This article originally appeared in the Irish Times

It was a long summer of claims, counterclaims and negotiations to try to bring the IRA hunger strikes to an end

APRIL 1981

WHEN BOBBY Sands became MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone on April 11th, some British officials hoped his election might encourage the IRA to move away from violence and into politics.

Sir Kenneth Stowe, permanent under-secretary of state at the Northern Ireland Office, told cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong that there was “reason to believe that the PIRA have been thinking seriously about an end to the campaign of violence, but feel that they need a success and an avenue to pursue their aims politically”.

As more prisoners joined the hunger strike, however, officials concluded that the IRA was primarily interested in short-term political gain rather than a new departure. On April 29th, with Sands expected to die within a few days, an intelligence assessment suggested that IRA “tactics have been determined on a day-to-day basis to take advantage of opportunities as they occur and it is unlikely that they have any clear policy on what to do next”.

MAY 1981

On May 11th, Dermot Nally, secretary to the Irish government, was visited in Dublin by Sir Robert Armstrong, his British counterpart. Both men agreed that the IRA was not, at that point, interested in an escape route from the strike. “The ‘wild men’ thought they were on to a winner and were determined to pursue their present line as far as possible,” Nally said.

The following day Francis Hughes became the second hunger striker to die. The British embassy in Dublin reported a growing feeling in Ireland that this yet was another instance “when British political sense and acumen are switched off when faced with Irish problems”.

On May 21st, Margaret Thatcher’s principal private secretary Clive Whitmore warned that the deaths of Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara (an INLA hunger striker) were imminent, after which there was likely to be a three- to four-week hiatus until the next striker would be close to death.

“There was no sign that the Provisional Irish republican leadership, which was controlling the strikes, would let them give up,” he wrote, adding that there was “no doubt that McCreesh’s family, including his brother, who was a priest, had specifically dissuaded him from breaking fast on 16 May.”

On May 26th, Thatcher hosted a high-level meeting with secretary of state Humphrey Atkins, RUC chief constable Jack Hermon and Gen Sir Richard Lawson, the GOC of the British army in Northern Ireland, at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence.

Both Hermon and Lawson emphasised their fears of the increasing alienation of the Catholic community. “If the government could dispel the impression of inflexibility and could get over instead that its policy was magnanimous and caring, these risks might be reduced,” they suggested.

Thatcher remained “rock solid” against concessions. At the end of May, when her civil servants wrote to the European Commission of Human Rights to reassure it that the government would be prepared to respond to “anything the other party may put forward”, she was furious. “No, no, no!” she wrote in the margins. “This implies that if they moved we would move.”

EARLY JUNE 1981

By June 12th, even Atkins, who had previously shared Thatcher’s hardline position, warned that in the perception of the outside world, “the line between firmness and intransigence is a narrow one”. In a memorandum entitled “The Need for Movement”, he wrote: “We may outface the hunger strikes, but we shall pay a heavy price for doing so.”

According to an intelligence- based analysis dated June 16th, some officials had previously believed that a consequence of increasing involvement in electoral politics by the Provisionals “might be a reduction in the amount of energy they put into their terrorist campaign”.

Now it was feared that “the Provisionals ‘gone political’ can succeed, where their terrorist activity has failed, in reversing the progress of recent years towards ‘normality’ and renewing for them a base from which a revitalised terrorist campaign could be launched”. As the hunger strike continued into mid-June, both the British and Irish governments became increasingly convinced that the hunger strikers were “pawns” in the strategy of the IRA leadership.

LATE JUNE 1981

On June 18th, 1981, senior Irish civil servant Dermot Nally called Downing Street on behalf of Charles Haughey to report that “there is at present some tension in relations between the parents of the hunger strikers, the hunger strikers themselves and the Provisional IRA controllers outside, which could be exploited”.

On June 23rd, 1981, the Irish ambassador in London, Eamon Kennedy, went to Downing Street to personally submit a letter from the taoiseach urging “another initiative”, on the back of a recent statement by Irish bishops criticising the strike.

Thatcher responded by telling Kennedy that while she welcomed the church’s intervention, the IRA was “in the hands of left-wing extremists who were not greatly interested in the views of the church” and “it was not easy to see what HMG could do”.

On June 25th, Nally called Downing Street again to suggest that “there is significant room for manoeuvre”.

Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, also believed that the IRA leadership might be amenable to a settlement. Although they had gained in terms of propaganda, “they must be apprehensive lest, if the succession of deaths is resumed, public opinion could swing against them and they might lose what they have gained”.

When Nally called back the next day, he told Armstrong “it was now a question of ‘percentages’”. Some “slight movement – not a major step”, might bring a resolution to the stand-off between the government and the prisoners.

Towards the end of June, the British government began tentative discussions with the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP), a body set up by the Catholic Bishops Conference, which had made proposals for improvements in conditions in the Maze Prison.

Following these discussions, in a policy statement on June 30th, Atkins stated that changes in work, clothing and association might be possible, while reiterating the government’s bottom line that political status would not be considered and that the prison authorities must retain full control of the H-Blocks.

JULY 1981

On July 1st, new taoiseach Garret FitzGerald once again informed the British that there were strong indications that the prisoners themselves wanted a deal.

The following day, Atkins told a cabinet meeting that the Provisional leadership felt under pressure from a “combination of signs of weakening resolve among some of the hunger strikers, a desire among moderate Catholics to see a reasonable settlement related to the ICJP’s proposals, and a reaction to manipulation of the families”.

On Saturday July 4th, Atkins publicly raised the prospect of “general improvements” being made in prison conditions, while insisting that the government would not act “under duress”. In other words, the strike had to end before any changes were implemented.

The same day, a statement was telephoned to the NIO (Northern Ireland Office) on behalf of the prisoners which recognised “that not all five demands would be achieved”. The IRA however still required “firm guarantees” by the British government “before the prisoners considered a ‘move’.”

The statement insisted there was no discrepancy between the prisoners’ position and that of the outside leadership, although British officials did not believe this to be true.

At this point, the IRA leadership made direct contact with the British government through an established “channel of communication” which had been used at previous points in the 1970s. That channel is presumed to have run from Derry businessman Brendan Duddy and MI6 officer Michael Oatley. In this batch of British state papers, the figure believed to be Duddy is referred to as “Soon” or “the channel”.

According to Soon, the July 4th statement by the hunger strikers was “issued independently by the prisoners in the Maze and the timing came as a surprise to senior Provisionals outside”. Although “the content did represent what was previously agreed”, Soon said it had “caught the Provisionals unaware”, with the leadership “dispersed”.

Nonetheless, Soon was “optimistic” that the basis for a deal was in place. This would involve an end to the hunger strike, followed by immediate concessions on clothing (prisoners would be allowed to wear their own) and parcels and visits, to give the IRA a “face-saving way out”. The issues of work and association would be dealt with shortly afterwards.

When Soon called back on July 5th, he said the Provisionals did not like the ICJP acting as a “mediator” and took a “destructive” view of its proposals. They were also suspicious of the fact that the British had not contacted them directly if they were serious about a deal. In reply, the British stated that, when it came to “the channel”, they “had only ever initiated calls in response to queries for clarification”.

Soon said that Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were the only individuals of sufficient clout to offer the “persuasion, education and knowledge” to push through any deal. The British made special arrangements for Morrison to be allowed to enter the Maze to talk to the prisoners directly, although they rejected a request that McGuinness be allowed to join the delegation.

(Morrison has challenged the British account of these events, as reported in The Irish Times of last Saturday, December 31st, on page five, headline “McCreesh family deny British claim”.)

Soon also said he had managed to convince the IRA leadership that the government was “not interested in any settlement unless the hunger strike is called off first” and was “fairly confident that this was acceptable”.

At 11pm on July 5th, however, things seemed to turn for the worst. Morrison had returned from his visit to the prison with a series of “alarming reports”.

According to Soon, the situation “was now so bad that the possibility of any settlement was seriously in doubt”. There was “a complete feeling of hostility among the prisoners towards the ICJP . . . [which] had created an alarmist view of the sincerity of HMG, and every type of neurosis imaginable was surfacing within the Provisional leadership”.

“From an apparently enthusiastic position,” according to a summary of the conversation, “Soon had been called into an angry and hostile meeting of the Provisionals almost verging on a complete breakdown”.

There were “many incoherent abuses aimed at the Soon channel, with the implication that the time spent in discussion on the Soon channel had been a front by HMG to enable the ICJP to manoeuvre the prisoners into an impossible position”.

At 1am on July 6th, Soon rang back to convey the agreed position of the IRA leadership, which was that the prisoners’ statement was the only basis for a successful deal and that they insisted that they were given a draft response by the government before they called off the strike.

It was only at this point that Thatcher was told by Atkins that in conjunction with the ICJP efforts, the government had been “approached by a third party who is trusted by the Provisional leadership”.

He made it clear that “no negotiations have been taking place but it is obviously only sensible that if the Provisional leadership wish to communicate something to us indirectly about this critical problem, we should listen”. Their views were “important because so far they seem to be largely in control of the strikers”.

Meanwhile, other British officials reported that there were “indications that the PIRA leadership are concerned that one or other of the prisoners might give up; and also that the work of the ICJP might put them in a humiliating position”. They were also worried that “more pressure from the families” might tip things in the government’s favour.

On July 6th, Thatcher approved a message to be sent through “the channel” which outlined the terms of a deal. The clothing regime in Armagh prison would be applied to all prisons in Northern Ireland (allowing prisoners to wear their own clothes), restrictions on parcels, visits and letters would be lifted and there was “scope for yet further developments” on work and remission.

If there was a “satisfactory” response, the government was prepared to provide the Provisionals with an advanced text of the arrangement.

On July 7th, following a high- level meeting at Downing Street, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland told the prime minister: “Following the sending of the message which you approved last night, we have received, as you will know, an unsatisfactory response. That channel of activity is therefore no longer active.”

The Provisionals, he reported, “did not regard it as satisfactory and that they wanted a good deal more. This appeared to mark the end of this development and we made this clear to the PIRA.”

In a dramatic twist, however, just after midnight on July 8th, Atkins met Thatcher again to inform her that – following the shutting down of the channel – the IRA had told the government that it was “not the content of the message to which they had objected but only its tone”.

It had also hinted that a slightly revised statement “would be enough to get the PIRA to instruct the prisoners to call off the hunger strike”. For the moment, Atkins recommended that the government hold firm to its position (although another deal was to be offered 10 days later)

Later that day, however, public recriminations began as it became clear that the expected deal had not materialised. The ICJP accused the NIO of clawing back on previous offers and the British government became increasingly concerned about its international reputation.

On July 14th, a foreign office minister suggested that the only way to prevent any more deaths was to feed the prisoners intravenously, against their will. If this option was taken, the prison authorities would also have to restrict visitors because “any relatives and priests allowed in may well be fanatical enough to wrench out the drip and smash the equipment”.

The same day, the foreign secretary Lord Carrington raised the prospect of “force feeding” in a meeting at Downing Street because of the damage being done to Britain’s international reputation by the deaths. Others suggested surreptitiously inserting glucose into the water provided to those fasting.

LATER JULY 1981

Another document in the prime ministerial files, dated July 18th, reveals that the British made one last attempt to revive the deal. NIO officials confirmed that they offered the same deal but with “fuller words” and it was passed through “the channel” again. Once again, when a satisfactory response was not forthcoming, the channel was shut down.

At midnight on July 19th, however, FitzGerald called Downing Street to suggest that there might be an opportunity to “persuade the prisoners to overrule” Brendan McFarlane, the IRA leader in the H-Block, who was now seen as an obstacle to the settlement.

On July 19th, the priest of Kevin Lynch (an INLA hunger striker), told British officials that the relatives of Lynch and Kieran Doherty wanted an NIO official “to clarify the government’s position to Lynch and Doherty respectively, on the same basis as before – ie without McFarlane present”.

At this point, however, the strikers themselves seemed to have intervened and said they wanted McFarlane present. According to prison authorities, Lynch had previously stated that he did not want McFarlane there.

On July 21st, officials finally concluded that the Provisionals “are not prepared to accept our position about prison conditions”.

Intriguingly, they also claimed that “we have a clear acknowledgement from McFarlane (which we are already making use of) that the hunger strikers have no power to give up”, although they did not elaborate further.

On July 30th, Atkins noted that “external pressures from the families, from interested priests, from others concerned about the situation – will now be focused on Brendan MacFarlane as the ‘hard man’ who is apparently discouraging the hunger strikers from ending their fast”.

The following day, July 31st, is usually seen as the day in which the hunger strike began to break, after Paddy Quinn’s mother insisted on medical intervention to save his life, although there were to be four more deaths before the strike officially ended in the first week of October.

In early June I blogged about the sectarian attacks on two mosques in Lahore, in which over 70 people were murdered. The mosques belonged to the Ahmadiyya community, a Muslim minority group who have increasingly become a target for sectarian Islamist groups in Pakistan, who allege that the Ahmadiyya represent a deviant sect of Islam.

Partly because of official persecution in Pakistan, the Ahmadiyya moved their headquarters to the UK in the 1980s. But the presence of Ahmadiyyas in the UK goes back over a century and predates the waves of immigration from South Asia since the 1960s. It is a worrying development therefore that some of the sectarian animosity faced by the Ahmadiyya in South Asia seems to be gaining traction in the suburbs of Britain.

According to the Surrey Comet, a police investigation has recently been launched following a leaflet campaign calling on Muslims to murder ‘Qadiyans’, which is often used as a derogatory term for the Ahmadiyya. Thus far, the person or organisation behind the leaflet campaign is unknown, though it is – at the least – an attempt to stoke up tensions between Ahmadiyyas and other Muslims in Surrey.  The area is home to the Baitul Futuh mosque complex, a focal point for British Ahmadiyyas, and the leaflets reportedly make positive references to the mosque attacks in Lahore.  
This is a reminder of the sectarian dynamic at the core of some versions of extreme Islamist theology, which transcends culturally-specific contexts. While the Islamist narrative is often seen as an outpouring of political frustrations (over foreign policy, for example) or social dislocation, the hostility to this small community (and other minority religious sects) is an integral part of the ideology espoused by numerous organisations, from al-Qaeda to the Taliban.  

According to alarming reports from Pakistan, coordinated sectarian attacks on mosques in Lahore have led to the deaths of approximately 70 people.  Earlier today, gunmen armed with grenades and automatic weapons attacked two mosques 15 kilometres apart in the city. It seems to have followed the fedayeen style of operation that have becoming increasingly popular with jihadist groups in the region, since the 2008 assault on Mumbai and 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team attacks.  Three attackers also blew themselves up as police entered the building to end the siege.

One eyewitness described how one of the attackers “reminded me of the people who attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team, he was wearing similar clothes - the traditional Pakistani dress shalwar kameez and he looked like someone from a tribal area.” Early reports from Pakistan suggest that this was the work of the Punjabi wing of the Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), on which ICSR recently held a seminar.

The two mosques belong to the Ahmadiyya sect, a sizeable religious Muslim minority in Pakistan that have long been the targets of sectarian Islamist groups who consider them to represent a deviant sect of Islam.  For most Sunni Muslims, a central tenet of Islam is that Mohammed was the final prophet (rusool) of God, whereas the Ahmadiyya sect are followers of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Kadiani, who they believe succeeded Mohammed.   

In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) have been at the forefront of this persecution, inciting violence and hatred against the Ahmadiyya, referring to them as kafir (non-Muslims) and calling for the nationwide closure of all their mosques.  In 1984, under the patronage of President Zia ul-Haq, the JI successfully lobbied for Ahmadi practices to be outlawed under blasphemy laws, preventing, among other things, “an Ahmadi, calling himself a Muslim, or preaching or propagating his faith, or outraging the religious feelings of Muslims, or posing himself as a Muslim.”  In 2009, Amnesty international issued a press release appealing for the law to be reviewed, stating:

Attacks on religious minorities have been exacerbated by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws which have fostered a climate of religiously-motivated violence and persecution. Accusations of blasphemy have frequently resulted in the murder of both Muslims and members of religious minorities.

The blasphemy laws, while purporting to protect Islam and religious sensitivities of the Muslim majority, are vaguely formulated and arbitrarily enforced by the police and judiciary in a way which amounts to harassment and persecution of religious minorities.

Today’s attacks, though the worst in recent memory, are by no means the first of their kind and are probably not going to be the last.  Regular sectarian attacks on the Ahmadiyya rarely make the news in this country, overshadowed as they are by the conflict in the northern regions against the Taliban. The international community must take much more interest in these types of sectarian attacks. Those who persecute the Ahmadiyya are often the ideological partners of those who wish to attack targets in the West.

The Real IRA, the dissident republican terrorist organisation, has admitted that it was responsible for the car bomb early this morning, which exploded within a mile of the MI5 headquarters on the outskirts of Holywood, County Down. A full report is available here but the bomb was loud enough to resonate across both sides of Belfast Lough, reminding residents of the worst years of the Troubles.

The timing of the explosion, at 0020 BST, was designed to coincide with the moment policing and justice powers were devolved to Northern Ireland’s local power-sharing government. Police said that no telephone warning was given and it is extremely lucky that no serious casualties have yet to be reported. Nonetheless, the fact that the Real IRA could get so close to such an important target, at so sensitive a moment – when an attack was anticipated – will be regarded as an important propaganda victory by the dissidents. It is also likely to raise questions about long-term effects of the devolution of policing and justice powers and the capacity of the security services to handle what seems to be a growing threat.

In one important sense, the dissident republican movement is notably different from that of its predecessor, represented by the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein: that is, in the limited stock the movement places on political activity as a means of achieving victory. While the Real IRA and other dissident groups do use political outlets, they are also aware that they do not have the means or the support to play the electoral game as effectively as Sinn Fein have done since the early 1980s. Among the dissidents there is a strong belief, based in history, that engagement with politics has corrupted and undermined the purity of the movement on a number of occasions.

At the same time, however, the timing of this latest act is confirmation that the dissidents retain an acute sense of political timing. There has been a steady continuation of attempted bombings and shootings for a number of months in Northern Ireland but this is arguably the most headline-grabbing act by the Real IRA since the murder of two British soldiers in Northern Ireland in March 2009. Many analysts believe that the frequency and scale of attacks is likely to increase further in the run-up to the general election, as they are seek to achieve as large an audience as possible and optimise the opportunity to destabilise the wider political situation.
The choice and timing of the MI5 centre in Belfast is not just designed to grab the attention of the UK government. It also represents an attempt to fire an ideological volley into republican circles and to challenge the narrative of the peace process offered by the Sinn Fein leadership. The MI5 centre in Holywood is not a bastion of colonial British rule in Ireland, or an old symbol of historical oppression. It is a new and state-of-the-art building, first opened in 2007, and with a much more extensive remit than Northern Ireland-related issues.

According to the MI5 website, it “was established in addition to a network of nine regional stations around the UK, which the Service began to establish from 2005 onwards in response to the nationwide threat from international terrorism … [and] provides a possible contingency fall-back location if our London headquarters is unavailable for use.” In other words, it is seen as a crucial back-up centre for the intelligence service should the London headquarters ever come under attack.

For dissident republicans, the building of a new MI5 base is a confirmation that the British state is actually strengthening its position in Northern Ireland with a long-term intention to maintain a presence on Irish shores. This is a direct challenge to the Sinn Fein narrative, which holds that the peace process is a building block in the slow march to a united Ireland. Sinn Fein would prefer its core supporters to forget that the MI5 building is there, precisely because they know it is not going away any time soon. The Real IRA are therefore speaking directly to a republican audience, saying that they are the only organisation really still committed to forcing the British out of Ireland.

As for the devolution of policing and justice, this remains a controversial political issue in Northern Ireland. Traditionally, the unionist community have been most sensitive about changes to the police service in Northern Ireland; the replacement of the Royal Ulster Constabulary with the Police Service of Northern Ireland was one of the most important issues in undermining support for David Trimble, for example.

However, there also remains a core component of Sinn Fein’s natural support base which is of the opinion that the police service has not changed as much as it should have done and is still very hard to palate. With the devolution of policing and justice, the Sinn Fein leadership are now required to back the security services more strongly than ever before. Many of its traditional supporters will be less than comfortable with this development, a fact that the Real IRA is eager to highlight.

It would be extremely difficult for the Real IRA or other dissident groups to bring Northern Ireland back to the cycle of sectarian violence which characterised the conflict in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. But it is clear that they do retain a capacity for a spectacular and deadly attack.

Having spoken to a number of experts this morning, I should report one final piece of informed speculation. A number of recent attempted dissident attacks have been foiled or disrupted by the excellent cooperation between the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and police from the Republic of Ireland: one clear dividend of the peace process. However, there is a growing worry that the dissidents are getting a stronger hold in Belfast than they have done for many years; last night’s attack started with a taxi being hijacked in north Belfast. The reform of the police and the devolution of policing and justice powers were both implemented with peace and progress in mind. But the reality is that the devolved police force now faces a serious and ongoing campaign by experienced and determined terrorists and will have to learn quickly to stand on its own two feet.

An increasing number of analysts in the United States are beginning to address the problem of home-grown Islamist terrorism in much greater depth than ever before. Unlike the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the attacks of 9/11 were, of course, perpetrated by foreign nationals.

In part, this has contributed to something of a consensus in the United States that home grown radicalisation was a problem which was largely confined to Europe and that the main threat to American national security was external.  "The feeling was we're a country of immigrants and people tend to come to the US and feel accepted, whereas in Europe they are caught between two worlds", observes Stephen Grand, director of US-Muslim relations at the Brookings Institution.

However, a number of events in recent weeks and months have led to a serious reappraisal of this view. The most dramatic of these was the Fort Hood shootings of 15 November 2009, which killed 13 people, and was allegedly perpetrated by Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army major who was serving as a psychiatrist. Hasan’s radicalisation has also been linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Islamist preacher of Yemeni dissent, who is a US citizen and has spent much of his life in the country.

There is worrying evidence that these events are indicative of a broader pattern. Al Qaeda has a history of trying to attract UK and American citizens to become active agents for its cause. Further, as the The Sunday Times has reported, during the past eight months alone, there have been 13 cases in which 30 American citizens allegedly plotted to carry out attacks or joined terrorist organisations in Pakistan or Somalia. Earlier this month, Sharif Mobley, a 26 year old New Jersey man of Somali heritage, was arrested in Yemen and charged with membership of Al Qaeda. Reports also claimed that Mobley had worked in power plants in the US before moving to Yemen.

Last week, in another dramatic development, news broke of the October arrest of Colleen LaRose ('Jihad Jane'). LaRose has been accused of actively trying to recruit others as part of a plot to assassinate the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who lives under a fatwa for cartoons he drew about the Prophet Mohammed. As part of the same investigation, it also emerged that another American woman, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31 years old and originally from the town of Leadville in the Rocky Mountains, had been arrested in Ireland. Newspaper stories claim that both women had been discontented divorces, until finding Islam and becoming radicalised; it also seems that the internet played an important part in their radicalisation.

These incidents feed into another growing concern, which is the potential role of women in Islamist terrorism. In a prescient article for the Hudson Institute, published the very day that the 'Jihad Jane' story broke in the media, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens observed that Islamist teachings on the involvement of women in jihad have developed significantly in recent years, and seem to forecast an increasingly prominent role for female jihadist. As Meleagrou-Hitchens summarises:

As the United States and Europe have slowly come to terms with the grim reality of the Islamist terror threat, comment and analysis on how to deal with it have almost invariably concentrated on angry young males. What has frequently been overlooked is the role played by females on the peripheries of many terror plots in the West. Their involvement has ranged from encouraging their jihadi relatives, ensuring that their will to carry out the operation remains strong until the end, to withholding information from the authorities. Although the West has yet to see its first female suicide bomber, recent developments suggest that such an incident is likely, perhaps even inevitable.

In late 2009, the wife of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote "A letter to the Muslim sisters" in which she argued that Muslim women should "fulfill whatever they [the commanders of jihad] ask of us, may it be through monetary aid to them or any service or information or suggestion or participation in fighting or even through a martyrdom operation." Nor is this an unprecedented phenomenon. Between 1985 and 2006, there were an estimated 134 Islamist-inspired suicide attacks carried out by women across Russia and Chechnya, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan.

On Wednesday 10 March, the Center for Strategic and International Studies convened a panel to discuss the issue of domestic radicalisation in the US. The contents of the discussion can be viewed here. The Center has also published a report, by Rick Nelson and Ben Bodurian, which contains two overriding pieces of advice for US policy makers in this area:

First, they must consider new ways to interdict the growing trend of "Internet radicalization." Many of last fall's suspects connected with transnational terrorist recruiters via the Internet; stopping this sort of activity is crucial to stemming domestic extremism in the United States.

Second, several of those arrested last fall seemed to harbor the belief that the United States is at war with Islam. This is a "narrative" that al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups actively promulgate; it holds that U.S. counterterrorism efforts signify a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. The United States must continue to work to puncture this narrative. White House officials already have discarded phrases like "war on radical Islam." But ultimately, the United States needs to go further than this, because al Qaeda seizes on more than just U.S. rhetoric to galvanize support for its agenda; the group also points to America's military presence in Muslim countries as evidence for its preferred narrative. The United States, then, should consider how to balance the need to combat global terrorism with the drawbacks of large-scale, direct military intervention. Doing so will require the United States to forge stronger partnerships with states plagued by extremist violence.

These conclusions provide a starting point for a range of discussions, particularly the connections between foreign policy and domestic radicalisation which have previously been identified in the UK. The report also makes a brief suggestion that ‘Europe’s experience with, and responses to, homegrown extremism have much to offer U.S. policymakers and officials’, arguing that small-scale initiatives such as the Quilliam Foundation illustrate the value of official engagement with Muslim communities.

Understandably, senior US policy makers have taken great interest in the fact that the UK has funnelled much time, money and effort into counter-terrorism policies, as part of the CONTEST (and CONTEST II) strategies. But the emphasis on outreach and engagement leaves a number of questions unanswered. What does 'engagement' mean and, more importantly, just who should the state be engaging with?

There are some things the UK does very well in this field; other things it does less well. Approaches to domestic counter-terrorism have evolved significantly since 9/11 and 7/7.

Nonetheless, it is important for US policy makers to recognise that the sagacity of the CONTEST (and CONTEST II) and the Prevent strategies continue to remain a great source of debate within the UK. In particular, the long-term wisdom of using non-violent extremists as a bulwark against those prepared to use violence has been questioned, alongside the precise criteria used for 'engagement' with various Muslim groups.

As Amm Samm's previous posts on FREERad!cals have made it clear, senior US policy makers should think long and hard before they transport the UK model to American soil. Further quality in the debate is needed.

 

Last night BBC 2 showed the first episode of Peter Taylor's three-part series on 'Generation Jihad'. The opening episode focused on the roots of radicalisation among young British Muslims.
Taylor is an experienced and talented journalist, who is chiefly known for a series of well-regarded documentaries on Northern Ireland. But the first instalment of Generation Jihad also raised a number of important additional questions – particularly about the relationship between radicalisation and Western foreign policy.

Two prominent themes that emerged early in the programme were the central importance of the internet as a tool of radicalisation (something dealt with at length in Tim Stevens's report for ICSR) and the crucial role played by radicalisers, as active and predatory agents of extremism within Muslim communities.

For example, Taylor discussed the case of Hammad Munshi, Britain's youngest terrorist convict who was targeted and groomed by older extremists at the age of 15, without the knowledge of his family. Indeed, there is evidence that even younger children have been targeted in this way. At the end of January, police from the Counter-Terrorism Unit in Manchester released a video seized in a raid, apparently showing two infants handling a Kalashnikov rifle and being encouraged to express their desire to 'kill the infidels'.

In tracing the genesis of Islamist extremism within the UK, Taylor identified the furore over the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1988 as a moment of awakening and heightened political consciousness among UK Muslims, which was subsequently manipulated by extremists to their own ends. He also emphasised the continued importance attached by UK Muslims to the 'Ummah', the wider Islamic diaspora.  

Most of Generation Jihad was filmed in West Yorkshire, the home of a number of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the 7/7 bomber, and where Taylor himself grew up. Those interviewed (by a Muslim colleague, rather than Taylor himself) included Bilal Mohammed and Rizwan Ditta, who have both served prison sentences for terrorism-related offences. These young men articulated a long list of Muslim grievances about the conduct of 'Western' foreign policy over the last two decades. The list included the plight of Bosnian, Chechnyan and Palestinian Muslims, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While denying active support for terrorism, some of the interviewees did express sympathy for the al Qaeda aim of cleansing Muslim lands of the presence of Westerners.

Much of this is binary narrative is, of course, familiar. Indeed, it is often given credence by those who campaign against perceived Western ‘imperialism’ but have no formal connection to the Muslim community. It is also temptingly plausible to Western audiences, as its exponents are well aware. But the reality is that extreme Jihadist Salafist ideology is not as relativist or reactive to Western actions as this narrative would suggest.

It would have been interesting to see the interviewees pressed further on the contradictions in the Al Qaeda narrative, and the shifting sands on which it is predicated. In the case of Bosnia for example, there is evidence that it was the failure of the West to do more to prevent the slaughter of innocent Muslims – that radicalised many young British Muslims, rather than the NATO intervention of the mid-1990s.  

Likewise, even amongst strong opponents of the Western presence in Iraq, it is hard to make a case for Al Qaeda in Iraq as liberators. That group’s tactics, which peaked in 2007, have been to ignite sectarian warfare between Muslims through a succession of huge attacks against the Shi'ite community in the country.

In other words, while there are many links between foreign policy and domestic radicalisation, these are not as simple as are often presumed and should be distilled with care.
Taylor ended the programme by reflecting on the difficulties faced by the authorities in dealing with the threat of home-grown terrorists. He agreed that it was serious and that 'the police and security services cannot afford to take their eyes of Generation Jihad' but expressed concern that 'the danger is that we create even greater resentment that will only end in further attacks'.

This evokes a point that Taylor has often made in his earlier work on Northern Ireland – that heavy-handed security measures exacerbated the terrorist threat from the IRA, by gaining them more sympathisers and recruits. It is certainly the case that the less resentment the police and the security services create, the more that they will be able to isolate extremists within these communities. As yet, however, despite some notable mistakes, there have been no major security blunders against 'Generation Jihad' on the scale that characterised the early phase of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland. And to this point, as far as existing evidence goes, the counter-terrorism efforts of the authorities have not in themselves been a primary driver of violent radicalism.

The next part of Generation Jihad will be on BBC Two at 9pm on Monday 15 February.