UK’s terror threat level reduced

  The terror threat level was raised to severe in January last year The UK terror threat level is being reduced from “severe” to “substantial”, the home secretary has announced.

The new alert level means the risk of a terrorist attack is considered to be a “strong possibility” and “might well occur without further warning”.

Theresa May said: “The change in the threat level does not mean that the overall threat has gone away.

“There is still a real and serious threat to the UK and I would ask the public to remain ever vigilant.”

She said the decision to downgrade the terrorist threat level was made independently of ministers by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) and was based on the very latest intelligence, considering factors such as “capability, intent and timescale”.

The threat level last changed in January last year where it was raised to “severe”.

The threat level is under constant review and can change quickly in response to events.

Continue reading the main story Critical – attack expected imminently Severe – attack highly likelySubstantial – attack a strong possibilityModerate – attack possible but not likelyLow – an attack unlikely

Source: Home Office

It was first made public on 1 August, 2006, when it was set at “severe”.

The level was then raised to critical ten days later after a series of arrests over an alleged plot to blow up a transatlantic aircraft.

It was lowered to “severe” again the following week.

The threat level was last set at critical in June 2007, following the attack on Glasgow Airport and the failed car bombings in central London.

BBC home affairs correspondent June Kelly said the threat to the UK comes from both Islamist extremists and Irish dissident groups.

US refocuses on home-grown terror threat

US army Lieutenant Colonel Jesse Pearson (2L) battalion commander of Task Force Spader talks to his men during a visit to US army Combat Outpost (COP) Bowri Tana in Gorbuz district, on the border with Pakistan in Khost province, east of Afghanistan on June 28, 2011. PHOTO: AFP/FILE

WASHINGTON: The United States vowed Wednesday to pursue the “utter destruction” of al Qaeda, while refocusing its counter-terrorism strategy to combat the threat of home-grown terror.

The new strategy comes on the 10th year of the US-led “war on terror,” launched by former president George W. Bush after the deadly September 11 attacks on the United States.

It is a “pragmatic, not ideological” approach to counter-terrorism that “formalizes” the administration’s approach since January 2009, said John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisor.

The new strategy, developed after US commandos killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 in Abbottabad, also reflects “the extraordinary political changes” sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, Brennan said.

“This is the first counter-terrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counter-terrorism efforts,” said Brennan, who is also deputy national security adviser for homeland security.

Al Qaeda still in the US crosshairs

The principal focus is “al Qaeda, its affiliates and its adherents,” said Brennan, speaking at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“We aim to render the heart of al Qaeda incapable of launching attacks against our homeland, our citizens, or our allies, as well as preventing the group from inspiring its affiliates and adherents to do so,” he said.

“This is a war, a broad, sustained, integrated and relentless campaign that harnesses every element of American power,” he said.

“And we seek nothing less than the utter destruction of this evil that calls itself al Qaeda.”

With US forces pulling out of Iraq and preparing for a draw-down in Afghanistan, Brennan all but ruled out foreign adventures.

“If our nation is threatened, our best offense won’t always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us,” he said.

President Obama, speaking at a press conference Wednesday, said that US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan have served to “severely cripple al Qaeda’s capacities” and have “decimated some of the upper ranks of al Qaeda.”

The terror network is “having a great deal of difficulty operating and financing themselves. We’ll keep the pressure on,” Obama said.

Brennan dismissed the new al Qaeda leader, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, as “an aging doctor who lacks bin Laden’s charisma and perhaps the loyalty and respect of many in al Qaeda.”

The “lone wolf” threat

The US strategy also takes into account the growing threat of domestic “lone wolf” attackers radicalized by online preachers.

This is “the first counter-terrorism strategy that focuses on the ability of al Qaeda and its network to inspire people in the United States to attack us from within,” Brennan stressed.

The best known of these attackers is Major Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 more in a November 5, 2009 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood army base.

On Wednesday, three men arrested in a sting operation for planning to attack two New York synagogues and to shoot down US military planes were each sentenced to 25 years in prison.

On June 23, two US men were charged with plotting to attack a military center in the northwestern US city of Seattle with machine guns and grenades, allegedly hoping to kill more people than Hasan did at Fort Hood.

The new counter-terrorist strategy also focuses on threat from al Qaeda affiliates in places like Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and north Africa.

“As the al Qaeda core has weakened under our unyielding pressure,” said Brennan, “it has looked increasingly to these other groups and individuals to take up its cause, including its goal of striking the United States.”

Separately, Brennan said that Iran and Syria “remain leading state sponsors of terrorism.”

“Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organizations that threaten Israel and our interests in the Middle East. We will therefore continue to use the full range of our foreign policy tools to prevent these regimes and terrorist organizations from endangering our national security,” he said.

Regarding Pakistan, Brennan acknowledged that the relationship “is not without tension or frustration,” but said that both sides were working to overcome differences.

“I am confident that Pakistan will remain one of our most important counter-terrorism partners,” he said.

Fighting terror: Obama claims crippling al Qaeda

Says US military actions in Af-Pak weakened network.

WASHINGTON: 

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday vowed to keep pressure on al Qaeda following the death of Osama bin Laden in the May 2 US raid in Pakistan.

US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan have served to “severely cripple al Qaeda’s capacities,” Obama said at a White House press conference. “Osama bin Laden got the most attention, but before that we decimated some of the upper ranks of al Qaeda,” he said.

The terror group is “having a great deal of difficulty operating and financing themselves. We’ll keep the pressure on,” Obama said.

He stressed that it was in the US national interest “to make sure that you did not have a collapse of Afghanistan in which extremists elements could flood the zone once again.”

US troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan “in a responsible way that will allow Afghanistan to defend itself and will give us the operational capacity to continue to put pressure on al Qaeda until that network is defeated,” he said.

Obama insisted that Kabul is ‘much safer than it was’ but said he expected attacks like the one on the Intercontinental Hotel to continue for ‘some time.’

Nine Taliban militants, some in suicide vests, stormed the hotel late Tuesday, sparking a ferocious battle with Afghan commandos and a Nato helicopter gunship that left at least 21 dead including the attackers.

The brazen attack was seen as a direct rebuttal from the Taliban to Obama’s claims of progress as he seeks to wind up the 10-year-old war.

It came only days after Obama announced the ‘beginning of the end’ of the conflict in Afghanistan.

In his first public comments on the Intercontinental attack, Obama insisted that the Afghan forces who are responsible for security in Kabul are doing ‘a reasonably good job’ and their capacity is increasing.

“Keep in mind, the drawdown has not begun, so we understand that Afghanistan is a dangerous place, and the Taliban is still active and there will be events like this on occasion,”` he said. “Kabul is much safer than it was, and Afghan forces in Kabul are much more capable than they were,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30th, 2011.