By the late 2000s, the Wilton Park material shows further expansion. One notable development is the explicit treatment of extremist appeal as a communications and branding problem. The 2008 conference on ‘Al Qaeda: Challenging the ‘brand’?’ (WP897, March 2008) aimed to help UK policymakers think about how to undermine the Al Qaeda message and promote a credible alternative. Sessions focused on messaging, appeal, the role of messengers, delivery channels, and methods for measuring success. Terrorism was now being approached in part through concepts borrowed from communication strategy, marketing, and narrative contestation, and participation reflected this – the dialogue was held in partnership with the RICU, and featured participants from communications consultancies, branding specialists, as well as former-extremists-turned-community-workers. By combining figures from film and magazines with national and local policy officials, including from the controversial ‘Prevent’ programme, this showed Wilton Park as a safe space for government to think expansively about the challenge of terrorism and radicalisation.
A second major development is the emergence of disengagement as a distinct field of policy concern. The 2009 conference on ‘Leaving Extremism Behind: Disengagement Policy and Programmes’ (WP962 July 2009, in partnership with OSCT) stated that disengagement had been a neglected area of counter-terrorism policy, practice, and research. It distinguished disengagement from deradicalisation and counter-radicalisation, thus framing counter-terrorism measures in more practical and pragmatic ways. This also indicates a policy shift from asking only how to stop radicalisation or attacks, to asking how individuals could exit violent extremist milieus via credible disengagement strategies. This shift in language from terrorism to extremism also shows a willingness to situate threats from Al-Qaeda and others not only in a ‘vertical’ context (a linear progression from support, through radicalisation, to violent action), but also a ‘horizontal’ one (seeing Islamist terrorism alongside different types of political violence). As such, sessions feature an openness to learning about disengagement from ‘psychology, cults, criminality and gangs’, and case studies on Northern Irish terrorism and even Nazism.
Protective security was also being redefined in more local and partnership-based terms. The conference on implementing the Lord West review of crowded places (WPS08-2, June 2008) emphasised risk matrices, Counter-Terrorism Security Advisers, local authorities, business forums, planning guidance, and national strategic frameworks that still depended on local ownership and local partnership. This was a form of counter-terrorism embedded in planning, design, licensing, resilience, and public-private cooperation, rather than only in intelligence and policing.
At the same time, Wilton Park became a forum for debate over the relationship between security and law. The 2009 conference on ‘Terrorism, Security And Human Rights: Opportunities For Policy Change’ (WP992, October 2009) argued that contemporary terrorism required a long-term response rooted in public legitimacy, rule of law, and human rights, and then examined hard cases such as deportation with assurances, control orders, intelligence cooperation, detention, and overseas military operations. This event was held in partnership with the International Commission of Jurists, based in Geneva, alongside FCO and the Home Office, and explicitly made space for questioning the long-term risks of counter-terrorism to freedom of speech, the right to privacy, and rule of law. In doing so, it actively platformed frequent critics of Western CT policy such as Amnesty International. This shows an evolution not simply from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ counter-terrorism approaches, but away from ‘emergency’ thinking and towards sustainable and accountable legal frameworks for CT.
The same period also demonstrates Wilton Park’s value as a venue for focused regional-policy learning. The 2009 workshop on ‘Understanding the Pashtun Context: Afghanistan and Pakistan’ (WPS09-10, October 2009) aimed to inform UK government understanding of society and militancy in Pashtun regions. It stressed that Pashtun societies were not homogeneous, that localised approaches were essential, that political reform should accompany development, and that consultation with Pashtun communities was necessary. The significance here lies in the move toward historically and socially specific analysis rather than generalised threat frameworks alone, as well as the continued commitment to engagement rather than purely securitisation of communities of concern.
Similar ambition can be seen in two dialogues in consecutive months: ‘Yemen: prospects for security, stability and development’ (WP1014, February 2010), and ‘Tackling Violent Extremism: The Arc Between Pakistan and the UK Diaspora’ (WP1021, March 2010). The first dialogue notes that “the threat posed to Yemen and its neighbours by terrorism and radicalisation is important, but the counter-terrorism imperative should not be allowed to get in the way of a more holistic and longer-term approach to Yemen’s problems”. Featuring sessions on the economy, governance, and politics of Yemen, as well as the role of external actors, the event is far-sighted in noting the risk of a failed state leading to humanitarian consequences for Yemen’s population, and ramifications for Yemen’s neighbours (including a “potentially serious impact on regional and international shipping routes”).
WP1021, organised once again with RICU and OSCT, takes a broad look at the issues affecting the Pakistani diaspora in the UK, setting the issue of violent extremism in both a historical context and a comparative one, referencing France’s post-colonial relationship with Algeria. It brings together DCLG, the Prevent programme, the education sector, and the needs of vulnerable people in society.
Both these events signal a UK counter-terrorism eco-system becoming increasingly aware of the range of issues that countering terrorism and violent extremism entails, and the kaleidoscopic range of partners that required.