The Hindu Business Line : Major challenges ahead for British security services

On Saturday, the British authorities evacuated the centre district of Birmingham — the UK's second largest city after London, about 125 miles north in Midlands — in a security alert, amid expectations that a "second" terrorist strike either in London or Birmingham could be in the offing.

According to police sources, the death toll in London is likely to rise to 70 and the latest leaked dossier from the Prime Minister's office reveals that the al-Qaeda terrorist movement is busy recruiting young hands from Britain's some 16-lakh strong Muslim community.

The racial tension on both sides of the ethnic divide is mounting and although moderate Muslim communal leaders have "vigorously and unanimously" denounced acts of terrorism under the banner of Islam, there is underlying fear all-round that a tiny faction of Muslim extremists could trigger major security and race relations crises. It is also argued that any reprisals by the British police, at this stage, could create a new generation of Muslim radicals who may propagate and even practice al-Qaeda religious extremism.

According to media reports, a network of "extremist recruiters" is now in circulation on university and college campuses targeting people with "technical and profession" qualifications mainly with engineering and IT degrees.

How far can such a campaign be sustained overtly as the British security establishment has masterminded a major security offensive to ensure that such "religious extremists" are instantly identified and possibly "nabbed" to contain major security challenges they are posing?

This is no more an academic debate and the British public is desperately looking for tangible results. The government's counter-terrorism strategy is code-named "Operation Contest" and it presents a "chilling" scenario amid conclusion that although one per cent of the British Muslims may be sympathetic to extremist cause, "this equates to fewer than 16,000 potential terrorists and supporters, out of British Muslim population. The government document also estimates that some ten thousand may have attended "extremist conferences".

The silver lining on the otherwise gloomy security and race-relations scenario is that more moderate elements on both sides of the dividing fence have urged "more tolerance and understanding" to contain major terrorist and security challenges.

At the same time prominent British establishment figures ranging from the Queen to Cabinet Ministers have stated that the terrorists under "no circumstances" would be allowed to change the British way of life and basic democratic values.

Against this background, there is mounting security concern in Italy, where Prime Minister Mr Berlusconi's "close identification" with Bush administration's policy in Iraq, may attract an Arab terrorist attack.

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