UK terror threats: Long-term prevention measures can be found at community level
On Monday 24th November 2014, the Home Secretary announced new measures that are designed to prevent terrorist acts on UK soil.
In August 2014, UK terror threat level had been raised to ‘’severe’’.
These terror threats are emanating from British citizens who might be coming back to the UK after they had joined the extremist Islamic groups, particularly in Syria and Iraq.
Although that those measures might be useful for a short time in preventing terrorist acts in the UK, the government policy is putting little focus on long term measures that would contribute in preventing British Muslims to join terrorist organisations in first place.
The Prevention Violence Extremism Strategy (also called’’ Prevent’’ Strategy) that has been introduced in 2007, as result of 2005 London bombing has not achieved its aims particularly in stopping radicalisation and discouraging young British Muslims to join terrorist organisations.
The government estimates that up to 400 British jihadists have joined fighting in Syria and Iraq and more are reportedly ready to go to join others.
These young British are known members of various local and Muslim communities across the UK. Under the Prevent Strategy’’, some local authorities were given funding to distribute to community-based projects in order to achieve the ‘’Prevent objectives’’.
I have identified two main issues regarding this government initiative. Firstly, many Muslim groups and Muslim community activists and leaders discarded themselves in any engagement with that policy and funding that came with it. This was due to the fact that they perceived Prevent Strategy to be loaded with prejudices about Muslim communities and their alleged ‘’terrorism potentialities’’. They feared that their communities would not only actively and effectively participate in such projects, but it would also lead to disengagement of their communities with authorities.
Secondly, the distribution of the Prevent funding has not been as diverse, innovative and community based as it ought to be for this kind of initiative that is looking for tangible, valuable and sustainable social outcomes within hard to reach communities.
London Borough of Tower Hamlets which has one of the biggest Muslim community (34% of its population) was one of the beneficiaries of the Prevent funding. Between 2012 and 2014, seven organisations were funded £637,841 to undertake actions that would achieve the prevent strategy. One organisation received more than 80% (£569,529) and it is specialised in working with Bangladesh communities.
While recognising the amazing community work that, that organisation is doing within Bangladesh community, the allocation of that portion of funding available was not proportional considering that the community action dimension of the delivery of Prevent Strategy. The funding should have distributed preferably at smaller proportions to various and diverse community-based initiatives in order to access the hardest to reach and facilitate the development of diverse community innovations related Prevent work.
The Somali community which is the second largest Muslim community in Tower Hamlets did not access a suitable proportion of the funding for its own and tailored community based and culturally sensitive initiatives, considering that members of their community are more likely to participate in terrorist acts than members of Bangladesh community.
As result of the Prevent funding across the country, currently, there are no straightforward ways to identify whether there are among projects funded, those who have developed good practices in stopping radicalisation and/or in reducing support for terrorism; which can be replicated in other areas of UK or within other communities.
Under various policies and strategy such as The Big Society and Localism agenda, the government recognises that community and grassroots-based actions have important potentials to access the hardest to reach and address effectively the most acute identified social challenge.
The most effective long term measures to prevent terrorism acts in UK by home-grown terrorists would be supporting, financially empowering and working with Muslim community based organisations and community leaders in developing and implementing grassroots-based initiatives that aims to achieve full integration, improved participation, citizenship as well as strong sense of belonging to the wider community.
Any social innovation that would achieve those outcomes should give confidence to the government that they will be implanting important seeds of patriotism and achieving all intended outcomes of the Prevent strategy.
It is definitely unlikely for a young British Muslim to participate in any terrorist activity if he or she had gained a strong sense of belonging and citizenship as a result of participating in his community activities. It is also unlikely for him or her to participate in activities that aim to prevent him or her to become a terrorist, due to the stigma attached to that word ‘’ terrorist ‘’.
Thus; for long term terrorism prevention measures, the government should keep its Prevent strategy intended outcomes in its draws and go down at ‘community level’ to support grassroots-based actions in collaboration with community leaders and community workers that are striving to facilitate their community to integrate, to gain sense of community, to participate and to gain strong sense of belonging.
In the process, the much more sustainable Prevent Violence Extremist Strategy objectives of preventing people from being drawn into terrorism would be achieved by reaching the wider range of beneficiaries within the Muslim communities.
Rene C Mugenzi
Senior consultant – LCSI