by Patrick Belton
forthcoming in an edited volume by Praeger press
The etymological origins of the term ÔinfrastructureÕ are military, appearing first in France in 1875. In the United Kingdom, it is construed for official purposes as those elements of communications, emergency services, energy, finance, food, government and public services, public safety, health, transport and water provision which if compromised could cause large scale loss of life, have national economic or social impact, or impair the ability of government to function. It is, in short, generally not the sort of thing we should like those who wish us ill to get their hands on.
The British infrastructure, primarily that portion of it which is engaged with transport, has been the object of terrorist attack from militant Irish republicans in a campaign now drawn to a close, and radical Islamist militants in the summer of 2005 in a threat that shows every sign of continuing. The United KingdomÕs experience in protecting its public transport infrastructure is unusual among countries in both intensity and duration, and as such merits unusual scrutiny for lessons to be learned for other countries coming now to confront similar counterterrorist exigencies.
This chapter will
draw attention to the history of attempts against the British transport
infrastructure, covariation in those efforts with the differing strategic and
doctrinal imperatives of attackers, ways in which these attacks were
countermanded, lessons to be drawn from these experiences to benefit present
efforts in counterterrorism and infrastructure protection, and salient
characteristics of the current operating environment pitting counterterrorist
against terrorist amid the battleground of the Underground and other transport
infrastructure.
Attempts upon
the transport infrastructure of the United Kingdom: A history
Terrorists would
then naturally seek to attack critical infrastructures (the earlier
designation, incendiaries, is even more explicit on that count),[iii]
but the term obscures a host of variation as to why, and therefore how. Distinctions may be drawn on a
number of counts here between Irish paramilitary republicanism and Islamic
radicalism. The Provisional IRA,
the îglaigh na hƒireann to its supporters (though the term properly applies to
the Irish Defence Forces) and to be distinguished from other post-1922
paramilitary anti-Treaty rejectionist groups by its splinter from the rump IRA
in 1969 over the latterÕs perceived inactivity in the Troubles,[iv]
viewed both the British administration of Northern Ireland and the government
of the Republic of Ireland as illegitimate, and itself as the sole legitimate
successor of the Irish Republic declared in 1916 by a complicated series of
political inheritances from the Second D‡il of August 1921-June 1922.[v]
Governed by its first Army Council of Se‡n
Mac Stiof‡in, Ruair’ î Br‡daigh, D‡ith’ î Conaill and Joe Cahill, its
paramilitary targets were first local and directed toward defence in the
sectarian violence of the early Troubles of nationalist neighbourhoods against
attacks from loyalist paramilitaries, Army units and the Royal Ulster
Constabulary and its plainclothes B Specials reservists until they were stood
down. Their legitimacy and numbers
grew as the conflict escalated amid such instances of British overresponse as
the introduction of internment without trial beginning in 1971 and the 1972
Bloody Sunday shooting dead of 13 unarmed protesters in Derry by members of the
1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment.[vi] The introduction of a bombing campaign
in mainland Britain was in response to the latter.
From a strategic
perspective, following the events of Bloody Sunday the PIRA sought to act as a
parastate, providing public order within republican neighbourhoods,[vii]
engaging in tit-for-tat deterrence with loyalist paramilitaries and the
security services and in a military campaign against the forces and civilian
members of the British administration, and through disruptive bombings preceded
by warnings in mainland Britain, seeking to erode public patience and political
will to continue to support the British presence in Northern Ireland. Doctrinally, self-imposed restrictions
upon the scope of their operations arose from the ProvosÕ desire to situate
themselves within an Irish nationalist tradition, leading to the practice by
which they would not attack targets lying within the historically Celtic home
nations of Wales and Scotland,[viii]
and from their desire to act, and be seen by potential supporters, as an army
rather than a terrorist organisation,[ix]
from which came restrictions upon target selection limiting the latter to
attacks upon on or off duty civilian and military officials, places they
habituated and warned attacks upon infrastructure. Constituency effects were quite powerful in urging the
latter restriction: the Bloody Friday bombings on 21 July, 1972 in and around
Belfast were as broadly condemned within Irish republican neighbourhoods as by
loyalists, and when it, uniquely, was the subject of an IRA apology thirty
years later, the apology was parsed in the language of non-combatant immunity:
ÔWhile it was not our intention to injure or kill non-combatants, the reality
is that on this and on a number of other occasions, that was the consequence of
our actions.Õ[x] Non-combatant immunity is an instance
of the type of law of war armies observe, and terrorists neglect; in seeking to
be one rather than the other, the IRA to an extent modified the way it selected
its targets accordingly.
The bombing
campaign in Britain[xi]
began not against infrastructure but rather against pubs frequented by off-duty
soldiers. As such, they were an
extension of a military campaign against the British forces, but amid softer
operating environments. The first
of these were in Guildford, Birmingham, and Woolwich. (In an important instance of the general law in which
effective and fair judicial administration is as equally important as effective
intelligence and anticipatory target protection in waging a counterterrorist
campaign, both the ÔGuildford FourÕ and the ÔBirmingham SixÕ who were convicted
and imprisoned for life for the first two bombings on further review had their
sentences overturned by the Court of Appeal, in 1989 and 1991 respectively,
amid charges of police torture and fabrication and suppression of
evidence. The Crown paid
compensation, and in the case of the Guildford Four, in February 2005 the Prime
Minister apologised to the ten men who were wrongfully convicted and to their
families.[xii]) The first
attack within Britain was infrastructural but against a military target (a
coach carrying forces personnel and their families along the M62 motorway at
Birkenshaw, killing nine soldiers and three family members, on 4 February
1974). More emblematic though of
this stage of PIRA operations, and the organisationÕs greatest operational
success in this period, was the ambushing and killing of 18 soldiers at
Warrenpoint, County Down in August 1979. There were also two attacks on
Harrods, in 1974 and 1983, indicating commercialism has taken root even among
paramilitarists.
From 1990 until the ceasefire of 1994, and still to a greater extent from the 1996 resumption of its campaign until the second ceasefire of 19 July 1997, the IRA came instead to focus on infrastructural targets, above all transport and the financial infrastructure of the square mile. Doing so garnered two advantages: for the IRA it did not attract the criticism from actual or courted supporters which attacks on pubs or city centres would draw, and attempts upon infrastructure were less technically demanding and required less highly sophisticated operators, and presented softer targets, than attacks upon the person of the Prime Minister or military and administrative installations. The reservoir of trained operators had by then come to pose some constraint for the PIRA: the Security Service became increasingly adept at penetrating its structures in the 1980s, with increasing aid from the Special Air Service through the 22 SAS and 14th Intelligence Unit. As an institutional adaptation to this environment, the IRA increased its self-organisation into compartmentalised ÔcellsÕ with a minimum of information shared between them. More through ineptitude than ideology many Provo operatives became suicide bombers during the London campaign, including in St Albans on 15 November, 1991, and while bombing a bus in Aldwych on 18 February 1996.
In the IRAÕs campaign against the Underground, 81 explosive devices were placed, of which all but two were hand-emplaced time bombs; they had a failure rate of 50 per cent. There were only three casualties (one at Victoria station in 1991, two on the Docklands Light Railway in 1996), reflecting a desire within the organisation to disrupt the capital city and its economy rather than bear political costs associated with taking lives.[xiii] As the worldÕs oldest underground rail system and one of its largest (opening in 1863, its routes covering 259 miles and 275 stations and moving 2.67 million people each day), its bar and wheel roundel ubiquitous as a British symbol, the Underground carried both symbolic as well as tactical attractiveness as a target. Attacks upon transport infrastructure other than the Underground included, after an early a 10 October, 1981, bomb attack on Ebury Bridge Road in London, killing two and injuring 39, an attack upon Victoria Station on 18 February, 1991, killing one and injuring 38, and on London Bridge railway station on 28 February, 1992, injuring 29. There followed a series of operationally inept and actually rather pitiful attacks upon Heathrow Airport on 8, 10, and 13 March, 1994. The 1994 ceasefire was ended with an infrastructural attack on 10 February 1996, on the South Quay DLR Station in the Docklands, killing two newsagents who had not been evacuated. The IRAÕs only attack on the Channel Tunnel, taking the form of sabotage upon the electricity supply, took place in 1996 and was foiled by the Security Service.
The campaign against the City and the financial infrastructure began on 24 April, 1993, with a home-made bomb fashioned from roughly a tonne of fertiliser placed in the back of a tipper truck in Bishopsgate. The bomb, of which warning was made by codeword beforehand, produced one casualty but caused £350m of damage, leading to a crisis in the insurance industry and the near collapse of LloydÕs of London. As a direct result, a Ôring of steelÕ was thrown up around the City, including traffic diversions, checkpoints and surveillance instruments, and accomplishing the PIRAÕs objective of wreaking systemic disruption and financial costs upon the capital. A presaging and earlier targeting of the financial infrastructure of the country had taken place on 20 July, 1990, when the IRA planted a bomb in the visitorsÕ lavatory of the London Stock Exchange, with a warning delivered by telephone 49 minutes beforehand; the blast ruptured a 10-foot hole in the building.[xiv] (Perhaps the greatest damage they would succeed in inflicting upon London and the City was inadvertent, by seriously damaging the Baltic Exchange building at the 30 St Mary Axe site in a 10 April, 1992 attack, which would as a result become occupied by the building which has acquired such sobriquets as the Towering Innuendo and the Erotic Gherkin.)
The PIRA Army Council declared a second ceasefire on 19 July, 1997, and in the wake of the London Underground bombings, the formal end to its armed campaign on 28 July, 2005.[xv] Their campaign was one calculated to generate great inconvenience, financial loss, and blows to public morale rather than massive loss of life. Viewed from that perspective, they may have won. Paramilitary republicanism accomplished, if not the end of British rule in Ireland, at least the end of rubbish bins in the Underground.
The two contrasting eras
of terrorist attacks segued neatly, with the onset of militant Islam making
life uncomfortable for a militant republican movement in the British Isles
which, having secured representation in the Northern Ireland government and
rising political fortunes in the Republic, found it could only lose through
terrorism. On Thursday 7 July
2005, a series of four bombs struck LondonÕs transport infrastructure during
the morning rush hour. Three
exploded within 50 seconds at 8:50 a.m. in the Underground, with a fourth
striking a bus at 9:47 in Tavistock Square. The capitalÕs transport and mobile telecommunications
infrastructures were paralysed for the day, and the butcherÕs bill ran to 52
dead (exclusive of the bombers) and 700 wounded. No deadlier act of terrorism had taken place in the United
Kingdom since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (killing 270), no deadlier
bombing since the Blitz, and no single terrorist attack had featured more
explosions in a UK city since Bloody FridayÕs twenty-two. Taking arguendo police investigatorsÕ current judgement that the four
were suicide bombers,[xvi]
the attack marks the occurrence of first suicide bombings within Western
Europe. The bombs were likely
placed on the floors of the trains and bus; each is believed at present to have
consisted of four and a half kilograms of home-produced acetone peroxide.[xvii] The four bombers ranged in age from 18
to 30, and included three Leeds residents of Pakistani descent (Hasib Hussein,
Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer) and one Jamaican-born Aylesbury
dweller (Jamal—or Germaine—Lindsay). A second, failed series of four explosions, again on the
Underground and a London bus, took place on 21 July, this time with only the
detonators of the bombs exploding.
Among the principal
investigative puzzles posed by the July 2005 bombings is the extent they were
home-grown rather than aided from abroad.
One piece of evidence in favour of the latter has been the surfacing of
a videotaped statement[xviii]
from Mohammad Sidique Khan in September 2005, which al-Jazeera indicated it
received from Ôthe al-Qaeda organisation,Õ and in which Khan makes reference to
ÔtodayÕs heroes beloved Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu
Musab al-ZarqawiÕ, supplicates the
ÔAlmighty to accept the work from me and my brothers and enter us into
gardens of paradise,Õ and indicating anger with British foreign policy with the
words ÔYour democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate
atrocities against my people all over the world.Õ The videotape also includes a
recorded message from al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri critical of British
Muslim leaders, and spliced footage of fighting apparently to stress
connections between Ôaggression against Palestine, Iraq, and AfghanistanÕ and
the bombings in London. The
Beeston youth worker known to all who knew him as ÔSidÕ was popularly regarded
as decent and well-liked, fully integrated within British society, and whose
experience was the very opposite of cultural isolation, racial segregation, or
adolescent religious indoctrination.
One line of investigation has followed the role of suspected al-Qaeda operative
Rashid Haroon Aswat,[xix]
a 30-year old British-born resident of a town near Leeds of Gujarati familial
background. According to police
sources, Aswat made 20 mobile telephone calls to two of the suspected bombers,
and was monitored entering Britain in late June and departing via Heathrow
hours before the attacks; also wanted by the United States for an alleged role
in setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon in 1999, he was said to have
been the subject of considerable Anglo-American negotiation as to which country
he would be remanded to when detained by Zambian authorities. There is much that remains mysterious
about the July bombings of 2005, but that the transport infrastructure is alive
and well as a target is not among that category. Enough is also tentatively known about the nature of what is
now assumed to be an al-Qaeda-linked attack upon the transport infrastructure
to draw initial comparisons and differences between this current threat
environment and that of the PIRA campaign which preceded it, including ways in
which their strategic and doctrinal imperatives shaped the way in which they
went about attacking the transport infrastructure, and implications for how
best now to go about securing its future protection.
Covariance in
patterns of attack upon transport infrastructure with differing strategic and
doctrinal designs of attacking organisations
With members of the Provisional IRA aiming more at causing public disruption rather than casualties among those it considered non-combatants, they were led to such tactics as establishing validity for codewords by using the new codeword in conjunction with several explosions, then telephoning in a large number of false alarms with the now-established codeword. This tactic would not cause loss of blood, but would bring massive disruption to the transport infrastructure. It was not used stintingly: with only 41 IRA attacks against mainland Britain transportation targets taking place between 1991 and 1997, no fewer than 6,569 bomb threats were telephoned in.[xx]
To develop the point further. The morning of the 18 February 1991 bombing, an important moment in the commencement of the IRAÕs escalated campaign against the Underground system, a bomb detonated at the empty Paddington station at 4:20 a.m., with no prior warning. At 7 a.m., a telephone call purporting to be from the IRA indicated there were bombs at all Ômainline stationsÕ in London—an imprecise phrase which generally would refer only to the 16 rail terminals on intercity or suburban services, but might conceivably have referred to the 250 Underground stations also. A decision was taken by the Anti-Terrorist commander of the Metropolitan and the Assistant Chief Constable of British Transport Police for railways to search the terminal stations. They failed to find an Improved Explosive Device planted in a rubbish bin in Victoria rail station, which then exploded killing one and injuring fifty-four. One week subsequently, an identical bomb threat was telephoned at 7 am indicating there were bombs at all mainline stations in London. The entire transport infrastructure was accordingly closed and searched for five hours without finding a bomb, with a cost from bringing the capital to a standstill estimated at £49 million. By making numerous bomb threats thereafter, some of them followed through upon, the IRA managed to manoeuvre police into the awkward position of explaining to the media why they had not taken adequate measures on those occasions when a bomb actually went off. This is not a tactic which has been adopted by militant Islamists, and if it were, its use would betoken a considerable doctrinal shift.
London buses, the present descendants of the cityÕs emblematic red Routemasters, carry four million passengers daily through 1,500 square miles; those in service number over 4,000. From the operational perspective of a terrorist, bombing a bus is more likely to result in high casualties, but much less likely to cause systemic disruption. For religious radicals seeking principally to use terror as political messaging, this represents an attractive bargain; for republican paramilitarists seeking to break British political will without alienating sympathisers, it does not. The Provisional IRAÕs only attack on a bus, near Covent Garden on 18 February, 1996, was an accidental early explosion; the IRA expressed regret for casualties the next day, as it departed from the organisationÕs standard procedure of issuing warnings beforehand. Militant Islamist strategy does though bear in common with that of militant republicanism that both seek to bring to the heart of Britain troubles that existed elsewhere, fashioning a connection between their own perceived security and that of members of the British democracy not dissimilar to the security linkage of mutually assured destruction which with some elegance underlies nuclear deterrence.
Michael Clarke asserts[xxi] a difference between the terrorism of the Provisional IRA and that of current Muslim extremists in that there is no counterpart to the constraining role of Irish political opinion which might be, and frequently was, alienated through indiscriminate murder. The claim, though, is not self-evident, and rather poses an agenda for research: Muslim opinion may also constitute a constraining role which may similarly be alienated and even driven toward the mainstream through acts of terrorism perceived as highly unpopular. A more reliable difference between terrorism of the republican and contemporary religious variants may be where that formerly, targets would need to be legitimisable with reference to republican-nationalist ideology and its aspirations, it is as yet unclear whether militant Islamist ideology would pose similar operational constraints on those acting within it. Thus, whereas attacks upon Celtic Wales or Scotland would not be countenanced (even if in selecting to observe or elide a distinction between military targets and ones associated with British civil administration as against civilian non-combatants the IRA Army Council often showed what might be termed great flexibility), the terrorists of the present generation may from a standpoint of operational tradecraft enjoy a greater number of possible targets from which they may select, and a greater number which must as result be defended.
Lessons to be
drawn from the UK experience in protecting its transport infrastruture in the
late 20th century
As with the September 11th attacks upon the World Trade Center, the Provisional IRAÕs City campaign represented a traditional bricks-and-mortar attack upon an essentially non-material financial infrastructure. It was spectacular but at root uncreative and ill-suited to disabling its target. Electronic attacks have greater potential in this regard but have yet to be utilised with any effectiveness by terrorists. In contrast to both these, the July 2005 bombings were precisely an attack upon infrastructure in the mechanical, intuitive sense in which it first occurs to us.[xxii]
Difficulties in defending surface transportation from terrorist operations are by now familiar, posing as they do several challenges that defence of the aviation target does not. Where airplanes are sheltered in fairly closed, reasonably controllable locations, and airport terminal access is controlled by a small number of entry points, trains, buses, and light rail are readily accessible, with many points of entry. Passenger profiling, screening, and deployment of metal detectors, X-ray machines, hand searchers and armed guards would if implemented in the same way as in air travel render the transport infrastructure useless to the commuting public, and the counterterrorist policy would be complicit in the realisation of the terrorist end of crippling the infrastructure.
Defence of the transportation as of any other infrastructure consists both of hardening the fundamentally soft target and the active frustration of the attacking organisation through effective infiltration and policing. In Northern Ireland, the security services learned only with some torpor that shorter term tactical advantages can result in strategic disadvantage. With largely Protestant, unionist security services and uniformed personnel introduced into the Northern Ireland operating environment, it did not require the Stevens report to document instances of RUC collusion with loyalist paramilitaries for the former to be perceived by residents of republican areas as another faction in an ethnic free-for-all rather than an impartial arbiter of public order. Only staff drawn from the communities being policed could have the requisite acumen for judging when actions would be perceived as excessive, illegitimate or ill-matched to their aim. One may always do better next time, though, and in this case through increased recruiting by the police and security services from the same communities from which terrorist organisations seek to draw their recruits, as well as better working relations with these communities led by civil servants who share common ethnic and religious background with those with whom they deal. One first lesson of the Northern Ireland experience lies then in the need for more innovative efforts at community policing, particularly ones aimed at adolescent males. The division between policed and policing must not replicate already existing ethnic or religious dichotomies if police and state power are not to be perceived as oppression. Endogenous forms of control by cooperating elites, whether generational or premised upon religious or community authority, are more effective than an exogenous police presence can ever hope to be, particularly if the latter is perceived as illegitimate.
A second lesson might lie in the danger, in seeking to protect a critical infrastructure, of playing precisely into the hands of tactically shrewd terrorist strategy. The killing of an innocent Jean Charles de Menezes in error at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July, 2005 dominated discussion of a post-bombings counterterrorist policy otherwise handled with great prudence. It is precisely provocation of this species of overreaction which is a goal of terrorist organisations. There is no superior recruiting sergeant than a sense of injustice and illegitimacy of the state organs among potential supporters of the terroristsÕ cause. As in Northern Ireland, perceptions of police injustice and legal clampdowns whose footprint falls disproportionately upon the policed communities represent a symbolic battlefield between terrorists and the state. Polarisation of public opinion in Britain between the broader non-Muslim community and the several Muslim communities constitutes a strategic goal for militants, to foster greater identity and unity among the many nationalities comprising BritainÕs 1.5m Muslims, as well as resisting the slide toward secularism among them. Unlike in British Northern Ireland policy, this time it is important not to do our best to help them do so. A further inevitability is that by concentrating the stateÕs policing and security resources to defend transport infrastructure, terrorists will seek out less defended targets; hardly an argument to neglect their defence, but an unavoidable outcome of strategic interplay between shrewd contestants. Here, it is important to know with what sort of terrorists one is dealing. Terrorists who are at root imitative will not respond with such great strategic acumen to moves to protect infrastructure, but will instead act in a copycat manner possibly illustrated by the bombers of 21 July 2005. Those forming part of more professional networks will have the centralised command and control capacities for institutional learning and strategy-making necessary to adapt to security service and police response and change their mode of attack, whether by change of forum (e.g., outside London to cities of the North and Midlands, and outside the Underground and major transport infrastructure toward other targets embued with symbolic value and where large numbers of people congregate) or in modality (such as toward chemical or radiological contamination as opposed to explosive). It is at the time of publication still not clear of which sort the terrorists behind 7 and 21 July were.
These are the antinomies of
counterterrorism and the protection of vital infrastructure: policing has the
potential to further terrorist goals neatly, and hardening of targets, as
indeed all counterterrorist actions, will lead to strategic adaptation by the
adversary. This should not present an apology for inaction, but rather to
underscore the inexcusability of intellectual torpor, or the expectation that
this should be any different.
Interestingly, no unattended
bag on the Underground has ever been linked to an explosive device.
The current
operating environment
With these
lessons from the British experience of the last three decades highlighted, to
be neglected only at all of our peril, the final section will now summarise the
state of play in Britain at the time of publication in the reading by the state
of the new operating environment after the London bombings, and the response to
it through institutional, technological, legislative and operational and
doctrinal innovation.
Institutional
adaptation
Spending on MI5, the exact total of which is not disclosed for reasons of security, increased by 50 per cent in the period 2001-2004, with similar rise expected for the four-year period to follow.[xxiii] Increasing policing has also formed an intuitive part of the response to the current bombing campaign: at the Brighton party conference, the Home Secretary announced that manpower in the police forces stood at 139,728, a record level in Britain and an increase of 12,5000 from 1997 levels. Special Branch also received an increased appropriation of £90 million, to fund upgrades in Birmingham and Manchester as well as increased surveillance and gathering of intelligence across Britain.
In terms of new additions to the bureaucratic family, the National Security Advice Centre sits within the Security Service and was inaugurated in April 2004 to reduce the vulnerability of the UKÕs critical national infrastructure and key Government assets to terrorism, which it does by providing security advice on physical and personnel protective security to relevant organisations, both private and public.
Developing the earlier comment on the potential for electronic rather than physical attack, the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre was stood up earlier, on 20 December 1999 by the Home Secretary to defend critical infrastructure against predominantly electronic forms of attack. This latter organisation draws its staff and Board from the Cabinet Office, the Communications-Electronics Security Group of GCHQ, the Security Service, the MOD and law enforcement; one of its principal purposes is to establish long-term partnership with companies that provide critical infrastructure services, with the aim of advising them on appropriate protective IT security measures and training measures for their IT and broader staff. It operates the Unified Incident Reporting & Alert Scheme, UNIRAS, which is charged with receiving reports of threats, incidents, vulnerabilities and countermeasures from Government, commercial, and international sources; sanitising them as appropriate after validating them, and then disseminating the information to its customers. In statements, the NISCC have assessed the threat from electronic attack to be increasing, but generally Ôfrom the sort of attack that would deface or deny service from a websiteÕ rather than jeopardising provision of a critical service to the nation. In the police rather than the Security Service, the National Terrorist Crime Prevention Unit was formed in 1998 by the Association of Chief Police Officers to disseminate Ôbest practicesÕ to the private sector, demand for such a move having begun with the 1996 IRA bombing of a Manchester shopping centre).
In testimony before the House of
Commons shortly over a month after the bombings, the Home Secretary announced
that a significant number of new officers had been recruited by MI5, that
attention had been devoted to strengthening liaison relationships with overseas
intelligence services, and that there were enquiries into the July bombings
seeking to return to forensic evidence and telecommunication intercepts before
the events in order to improve predictive the predictive quality of analysis. He commented also that all but the last
of these measures had been put into place before 7 July, generally after 9/11. [xxiv]
Legislative
adaptation
The most marked,
or at least visible, responses to the July bombings took place in Commons. On 19 July, the Home Secretary
announced a fast-tracked anti-terror bill. This legislation criminalises Ôacts preparatory to
terrorismÕ (to include, perhaps, reading this edited volume with malevolent
intent), Ôindirect incitement to terrorism,Õ and seeking or providing terrorist
training, whether domestically or abroad.
It thus deals with the protection of the newly threatened transport
infrastructure by reform of policing and immigration, rather than any direct hardening of the
target. Its most controversial
provision, extending the period police may hold terror suspects without
charging them from one fortnight to three months, was rejected by Commons on 9
November, with a backbench proposal of 28 daysÕ detention being passed instead.
Deportation of
known militants, such as those who in the last decade came to surround the
Finsbury Park Mosque, was in that period slowed both by the Security ServiceÕs
judgement they did not pose a threat to British targets, that there was value
in intelligence collection from having them near, and also a concern that under
BritainÕs commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights, they could
not be deported if doing so would return them to nations where they may have
faced torture or execution.[xxv] The Home Secretary in August revised
this policy by publication of a list of grounds under which those fomenting,
justifying or glorifying violence may be more easily deported. Mr Clarke announced the Government was
entering into new agreements with other countries, such as Jordan, to ensure
their nationals could be deported without fear of torture or ill-treatment upon
repatriation. If necessary, he
announced Britain would amend human rights laws to prevent legal obstacles to
the new deportation rules.
Further, the Home Secretary would now automatically consider deportation
of any foreign national involved in listed extremist bookshops, centres,
organizations or websites; create a list of foreign preachers to be kept out of
the UK and consult on creation of new powers to close places of worship used to
foment extremism; and use biometric visas for nationals from designated
countries and compile a database to exclude from the country those whose views
or activities pose a threat to British security. In other changes in Home Office and Government procedure,
the number of special judges hearing terror cases would be increased, the
threshold for gaining British citizenship would be ÔreviewedÕ, and grounds
permitting the banning of Hizb ut Tahrir and the successor organization to
al-Muhajiroun would be broadened if necessary.
Also in
Parliament, the Commons Transport Committee warned the terrorist threat to the
public transport infrastructure remained Ôgrave,Õ finding tube train radios to
be in a poor state, and criticizing the Transport Security and Contingencies
Directorate of the Transport Department for not applying performance measures
to its work.[xxvi]
Technological
adaptation
Another avenue of
response to the new environment of threat facing the transport infrastructure
is the development and testing of new protective technology, though to date
there have been no breakthroughs which can be classed as stellar. Transport Secretary the Rt Hon Alistair
Darling announced in November 2005 the forthcoming trial of a Ômillimetre waveÕ
scanner to screen for concealed weapons and traces of explosives on
trains. The new screening would
first be trialled at Heathrow Express service from Paddington Station. A so-called Ôintelligent CCTVÕ tested
at Liverpool Street station in 2002 generated too many false alarms, and facial
recognition cameras required excessive time to match faces of passengers with
saved images of suspects, though the Underground is watching closely trials of
a newer system on the New York subway.
Among other new technologies being tested are body imaging detectors to
enable security staff to check for objects concealed under clothing; ÔsnifferÕ
scanners designed to detect traces of explosives in the air by directing puffs
of air at a subject; intelligent CCTV is being developed to alert operators to
when a passenger is standing in one place for too long a time, or in other ways
behaving suspiciously. [xxvii]
In broadened applications of existing technology, the
Underground revealed in November its plans to increase the number of CCTV
cameras, currently at 6,000, to double the present number by 2010. [xxviii] Staff levels will be redeployed to more
visible areas to exert a deterrent and reassurance effect, and canine patrols
capable of smelling explosives would be made more common. Facial recognition
cameras are already receiving some use at Leicester Square station to identify
known pickpockets.[xxix]
At a conference held in London in November 2005 for
the International Association of Public Transport to compare national lessons
learned in counterterrorism, a preponderance of experts believed staff could
identify abnormal behaviour more quickly than software, with fewer false
alarms. Regarding face recognition
technology, Alain Caire of the Paris region transport authority noted Ôa few
years ago, it took 10 or 15 seconds to compare a face—now it takes three,
but if you are comparing that face with, say, 20 terroristsÕÕ faces, thatÕs 100
seconds, so it becomes impossible.Õ[xxx]
If the current
consensus among specialists is that human policing is best, it stands as
reasonable that the British Transport Police presence on the Underground
network would have been raised to 650 from the 2003 level of 450, with the
London Underground pressing for 100 more.
Holding drills, drawing up procedures, and keeping these under frequent
review is also a lesson which students of transport safety have drawn from the
terror attacks in Madrid, Moscow and London—the managing director of
London Underground, Tim OÕToole, argues that his organisationÕs planning exercises
prior to 7 July had on the day created a shared knowledge as to who would do
what, permitting the network to return to operations relatively quickly
afterwards; if there was a lack of foresight, it was in anticipating a
simultaneous attack upon multiple points in the system, which the IRA had never
attempted and which the planning had not anticipated.
The Transport
Secretary has also announced that trials of random airport-format security
checks would begin in 2006 on the Heathrow Express and a number of other rail
and tube stations, with initial trials lasting four weeks. Randomly selected passengers will walk
through body scanners on platforms to check for objects hidden under their
clothing, and they may also have their bags passed through x-ray machines.[xxxi]
Doctrinal and
operational adaptation; and controverted topics
A threat within national boundaries or which elides domestic and foreign fora requires greater coordination than purely international threats met wholly by the forces and foreign intelligence service; they must be met by the combination of the efforts of police, domestic intelligence, National Health Service, and others. Coordination toward this goal remains more priority than fact at the levels below Whitehall, and in most areas outside of the M25. There are at present 43 police forces in England and Wales; such institutional fragmentation also fragments the spread of information. The urgency for revising working procedures is keenly felt. The Security Service furthermore fears that up to 50 more British-born terrorists are at large in ÔsleeperÕ capacities, and it is suggested a lorry or car bomb may be planned next.[xxxii] On the supply side, von Hippel tantalisingly speculates on the connection between adolescent male suicide rates in Britain, doubled since 1975 and still rising, and the onset of suicide bombing in this country; ÔmartyrdomÕ may provide a unique socially legitimate route for suicide attractive for its own, unexplained reasons.[xxxiii]
Doctrinal development within the policing community is principally revolving around a greater visibility and a move toward what is becoming known as intelligence-led policing. More visible presence of police forces within the transport infrastructure serves the treble ends of reassuring the public, exercising a deterrent effect while encouraging selection of targets with less catastrophic potential, and being in place to contribute to intelligence collection if they are adequately trained to do so. Second, to the extent policing is driven by intelligence rather than by ethnic profiling or random stops and searches, those groups from which terrorists recruit will become less estranged from the broader community and civic institutions and given to feel, perhaps not wholly unjustly, the disproportionate target of counterterrorist efforts. Dissolving barriers between police services on the one hand and both domestic and foreign intelligence on the other increases the availability of useful intelligence; training of police and such parapolice units as community liaison officers increases the volume of intelligence by increasing the number of collectors, assuming again that they are trained to the task.[xxxiv]
The principal source of controversy to the moment has been the powers of armed Met officers to be empowered to shoot suspected suicide bombers in the head when tactical concerns require it. They have done so once; it came off badly. The new operational guides, which are reported to be categorised according to the contingency title Operation Kratos, were drawn up by police with knowledge of the Home Secretary and the at least higher Cabinet in the wake of September 11th, drawing upon the experience of Israeli, Russian and Sri Lankan security forces. Within London, shoot-to-kill authority is provided operational commanders at their discretion on particular occasions when the Metropolitan Police Commissioner is led to believe intelligence supports such a move. The Metropolitan Police possesses a firearms unit (formerly SO19 though titles are in flux) of roughly 400 officers trained to high standard in use of small arms. The newly formed Special Reconnaissance Regiment of the SAS was called upon to help the Metropolitan Police following 7 July. On 22 July, the inherent risks of such a policy were, obviously, displayed to the nation when an armed response team operating together with two other police and special forces surveillance teams killed innocent 27-year old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell tube station.[xxxv] The question remains open, all intuitive responses unsatisfactory.
One is condemned
to repeat some portions of history, but not necessarily mistakes made during
it. Drawing upon thirty years of
defending mass transport against terrorist attack in a campaign just ended
provides some insight, often won painfully through bitter mistake, in waging
another counterterrorist campaign following with pauce breathing room upon its
heels. The lessons of history are
precious; they are not to be squandered.
Patrick
Belton is president of the Foreign Policy Society. He is completing a
doctorate in international relations at Oxford, writes daily on www.oxblog.com,
and has appeared as a foreign policy commentator on CNN, in the Times Literary
Supplement and elsewhere.
Bibliography
Centre for Defence
Studies. Terrorist Attacks in
Britain: The Next Phase. August 2005. Briefing Paper, London, Centre for Defence Studies.
Newspaper
coverage as cited in endnotes.
Parliament. 2000. Terrorism Act, c. 11.
London, HMSO.
Schmid, Alex and
Albert Jongman. 1988. Political Terrorism: A Guide to
Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Basis, Theories and Literature. North Holland,
Amsterdam.
Warner,
Jessica. 2005. John the Painter: The First Modern
Terrorist. London, Profile.
[i] The definition is at section 1. (In its entirety: (1) In this Act ÔterrorismÕ means the use or threat of action where- (a) the action falls within subsection (2), (b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and (c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. (2) Action falls within this subsection if it- (a) involves serious violence against a person, (b) involves serious damage to property, (c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action, (d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or (e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system. (3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.)
[iii] The label ÔincendiaryÕ is, for instance, applied to the Ôfirst modern terroristÕ, seventeenth-century Scottish nationalist James Aitken, a.k.a. John the Painter. C.f. Warner (2005).
[iv] The other cause of the split was over the policy of abstentionism, begun by Sinn FŽin in 1918 and under which nationalists who observed it would stand for, but if elected refuse to sit in, Westminster, the Stormont assembly, and the D‡il ƒireann. This policy was continued by the anti-Treaty parties after the Irish Civil War, though in 1986, Sinn FŽin members began to occupy seats to which they were elected in the D‡il ƒireann, causing a splinter group to depart to establish Republican Sinn FŽin. From the Good Friday agreement onwards Sinn FŽin members have sat in Stormont, though not in Westminster where they refuse to take the oath of allegiance.
[v] See Brendan Behan—at any meeting of a new Republican organisation, Ôthe first item on the agenda was the split.Õ For uses of the Behan axiom in politics, see R. Bruton TD in the D‡il, 11 November 1998 debate on the State Property Bill, 1988 (report and final stages), and again in 18 May 1999 debate upon the Qualifications (Education and Training) Bill, 1999 (second stage).
[vi] For the latter, see the forthcoming report of the inquiry tribunal chaired by the Rt Hon Lord Saville of Newdigate.
[vii] Here see the Direct Action Against Drugs campaign from 1994 onwards, not officially claimed by the IRA, in which ecstasy dealers were executed or beaten. Conversely, much IRA funding was obtained through criminality; q.v. the £26 million Northern Bank robbery of 2004 and the rather odd kidnapping of the Derby and Royal Ascot champion Shergar in February 1983 with a subsequent, unmet ransom demand of £1.5 million.)
[viii] The exception is on attacks on the person of the Queen – q.v. the 1981 attack upon the royal opening of an oil terminal in the Shetland Isles.
[ix] Which is not to say they were recognised as such outside certain stronghold neighbourhoods. SDLP leader John Hume accused the provisionals of waging a campaign of Ôsectarian genocideÕ after the 1981 assassination of UUP South Belfast MP the Rev Robert Bradford.
[x] IRA statement of apology, 16 April 2002. Received by An Phoblacht on Tuesday, 16 July, and signed as per tradition ÔP OÕNeill, Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, DublinÕ. The language used on this occasion was inclusive and applied to all non-combatants injured in PIRA operations, though not to combatants: ÔIt is therefore appropriate on the anniversary of this tragic event, that we address all of the deaths and injuries of non-combatants caused by us.Õ Ameliorative language short of apology was included for combatants also: ÔThere have been fatalities amongst combatants on all sides. We also acknowledge the grief and pain of their relatives. The future will not be found in denying collective failures and mistakes or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who have been hurt.Õ
[xi] There was an earlier, sparse bombing campaign in British cities from 1939-1941.
[xii] See ÔBritish Prime Minister ApologiesÕ, The Guardian, 10 February, 2005, and the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (1993).
[xiii] Conversely on the other hand, see the 15 June, 1996 attack upon the Coronation Street shopping area in Manchester city centre, with a 3,000 pound lorry-bomb on a busy FatherÕs Day Saturday. A telephone warning was delivered at 10:00 and the bomb exploded at 11:20, but the large size of the area to be cleared resulted in two hundred people being wounded, mostly by flying glass, and seven of them seriously.
[xiv] 20 July 1990. There were no injuries as a result of the prior warning and evacuation.
[xv] The dissident Real IRA, rejecting the Good Friday Agreement and responsible for the 1998 Omagh bombing, carried out a campaign in Britain from 2000-1, beginning with a June 2000 attack on Hammersmith Bridge, a bomb attack the next month on the Underground line near the Ealing Broadway tube stop, a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Secret Intelligence Service HQ in September 2000, a sorting office in Hendon in April 2001, and car bombs outside the BBC Television Centre in Shepherds Bush in March and in Ealing in August 2001. The organisationÕs last attack in Britain was a car bomb in Birmingham city centre in November 2001. Apart from punitive attacks against targets within NI, the organisationÕs ability to conduct operations has been compromised through active infiltration by the security service.
[xvi] Vide contra: the four purchased return tickets to Luton, and carried on their persons identifying items which traced to a bomb factory in Leeds that showed signs of being intended for future use.
[xvii] An organic peroxide and high explosive, and also known as peroxyacetone, it takes the form of a white crystalline powder with acrid smell, and for its instability in the face of heat, friction and shock has acquired the moniker ÔMother of Satan.Õ Its production is remarkably simple and requires only hydrogen peroxide (such as hair bleach), acetone, sulphuric acid (which can be obtained from a battery), and ice to precipitate the product out of solution. See Journal of the American Chemical Society 81, 6261 (1959), and A. I. Vogel, Textbook of Practical Organic Chemistry (Prentice Hall 5th edition, 1996).
[xviii] Lawrence Smallman, ÔAl-Qaida Claims London Bombing,Õ al-Jazeera.net, 1 September, 2005.
[xix] William K. Rashbaum and Raymond Bonner, ÔAs 3 Nations Consulted, Terror Suspect Eluded Arrest,Õ New York Times, July 29, 2005.
[xx] See for this statistic Peter Whent, ÔControl of Public Space,Õ American Public Transportation Association Rapid Transit Conference Proceedings Paper, 1999.
[xxi] Michael Clarke, ÔTerrorist Strategy and British Targets of Vulnerability,Õ in Centre for Defence Studies volume, 2005.
[xxii] Terrorist Attacks in Britain: The Next Phase, CDS Briefing Paper, August 2005, Centre for Defence Studies
[xxiii] Blunkett Promises £90m for Fight Against Terror, The Evening Standard, p. 6. September 29, 2004.
[xxiv] ÔMinutes of Evidence Taken Before Home Affairs Committee: Counter-Terrorism and Community Relations in the Aftermath of the London Bombings,Õ Tuesday 13 September 2005, House of Commons Uncorrected Transcript of Oral Evidence. Rt Hon Charles Clarke, MP., The Home Secretary.
[xxv] See Karin von Hippel, ÔChallenges for the PoliceÕ, Centre for Defence Studies volume, and author communication.
[xxvi] ÔTransport Terror Threat ÒGrave,ÓÕ BBC News, 30 November, 2005.
[xxvii] Hugh Muir, ÔBomb scanners to be tested on trains in new year,Õ The Guardian, Tuesday, November 15, 2005.
[xxviii] Stewart Tendler, ÔÒSmartÓ CCTV Could Fight Terrorist Threat in Stations,Õ The Times, 15 November, 2005.
[xxix] Hugh Muir, ÔBomb Scanners to be Tested on Trains in New Year,Õ The Guardian, 15 November, 2005.
[xxx] Jenny Matthews, ÔHigh-tech, High Transport Security?Õ BBC News, 14 November, 2005.
[xxxi] Rosalind Ryan, ÔCommuters Face Airport-Style Scans,Õ The Guardian, 14 November, 2005.
[xxxii] Fraser Nelson, Gethin Chamberlain and James Kirkup, ÔPolice May Receive Shoot-to-Kill Orders,Õ The Scotsman, 15 July, 2005.
[xxxiii] Ut supra.
[xxxiv] See Peter R. Neumann, ÔImplications of Domestic Terrorism,Õ chapter two in Centre for Defence Studies volume noted supra.
[xxxv] Evening Standard, 26 July, 2005.