Hiranmay Karlekar
After the recent subsequent terrorist attacks in Europe, maybe it is time to introspect if the system there is spawning extremism
According to a report by Aditi Khanna in The Indian Express of May 29, 2017, Britain's intelligence community has estimated that as many as 23,000 persons with extremist tendencies are at large across the country. Of these, 3,000, judged to pose threats of terrorist strikes, are under investigation or are being monitored. Released in the aftermath of the Manchester terror strike, the figures are large but not surprising. John F Burns, in a report published in the New York Times as early as July 5, 2012, cited British officials as warning in preceding years that a wide network of Islamist militants' cells had been established throughout the country. Some of them, John F Burns had stated in his report, were actively planning terrorist attacks, often benefitting from the cultural, political and religious alienation that has become common among Britain's million-and-a-half strong Muslims. The Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been steadily expanding its network in Europe. Terrorists suspected to have AQIM links have been arrested throughout the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Some analysts had pointed to thwarted attacks and arrests of AQIM-linked terrorists as evidence of the group's capability of staging attacks in Western Europe.
Professor Michael Clarke, then Director-General, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, had pointed out in Global Origins of New Terrorism, (UK Terrorism Analysis number one, February 2012, RUSI briefings), that Britons were thought to constitute 25 per cent of the 200 or so foreign fighters fielded by Al Shabaab in Somalia and in a deepening war on neighbouring Kenya and its tourism. He further pointed out that the survivors among young British men, and some women, who went to fight in Somalia, Yemen and border areas of Pakistan, tended to return in months or perhaps a year. It was only a matter of time before their commitment to the cause and their newly acquired expertise were likely to be seen on British streets.
The danger from them would be all the greater because their return would “coincide with the steady release from prison of those convicted of terrorist offences in Britain over the last decade. For good legal reasons their sentences have not, on average, been very long. Less than 20 per cent of convicted terrorists are serving life or indeterminate sentences and another 20 per cent have been given more than ten years. The largest single proportion — 32 per cent — have been serving sentences of between eight months and four years for their offences.”
Nearly five years have passed since the publication of Burns' piece, and the AQIM has been eclipsed by the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, (ISIL) which is now the magnet for Britain's alienated Muslims. And the number of people with extremist tendencies have continued to rise. The argument that, in the long run, the solution lies in removing the grounds of alienation, is engaging but not entirely true. Alienation is as much a result of individual psychic orientation — which explains why the same situation alienates some but not others — as of social conditions. As Eric Hoffer points out in The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements, “There is a tendency in us to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence, it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think of it a good world and would like to conserve it, while the frustrated favour radical change.”
Individual alienation will always remain, however inclusive a social order. The question is: Under what circumstances does alienation lead to terrorism? These include an ideology championing terrorism, circumstances glamourising it, an organisation — ISIL, Al Qaeda etc — that potential terrorists can swear by, and opportunities for terrorist ideologies, their appeal and organisations promoting and implementing these, to grow. These circumstances flourish in the absence of strong and strategically sound preventive action. In Britain's case, this has been the result of several factors — particularly, a self-righteous, ‘more democratic than thou’ attitude toward the rest of the world which encouraged fire-eaters of the globe to congregate to it.
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