Feature Counter-Terrorism Read more online at www.securitymattersmagazine.com
Raising
awareness
TINYg has been working with Deltar
Training Solutions and the Institute of
Strategic Risk Management to devise a
training course for security professionals
focused on the issues involved with
terrorism awareness. Here, David Evans
and David Rubens focus on the key detail
LET’S BEGIN with an August
2003 quote from Leiden University’s
Arjen Boin and Paul Hart writing in the
Public Administration Review on the
subject of ‘Public Leadership in Times of
Crisis’. At that juncture, the duo
observed: “Most man-made disasters
and violent conflicts are preceded by
incubation periods during which policy-makers
misinterpret, are ignorant of or
otherwise flat out ignore repeated
indications of impending danger.”
If we consider the events of 9/11 (that
occurred 20 years ago this month, in
fact) to be the triggering of what might
one day come to be labelled ‘The Age of
Terror’, in the intervening years since
those tragic events that seriously
impacted the USA and its people, it has
become abundantly clear that terrorism
– together with its acts and
consequences – isn’t solely limited to the
mega-impact episodes that change the
course of nations.
Of course, we all know those headline
events. Madrid (2004), London (2005),
Mumbai (2006), London (Polonium-
210) (2006), Westgate (Nairobi) (2013),
Paris (2015), the Manchester Arena
(20017), Salisbury (Novichok) (2018),
Christchurch (2019), Sri Lanka (2019)
and Nova Scotia (2020). Each of them
unique events in themselves.
Terrorism can no longer be
considered as a rare event limited to
global geopolitics. There’s no
community, neighbourhood or
organisation that can consider itself to
be unaffected by recent developments in
terms of terrorist attacks and activities.
From the highly organised through to
the semi-structured and on to the self-radicalised
gunman or suicide bomber,
terrorism in 2021 is as real as your next
mobile phone call or tomorrow’s media
headlines. It’s every bit as likely to be
locally based actions that directly affect
and impact cities, towns and
communities around the world.
Breadth of the threat
What’s more, there’s no single ‘style’ of
terrorism. For the modern day
practising security and/or risk manager,
whatever the context in which they
operate, the overriding need to harbour
a well-rounded awareness of the breadth
of threats that terrorism poses has
arguably never been higher than now.
An understanding of how and why
events like the Novichok episode
happened provides an insight into the
development process that allows an
effective terrorism awareness and
management programme to be put in
place that will maximise the ability to
detect/deter an attack, respond in the
event that an attack materialises and
then manage the response and recovery
programme as effectively as possible
given the horrendous level of disruption
and destruction that a successful
terrorist attack can cause.
TINYg (the Global Terrorism
Information Network) is itself an
organisation born out of the defining
terrorist issues and methods of modern
times, so too the numerous attacks
perpetrated on international assets
Terrorism can no longer be considered as a rare event limited
to global geopolitics. There’s no community, neighbourhood
or organisation that can consider itself to be unaffected by
recent developments in terms of terrorist attacks
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