Wednesday, November 21, 2012

After Polish plot, time to face European extremism

Poland's ABW reported earlier this year that Anders Breivik travelled to the country to acquire explosives. Now a Polish chemistry professor is arrested for plotting to kill the country's Prime Minister while blowing up the Parliament. It is time to step up and make bigger efforts on the European-level before more people die and more European policies will be disfigured by domestic extremists.
This time Poland Internal Security Agency was successful

First, after the arrest of a Polish extremist, it is high time to forget the counterproductive generalizations on extremists being „under-educated, unemployed or poor”. Mr. Kwiecień was a professor with two doctorates, employed by the University of Agriculture in Krakow and appears to be affluent in light of the fact that the resources he was able to employ while preparing his plot required money.

Considering the tactical implications of the case, the important thing is that the perpetrator was not a 'lone wolf'. Polish law enforcement reported that they have arrested other local co-conspirators. Beyond this, his plot was discovered by law enforcement and intelligence agencies looking into Anders Breivik's network. At a news conference, Polish PM Donald Tusk said that „an analysis of Breivik's contacts abroad had helped lead Polish investigators to the suspect.” As we pointed out in our latest study on the European Threat Landscape, deadly extremists rarely materialize out of thin air – they are products of a broader extremist scene. This also implies the solution as follows.


On the tactical level, European countries must set up capacities on the European level to carry out monitoring, intelligence sharing and analytical work, exactly because organized extremists also operate regardless of borders. This Polish case is just the most recent example. At the time of the arrest of Mr. Kwiecień, several dozen Hungarian far-right extremist, including a Member of the Parliament, travelled to Warsaw to meet Polish counterparts and participate in demonstrations, including violent clashes with law-enforcement.

On the political level, one must consider the fact that there are millions of people in Europe with similar knowledge (either in science or in chemical, pharmaceutical, etc. industries). Moreover, Anders Breivik had no such background in science, but he was able to bomb central-Oslo based on knowledge he acquired via the Internet. Europe cannot – and should not – try to use the criminal justice system to keep an eye on all these people. However, European countries should definitely develop capacities jointly to monitor extremist activities, including surveillance. Still in terms of politics, the sole viable thing in the long-run must be a focus on better governance (decreasing demand for extremism) and mitigation by building resilience in European societies.

The rationale for such a strategy is based on two facts. First, organized extremist groups – many of them later turning into mostly far-right political parties (e.g. Golden Dawn) – need broader support in a society to be able to carry out prolonged activities with significant impact (e.g. Hungarian Guard). Mainstream politics can seriously degrade this political support by offering a credible alternative supported by convincing performance. (The same is also true if European decision-makers will try to avoid making hard decisions in key fields then people will be more inclined to accept the “solutions” that extremists have to offer). Secondly, European decision-makers need to realize that whatever they do, there will still be attacks. For instance, one cannot argue that Norway would have been such a poorly governed country prior to Breivik's attack. Then the sole question is what political impact these attacks will have – and this is why the solution is to build resilience in European societies.

If European countries are able to decrease demand on the political level, invest in intelligence and law enforcement on the tactical level and in education, etc. on the strategic level and at the same time put emphasis on preparing their citizens for coming attacks while also emphasizing that such attacks will have a limited impact and will not be able to undermine the basic democratic framework of their countries – then if an attack occurs, it will have indeed been able to cause only limited damage.

No comments:

Post a Comment