Twenty years on from 7/7, we have learned nothing
The war in Ukraine is now heartbreakingly similar to the trench warfare of WW1. The casualty rate is similar and now the Russians are trying to break the stalemate with gas as the Germans did at the second battle of Ypres in April 1915. As then, the lack of respirators initially was decisive: but the delivery of protective equipment to the frontline in WW1 nullified this dreadful weapon, as it should in Ukraine once British masks arrive in the coming weeks.
Twenty years ago, at the time of 7/7, I was commanding the UK's Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) defence force and we were on operations in Iraq. We were dealing with a potential Al Qaeda biological weapon attack against British troops in southern Iraq. Though much about that episode is still confidential, the basic detail is in my memoir Chemical Warrior.
That situation ultimately turned out to be a false alarm, but it brought conventional operations to a halt for 48 hours as my team and I dealt with the threat. This is when I began to think that if you had no morals or scruples you would use chemical weapons all the time. In his brilliant autobiography Nine Lives, Aimen Dean, a jihadist turned MI6 agent working within Al Qaeda, details how the terror organisation was planning to use and develop chemical and biological weapons. This is undoubtedly still an aspiration of ISIS and other jihadist groups.
What has vexed me for some time is the thought that had 7/7 been a CBRN attack, God only knows what the death toll might have been. I saw at close hand the vile Assad regime killing thousands of Syrian civilians with the deadly nerve agent Sarin, but also with much more readily available chlorine. When I was fighting with the Peshmerga against ISIS, in 2015-17, the terrorists frequently fired mortars at us full of mustard agent aka mustard gas. ISIS also tried to obtain highly enriched uranium to make an improvised nuclear device which could have devastated whole towns and villages.
The successors of the 7/7 jihadists have tried and, so far, failed to devastate the hated West with some form of CBRN attack. Long may this continue, but we must not drop our guard.
It is not just the terrorists who view this type of attack as the gold standard, but also tyrants and rogue states. The dictator of North Korea had his stepbrother assassinated with the nerve agent VX, and my hometown of Salisbury was attacked by Russian hitmen on the orders of Putin himself, with Novichok, the deadliest chemical man has ever produced. There was enough Novichok used in the attack to kill half the population of Salsibury.
Nonetheless there are countermeasures for every threat. It is the one that is ignored or put in the too difficult bracket that will cause us serious harm. The routine use of readily available toxic industrial chemicals like chlorine in Syria, and of 'non lethal' CS gas in Ukraine, has drawn very little comment from the international community. Tyrants like Putin may become emboldened to use more toxic and lethal substances or pathogens against us.
The awful events of 7/7 showed us long ago that it's a dangerous world, full of people who wish us harm, and it is much more dangerous today. But for too long we have allowed evil to flourish without action or even protest. Worse, we have failed to strengthen our defences: we have used creative accounting to pretend spending was adequate, rather than actually finding more money for the armed services, the intelligence agencies, the special forces and all the others who guard us while we sleep.
Going forward we need to remember that stark lesson we should have learned 20 years ago. It won't matter how good (or not) our other public services or our welfare system may be if our defences are inadequate.
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The Guardian
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This took the numbers so far this year to a new record of just over 20,000, a 50 per cent surge over the same period last year, despite Starmer's vow last July to 'smash the gangs' and 'stop the boats'. • Labour's first year: is Keir Starmer keeping his promises? The French interior ministry declined to confirm a change of tactics. A spokesman said six officers, 'detecting immediate danger', intervened at about 8.30am French time in a 'proportionate manner' to 'avoid any risk to the passengers', adding: 'No one was injured or required emergency care.' It followed a similar incident on June 13, further north near Gravelines, when two officers also from the Compagnie de Marche waded into waist-deep water to prevent migrants boarding a waiting 'taxi boat'. The local prefecture cited a 'need to safeguard human life', which it said 'takes precedence over all other considerations'. The scenes raised eyebrows among police themselves. 'Officers are weighed down with kilos of kit,' said Laroye. 'If they get knocked over by a wave they may not be able to get up.' Even the slightest drop of corrosive salt water will destroy the gun that French police routinely carry strapped to their waist. Authorities already appear to have been quietly changing their rules of engagement in recent years, according to French media reports, although it has failed to make a dent in the numbers. Internal memos issued by the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea dated November 2022 and 2023, seen by the television station TV1, authorise forces to intervene at sea to control 'taxi boats', provided they are less than 200 metres off the coast and do not carry more than than three people — presumably the smugglers waiting to pick migrants up. • The asylum seeker who became London's £12m migrant smuggler Police officers who will have to implement the new rules have poured cold water on British hopes that they will make a substantial difference. There is a difference between slashing a boat in shallow water and doing so 100, 200 or 300 metres out to sea, according to Julien Soir, a police officer and official with Alliance Nationale Police, a rival union. 'If we want to intervene in this 300-meter range, we would have to have enormous resources,' he explained. 'You need boats, you need people who are trained, you need a lot of things.' Officers also fear they could face prosecution if migrants die as a result of their intervention. 'If you intercept a taxi boat and make someone fall out and drown, then you as a policeman will be held responsible,' said Régis Debut, a colleague of Laroye's at Unsa. 'The charities would have a field day', he added, in reference to vocal groups that champion the interest of migrants. Meanwhile thousands of migrants, largely from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, continue to arrive on the French Channel coast where they sleep rough while waiting to cross. Most evenings, around 7pm or 8pm, columns of people can be seen walking from one encampment near Gravelines, apparently on their way to a meeting point in the dunes behind the beach that has been given to them by the smugglers. Often they will take a bus from a terminal in front of the nearby out-of-town shopping centre. 'A whole group of them will get on and then suddenly get off at a stop in the middle of nowhere,' a driver waiting there said. The boats leave from a different point each evening as the traffickers, part of what — with crossings costing up to €5,000 per person — has become a major multimillion pound business, strive to stay one step ahead of the police. The next morning those that have failed make the journey back to their tents. I encountered one such group on Friday, clutching flimsy life jackets. 'The police stopped us just as we were trying to board,' said one angry Iranian man. Similar scenes are repeated up and down the coast. Others are picked up by police, either on the streets or on buses, and taken in to have their identity checked and nationality established. Many, though, are from countries that refuse to take back their citizens and so are then released, giving them the chance to attempt the crossing again. @Peter_Conradi
