14 Nov 2014

Why the government believes we need new jihadi terror laws

It is a mark of how worried British security officials are that the coalition government is intent on pushing through new anti-terror laws.

These laws mean that British nationals could have their passports cancelled if they are judged to be returning from fighting in Syria and Iraq. These measures also allow for the seizure of passports of those still in the UK who have not yet set out.

These steps have been agreed after weeks of negotiations with Liberal Democrats. Though they risk making British citizens effectively “stateless”, the government counters that citizenship is not actually revoked, because “temporary exclusion orders” can be ended if the citizen in question agrees to return to the UK under supervision.

We haven’t been told yet how all this is going to work. But Brits could in theory turn up at Turkish airports and find that their passports will not allow them to fly home.

Given that Turkish police are unlikely to arrest them without an Interpol warrant, these Brits will either lie low in Turkey or go to British Consulates there to negotiate their way out. Or return to the fighting.

Read more: British strikes on Islamic State group begin: the view from Iraq

Aside from the practicalities of getting the Turks and others to cooperate, these laws risk further radicalising those who travelled out on “jihadist gap years” without perhaps realising what they were letting themselves in for.

They are also bound to be subject to legal challenges – though the intelligence agencies have clearly decided that keeping the UK homeland safe outweighs all these other considerations.

Why the need? It is reckoned over 500 Britons have made the journey to Syria and Iraq with around half of them coming back.

The link between returnees to potential terrorist incidents is what alarms officials most. More than 200 terrorist suspects have been arrested over the last year, many of them below the age of 21.

Read more: Does new IS video offer some sort of grim good news?

The official terrorist threat level recently increased after British air strikes in Iraq and the execution of British hostages in Syria, as well as in the wake of terrorist attacks in Belgium and Canada.

Jihadist traffic to and from Pakistan has diminished, with years of controversial American drone strikes weakening Al Qaeda there. Syria and Iraq are nearer the UK and easier to get to, thanks to the Turks failing to police their borders properly in the mistaken belief that jihadists would quickly topple the Assad regime.

Osama bin Laden never declared a Caliphate. Omar Al-Baghdadi, the leader of “Islamic State”, has; some six million people live there, and the prospect of living in a prototype country in the heart of the Middle East which tears up colonial era borders is proving irresistible to some.

Some 20,000 people from around the world may have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq in the last few years; the figure travelling to Pakistan-Afghanistan was nearer 12,000 over a decade. No wonder British officials are worried.

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