The global security situation is deteriorating. Increasing political polarisation, climate change, and unprecedented challenges to the post-war international order are all contributing factors. On top of this, the world is now facing the worst public health crisis in over a century, the geopolitical and economic ramifications of which will be felt for years to come. While better placed than some, the UK will not be insulated from these changes. However, their impact on domestic security is unclear, as is the extent to which international developments materially affect the threat of terrorism in Great Britain.
The threat landscape of terrorism in the UK has shifted dramatically over the last 60 years. From the 1960s until the late 1990s, the threat overwhelmingly stemmed from domestic actors, including the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and associated groups. However, international terrorism did affect the UK sporadically – the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege and the 1988 Lockerbie bombing being perhaps the most salient examples.
Against the backdrop of the Irish republican and unionist paramilitary terrorism, these incidents were somewhat incongruous. They were primarily related to international disputes between third-party countries, and their occurrence on British soil was largely tangential. Nonetheless, they demonstrated the potential for international insecurity to impact directly on the domestic security of the UK.
A new era
The September 11 attacks signalled a new era of terrorism both in the UK and worldwide the rise of globalist Islamist extremism with a focus on waging jihad in the West, with al-Qaeda (AQ) being the primary threat actor. AQ had been active since the late 1980s, although it was primarily concerned with combatting the presence of Western countries in Muslim-majority countries, although some precursor groups that joined with AQ, such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad, were focused more on the near enemy and apostate regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. British-born Muslims travelled overseas to participate in jihad in regions such as Kashmir and Bosnia, gaining combat experience and, in some cases, terrorist tradecraft. However, throughout the 1990s, despite the growing number of mujahids residing in Britain, there was no evidence of intent on their part to mount attacks in Britain.
This was largely the result of the UK government offering asylum to a range of political exiles, including Islamists, with a mutual understanding that exile groups would not sanction attacks in the UK. The head of al-Muhajiroun, Omar Bakri Muhammad, called this a covenant of security. Thus, British authorities made no attempt to prevent individuals from travelling to wage Jihad overseas or to prosecute returning fighters, and in return Islamist groups treated the UK effectively as neutral territory, although UK-based individuals or groups did play a hand in the organisation of attacks elsewhere in Europe, such as the Groupe islamique armé (GIA), which mounted several attacks in France.
Afghanistan, Iraq
However, the invasions and subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended this covenant. Following Britain’s significant involvement in these conflicts, Islamist plots and attacks began to increase on British soil, primarily focused on aviation targets, but also other crowded places, culminating in the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005. This led to the formation of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) and the implementation of a terrorism threat level that delineated the threat from terrorism into international (a euphemism for Islamist extremism) and domestic (a catch-all term for non-Islamist terrorism).
Some of the offenders involved in these early plots and attacks had been involved in the conflicts in Bosnia and Central Asia. As a result of British foreign policy towards the Middle East, the country went from a neutral party to a hostile one almost overnight, leading to an increase in terrorism. This shows that a states response to insecurity overseas can materially affect the terrorism threat landscape domestically.
That is not to say that interventions by the British government always have this effect. British interventions in Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere did not elicit the same response. The key dynamic here appears to be the interplay between foreign policy decisions, significant diasporas within the UK with overseas links, and an international ideology capable of exploiting tensions over government policy to radicalise and mobilise sympathetic individuals.
This internationalist ideology has persevered into the present day with the rise of Daesh. The group, born of AQ in Iraq, was congenitally anti-Western as well as anti-Shia. This sentiment was amplified by Western bombing campaigns against the group from the early 2010s, but ultimately Daesh continued the AQ strategy of targeting the far enemy namely attacks against civilians in the West.
International and domestic terrorism blur
Further complex, coordinated plots like 7/7 have largely been prevented owing to the vast resources dedicated by the UK and its allies to identifying and disrupting transnational terrorist networks. However, Daesh could still exploit vulnerable members of British Muslim diasporas in the UK to conduct so-called inspired attacks through spreading its ideology online, though of course ideology plays just one part in the radicalisation process alongside a number of other structural and personal contributors. Additionally, Daesh has played a more prominent part in the actual coordination of many of these inspired, low-complexity attacks by actually directing UK-based ideologues. The Security Service acknowledged this dynamic when, in July 2019, it updated the threat level system to reflect that terrorism with an international ideology may be perpetrated by wholly domestic actors.
Following the loss of its claimed territories in Iraq and Syria in 2017 and 2019, Daesh has largely been unable to inspire or direct attacks in Western Europe. This is in part because its propaganda capabilities were severely diminished following the fall of Raqqa as well as a lack of manpower following sustained kinetic operations by the global coalition arrayed against the group.
However, the group could resurge, particularly against the backdrop of coronavirus. Since March 2020, Daesh and its affiliates have claimed attacks at an increased tempo in both Iraq and Syria. This is possibly due to an overburdening of local security forces as both countries attempt to curb the spread of the virus. Additionally, foreign militaries present in both countries were either pulled from service or stood down at the beginning of the local lockdowns earlier this year. A resurgence of Daesh in the Middle East is of particular concern to the UK and Europe as a whole given the proximity of the region to Europe and the group’s record of successfully directing and inciting attacks in Western Europe. This threat is compounded by the possibly thousands of foreign terrorist fighters of European origins currently interred in refugee camps or jails across the region who may return to their countries of origin or attempt to reestablish a Caliphate in the Levant.
Islamist insurgencies in places such as sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia, while a threat to international security and British interests overseas, are less likely to affect the domestic threat landscape for a variety of reasons. The physical distance of these regions from Europe is a major one, but less tangible factors also play a part. Islamist groups operating in these regions may be formally aligned with AQ and Daesh and pay lip service to the principle of international Jihad but are essentially parochial and locally or regionally focused, lacking the intent or capability to mount out-of-area operations in most cases. Some locally engaged groups, such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), showed some determination in engaging internationally, including claiming responsibility for the 2009 Underwear Bomber plot and publishing English-language propaganda. Furthermore, the conflicts in these regions lack the emotional resonance of those in the Middle East, at least to Western audiences, and are therefore less likely to galvanise violence by those in Britain sympathetic to Islamist ideologies.
This interplay between diaspora, ideology and foreign policy response is almost exclusively related to global Islamism. While this dynamic could manifest in relation to other extremist ideologies, there are no other candidates with such established narratives or widespread agitative networks.
Given this, it seems likely that Islamist terrorists will remain the key threat group that will capitalise on the growing insecurity overseas to expand their capabilities in the UK and wider Western world. That being said, as their presence overseas peaks and troughs, so too will their ability to direct attacks and inspire plots in the UK.
Forecast
Although attacks in the UK may increase in frequency as a result of insecurity overseas, this does not necessarily mean that the severity of attacks will materially increase. It remains challenging for terrorist actors to acquire sophisticated weapons in Great Britain, particularly military-grade firearms and explosives. Most attacks will therefore probably employ low-complexity methodologies such as bladed weapons and vehicular impact attacks. A resurgence of state-sponsored terrorism by rogue states, as witnessed in Britain in the 1980s, would have the potential drastically to alter this situation. However, while such a scenario cannot be discounted, it fortunately remains unlikely in the near term. Ultimately, there are no certain rules governing the relationship between security developments overseas and the domestic terror threat. The UK’s benign geographical position means it is, to some degree, isolated from the effects of deteriorating security environments further afield. However, the UK is also highly globalised and continues to play an active role in international security, meaning it will remain an attractive and accessible (if hardened) target for international terrorist groups.