Posts Tagged ‘Brexit’

Hopeless Brexit planning has left Britain at risk from a new wave of terrorists

Posted: February 15, 2019 in Independent
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Have been very delinquent in posting pieces on the site for a variety of reasons. So catching up a bit now. First up is a piece from early January for the Independent offering a view on some of the security information sharing concerns that might arise from the dreaded Brexit.

Hopeless Brexit planning has left Britain at risk from a new wave of terrorists

The twin threat of far-right extremists and Isis-inspired attackers can only be addressed with robust coordination across the continent

Largely unnoticed in the 2018 political chaos was a House of Commons Home Affairs Committee report on the security consequences of Brexit. In deeply concerned tones, the committee concluded that the government had not prepared sufficiently for the potential domestic security implications of Britain’s departure from the EU.

Against a backdrop of lone actor plots across the continent and growing right-wing extremism, this is not good enough. The terror threat remains as diffuse and transnational as ever.

Key to disrupting these threats is information sharing – something the committee specifically identifies as at risk from the current approach to Brexit. The Police Federation, which represents 120,000 rank-and-file officers, claimed the government has left it with “no idea” how they will protect the British public after Brexit.

Recent plots in Strasbourg, Manchester, Bottrop, Tokyo, Sweden, Italy and Newcastle have repeated a pattern of lone individuals potentially, but not necessarily, linked to larger networks. They are hard to identify before an attack. They pop up across the continent and can occasionally get through, as was the case at the Strasbourg Christmas market.

In almost every case, investigations reveal the attackers were previously known to authorities. The positive we can draw from the larger picture is that a growing number are disrupted before the plot is enacted. The tough task for European authorities is to work out which of the many individuals monitored are genuinely prepared to commit murder.

To arrest them all would be vastly disproportionate. These individuals remain free not due to the authorities’ laxity, but rather because of a lack of evidence, or lack of guilt. Some will likely never become priority targets for authorities, or active terrorists.

So how do we keep improving the decision-making about who to focus on? In brief, we need a fuller understanding of the individuals, and that comes from gaining access to more data. The current arrangements around Brexit put that under threat. According to the government’s own figures, one database, the Second Generation Schengen Information System (SIS II), contains 76.5m records that were checked by UK enforcement more than 500m times last year.

In his evidence to the committee, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Richard Martin highlighted the role of the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS). Martin quoted research that suggested “losing access to ECRIS would mean a response to a request about a foreign national’s criminal history would take an average of 66 days, compared to 10 days under ECRIS”.

At the same time as the threat from Isis-inspired terrorism has continued – despite talk of its “defeat” in Syria – we have seen a rise in extreme right-wing terrorism.

According to the 2018 Global Terrorism Index, right-wing groups and individuals killed 66 people in western Europe and north America between 2013 and 2017. In the UK alone the index tracked 12 far-right terror attacks in 2017, including the attack outside Finsbury Park mosque, where 47-year-old Darren Osborne drove a van into Muslim worshippers, killing one person and injuring at least nine others.

Perhaps most worrying are the potential links across Europe, where a more organised extreme right wing has long been visible in parts of Germany and is connecting across the continent. Groups in Central and Eastern European are making links to like-minded people in the UK, creating the alarming spectre of a transnational community.

Again, the only legitimate way to address this problem is closer connectivity and cooperation. Continental security partners will of course want to continue sharing information to counter a common threat, but in the absence of robust procedures and structures, information may slip through. It is all very good for security forces to want to share information, but this can only be done properly through appropriate and legally monitored channels to prevent abuse and protect civil liberties.

The combined threat of hard-to-track Isis sympathisers and international collaboration between far-right extremists present a relentless challenge to our security forces. They have had considerable success, but this is in part thanks to the shared information which builds difficult investigations to disrupt potential terrorists.

It is essential that they have the data to continue this task. Hard Brexit, soft Brexit or no Brexit at all, serious and concerted plans must be made to guarantee the seamless continuation of pan-European intelligence on the people that seek to do us harm. That there remains a lack of clarity here, despite expressions of concern by senior security officials, is a very worrying state of affairs.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI)

Brexit: A Case for British Recalibration In Relation To Asia and Africa

Posted: July 4, 2016 in Royal United Services Institute
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This is my attempt to offer some ideas for the UK post-Brexit for my home institution at RUSI. The vote was not in the direction I would have chosen, and it is not clear how things will shake out in the long-term (as in what will the UK’s relationship with the EU look like), but it feels like the UK needs to think seriously about what it is going to do in the world next.

Beyond this, spoke to CNN and CNBC in the wake of the Istanbul airport attack, La Repubblica in the wake of the Dhaka attack, and Eurasianet after the SCO Summit.

xi_jinping_and_david_cameron

Brexit: A Case for British Recalibration In Relation To Asia and Africa

Commentary, 1 July 2016

Africa, Brexit Briefings, Central and South Asia, Pacific, UK, International Security Studies

The Brexit vote has created an urgent need for the United Kingdom to redefine its global identity if it is to remain a leading player in international affairs. Re- assessing relationships with Asia and Africa might be a good place to start.

The British electorate has made a momentous foreign policy decision, the ramifications of which will not be fully understood for some time. But whilst the full consequences may not yet be clear, the country’s decision has already had an impact on how it is perceived – and treated – by the rest of the world. It is therefore imperative that the country starts to think about crafting a new role, adjacent to its European one, and redefining its identity in an international context. This should be built on advancing liberal ideals and values to the world, whilst seeking out new markets and opportunities and ensuring that British national security and interests lie at the heart of foreign policy.

The UK still has a number of strong cards in its hand. These include its membership of NATO, its seat at the United Nations Security Council, membership of the Five Eyes intelligence community, of the G7 group of industrialised states and the world-wide links that the Commonwealth family of nations brings, in addition to the availability of the City of London as one of the world’s biggest trading hubs and a language that is the universal mode of communication. Success however will depend on whether these advantages can be translated into a new series of international relations in a world with a growing number of superpowers.

The first port of call after Europe must be Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to the UK gave birth to a ‘global comprehensive strategic partnership for the 21st Century,’ whilst during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit, Prime Minister David Cameron told a packed Wembley stadium that ‘team India, team UK – together we are a winning combination’. Not long before the EU referendum, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the UK in order to reaffirm the strong bond between the two countries, stressing that ‘we are clear that we are stronger when we work together – both bilaterally and alongside our international partners’.

Whilst there is no doubt that the UK will now be perceived as a different power by these Asian giants, it will nonetheless still be a significant power. Its seat at the UNSC will guarantee that it will have a voice in the conversation, but the UK needs to initiate a programme  of intense diplomacy and engagement to convince the world that, from its position outside the European Union, it still has a distinct role to play on the international stage.

First, it needs to ensure the message gets across that the country is open for investment and will continue to be an attractive trade partner. Asian markets reacted badly to the decision to withdraw from the EU and are still fragile in the face of a Chinese slowdown.

Second, the UK needs to find a way to strengthen its voice on crucial Asian security and political questions. Until now, the country has played a secondary role in the majority of Asia’s most difficult security questions, focusing more on its partnerships with Europe or its alliance with the United States and using them as vectors to engage with regional Asian security issues. While these  partnerships will remain important, by demonstrating a deeper understanding of regional security issues the UK will show that it is not just there for mercantile reasons, but through a desire to engage, influence and support.

Thirdly, the UK needs to focus on engaging with the flow of  Asian capital into bigger regional or global projects; China’s ‘Belt and Road’ vision, India’s ‘Act East’ policy and Japan’s continuing strategic engagement with its neighbours all create opportunities for the UK to engage with third countries, alongside and together with these Asian giants. This can take the form of joint investments and projects, but also the use of  British relations and diplomacy to help deepen the UK’s strategic engagement with these Asian giants across the developing world.

Finally, the UK needs to peer beyond the Asian giants of today and look to the next potential rising wave: powers like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia or the Philippines are at very different stages of development, but have massive populations that will inevitably grow in size, power and eventually influence. Forging strong relations in development, trade, economics and security sooner rather than later will help to establish the UK as a relevant player at the heart of the emerging Asia.

Beyond Asia, the UK needs to also look more closely at Africa, a continent that has largely been relegated in most British government planning to the status of being either a security concern or a development project. While these issues are undoubtedly important in terms of UK engagement with the African continent, focusing on them alone risks missing significant opportunities for economic engagement.  Across Africa, there is a grass roots community of small to medium entrepreneurs who are creating a new commercial climate. By finding ways of engaging with this community, helping them connect with British counterparts, as well as continuing to focus on reform, development and engagement with Asian powers as they invest in large scale infrastructure projects across the continent, the UK can successfully re-position and redefine itself globally.

It will of course be impossible to know if any engagement, financial, diplomatic or otherwise will be able to replace what is likely to be lost by the Brexit decision. But in order to ensure that the UK does not become merely an island off the coast of Europe in more than a geographic sense, there is a need for the country to move quickly and find a way to reposition itself as a power with influence and relationships that enable  it to punch well above its weight. This may seem a daunting task, but it it’s not an impossible one.

Ignored by the authorities, emboldened by Brexit, Europe’s far right is surging

Posted: June 30, 2016 in Guardian
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And a second post-Brexit article, this time for the Guardian, covering some of the same points but this time focused singularly on the far right and the implications for them for the Brexit vote. This has some depressing portents in the future for it, and lets hope that politicians and others can find ways to move us forwards.

Ignored by the authorities, emboldened by Brexit, Europe’s far right is surging

Rightwing extremists are a grave danger in themselves, let alone when you factor in their influence on mainstream politics, and on terrorism
Poles against migrants protest

The result of Britain’s referendum on EU membership has strengthened far-right activism across Europe. In the UK there have been reports of public racist abuse, while far-right-leaning parties across the continent have taken advantage of the situation to call for their own referendums. There is a danger that an already polarised political environment will become even more broken with some individuals choosing a path to violence in response.

Extreme rightwing terrorism has been a growing problem in Europe for some time. A recent study by a consortium led by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) highlighted that when looking at the phenomenon of “lone actor” terrorism in particular (terrorist acts conducted by individuals without any clear direction from an outside group), the extreme right wing was responsible for as many as Islamist extremists. And not all were random one-off killers – Anders Breivik was able to butcher 77 people in a murderous rampage in Norway. What was particularly worrying was the fact that these individuals sat at the far end of a spectrum of extremists that included elements closer to the mainstream.

In the runup to conducting his act of terrorism, Breivik claimed to have attended protests organised by the English Defence League (EDL), a group he admired for its stand against what he perceived as invading Muslim hordes in Europe. Founded in the UK in response to a perceived refusal by authorities to clamp down on the noisy extremist group al-Muhajiroun, the EDL became a grab bag of far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant protesters who would take to the streets. It spawned imitators in continental Europe.

The emergence of the EDL, however, came at a moment when more established European nationalist groups such as Front National in France, the British National party (BNP) or the Austrian Freedom party, all became prominent in the public conversation. Far-right nationalist xenophobic sentiment has always been a part of the European conversation, but the strengthening of these groups highlighted how much the ideas they represented had started to slip into the political mainstream, largely off the back of anger with the usual parties of power. But while the far right tried to move itself into the mainstream, its violent edge remained, and as the European debate on immigration and Muslims has become more pronounced, there has been a growth in incidents of extreme rightwing violence.

The response from security forces has been mixed. While we have seen an apparent increase in extreme rightwing violence, there has been less attention paid to it by authorities. In the RUSI-led research, a particularly striking finding was that in about 40% of cases of far-right extremists, they were uncovered by chance – the individual managed to blow himself up or was discovered while authorities conducted another investigation. By contrast, around 80% of violent Islamist lone actors were discovered in intelligence-led operations – in other words, the authorities were looking for them.

But it is easy to understand why the extreme right wing gets overlooked. Most examples are fairly shambolic lonesome individuals whose efforts to launch terrorist plots seem amateurish at best. But they are still attempting to kill fellow citizens to advance a political ideology. And in the case of lone actors, they are at least as lethal as their violent Islamist counterparts – in our dataset of 120 cases, even when one removed Breivik as an outlier, the extreme right wing was as lethal as violent Islamists.

The concern from this phenomenon must now be twofold. On the one hand, the increasing mainstreaming of a xenophobic anti-immigrant narrative will feed the very “clash of civilisations” narrative that groups such as al-Qaida and Isis seek to foster – suggesting that there is a conflict between Islam and the west which they are at the heart of. It will only strengthen this sense and draw people towards them.

But there is also the danger of frustrated expectations. The reality is that notwithstanding a rise in anti-immigrant feeling in Europe, the migrants will still come. Attracted by the opportunity and prosperity they see in Europe (which is often a huge improvement on the environment they came from), they will come to seek low-paying jobs – jobs that western economies will still need to fill and are not taken by locals, which offer better prospects than where they came from. This economic dynamic means that people will not necessarily notice a dramatic change in their material environment. Foreigners will continue to come and will continue to be a presence around them – providing a community to blame when individual economic situations do not change or feel like they are getting worse.

Here lies one of the more dangerous sides of this new European political environment. A polarised society which does not appear to materially change – frustrating those who feel like they have expressed their political will only to find it unanswered. The result, unless handled properly by the mainstream political community, is a potential for violence that has already reared its head brutally on the European continent, and unless carefully checked will do so again.