Welcome to the 2016 Terrorism Cup. What sort of a question is the one I heard on the BBC this morning: Can you “guarantee” that the games will be safe? This was asked of a French European cup official.
The question can invite only one of two answers, one a lie, the other an incitement to fear.
The question was repeated. How could the official be sure there was no risk? Was it not taking a risk to herd the fans together? Was it not risky to hold the cup in France at all?
No one can “guarantee” security – as the official rightly retorted - but to be pressed and publicly to admit it could only have the terrorist cheering all the way to the bomb factory. “French officials cannot guarantee safety,” was the headline the BBC – and for that matter the rest of the media – clearly seek to disseminate.
The holding of the European football cup in France after last year’s murders there was clearly “a risk”, but probably no greater risk than holding it anywhere. All large gatherings offer a target for mass murder, and the evidence of Tunisia, Paris and Brussels is that any target is as good as any other.
Security experts tend to deride the deployment, as in Paris, of 100,000 armed police and troops, the erecting of barriers and the searching of bags. The way to counter terrorism is at source, to infiltrate the groups and cells and pre-empt attacks. Occasional failure lies not in the lack of protection but in the lack of prior intelligence.
The lack of such intelligence in London in the 1970s and 1980s was what made the IRA sleeper cells so effective – far more so than militant Islamists.
Nine-tenths of the impact of modern terrorism lies not in the deed but in the surrounding noise. It lies in inducing a sense of insecurity, and hence overreaction, in the host population. The Herculean defences now going up in Paris and elsewhere in France are said to be “about reassurance”, but have produced, at least in media coverage, the opposite effect. Terrorism can nowadays win publicity, drain resources, change laws and restrict freedom of movement, without even setting off a bomb.
I believe the public really expects the security services to go quietly about their business of pre-emption without ostentation.
Meanwhile the media, prime disseminator of public fear, must acknowledge an obligation not to exaggerate or propagate that fear.
Overhyping terror assists just two groups of people. One is the security industry, the other is the terrorists. Journalism has become useful idiot to them both.
