Daily Times

The current critical debates on the Olympics 2012 security plan, the police and crime commissioners system and the deployment of US security personnel, in British parliament, NGOs and government sponsored private security research institutes have raised many questions including the lack of coordination, trust and communication among the police, security agencies and government departments. The failure of the police and law and order management strategies during the London riots, phone hacking scandals and the resignation of senior police officers from their posts have put the credibility of the New Scotland Yard, national intelligence model, ballistic intelligence and other law enforcement agencies in question.

The story of distrust between the government and police started on August 11, 2011, while Prime Minister David Cameron requested a former chief of the New York police to help his government control communal violence. The gap of distrust further widened when both the government and the police lost the trust of the communities during the riots. Communities complain that this gap of mistrust needs to be addressed and that it must be established how they are to be policed and how the police want to police their streets and homes. The public is not interested in whether burglaries and knife crimes have gone up or down; they want to live in peace and harmony. This growing alienation between the police and communities is a dangerous development. The public in the UK lacks the power to get the policing they want.

Security experts believe the police and home office are running in opposite directions while there is a general perception that both the police and government are reluctant to share their security concerns with the communities. The resolve of intelligence-led policing has weakened while the national intelligence model, ballistic intelligence and even private security agencies have hardly been able to penetrate into the networks of extremist, terrorist and criminal gangs. Data on knife crime is poor and cases of kidnapping, fraud and violence are increasing. Terror and extremist networks are getting stronger while the resolve needed to counter these groups is getting weaker.

Every month, thousands of criminals and extremists join these networks across the UK. They have managed long-term financial resources. Members are operating in the UK, Waziristan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Iraq, often with the best in military training. The invasion by jobless and illiterate Asian, African, Arab and European workers into these criminal networks is a matter of great concern. The UK police and security agencies have been encircled by these forces from all sides.

The recent ruction between the UK border agency and home office over the failure of border control created more misunderstandings about the operational capabilities of the agency. The media images of this story have been negative. The UK border agency chief Brodie Clark’s reputation was destroyed by some media reports while he directly accused the home secretary. A leaked draft copy of the disciplinary investigation regarding the former UK border agency chief’s behaviour revealed that foreign nationals were allowed on 164 occasions to enter the country without check. The home affairs select committee complained about the cases of more than 124,000 asylum seekers dumped by the agency. Ministers and the opposition blamed each other for the failure.

Recent reports in Britain have warned that the issue is becoming more complicated. The UK based Afghani Pakistani and Bangladeshi extremist groups have a direct link with the Taliban groups in Waziristan, Punjabi Taliban, Punjab, Balochistan and Chittagong-based extremist groups. According to a Guardian report (November 19, 2011), two Asian British citizens were killed by a US drone attack in Waziristan weeks ago. Last week, four Pakistani Britons were remanded in custody by a Westminster magistrate court, charged with terrorism offences. They were charged with fundraising for terror purposes and travelling to Pakistan for terror training.

They were arrested by the Birmingham counter terrorism unit last week. In the Daily Mail report, we have another example of how Britain based terrorist groups are strong and how they abuse the system of Britain’s hospitality. An extremist, Munir Farooqi, running a terror network in Manchester was jailed for life recently. Various studies and research reports have warned that Britain is becoming the hub of exporting international terrorism. The recent debate in British parliament also signalled towards the radicalisation of students in British universities.

The saga of uncontrollable riots and the arrest of a security guard at the London Olympics site this year provoked the anxiety of the US government to share its expertise with the security infrastructure of the UK, but some security circles understand that, with the arrival of a US security team, the danger of al Qaeda, Afghan, Arab or Pakistani extremist networks to disrupt the Olympic games or possibly target US security officials cannot be ruled out. In police circles also, there are some reservations over the deployment of the US security team as they understand New Scotland Yard has the capability to effectively control the situation. Senior police officials from the counter terrorism unit believe that the deployment of US counter terrorism officers in the UK will further widen the existing gap between the government and law enforcement agencies.

As Britain is under threat from modern terrorism and home-grown extremism, intelligence agencies are responsible for addressing all the security issues of the state. Former director GCHQ, Professor David Omand understands that: “Maintaining community confidence in the action of the state is important. Good pre-emptive intelligence can reassure the community by removing the extremists and by disrupting any potential attack without having to fall back on the sort of blunt discriminatory measures that alienate moderate support within the community on which effective policing and counter terrorism depends.” As Home Secretary Theresa May in her foreword to Prevent Strategy (June 2011) has quoted, security experts understand that future terror threats are coming mostly from terrorists born inside the country. Finally, all sections of British society are agreed upon the fact that maintaining security remains the primary duty of the government.

The writer is the author of Afghanistan Beyond 2014 and Punjabi Taliban. He can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com