorism policing in the late Eighties, there were just six specialist counter-terrorism detectives at New Scotland Yard dealing with all known “international terrorism” threats, and several hundred dealing with Irish-related terrorism. There are now more than 2,000 officers at New Scotland Yard in around 70 different specialist teams dealing with Islamist terrorism in London alone. Ten years ago, the home affairs select committee was told that the number of Islamist extremists in the UK being monitored by MI5 numbered 2,000. That figure is now said to be 3,000, with 500 live covert counter-terrorism operations under way. Extremism is on the rise.
Most counter-terrorism professionals agree that the current national strategy is weak in two areas: a lack of measures to curtail online extremism and an incoherent Prevent strategy that fails to confront extremism within some Muslim communities. It is inconceivable that no one knew about the inclinations of the three terrorists who committed Saturday’s attack.
Islamist extremism won’t be solved by intelligence-led investigations. We cannot arrest our way out of the problem. There have now been 34 innocent people killed and 214 injured in three terrorist attacks in 74 days. We owe it to all those whose lives have been changed by these atrocities to improve our efforts to tackle this pervasive ideology in our midst.