The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith outlined plans for a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, Contest Two, which is intended to expand police and intelligence work. The government needs to "enlist the widest possible range of support" to combat terrorist activity, she said. The plans entail training 60,000 key workers to spot terrorist activity and develop response procedures in the event of an attack. The plans also highlighted the danger of a "dirty bomb" and will renew investment in defences against nuclear, chemical or biological attack, bringing total counter-terrorism spending in Britain to £3.5bn a year.
The toD verdict: While Britain's current counter-terrorism strategy, Contest, has succeeded in preventing any major attacks on British territory since 7 July 2005, it has arguably failed in tackling the root causes of terrorism, a fact recognised by the renewed strategy's focus on the radicalisation process.
The danger, however, lies in whether promoting a popular levée en masse against terrorist activity, signalled by the training of thousands of employees and calls for communal vigilance, will promote a culture of vigilantism that would only worsen community tensions. Bringing the fight against terrorism out from "behind closed doors", as the Contest Two strategy promises, may disrupt the same day-to-day economic and social life which we employ the security services to protect.
The government will also "challenge those who reject the rights to which we are committed, scorn the institutions and values of our parliamentary democracy, dismiss the rule of law and promote intolerance", a move that seems to suggest that even non-violent and presently legal forms of extremism will be targeted. While there is an obvious ideological connection between those who vocally promote extreme forms of protest and incidents of violence carried out for the same end, there is a danger that by grouping the two together Muslims radically critical of government policy but unwilling to pursue unconstitutional violence will be forced into the arms of proponents of violence.
PLO leader assassinated in Lebanon
The deputy leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon, Kamal Medhat, was killed along with several bodyguards by a roadside bomb yesterday as he left the Mieh Mieh Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country. The PLO's top leader in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, had also visited the camp on Monday but was not present at the time of the explosion. Zaki accused Israel of carrying out the assassination, but another Fatah official, Fahmi Zaarir, said the party "did not accuse anyone at this point". A spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the killing and hoped "the climate of calm" in Lebanon would be upheld.
Wave of attacks kill at least 32 people in Iraq
Iraq witnessed a wave of deadly attacks on civilians on Monday, claiming the lives of over thirty people. A suicide bomber struck a wake held for the brother of a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party official, killing nineteen mourners and wounding 39 others. The attack took place in the town of Jalawla in Diyala, a haven for Sunni extremists attempting to provoke sectarian violence between Arabs and Kurds in the ethnically mixed province. Further explosions killed at least eight people in the Abu Ghraib district west of Baghdad, but the nature of the attack has not yet been confirmed with reports varying between a single blast or multiple explosions, and the victims identified as either Iraqi soldiers or paramilitaries of the US-backed Sunni Awakening movement. Further attacks took place in and around Mosul, with four killed in the city in a series of shootings and bombings and a suicide attack killing a police officer and four civilians 30 miles to the west.
US presents new Afghanistan strategy to NATO allies
The US envoy Richard Holbrooke attempted to drum up support from EU leaders over the weekend before formally presenting US plans for Afghanistan at a NATO summit in the Netherlands on Monday. He claimed to find "a very encouraging symmetry of views" between the US and its partners in Europe, although it seems unlikely the transatlantic row on burden sharing and strategy has been solved over the weekend. As Holbrooke pressed for a greater European share of the burden in Afghanistan, US President Barack Obama was simultaneously reassuring the American public and international opinion that he was formulating a clear "exit strategy" for American forces, a further 17,000 of which are being deployed this dummer.
Meanwhile, European concerns about the NATO strategy were expressed at a local level in Strasbourg, where a row has erupted over police powers and the removal of "No to NATO" flags from the city ahead of a summit to be held early next month.
Security services on high alert after suicide attack on police station in Islamabad
A suicide bomber detonated in front of a Special Branch police station in Islamabad yesterday, killing a guard who had prevented him entering the building. The bombing occurred during Pakistan's Republic Day celebrations, which had been curtailed to minimise the risk of an attack. Police immediately cordoned off the site, which was visited by Interior Minister Rehman Malik who warned that up to seven bombers could be in the city preparing to carry out further attacks. After news of the bombing, police in Lahore intensified security in case several simultaneous strikes were intended. Security precautions in Islamabad itself remain tight today as further celebrations attend the reinstatement of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chief justice dismissed by former president Pervez Musharraf.
Teenager charged with killing of police constable in Northern Ireland
Police charged an unnamed seventeen-year-old this morning with the murder of the Police Service of Northern Ireland constable Stephen Carroll who was shot in his patrol car in Craigavon on 9 March. The suspect is also accused of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, collecting information likely to be of use to terrorists and membership of a proscribed organisation, the Continuity IRA, which claimed responsibility for the attack. Two other suspects were released without charge yesterday in connection with the killing, while four men are still held for suspected involvement in the attack on Massereene army barracks, which left two soldiers dead two days previous to the shooting in Craigavon. Conditions for those held have been criticised by the suspects, one of whom today began a hunger strike and has, along with five others, launched a high court appeal against the extension of their period of detention. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission criticised the manner of their detention, saying cells were too small and 24-hour lighting deprived inmates of sleep.
