British jihadists: How Britain became the Yemen of the West

By Andrew Gilligan

23 Aug 2014

Britain’s role as a chief exporter of terror was made horrifically clear this week. We examine the key failings of government and security forces that allowed home-grown jihadists to flourish

The Japanese hostage lies pinned to the sandy ground, bleeding from two long, slashing cuts across his face – perhaps carried out with the same knife that one of his jihadist interrogators is now pointing at him. “Where are you from? Don’t lie to me!” shouts the man, in English. The alleged “regime soldier”, in civilian clothes, thrashes desperately against his captors as his throat is cut: an 18-minute snuff movie, complete with sound, of unwatchable horror, linked to a Twitter account apparently belonging to the British extremist Anjem Choudary.

Dreadful as the murder video of the journalist James Foley was, it is by no means the worst thing posted online by, or involving, British and Western jihadists this week. In the jihadists’ theatre of savagery, Britons and Westerners have for several months taken principal speaking parts.

The Foley video’s real significance, perhaps not fully understood in the general shock, is different. Until now, the Islamic State (Isil) has shown little interest in threatening the West. In that video, this started to change, with “John the Beatle” promising the “bloodshed of your people”. The ransom demand sent to Mr Foley’s family, published yesterday, is even more explicit: “Today our swords are unsheathed towards you, government and citizens alike,” it says.

The Afghan war, which has cost so many lives, was supposed to deny Islamist terrorism an operational base. Now the jihadists have a much better one – in Iraq and Syria, separated from us by a road journey and a short easyJet flight. It has been visited by up to 2,800 Westerners since February 2011 (the start of the Arab Spring) – “more than in all previous combat zones combined”, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London.

About 500 of these, a disproportionate number, are British (and a further 1,500 are EU citizens with travel rights to the UK). Just under 4,000 Britons – including 1,450 children – have been referred to the Government’s Channel programme, designed to divert those at risk of radicalisation, though only about 20 per cent (777) are assessed to be actually at risk of becoming involved in terrorism. The numbers have roughly doubled in the past two years.

How did Britain become such a wellspring of extremism, a Yemen of the West? And what can we do about the hundreds of radicalised, brutalised and combat-trained fellow citizens heading back to our shores?

Britain’s key failing is that it was tough where it should have been liberal, and liberal where it should have been tough. It extended detention without trial and stop-and-search: sweeping measures that affected everyone and left Muslims, most of whom are completely blameless, feeling under attack. At the same time, it was ridiculously tolerant and indulgent towards a small minority of Muslim radicals.

The vast majority of ordinary British Muslims are not extremists, as every poll shows. But extremists do control, or heavily influence, many of the most important institutions of Muslim Britain: key mosques, large Muslim charities, influential TV stations, university Islamic societies and schools. Until recently, this was done with at best the acquiescence, at worst the support, of the British state. It was acting partly in the naive (and surely now disproved) belief that it could anoint “good” radicals and use them against the “bad” ones, and partly through the loss of moral perspective that seems to overtake some liberals whenever race is involved.

In the most bizarre example, Ed Balls, when education secretary in the last government, actively defended the payment of public money – which continues to this day – to schools run by supporters of the racist, separatist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose key aim, the creation of an Islamic state, has now been achieved in Iraq and Syria.

Shiraz Maher, from the ICSR, believes that “in many respects preachers and mosques no longer matter”, because social media is seducing potential Isil recruits far more effectively. Of course traditional forms of influence are less dominant now – but to say they no longer matter is like saying newspapers or the BBC no longer matter.

In fact, substantial numbers of those Britons who have travelled to Syria and Iraq have been heavily involved with radical mosques – such as al-Manar in Cardiff, attended by the first British jihadists to make an Isil propaganda video – or with radical groups, such as Choudary’s al-Muhajiroun, which is closely linked to the first British suicide bomber, Abdul Waheed Majid.

Yet, of course, personal factors are also vital. Many of those who have gone to Isil know each other – relatives, flatmates, a group of 10 from Portsmouth, for instance. Throughout history, bored, maladjusted and sexually frustrated young men have sought excitement and identity through violence. Where a non-Muslim adolescent might only have the outlet of gang fights in shopping centres or punch‑ups in pubs, young Muslims have the glamour, thrill and wider meaning of Middle East combat. The connections they can make online, with others far away, and the ease of travel in the globalised world complete the picture.

One person who works in the Channel programme says that “a lot of the guys who go out to Syria and Iraq explicitly say they don’t have anti-Western sentiments before they go. They see themselves as going out to fight the Syrian regime, which the West hasn’t done anything about. Once there, they end up meeting different groups, and can take on a much more radical belief system.”

This suggests that one of the things we should do is try to deglamorise the jihad. Perhaps some parts of the media could avoid treating Isil fighters as triumphant lions of terror, which is exactly what their PR videos want us to do. That doesn’t mean suppressing the truth – it means telling it.

On the battlefield – the thing that matters most – Isil appears to have suffered a major defeat this week, losing control of the Mosul dam, thanks to US air strikes. In the media battlefield, that was completely drowned out, as no doubt Isil intended, by the release of the Foley tape.

A potential British Isil recruit may not be too bothered that he could end up dead. But around half of the Britons who have died so far in Syria and Iraq were killed not by the regime-infidel enemy but by their own side through in-fighting, and if that same potential recruit knew that, it might put a different complexion on it.

If young men in Bradford and east London heard stories from disillusioned British Isil fighters who felt they were treated as cannon fodder, that would do 20 times more good than any number of heartfelt condemnations from middle-aged politicians or “community leaders”.

What that suggests, too, is that we should be smarter about how we deal with those who return, and those at risk of going. The understandable response so far has been a policing and criminal one, but criminalisation is not the whole answer. Where there is evidence of participation in atrocities, returnees can be prosecuted – one of the ways that social media works in civilisation’s favour in this story. The vast majority of returnees to date, however, have not been charged. Fewer than half have even been arrested. Often there isn’t enough evidence to convict them of anything, or anything serious enough to send them to prison for long. Sending people to prison is about the best way you can devise of ensuring that they remain radicalised, and perhaps infect other prisoners around them.

Channel, which works with both potential and returned jihadists, has made what the Home Secretary, Theresa May, calls “a very significant contribution to our national security.” There are around 40 Channel workers, most of whom are British Muslims. They typically meet their clients one-on-one, trying to build up trust, address the arguments for violence and radicalism that they make – sometimes theologically, sometimes not – and steer them towards non-violent approaches.

There are what one person involved described as “differences of emphasis” between the Home Office and the police over the programme. “There is a tendency for us [Britain] to prefer the criminalisation approach,” said the source. “The problem is that an arrest quite often doesn’t lead to significant or any criminal action and yet it can substantially set back the deradicalisation process.” Sometimes, too, disputes between police and Channel allow vulnerable individuals to slip through the cracks. This is what happened with Aseel Muthana, one of the Cardiff jihadists.

Other European countries, including Holland and Denmark, go further than Britain in following a “reintegration” process for their returned jihadists. Both Richard Barrett, former MI6 head of counterterrorism and Sir Richard Dearlove, the service’s chief, have warned that harsh treatment of returnees could cause further radicalisation.

Whichever approach is pursued, and whether or not Isil develops into a serious threat to the West, it seems clear that this is a battle of ideas. More than ever in a social media world, you cannot lock up an idea in Belmarsh or turn it back at Heathrow. The only way to defeat a bad idea is with a better idea. David Cameron’s Government has creditably reversed some past tolerance of bad ideas. But on the very biggest canvas, what the Middle East should look like and what role Britain should play in defeating terror and tyranny, Mr Cameron still gives a convincing impression of not having any ideas at all.