Introduction
The events of recent years, the assistance of European governments to terrorist organizations in the fight against even prominent political figures, prove that, unfortunately, terrorism has become an acceptable tool in the struggle for spheres of geopolitical influence. Instability circles the western part of Eurasia from the south in North Africa, from the southeast in the Middle East, and now from the east in Europe. Throughout these regions, the security situation has deteriorated sharply in recent years. Some time after the start of the so-called war on terror, terrorist activity on the planet has increased dramatically. In this paper, all possible mechanisms of anti-terrorist structures are considered and presented in the context of the legislation and actions of Great Britain on the example of countering Al-Qaeda at the beginning of the 21st century.
Main Structures
Terrorists consider that one of their goals is to influence public opinion and the subjects of decision-making through intimidation, which leads to a deterioration in the situation in a state or region. and today’s global society, a series of major terrorist attacks are increasingly capable of destabilizing the functioning of the world political system. The communication component is an essential aspect of terrorist activities, as well as international security, respectively (Bodas et al., 2021, Matusitz, 2012, Semati and Szpunar, 2018, Vergani and Bliuc, 2018). In this regard, it seems timely and necessary to analyze the communication strategies of the world’s developed countries in this area. Communication counteraction to terrorism can be successful with a combination of open and closed communications. The latter are well-developed in European states’ intelligence and counterintelligence systems.
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, attacks, most EU governments have steadily expanded their anti-terrorism police and security forces. For example, the British MI5 budget was increased by almost 30% from May 2004 to June 2005 (Andrew, 2009). After the terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, the EU developed and adopted a program to prevent and prosecute international terrorism, and in 2010 the “EU Internal Security Strategy” came into force, which provided for the creation of a unified European model for combating against terrorism and organized crime by coordinating the efforts of all EU member states and other countries” (Wahl, 2010). The UK Government has approved the Prime Minister’s initiative to establish a Joint Terrorism Threat Analysis Centre. According to the 2012-2013 Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security report, MI5 uses 68% of its resources in the fight against international terrorism, and the annual growth of this share is estimated at 2.6 (Thomas, 2013). Terrorism scholars speak of the validity of this approach. Moreover, the European governments have concluded that it is urgent to improve the standard European intelligence system, especially the establishment of intelligence communications, where it is possible and adequate cooperation in data exchange and joint judicial procedures are possible.
The UK has a long history of countering terrorism and political extremism threats. Intelligence and counterintelligence play an essential role here. Thus, the Parliamentary Committee on intelligence and Security is constantly operating. It was founded following the 1994 Law on Intelligence Services; its primary purpose was initially to analyze the spending, management system, and policies of the country’s three intelligence services: the Security Service MI-5, the Secret Intelligence Service SIS or MI-6 and the Center for Government Communications GCHQ (Davies, 2004). Committee members operate in secrecy under the 1989 State Secrets Act (Walker, 2011). The committee reports directly to the Prime Minister and through him, to Parliament, publishing, among other things, annual reports on its work: they are publicly available on the UK government website. The committee has its secretariat within the secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers. The 2001-2002 report of the Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security notes that the main legislative acts that today provide for the activities of the intelligence and security services came into force in the early 2000s. These include the Terrorism Act of 2000, the Investigative Powers Act of 2000, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, and the Data Protection Act of 1998 (Bonner, 2002, Chatterjee, 2011, Pounder, 2022). These laws increased the demands on intelligence services.
In addition to the three intelligence services mentioned, the state intelligence mechanism includes the military intelligence headquarters and the Joint Intelligence Committee, which is part of the cabinet secretariat which includes the heads of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ. The Joint Intelligence Organization supports the JIC, which consists of an evaluation team, a coordinator team under the Prime Minister’s office for security and intelligence, and a secretariat. Funding for the three intelligence services comes from the Unified Intelligence Services account, while DIS and JIO are funded by the Department of Defense and the Cabinet Office. At the national level, the heads of the three intelligence services have broad powers, as was evident immediately after September 11, 2001 (Blackbourn, 2011). The leaders of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ were in the US a day after the World Trade Center attacks to coordinate their agencies’ work with the US. Thus, Great Britain was the first of the EU countries to support the American course for a “war on terror.” After September 11, 2001, the document flow in the particular services increased sharply, both the number and volume of reports increased, and the removal of a significant number of restrictions on the powers of intelligence, both at the international level and to and in the UK itself (Gearty, 2005). Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Treasury approved £54 million for the financial year 2001–2002; another 54 million were allocated during 2002-2003.
CONTEST
Currently, the fight against terrorism in the UK follows the CONTEST – Counter-TErrorism STrategy strategy and implies an integrated approach. The first version of the strategy was adopted in 2003, its updated version CONTEST 2 – in 2009, and the last one – in 2011, although the main principles of the three versions are the same. CONTEST focuses not only on identifying and predicting terrorist activity but also on studying the causes of extremism to deprive terrorist groups of the opportunity to recruit new fighters and public support (Gearson and Rosemont, 2015). CONTEST recognizes that terrorist attacks can still occur despite the diligent work of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, so the strategy includes essential provisions for the flexibility of the state’s position. It is due to the desire to provide for the possibility of applying emergency measures in the event of a terrorist act. The content of the CONTEST consists of four key elements, which are usually called “four P”:
Prevent aims to curb the radicalization of society through extensive information and communication work. The concept of preventing terrorism aims to deter people who actively sympathize with terrorists from committing terrorist attacks, as well as to eradicate the underlying motives of terrorism.
Pursue is aimed at identifying and disrupting existing terrorist networks, disrupting their operations plans. Intelligence plays a significant role in identifying and controlling potential threats. Evidence and testimonies are also being collected in this direction in order to ensure the conviction of the terrorists.
Protect is to reduce the UK’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks. This concept provides for the expansion of the powers of the border services in order to complicate the crossing of British borders for terrorists. The concept also refers to the protection of critical areas of infrastructure: state borders, transport networks, and many more, attacks on which can cause severe damage.
Prepare is the final aspect of CONTEST, the main point of which is that although it is impossible to prevent every single terrorist attack, it is necessary to plan for crises to increase the state’s ability to respond to terrorist attacks. For this, possible risks are predicted, behavior scenarios in a crisis are developed, and training is provided to apply them in practice.
Al-Qaeda’s success in the UK in 2011 was assessed as insignificant. No successful terrorist attacks have been recorded since the July 2005 subway bombings. The decrease in the number of trials and, accordingly, the number of prisoners made it possible to conclude that the ranks of terrorists are less often replenished with new people yearly. The question was even raised about the final victory of the British special services over Al-Qaeda. However, against the backdrop of data on the radicalization and growth of ultra-right sentiments in British society and, of course, against the background of such events as the high-profile murder of a serviceman Lee Rigby on May 22, 2013, right on a London street, an attempt to set fire to the city mosque on the same night, the victory claimed by the authorities can be regarded as nothing more than a tactical one (Richards, Fussey and Silke, 2010). Victory in any terrorist conflict, according to E. Silke, a researcher at the University of East London, ultimately depends on two critical factors. Although the first of these, the specialist calls the degree of intelligence professionalism, the ability to classify one’s secrets and plans, revealing the plans of the enemy, the second, “perhaps even more important” factor is recognized as “psychological struggle, what is called the “battle for hearts and minds”: “As long as the roots of terrorism feed on society, the conflict continues. If this support is withdrawn, the terrorists begin to feel like a fish washed ashore; their days are numbered” (Richards, Fussey, and Silke, 2010). However, the concept of preventing terrorism has been implemented poorly in the UK for a long time; most of the projects and investments were concentrated in other areas.
As an illustration, data on project funding within the CONTEST is given, and projects in the field of psychological warfare remain on the periphery. In 2006, the Anti-Terrorist Police Department was merged with the London Police Special Services Branch, resulting in a new organization: the 15th Anti-Terrorist Special Operations Team STS. By 2007, its staff had expanded to 2,000 police officers and related services (Clarke, 2007). STS has three regional divisions. The Counter Terrorism Team is dedicated to combating the threat of terrorism at the local, national and international levels and supports the National Anti-Terrorism Network and the Senior National Counter Terrorism Coordinator.
While the JTS shows a high level of commitment to implementing the concept of persecution contained in CONTEST, its achievements in preventing terrorism are still less known. There is information about the work of the Muslim Contact Unit, which played an essential role in establishing relations between the police and Muslim communities, as Muslim youth were chosen by Al-Qaeda and some other terrorist and extremist organizations as the target audience of their propaganda. In practice, the Prevent concept is often criticized, as many see it as a mechanism for gratuitous surveillance of citizens. For example, V. Dodd, a crime reporter for The Guardian newspaper, cites many opinions according to which British intelligence aims to control citizens’ private lives (Dodd, 2019). Without the accumulation of information, the fight against terrorism is impossible, but the above case shows that in a polarized European society, secret services face the problem of public loyalty, increasing the reputation of security agencies in the eyes of citizens. Therefore, the traditional work of collecting information often irritates without a review of the communication system with the public.
Conclusion
Even though terrorism itself is a means of realizing the economic and political interests of relatively narrow groups and can exploit any ideology as long as it helps to achieve the goal, in the public mind, terror is associated with the efforts of the media, some politicians, precisely with the ideology of the problem of self-identification, expressed in political, religious, cultural doctrine. It is one of the main reasons that terrorist cells and networks have become so quick to find active supporters and recruits: terrorism, since at least September 11, 2001, has been recognized as an expression of ideology; in particular, this is reflected in the naming of supporters Al-Qaeda “jihadists” and thousands of those who did not find a way to solve their problems within the framework of a liberal political course and began to search for an alternative ideology became visitors to extremist and terrorist Internet sites or consumers of low-quality literature.
Thus, the same approach to the problem partly provokes radicalization in the European Union. The situation in the UK corresponds to the situation in the field of combating terrorism in the European Union as a whole, in which, despite the apparent need to develop communication support for the fight against terrorism, a network of anti-terrorist units is developing, first of all, whose specialization remains power operations, investigations. Structures responsible for cooperation with public organizations and national and religious minorities are developing as an addition to the network of anti-terrorist units. Often, their communication strategies are not fully developed. However, when developing practical recommendations in the field of communication countering terrorism, it is necessary to take into account both positive and negative experiences; therefore, the study of various areas of anti-terrorist activities in Western countries seems relevant and vital. The scientific community is able and should become one of the active institutions of civil society that can oppose terrorist propaganda with the idea of positive social and cultural development, but this idea can be realized in specific activities only with the full support of the state, acting in the interests of society, and not in narrowly corporate interests.
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