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    Third Annual Colin Cramphorn Memorial Lecture

    Terrorism andCounter-Terrorism: what next?

    Delivered by Charles Farr OBE, Director General of the Office for Security and

    Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office.

    25 March 2009

    I am very grateful to Policy Exchange for the invitation to give this talk. I never met

    Colin Cramphorn but I have seen what he achieved and the legacy he left for policing

    and our counter terrorist work. It is immense; I would like to return to it later on.

    But Id first like to consider some of the themes in the revised counter terrorist

    strategy, CONTEST, published by the Government yesterday and, specifically, three

    key issues: what terrorists are trying to achieve and the nature of the threats we

    now face; how these threats have emerged; and the broad features and principles of

    our intended response.

    I think I can best explain the first of these points by comparing the international

    terrorist threat in the seventies and early eighties with the threats we face now.

    The first sustained phase of international terrorism at least as it affected this

    country - was focused on Palestinian related issues and terrorist operations were

    conducted primarily by a variety of Palestinian groups. Internationally, this phase

    began for us in 1970 with the hijacking of a British airliner by the Popular Front for

    the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP. It was subsequently marked by the Munich

    airport massacre and later by the actions of the renegade Abu Nidal Organisation. At

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    the time the threat from ANOand some other Palestinian organisations seemed to

    be high. It was certainly unfamiliar: we had seen nothing like it before.

    Terrorist groups operating in this period were usually concerned with a specific

    political issue, the creation of a Palestinian state. They had little or no interest in

    regime change across the Arab or broader Islamic world, though at various times

    they certainly caused significant unrest in both Jordan and Lebanon. They conducted

    attacks which were deliberately limited in scope, often directed against Jewish and

    Israeli targets. As far as I know they did not consider or even imagine the use of

    weapons of mass destruction. They were often state sponsored, something which

    perhaps explains much about their behaviour.

    Like terrorists before and since these groups sought publicity. They had a carefully

    crafted public message, which tried to attract support for their political objective.

    They made no attempt to justify their actions by reference to anything other than

    the political grievances they felt and the validity of their cause. They had no outward

    religious motivation: some were Marxist and many were influenced by secular

    European terrorist groups like Baader-Meinhof.

    These groups made little or no systematic attempt to recruit people to their cause in

    this country or elsewhere in the non Islamic world. I suspect that, for them, the idea

    would have seemed very strange. They considered themselves an elite and not a

    vanguard.

    In the eighties terrorism changed. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that an

    event of really lasting significance (surely comparable to the Iranian revolution) was

    the assassination of President Sadat of Egypt in 1981 - not because it succeeded in

    overthrowing the state but because it marked the arrival of a new type of terrorist

    organisation.

    Their purpose was regime change. They wanted to establish what they regarded as a

    genuine Islamic state ruled by Islamic law. They claimed to be able to justify their

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    actions by reference to Islam. No doubt, the example of revolutionary Iran played

    some part in their thinking. They did not ignore Palestine. But, as one of them later

    remarked, they thought the way to Jerusalem was through Cairo1.

    Disrupted by the Egyptian security forces, the Egyptian organisations migrated to

    Afghanistan with the intention of challenging the Soviet army, and again re-

    establishing an Islamic state. They joined forces with what at first was a very small

    number of like minded groups from around the Arab world.

    Two things happened. The aim of these groups evolved, from confronting an

    apostate government to challenging the invasion of what they regarded and

    described as Muslim land. And they internationalised their struggle. They openly

    sought recruits from across the Islamic and non Islamic worlds, including the US

    (particularly New York) and the UK, where they found a sympathetic and supportive

    audience. They styled themselves as mujahideen, meaning people engaged injihad,

    a term they used to refer to armed combat or conflict2.

    By 1989 the Soviet army withdrew and these groups claimed victory. The myth was

    then established that they had defeated a superpower.

    In the following few years some people in these groups became the core of the

    Taliban. Others including influential members of the earlier Egyptian terrorist

    groups - had already created Al Qaida and continued to seek regime change in the

    Islamic world. They came to see the West itself as a target, on the grounds that the

    West (notably, of course, America) was judged to be supporting, sustaining and in

    particular occupying the apostate regimes to which they took exception. They

    thought the West was conducting a war on Islam itself. Having taken on one

    1 The remark was made by Ayman al Zawahiri, writing in 1995 in Al Muhajidun, the publication of

    Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Quoted in Gilles Kepel and Jean Pierre Milleli, (eds)Al Qaeda in its own

    words (Cambridge Mass and London: Harvard, 2008) p156.2

    This is clearly set out in the very influential work of Abdallah Azzam, an ideologue for jihad in

    Afghanistan - for exampleJoin the Caravan, reproduced in Kepel and Milleli (eds), p.122

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    superpower they determined to take on the other and they declared war on

    America3.

    They also developed their case for murdering civilians. They thought that democracy

    had become a new religion, based on making the people into gods and giving them

    Gods rights and attributes4. They argued that civilians in America and in allied

    countries should be killed because they had voted for the Governments who were

    now at war with Islam5. So they concluded that democracy had turned civilians into

    targets.

    For all Western states the significance of this was unclear for much longer than now

    seems possible. We did not always understand the points Al Qaida was making,

    perhaps because they made them at great length, a long way away and in a language

    and with a vocabulary which was unfamiliar: the terrorism of Al Qaida and like

    minded organisations was very different from the Palestinian terrorism which had

    gone before it.

    Fast forward twenty years. The threat we face now is driven not by a regional but a

    global cause. Al Qaida and its associates still want to change Governments and

    fashion a new world order. We think of them as terrorist organisations but they

    aspire to create an insurgency, meaning (according to the NATO definition) a

    movement which seeks to overthrow a Government by armed conflict and

    subversion6. That is their fundamental aim. Zawahiri, bin Ladens deputy, has been

    clear on this point, remarking that the key objective of the Al Qaida movement is to

    establish what he describes as a Muslim authority on Muslim territory7.

    3 See for example the Declaration of Jihad by Usama bin Laden and others; parts of the text are

    translated in Bruce Lawrence (ed)Messages to the World: the statements of Osama bin Laden

    (London: Verso, 2005) p. 23; and Kepel and Milleli, p. 53.4

    The quotation is from Ayman al ZawahirisAdvice to Reject the Fatwa of Bin Baz, translated in Kepel

    and Milleli (eds), p.184. The text probably dates from the early 1990s.5

    See for example Bin Ladens comments in Lawrence (ed) p. 47 and p.616

    www.nato.int/docu/stanag/aap006/aap6.htm7

    Ayman Al Zawahiri, Knights under the Prophets Banner, reproduced in Kepel and Milleli (eds) , p.

    205

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    So for Al Qaida and groups like it terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end, albeit a

    tactic of a particularly ruthless and novel kind, involving indiscriminate killing of large

    numbers of people using any kind of weapons, including chemical, biological,

    radiological or even nuclear. I dont think we can recast counter terrorism as

    counter insurgency: but I can see why some people suggest that we should8.

    Al Qaida and like minded organisations differ in another and perhaps much more

    profound way from the Palestinian secular groups which came before them because

    they also claim that terrorism and insurgency are religious obligations. They

    commend martyrdom and suicide operations because they earn reward in the

    afterlife. They invoke the dutytojihad, a concept which has a fundamental place in

    Islamic thought, but develop its meaning to include not just resistance to the

    occupation of Muslim land (the position of the early mujahideen in Afghanistan) but

    also attacks on the United States and its allies, like us, and on civilians wherever they

    may be. Zawahiri writes that confronting what he describes as unbelievers is a

    pillar of faith9.

    So Al Qaida consider themselves a vanguard as well as elite. They look to recruit

    people from across the Islamic and the non Islamic worlds, including this country.

    They want to create a mass movement. For that reason, Al Qaida and other like

    minded groups have tried to enter our societies in a way that international terrorist

    organisations had not tried before.

    I do not therefore think we can characterise the threat we face only in terms of the

    number of people engaged in violent extremism in this country, huge challenge

    though that is. We need to consider the threat posed by insurgency, by the

    aspiration to destabilise and change Governments and to alter the shape of the

    Islamic world. And we also need to reflect on the challenge posed by an ideology

    8For example David Kilcullen, Countering Global Insurgency in The Journal of Strategic Studies

    August 2005, pp 597-617 and Subversion and Countersubversion in the Campaign against Terrorism

    in Europe in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 2007, pp 647-666.9

    Ayman Al Zawahiri,Loyalty and Separation, reproduced in Kepel and Milleli (eds), p. 231.

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    that tries to set one faith group against another, make violence an obligation and

    appeal directly to people here to join a global terrorist movement.

    The CONTEST strategy argues that we have never faced a terrorist threat of this

    complexity before. There are few analogies either with the earlier international

    groups which had an impact on this country or with Irish related terrorism. This is

    different.

    Why is it necessary to make these points? Partly, I think, because we want to

    connect strategy to history; partly because we have to connect insurgency to

    terrorism; and partly because unless we agree the outline of the threat, our

    response will often seem neither necessary nor proportionate. That seems to have

    been the issue in some of the debates about counter terrorism during the past year:

    the argument has been not just about the nature of the Governments response but

    more fundamentally about the extent of the problem itself.

    - 2-

    Terrorist objectives are not the only basis on which to build a counter terrorist

    strategy. CONTEST also argues that we need to identify the factors which have

    enabled terrorism to develop as it has over the past twenty years.

    I have already mentioned one the ideology that has come to be linked to Al Qaida;

    but there are three others, of rather different kinds, which seem to be important.

    The first is conflict and the failure of states.

    Contemporary terrorist groups have emerged in and been developed by unresolved

    disputes, specifically conflict in the Muslim world or conflict affecting Muslims and

    often conflict in which the West is somehow engaged. Palestine, Afghanistan,

    Bosnia, Chechnya, Lebanon, Kashmir, Iraq and now Somalia are all obvious examples.

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    Conflict has created conditions for terrorist recruitment, facilitated training and

    provided a theatre for the rapid development of operational expertise.

    Conflict is a frequent characteristic of failed or fragile states although there are

    certainly others, including poor governance and erosion of the rule of law. Failing or

    fragile states create safe havens where terrorist organisations have assembled,

    settled and then grown, free from Government sanction. Afghanistan, the Tribal

    Areas of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and much of sub Saharan Africa are all areas on

    which Al Qaida and associated groups depend for their very survival.

    In failed and fragile states terrorist organisations like Al Qaida also have the greatest

    chance of creating an insurgency and challenging Government authority and power.

    Research suggests that, as a general rule, the poorer the country the more terrorist

    groups reach the insurgency stage and of course the longer it then takes to control

    them on average fourteen years10

    .

    The second factor is technology.

    It is one of the accidents of history that at the moment when terrorist organisations

    set out to change the way that people think and behave, so technology, developed

    for the US military, provided it with the perfect tool to do so.

    The communications revolution, the internet, has enabled the current generation of

    terrorists to reach far more people than they ever could before and, as I have said,

    with a quite different message. The fact that cognitive change in the hyper reality of

    the internet seems to take place much faster and with less challenge than anywhere

    else only makes it a more powerful and appropriate terrorist tool.

    Many contemporary terrorist groups have their own media teams. Al Qaida is just

    one example. There are over 4000 terrorist related websites. Ten years ago there

    10Seth Jones and Martin Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End, Lessons for Countering Al Qaida (Santa

    Monica: RAND Corporation, 2008)

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    were about twelve and the communications tool of choice was the fax machine. The

    cumulative effect of the 4000, in conjunction with international satellite television,

    has been to establish a new worldwide global audience, watching not only every

    move made by Al Qaida and other like minded groups but also every move we make

    in response.

    Technology has had other impacts. It has enabled terrorists to more easily and

    securely communicate with one another, to plan their operations from a distance

    and to obtain and then share more lethal weapons. Terrorists aspire to develop and

    use chemical, biological and radiological weapons and look to the internet to assist

    them.

    But neither conflict nor technology would have enabled terrorism unless some

    people, for whatever reasons, were prepared to support it. Radicalisation the

    process by which people come to support terrorism and violent extremism - is

    therefore the final key factor or enabler and perhaps the most important.

    Radicalisation has obvious effects.

    Not everyone who is radicalised becomes a member of a terrorist organisation or an

    insurgency. But it is from those who are radicalised that these groups are able to

    recruit and to survive.

    Moreover, as the agenda of the radicalised or even parts of it, enters the political

    blood stream so it may be a constraint on authorities around the world, aware of the

    possible risks from publicly challenging militant networks or their ideology. The

    wider effect of radicalisation can be the absence of an international consensus about

    the challenge we face and of the international support on which we depend.

    A great deal has now been written on the causes as opposed to the effects of

    radicalisation. This is summarised in CONTEST. Several points are particularly

    important.

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    People support terrorism today as they have in the past for a wide range of reasons.

    They vary from one country and group to another; even within a single organisation

    the motivation of those in the leadership can differ significantly from those who are

    not.

    Certainly, some people become terrorists because they hold political grievances.

    Open source research suggests that significant numbers of Muslims believe that

    some Western states have set out to deliberately weaken and divide the Islamic

    world and to dominate their land, resources and culture11

    . There is a widespread and

    fundamental view that the Western world does not respect its Islamic counterpart or

    Islam as a religion

    12

    . Research suggests that the stronger these grievances the more

    likely people may be to approve of terrorism and the more vulnerable they will be to

    the ideology of Al Qaida and other groups like it13

    .

    But many people are also drawn to terrorist groups because they offer the security

    and support that Governments in failed or fragile states cannot provide. Others join

    or even create terrorist groups for reasons connected with nationalism or the well

    being of a clan or a tribe. Some drift into terrorism because they lose their bearings,

    and are disconnected from family, community and state, perhaps by migration or

    criminality but also by a range of other socio economic grievances; and some get

    recruited into terrorist organisations because they value the personal support which

    those organisations can provide.

    So radicalisation is rarely just a function of ideology and perhaps even less so in this

    country than in some others. People come to support and even to join organisations

    like Al Qaida for a range of external reasons; they buy the brand and to extend the

    metaphor - sometimes even want to sell it, but not always because of the contents.

    11Stephen Kull,Muslim Public Opinion on US policy, Attacks on Civilians and al Qaeda (University

    of Maryland: World Public Opinion.org 2007).12

    John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think

    (New York: Gallup Press, 2007), p. 9113

    Stephen Weber, Perceptions of the US and Support for Violence against America (Maryland:

    University of Maryland, Studies on Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, START, 2006).

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    This is fundamental when we come to consider our response: counter ideology and

    counter radicalisation are not the same thing.

    Clearly the factors I have talked about here conflict and state failure, ideology,

    technology and radicalisation are related. They tend to reinforce one another.

    Conflicts create grievances which are interpreted and exploited by ideology and

    technology and which can lead to the radicalisation process. Radicalisation

    amongst many of other factors contributes to state failure and conflict. There is of

    course nothing inevitable about this cycle. But it happens; one interpretation of our

    task is that we need to break it.

    -3-

    I have tried to explain here the ambition and objectives of contemporary terrorism

    and the factors which have enabled terrorism to become what it is today.

    In very simple terms the response outlined in CONTEST takes three parts.

    We need to address what we might call the symptoms of the problem - planned

    terrorist attacks or insurgent movements. The first is the theme of CONTEST. The

    second is connected to and coordinated closely with it. Both operate within the

    broader framework now provided by the Governments National Security Strategy,

    published last year.

    Our experience in Europe over the past few years illustrates how both these

    challenges affect us. The immediate threat we have faced has come partly from

    people intending to attack targets here and cause civilian casualties. Many people

    have been arrested. We have seen and continue to see attempts by Al Qaida, their

    affiliates and like minded groups to conduct operations.

    We believe these attempts are likely to persist even as the shape and structure of Al

    Qaida may change under concerted pressure against the leadership group in

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    Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is clearly not the case that a change in structure will lead

    to a reduction in the threats. Indeed, it might create exactly the kind of structure

    that some people in Al Qaida have long argued would be most effective14

    .

    But these terrorist operations are often planned in the areas where insurgency has

    begun to take root and where Al Qaida and associated networks have obtained

    control. The people who conduct operations here often train over there and receive

    instructions from the leadership in the region.

    Moreover, we have also seen many people from across Europe travelling to take part

    in these insurgencies, mainly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and more recently in

    Somalia. Indeed, of the people arrested in Europe in the past few years a very

    significant proportion probably the majority - have been trying to engage in

    insurgency and not initially in terrorism. Entire facilitation networks have emerged

    around Europe to enable them to do so. Some of these people then intend to come

    back to Europe and reengage with the terrorist networks whose focus is on

    operations here.

    So terrorism and insurgency have become interwoven and even interdependent. The

    stability of Governments overseas is vital to us for a very wide range of reasons, but

    our own domestic security is certainly one.

    There is, I know, a school of thought that argues that whatever Al Qaida might say it

    is neither serious about nor capable of insurgency. I think this is a mistake. It is

    certainly very important to talk about the failure of Al Qaida. CONTEST does this. Al

    Qaida and its affiliates have not succeeded in creating mass movements. They have

    not yet overthrown Governments, let alone established a state. They are not as big

    as they would like to be and as they often claim. It is possible to read their repetitive

    press statements as a spurious claim for relevance. They have provided no support

    14Some of the debate inside Al Qaida about these issues is summarised in Gilles Kepel,Beyond

    Terrorism and Martyrdom (Cambridge Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp.160-

    171

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    to Muslim communities: rather the opposite - they have killed Muslims in great

    numbers. Certainly they are regarded with revulsion in communities here and across

    the world.

    But failure has been a consequence of continued international pressure and not luck

    or chance. Al Qaida remain committed to regime change - as Zawahiri has said,

    however long it takes and whatever sacrifices are required15

    - and are working with

    and alongside the many and varied groups who share at least part of their cause.

    Some of these are formal Al Qaida affiliates; others are semi independent. They may

    not yet be capable of overthrowing states. But they are capable of taking over areas

    and using them to try to take over more. That of course was the intent in Iraq and

    remains the intent in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and parts of sub

    Saharan Africa.

    So dealing with terrorist attack planning and coordinating with counter insurgency

    work are key themes in CONTEST. But one of the main arguments in CONTEST is that

    dealing with symptoms is not going to be enough. We also need to address the

    underlying enablers or causes I touched on earlier. This is about conflict and state

    failure, ideology and technology as well as radicalisation. It is a key principle that we

    cannot do either symptoms or causes. We have to do both. In that sense the answer

    to the question counter terrorism: what next? is not just more counter terrorism,

    or at least not in the way we sometimes describe it.

    I am not going to spend much time on how we might address conflict resolution and

    state failure and fragility. These are not only or mainly matters for counter terrorism

    and, for broader reasons, they feature in the National Security Strategy. Of almost

    thirty countries recently identified as being at risk of conflict or state failure, half

    have already experienced terrorist attacks16

    . We know that conflicts exploited by

    15Ayman Al Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophets Banner, reproduced in Kepel and Milleli (eds), p.

    20516

    The Interim Report of the IPPR Commission on National Security in the 21st

    Century, Shared

    Destinies, Security in a Globalised World(London: IPPR, 2008), p. 57.

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    terrorist organisations show no sign of early resolution. We can see their corrosive

    effect.

    The challenges of technological change are perhaps less familiar.

    Some new technologies, often developed for peaceful purposes, are or will be

    capable of lethal application and use by terrorist groups. We worry about chemical,

    biological, radiological and even nuclear exploitation and that is reflected in

    CONTEST. This threat is as much about supply of these materials as it is about

    demand for them. Other technologies will make terrorist operations easier to plan

    and conduct. New age communications, for example, confer greater privacy and

    anonymity than before and are much faster and more flexible.

    We can anticipate these technologies and, often by developing other technologies,

    we can try to stop terrorists taking advantage of them. We can protect ourselves

    against their possible deployment. We can prepare for the possibility that they may

    be used and anticipate the actions that will then be required. We can reach

    multilateral agreements that will support our domestic programmes. But we cannot

    stop technology or stand still in its path.

    The internet is a particular case. Its not a country with borders and a police force.

    Governments cannot ask someone to remove 4000 websites. And if they could the

    websites would reappear a day later somewhere else. But we can better understand

    the use to which the internet is being put by violent extremists. We can and do

    develop ways in which we can level the playing field, enabling others to respond to

    terrorist messaging and propaganda. We can support multilateral programmes,

    notably with the EU and the UN, as they try to develop collaborative research work

    in this area. And Government has placed much greater emphasis on counter terrorist

    related communications. This is all set out in CONTEST.

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    I think it is partly because our ability to shape state failure and technology is

    inevitably limited that we tend to focus on the work we do to counter ideologies and

    disrupt radicalisation.

    It is hard to overstate the significance of this. The ability of communities and

    Governments to reach and persuade those who already support violent extremism is

    limited. But their ability to reach and persuade those who hold grievances or are

    vulnerable to radicalisation for other reasons is much greater. CONTEST argues that

    the extent to which the international community can collectively do so will

    significantly determine the future shape of the threat.

    The Government has set a series of objectives for Prevent. They include challenging

    the ideology that regards terrorism as a religious obligation. But we also aim to

    disrupt the propagandists for this ideology, identify and support people vulnerable

    to radicalisation, build community resilience and address some of the grievances

    which can lead people to engage with violent extremist organisations. These

    grievances include a misreading of our foreign policy and, in particular, the view that

    we are trying to weaken and divide the Islamic world and to humiliate its religion.

    But positioning Prevent is vital. It does not dominate Pursue or CONTEST. Its purpose

    is not community cohesion, though cohesive communities undoubtedly facilitate

    counter radicalisation. It is neither about supporting one extremist against another

    nor criminalising types of extremism for the first time. Neither the new nor the old

    CONTEST strategies talk about these things. Nor (as is sometimes claimed) is it

    simply about the application of soft power: a key part of this work is to identify,

    disrupt and where possible to prosecute propagandists for violence.

    And its not just domestic and local: the international agenda on Prevent is every bit

    as important as it is for other parts of counter terrorism. Ideas cross borders. We

    work under the scrutiny of a global audience. Communities in this country are

    influenced as much by the media and events overseas as they are by the media and

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    events here. The term homegrown terrorist has never been very helpful and the

    internet has made it largely redundant.

    I have said that CONTEST sets out to deal with symptoms and with causes. But it also

    aims to ensure that in addressing symptoms, in handling the immediacy and urgency

    of an attack, in saving lives, we do not inadvertently reinforce the very factors which

    we are trying to resolve. We have to ensure that in the process of disrupting a

    terrorist network here or tackling an insurgency overseas we do not create or

    reinforce state failure or fragility, provide fuel for an ideology, enable the use of

    lethal technologies by terrorist groups and enhance the process of radicalisation.

    No strategy will provide a neat solution to all the challenges we face. It is a strategy ,

    not a mathematical formula. But there are principles running through CONTEST, set

    out in terms, which try to give it consistency and are intended to avoid parts of the

    strategy conflicting with one another. Some of the most important are rights, values,

    partnerships and people.

    Rights and values are at the forefront of both the National Security Strategy and

    CONTEST. The aim of the strategy is to reduce the risk from terrorism so that people

    can go about their lives freely and with confidence. Freely is a key word. The

    strategy explains how measures the Government has taken to protect the right to

    life are consistent with other rights which form the basis for society. By providing an

    objective account of the threat, CONTEST also seeks to demonstrate the necessity

    and proportionality of the Governments response to it. Discussing rights without

    considering these threats has become commonplace but is surely an imperfect basis

    for debate.

    The Government has also made clear that this is not just a strategy about protecting

    rights. Its about promoting rights, values and, as the document says, the kind of

    society we want for ourselves17

    . And that also means in this and other contexts -

    17The United Kingdoms Strategy for Countering International Terrorism CM7547(London: The

    Stationary Office, 2009) p.87.

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    challenging those who reject those rights and values, for whatever reason or

    cause18

    . This is not quite as new as has sometimes been claimed. The National

    Security Strategy talks in similar terms19

    .

    But if rights and values are at the forefront of these strategies so are partnerships

    and people. The more counter terrorism is something we do with and not to people,

    the less likely it will be that in resolving a security problem, a symptom, we aggravate

    a cause. Working with people is therefore a second theme running through

    CONTEST.

    One of the most striking features of this work in the last few years have been the

    growing convergence of tactics in very different areas of the world around this single

    principle. It is prominent in work under Pursue, Prevent, Protect and Prepare in this

    country and in connected policies on cohesion, community empowerment and race

    equality. It features in counter terrorist work overseas, in its very broadest sense,

    including conflict resolution and poverty reduction. It is also a key theme in the

    counter insurgency work, to which CONTEST is connected, in Iraq, Afghanistan and

    Pakistan. As Commander of the Multinational force in Iraq, General Petraeus, caught

    this trend perfectly. In his 2008 Counter Insurgency Guidance he instructed his

    command to secure and serve the population, live among the people, generate unity

    of effort, promote reconciliation, be first with the truth and live our values. I do

    not think it is a coincidence that Al Qaida in Iraq has lost much of the support on

    which they once relied.

    This really brings me back to where I started. Colin Cramphorn was responsible for

    the early development of the counter terrorist network (and of course for policing in

    Northern Ireland) and for setting counter terrorist work in a regional and a local

    context, with and among people and communities. He made counter terrorism

    something for a police service, not just a police force. As counter terrorist work

    18ibid, p. 87

    19The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom CM 7291 (London: The Stationary Office,

    2008), p. 6.

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    continues to evolve that seems to me to be a vital legacy and essential theme for the

    future.