Inside the troubled history of Britain’s fight against extremism

LONDON, UK — You can say at least this for Britain’s ideological extremists: Their reach is global.

British men are among the executioners in a graphic Islamic State (IS) video released this weekend showing beheadings of Syrian soldiers.

A former National Health Service doctor has just appeared in a recruiting video for a Taliban splinter group in Pakistan.

In announcing the murder of US aid worker Peter Kassig, a London-accented IS militant dubbed “Jihadi John” issued a warning to Western leaders that the group would soon “slaughter your people on your streets.” UK security officials said this month that the likelihood of another domestic terror attack is so great as to be all but inevitable.

These cases represent failures in the government’s decade-long effort to thwart the kind of radicalization that leads to such violence.

The policy — known officially as Preventing Violent Extremism, or Prevent — has sometimes struggled to identify effective strategies. Some critics see it mainly as a surveillance program that curtails civil liberties and freedom of expression for British Muslims.

It has alternately embraced and abandoned community organizations that have the knowledge and credibility to reach at-risk individuals, but whose ideologies have clashed with what Prime Minister David Cameron calls “British values.”

The latest version of Prevent is expected sometime next year. The Home Office won't provide details, but it may have a hard time selling it to the public no matter what.

The program is so unpopular among many British Muslims today that groups that accept government funding prefer to keep their affiliation as quiet as possible to avoid clouding their standing in the communities they’re trying to serve.

Prevent is part of Contest, a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy unveiled in 2003 and revised several times since.

The scheme consists of four parts: Pursue (find and prosecute those planning to commit crimes), Protect (beef up border security and infrastructure), Prepare (ready disaster plans) and Prevent.

The first three built on existing responsibilities. Prevent was a new kind of policy, a constantly recalibrating plan to tackle an amorphous and evolving problem.

In its early days, the initiative funded a grab-bag of programs, not all of which were effective in their reach or design.

Some projects accomplished little besides alienating communities, such as an aborted attempt to install secret cameras in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods in Birmingham.

Such missteps outraged many British Muslims and left the impression that Prevent was little more than a Trojan horse for government surveillance.

“Taking Prevent money within the Muslim community became very, very taboo,” says Usman Nawaz, 25, who was a member of the Prevent-funded Young Muslims Advisory Group, a government consulting board.

“Ultimately I concur with the aims of Prevent, [but] I think perception is everything, and if the perception in the public is that some projects funded by Prevent money were surveillance or spying projects, it taints the program in general.”

When funding did reach groups working directly with those susceptible to extremist Islamist ideology, that proved controversial as well.

One of the episodes involved Abdul Haqq Baker, a British-born Muslim convert who headed the Brixton Mosque in South London from 1994 to 2009.

Richard Reid, the British “shoe bomber,” and Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen currently serving life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, both attended the mosque, whose worshippers follow the fundamentalist version of Islam known as Salafism. Both were expelled after falling in with violence-espousing Islamist ideologues in London.

In 2006, Baker founded Street, a South London-based mentoring organization that worked to keep young Muslims away from crime, gangs and violent extremism.

The fact that many of Street’s staff were themselves Salafi Muslims bolstered their credibility among youths attracted to more hard-line versions of their religion.

Staff scoured the internet for violence-glorifying materials making the rounds and then watched them together with their young charges, breaking down scriptural and moral flaws in the arguments.

After stipulating that the organization wouldn’t share intelligence about clients unless they were a clear public safety threat, Street accepted Prevent funding, Baker says. He spoke from his home in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia, where he moved his family in 2002 partly because of threats.

In the beginning, he says, Street was hailed as “poster boys” for the government’s anti-radicalization efforts. Baker counseled officials in Europe, Canada and Australia about starting similar programs.

But he says critics called him and his associates “informers” and worse for their involvement with the government.

Others said the government’s support for groups with Islamist underpinnings was misguided, akin to feeding a snake that would eventually turn around and bite.

The political landscape changed in 2010, when an election ushered in a Conservative-led coalition government. The following year, Cameron gave a speech in Munich that heralded a new era in Britain’s anti-terror efforts.

“We need to think much harder about who it’s in the public interest to work with,” he said, adding that the government would cut funding to groups that didn’t align with “Western values” such as democracy and equality.

“To those who say these non-violent extremists are helping to keep young, vulnerable men away from violence, I say nonsense,” he said. “Would you allow the far-right groups a share of public funds if they promise to lure young white men away from fascist terrorism?”

Street lost its government funding soon after. Although the official reason was budget cuts, Baker says it was made clear to him through other channels that his Salafist beliefs were the problem.

“No one has said to me what British values I do not espouse,” he says. “Anyone who knows me knows I am a proud Brit. I don’t agree with everything the UK says, [but I didn’t] before I was a Muslim, and this is the right and laws of Britain not to subscribe to everything.”

Some security officials were dismayed at the government’s change of tack.

“When individuals I have seen playing a very effective part in tackling the Al Qaeda type narratives, when they are described as part of the problem, [or as] extremists — that, from my own analysis, is also problematic,” says Robert Lambert, a former undercover police officer and chief of the London Metropolitan Police’s Muslim Contact Unit, who worked with Baker and others.

Britons are continuing to debate the best way to counter radicalization and where the line should be drawn between free speech and dangerous incitement.

But Prevent’s critics and supporters alike say the program’s reputation is too tarnished to remain effective.

“The government does not have the cachet, the capability or the trust in the community to deal with counter-radicalization,” says Douglas Weeks, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of St. Andrews studying terrorism and political violence.

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Prevent’s efficacy is difficult to measure. Roughly half of the 600 Brits who have joined the fight in Syria were previously unknown to the security forces, a sign that radical messages are still reaching people here.

But it’s impossible to know how many have been dissuaded from violence as a result of the government-backed effort.

“When the problem is street crime or gang crime, there is never any expectation that this work is going to eradicate it,” Lambert says. But in the public’s eyes, terrorism is different.

“One attack means that if people in Prevent had what they thought was a good week’s work where they helped nine young people move away from violent extremism, that good work would count for nothing when they open the newspaper.”