New Terrorism and the National Security Strategy

Dr. Chris Mackmurdo is Founding Director of Contest

Global. Dr. Alia Brahimi is Visiting Fellow at the Changing
Character of War Programme, University of Oxford and PS21
Global Fellow.
The threat to the UK from terrorism is increasing and, in
important ways, so is our vulnerability. The revised National Security Strategy, which
will be launched in the coming months, represents a unique opportunity for the UK
government to reformulate its approach to counter-terrorism.
New threat
In the past decade or so, two main types of terrorist plots confronted the UK security
services.
Firstly, there were plots like the 2006 conspiracy to blow up multiple transatlantic
airliners with liquid bombs. The conspirators planned to use household batteries and
hydrogen peroxide which they referred to in coded messages to Pakistan as Calvin
Klein aftershave disguised in soft drink bottles. The aim was for coordinated suicide
bombers to detonate the small devices, which would punch holes through the fuselages of
as many as seven planes, and kill hundreds of travellers bound for the US and Canada.
It is believed the plot was directed by an al-Qaeda linked network in Pakistan, where
some of the plotters had travelled to work with Afghan refugees. On account of the
circles he moved in, the groups ringleader, Abdullah Ahmed Ali, came to the attention of
the British security services. Hundreds of officers went on to monitor the men
researching flight timetables, discussing details of the plot with one another, and working
in their bomb factory in east London.
Having been in contact with jihadist hierarchies, physically-connected terrorists like
Ahmed Ali were capable individuals planning high-impact attacks. However, given the
protagonists links to established terrorist networks, it was within the capabilities of the
intelligence and security agencies to detect and disrupt such plots. Operation Overt, the
investigation into Ahmed Ali and his associates, was the UKs largest ever covert
surveillance operation. Therefore, plots like the liquid bomb conspiracy presented higher
threat but lower vulnerability risks.

At the same time, there were plots by people like Roshonara Choudhry. Having recently
dropped out of her degree programme at Kings College London, the 21 year-old from
East Ham made an appointment at a community centre with her local MP, Stephen
Timms. As Timms went to shake her hand, Choudhry smiled and then stabbed him twice
in the stomach with a kitchen knife.
Choudhry told police that she targeted Timms because he had voted in parliament in
favour of the Iraq war. Six months prior to the assault, she had begun listening to online
lectures by the Yemen-based al-Qaeda propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki. Reflecting on
Choudhrys life sentence, handed down in November 2010, Timms noted that it was
alarming that she had reached the decision to attempt to murder him and throw her life
away simply by spending time on the internet.
Certainly, virtually-connected lone actors like Choudhry did not engage in any
meaningful way with terrorist command and control structures but were part of an online
community of like-minded radicals. These individuals did not achieve a high level of
capability or experience, and tended to plan low-impact attacks. However, owing to their
disconnection from identifiable physical terrorist networks, these under the radar
machinations were very difficult to detect and disrupt. Choudhry, for her part, told no one
what she was thinking and planning. Thus, plots like hers presented lower threat but
higher vulnerability risks.
Whats new about terrorism today? Simply speaking, it unites the most dangerous
elements of the liquid bomb plot and Choudhrys attack. Capable terrorists planning highimpact attacks are combining with low-visibility behaviours. The result is higher threat,
higher vulnerability terrorism risks.
This changing risk picture bears an intimate connection with what has happened and is
happening on the ground in Syria, Iraq and beyond, primarily due to the rise of the
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Changing landscape
ISIS fundamentally altered the nature of radical Islam, mainly through its approach to
jihadism as a state-building enterprise. This was driven by the participation of its
predecessor groups in the post-2003 insurgency and tactical alliances with former
Baathist officials. From Borno state in Nigeria to Baghlan province in Afghanistan, the

ISIS paradigm of jihad is now widely invoked. It involves seizing territory from weak
governments, and brutally imposing a vision for society.
This state-building model had a dramatic impact on jihadist ideas, actors and spaces
and evolving technologies, particularly social media tools, connect these changing ideas,
actors and spaces like never before.
In terms of ideology, in order to maintain control over local populations, ISIS must
continually instil fear. This imperative has led to an ever more fanatical jihadist discourse,
in which the camp of the enemy is continually expanding. At the same time,
engagement with theological nuance is far more limited than in previous years, and mass
casualty attacks against any civilian targets are now depicted as self-evidently justified.
Jihadist actors have also changed. The scale of foreign fighter flows to the Islamic state
is overwhelming. Nationals from more than 70 countries are fighting in Syria and Iraq
today. The US intelligence community estimates that 3,400 citizens from western
countries have now made the journey, up from 2,700 last November. The security
services are therefore straining to keep track of who is going to fight, who has returned
and, most importantly, what their intentions are. Beyond fighters who physically join
jihadist ranks, ISISs territorial vision of jihad, with the attendant declaration of a
caliphate, has enabled its sympathisers worldwide to conceive of themselves as soldiers
waging war on behalf of a state a tangible community rather than as lone actors
carrying out terrorist attacks in the service of an ill-defined end.
Alongside active jihadist theatres in Iraq and Syria, permissive operating spaces for
extremists are proliferating, particularly in North and West Africa. ISIS and allied
provinces do not merely seek to exploit chaos, but also, through the establishment of
proto-states, to impose a long-term order. Thus, jihadist spaces are not only
geographically expanding, but also systematically deepening. As a result, the scope for
secure training bases, far beyond the reaches of western intelligence services, is
unprecedented.
Furthermore, given widespread governance challenges, as things stand there are dim
prospects for local governments to reclaim ISIS-held territory and hold onto it in the long
term. Even in Iraq, where a popular mobilisation drive yielded thousands of volunteer
fighters who are supported from the air by a US-led coalition, anti-ISIS efforts are

inevitably hampered by the lack of a broader political strategy to reach out to Iraqs long
marginalised Sunni community, as well as the absence of significant and viable local
opposition from within ISIS-held territories.
Across the border in Syria, the position of ISIS is set to remain strong, irrespective of
whether the brutal regime in Damascus continues or it collapses to (mainly radical)
opposition forces. Indeed, the gestation of ISIS in Syria and Iraq is intimately bound up
with a deep crisis of authority on the political level, sectarian polarisation on the societal
level, and a race to the bottom on the tactical level.
Of course, longstanding al-Qaeda networks pose an enduring security threat that requires
disruption, but newer terrorist phenomena present an increasingly complex global risk
picture, in which the relationship between governance failures, local conflict and
international terrorism is growing rapidly.
Full-spectrum security strategy
Given the complexity of higher threat, higher vulnerability terrorism risks and their
close connection to developments in troubled parts of the world, the UK must begin to
reformulate its counter-terrorism response. Rather than solely working to mitigate
immediate threats, the UK needs an international counter-terrorism framework that
incorporates the broader drivers and enablers of terrorism, and sets out clearly their
linkages to threats. Accordingly, counter-terrorism ought to be conceived as part of a fullspectrum approach to international security, conflict-reduction and stabilization.
Of course, terrorist leaders, networks and propaganda machines require detection and
disruption using traditional counter-terrorism tools. However, long-term progress will
elude us until we also deal with terrorism drivers (conflict, instability and poor
governance) and terrorism enablers (ideology, operating spaces and terrorist financing).
These fuel and facilitate the evolving terrorist threat, and require a broader set of
responses that are not conventionally considered counter-terrorism-specific, but are
critical to tackling fundamental parts of the terrorism problem.
In revising the National Security Strategy, the UK government must address the
underlying trends that produce higher threat, higher vulnerability terrorism risks over
the longer term. To combat a mutating threat that is entwined with problems and policies
abroad, counter-terrorism requires the implementation of a wide range of strategies in

fragile and conflict-affected states. With a new strategic vision for counter-terrorism that
is integrated with international policy, we can begin to lower the terrorist threat to the
UK, and lower our vulnerability.
This piece was originally published on the commentary page of Contest Global on June
1, 2015.
Project for Study of the 21st Century is a non-national, non-partisan, non-ideological
organization. All views expressed are the authors own.