Assessing jihadist threat levels: Optimism will not stop terror attack

ONE of the many gifts sport offers is an economy of language; a battery of pithy philosophies that express truths that would, in a sane world, be more widely embraced.

Shaquille O’Neal tells us that “excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly.” A homegrown hero — our Rog — used a version of that so often it almost became his mantra: “Prepare properly or prepare to fail.”

The truth those phrases carry applies to yesterday’s Garda warning that we should not consider Ireland immune to jihadist attack.

In its report for 2016, An Garda Síochána warn “an attack is possible but not likely” and even if that seems a version of damming with faint praise events of the last year all across mainland Europe and in Britain suggest we might pay a high price for any complacency that assessment allows.

If those attacks have anything in common it is that the identity of those murdered in Paris, London, Manchester Nice or Barcelona was irrelevant to the terrorists. Provocation, the creation of fear and publicity were the objectives and, in that equation, geography hardly seems relevant.

An atrocity in Dublin, Belfast or Cork is as valuable to terrorists as one anywhere else. Our joined-up world of instant communications ensures that, so the threat of jihadist attack, even if a moderate one, cannot be discounted.

That the Garda report came just days after a prominent Islamic cleric criticised our failure to establish an anti-radicalisation programme suggests an unacceptable level of self-delusion and vulnerability.

Shaykh Dr Umar Al-Qadri, a founder of the Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council, has said an anti-radicalisation programme was needed for Ireland’s 63,000-strong Muslim community. That Ireland is one of the few EU countries, despite our recent history of violent extremism, that does not have a programme to counter redicalisation seems naive.

“The Irish Muslim community is not immune to radicalisation. It can only be prevented when there is youth engagement and different activities between communities,” warned Dr Al-Qadri.

That these warnings come at a time when the weakness in our Defence Forces has been repeatedly highlighted can hardly be ignored either. Defence Force sources of all ranks have warned that they are at a low ebb and require far greater funding if they are to provide the kind of security we all expect from them.

This weakness is a legacy of economic implosion but the political will needed to reverse that decline seems absent. Brexit, and the prospect of a hard EU frontier on this island must add to those concerns. So too does our commitment to neutrality in an ever more polarised world.

This, albeit unintentionally, may have indulged complacency and ignored the fact that the best way to protect our neutrality is to have a convincing deterrent in place.

Those arguments are convincing but there is another that carries a greater weight than all of them combined. Islamic State is being driven out of Raqqa, the capital of its fantasy

caliphate, so its war against civilisation will move to Europe and America. We must, sadly, replace optimism with preparation.