This is no time to take our eye off the ball on terror
Britain’s ability to track Islamist groups such as IS has been diminished by the Afghan withdrawal
With China said to be testing new hypersonic nuclear weapons, Russia ending its cooperation with Nato, and North Korea firing its first submarine-based missile, it is perhaps understandable that the long-running campaign against Islamist-inspired terrorism has been slipping down the list of Britain’s national security priorities.
In the past few years the prospect of future state-on-state conflict, once considered unimaginable because of its catastrophic impact on humanity, has become a worryingly real possibility – not least because of the tremendous technological advances taking place in modern warfare.
Claims this week, for example, that China has successfully tested a hypersonic Fractional Orbital Bombardment System – a space launched nuclear weapon, to you and me – would certainly represent a significant upgrade in Beijing’s nuclear capabilities. It would give China the ability to launch a missile system that can orbit the earth multiple times before firing a nuclear weapon at its designated target.
Apart from demonstrating Beijing’s determination to achieve dominance in the nuclear arms race, the development of such a system would give China the ability to avoid US warning defences, thereby providing the country with the means of conducting a first nuclear strike against the US, or allies such as Britain.
Moscow’s hissy fit with Nato over the expulsion of eight members of the Russian mission on spying charges offers further evidence of the deepening divisions among world powers. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s peevish foreign minister, has responded to the accusations by suspending the Kremlin’s mission at Nato headquarters, and withdrawing the accreditation of the alliance’s representative in Moscow – moves that are likely to increase East-west tensions to Cold War levels.
Add to this troubling scenario North Korea’s successful test launch of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, as well as what US security officials have termed Iran’s “alarming” progress in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons, and it is not hard to fathom why British defence and security officials believe they have more pressing challenges to contend with than tracking the activities of Islamist terror fanatics.
Yet, the potential harm caused by Islamist extremists remains as potent as ever, suggesting that any attempt by our security establishment to downgrade the threat could prove to be wholly misplaced.
The impulse to divert resources from conventional counter-terrorism operations to deal with the threat posed by hostile powers such as China, Russia and Iran has its merits, especially in the wake of the devastating defeat inflicted on Islamic State. By contrast, the existential threat posed by China’s expanding nuclear arsenal or Russian cyber warriors is indisputable, and rightly deserves to take centre stage in our national security deliberations, an attitude that is reflected in the conclusions of the Government’s recently published Integrated Review.
Nevertheless, in terms of the disruption terrorists can inflict on our lives, their potency cannot be ignored, especially as all the evidence suggests that Islamist militants remain as determined as ever to carry out their evil plots.
In the wake of Sir David Amess’s killing, which British investigators are treating as a terrorist act, calls have already been made to curb our freedoms, such as making it harder to gain access to MPS’ constituency surgeries by imposing stricter security arrangements. Furthermore, intelligence chiefs say that it is becoming harder to track and apprehend so-called “bedroom radicals” because it is often difficult to distinguish between those who propagate hate-filled propaganda and those who genuinely intend to carry out extreme acts of violence.
Our ability to track the activities of Islamist terror groups like IS and al-qaeda has also been severely diminished as a result of the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the sophisticated intelligencegathering operations that enabled us to monitor and disrupt the activities of Islamist extremists no longer exist. Consequently, the country has become a blind spot for Western intelligence services, with no one taking seriously the Taliban’s boast that it will prevent Islamist terror groups from plotting attacks against the West from territory they control.
As US General Kenneth Mckenzie, head of Central Command, remarked earlier this week, the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has been a “shot in the arm” for global extremists. In an interview with Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper, Gen Mckenzie said there was no sign that the Taliban was cracking down on terror groups. “There’s no evidence yet that they have done anything to sever ties with al-qaeda.”
All the more reason, then, for the West to maintain its vigilance against the Islamist threat instead of diverting resources elsewhere. Otherwise we could soon find ourselves experiencing more bloodshed on Britain’s streets.