United Kingdom’s Home Grown Terrorism, Abroad

One of the sessions at the United Nations Conference on Counter-Terrorism in June 2023 was called “Building Effective and Resilient Member States’ Institutions in the Evolving Global Terrorism Landscape.” One of the speakers, Colin Smith from the United Kingdom, spoke (44:35) of the changing landscape of terrorism over the past twenty years and covered:

a focus on al Qaeda 20 years ago versus local terrorist groups today
a secretive counter-terrorism community vs. an open forum where countries share information and resources
immature counter-terrorism agencies vs. more sophisticated organizations
centers of terrorism vs. geographically diffuse operations now

Smith said “Since 2018, there’ve been nine successful terrorist attacks in the UK and one failed attack but none of them were directed from overseas. They were all self-initiated terrorists. So an individual or perhaps a small group getting together being radicalized by what they saw online or what they heard and turning to a terrorist attack in perhaps a very short of time, perhaps radicalizing in weeks, and not in months or years; perhaps days or weeks. Very low sophistication attacks using knives and cars. So since 2018, there have nine such attacks killing six people and injuring 23 in the UK but we’ve had no externally-directed attacks. In fact, the last time there was an externally successful attack in the UK was back in 2005.”

It begs the question as to the nature of home-grown terrorism in the UK since 2005.

*Colin Smith of the United Kingdom talking at the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in June 2023*

A quick review of some of the attacks:

On May 22, 2013, two Muslim men killed and hacked to death a British soldier stating that they did so “because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers. And this British soldier is one…. By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.“
On March 22, 2017, a 52-year old Briton who had converted to Islam, drove his car on Westminster Bridge injuring 50 and killing five.
On May 22, 2017, 23 people were killed and over 1,000 wounded when a British Muslim man bombed an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. He was aided by his brother and it was learned that his imam had called for an armed jihad ten days earlier.
On June 3, 2017, three Muslim men ran a car over people on London Bridge and then began stabbing people, killing eight and wounding nearly 50 people

Quite a heavy toll between 2005 and 2018, and certainly more violent than only “using knives and cars.”

Smith’s UN comments were seemingly dismissive of the news when he said that the attackers were “radicalized by what they saw online or what they heard,” making it sound like the attackers were being fed disinformation and preyed upon. However, it was a well known and reported fact that the United Kingdom participated in fighting Al Qaeda and ISIL. The British Muslims who committed the terrorist attacks simply showed a greater love for co-religionists than for their fellow citizens whom they saw as co-conspirators killing Muslims.

Smith highlighted that the UK published a counter-terrorism document called CONTEST in 2018. Importantly for the UN conference, he spoke of the broad coordination happening amongst different agencies and the public sector to combat terrorism holistically, as called for in the report.

Yet he avoided discussing that between 2013 and the 2018 counterterrorism report, British police “foiled 25 Islamist plots since June 2013, and four extreme right wing terror plots in the past year alone…. The war in Syria, which was in its infancy when the last Strategy was published, has created both a haven and a training ground for British and foreign terrorists. UK citizens have been targeted in attacks overseas, for example in Sousse in 2015,” when 30 British tourists were killed in Tunisia.

The CONTEST publication was explicit about the serious threats facing the UK: “Daesh’s ability to direct, enable and inspire attacks still represents the most significant global terrorist threat, including to the UK and our people and interests overseas. Daesh’s methods are already being copied by new and established terror groups. Using pernicious, divisive messaging and amplifying perceived grievances, Daesh and Al Qa’ida exploit the internet to promote warped alternative narratives, urging extremists within our own communities to subvert our way of life through simple, brutal violence.”

In the setting of the United Nations panel, Smith avoided mentioning Islamic extremism, despite being the root cause of the British developing its comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. He alluded to disinformation, rather than point out that terrorists had grievances about actual facts. He did not discuss the end of British troops fighting in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan (or at least the media covering such events) as cause for the pause in jihadists killing British citizens in recent years.

Significantly, Smith also did not talk about the United Kingdom’s refusal to repatriate perhaps as many as 400 British citizens back to its shores after fighting alongside terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.

CONTEST was explicit, writing “Daesh’s initial state-building narrative persuaded thousands of people, including women and families, to travel to Syria from around the world, including from Europe and North Africa. This includes around 900 people of national security concern from the UK. Of these, approximately 20% have been killed while overseas, and around 40% have returned to the UK. The majority of those who have returned did so in the earlier stages of the conflict, and were investigated on their return. Only a very small number of travellers have returned in the last two years, and most of those have been women with young children.” That leaves 40% of the 900, or about 350 Britons still abroad as of 2018.

In regards to children still overseas, as of April 2023, as many as “60 British children are believed to be detained in al-Hol and Roj, two sprawling detention camps in northeast Syria primarily holding family members of Islamic State (ISIS) suspects” according to Human Rights Watch. Those children are among 37,000 foreign nationals held in the camps who are being refused re-entry into their home countries, many of whom have been stripped of their citizenship.

The UK published its goals of reintegrating returnees from the conflict in CONTEST, noting that its Desistance and Disengagement Programme (DDP) was “to reduce the risk from terrorism through rehabilitation and reintegration… will aim to more than double its current capacity to accommodate up to 230 individuals…. Through the DDP, we provide a range of
intensive tailored interventions and practical support, designed to tackle the drivers of radicalisation around universal needs for identity, self-esteem, meaning and purpose; as well as to address personal grievances that the extremist narrative has exacerbated.” It was unclear whether addressing the terrorist’s grievances meant discussing why the UK fought ISIL or changing policy and having the UK abandon the fight.

Further, if there were still as many as 60 British children held in detention camps in Syria as of April 2023, it stands to reason that the UK has left almost all of the 350 adults in the camps as well, repatriating no one.

CONTEST also spoke of the government’s intention of pursuing would-be terrorists “including covert human intelligence sources, surveillance assets and the lawful intercept of communications. In addition to these capabilities, we also use a wide range of tools to constrain the ability of terrorists to act, for example working to proscribe organisations, freeze and seize their financial assets, and break up networks and associations in prison.” Even before the effort was launched, the report noted the government had contained “approximately 700 prisoners… who have been identified as engaged in terrorism or extremism, or about whom there are extremism concerns.”

Incarcerating would-be terrorists was also excluded from the panel discussion at the United Nations.

In summary, the UN forum was devoid of mentioning Islamic extremism, keeping terrorist in prisons at home and abroad, and blamed disinformation on the Internet for spawning attacks rather than actual grievances from a warped ideology.

It also did not mention acceding to terrorists’ demands which the United Kingdom may have already done, such as abandoning the fight on Islamic terror, whether ISIL, Taliban, al Shabab and Boko Haram, and resuscitating terrorist groups like Hamas.

The United Nations panelists on counter-terrorism did not speak openly, honestly or comprehensively about various approaches countries have implemented to tackle the global scourge and opted instead to parrot politically correct non-controversial narratives. Perhaps honest dialogues exist in private but the public spectacle of the UN is a ghostly version of reality.