The meeting of leaders: will it hinder or help terror?

Prime Minster Gordon Brown last week has called for a high-level meeting of international leaders to discuss the growing AL-Qaeda threat. The meeting will take place in London sometime this month and at the same a summit on Afghanistan will take place. With the support and blessing of the White House and EU leaders the meeting will focus on what help the Yemeni government should receive to improve its counter-terrorism measures. Confidant in getting support from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries the PM is hoping the event can encourage countries to give more cash to Yemen and provide training for the country’s security forces.

As industrious and quick thinking this one day conference is – calling an international leaders’ meeting to discuss what some might regard as ‘another country’s domestic affairs and business’ regardless of the AL-Qaeda threat- is not the best way to handle this threat at this time. It is no secret that AL- Qaeda has been for a long time now heavily recruiting in the UK. Umar Abdel Mutallab (the Christmas Day Bomber) although trained in Yemen was recruited and enlisted in the UK. The question here is how many like him are signed up every day?

The threat from Yemen as the latest hub and training centre for terrorism is serious and should be – but training is the second phase and can only be reached after the recruiting stage. A more effective way to combat terror will be to root out the home-front recruiting efforts of the terrorists. If our resources are collectively focused on national efforts – and aimed at finding out the roots of what is making the UK an attractive and fertile ground for recruiting both locals and visitors – it will be a far more worthwhile investment of time and resources.

This meeting with all its good intentions will be used by radical and extreme Islamic groups as an excuse and a reason to bring home their message of western interference in domestic matters. It will help them to increase recruitment and gain more financial and ideological support – some of which will even come from within Yemen itself. These will not in the long run help and support the Yemenis in uniting the country or in compacting terrorism and closing down the training centres, but it will most definitely strengthen the terror efforts.

Terrorism is a regional and global threat; the more we do locally and internally the more we will protect our own region and hinder the exportation efforts of terror form the UK. It is a harder and longer route to go down in order to decentralise terror and achieve some peace, but it will ultimately close the door on the face of local extremist groups. As a result terrorists and their supporters will lose the grounds on which to claim they are protecting their own region and safeguarding its integrity from western meddling and intervention.