The attack against Salman Rushdie revives the debate on the importance of security and the role of the State Security Forces and Bodies. Preventive policies have been key to the decline of the large terrorist groups, but they have also favored the false feeling that the jihadist problem belongs to the past.
On August 12, reading the latest news about the Salman Rushdie attack, I couldn’t help but think of Stanley Doll. How would Stan have reacted to hearing the news? I thought. Surely, he would have felt as much rage and impotence as we did, but he would have gotten over it right away to coldly analyze the situation. I assumed that he would have wanted to know all the details, reconstruct the crime in his head, draw lessons to prevent further attacks. Pure conjecture, because my knowledge of Stan is limited to Rushdie’s description of him in his masterful autobiographical account joseph anton.
Stan, Rushdie tells in his book, was one of the best tennis players in the British police and was part, along with Ben Winters, both of whom were “astoundingly handsome”, of the first security team that protected him. When on February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed a fatwa condemning the author of the satanic verses and to everyone who had participated in the publication of that book, the news provoked reactions of all kinds. There were those who downplayed it, who condemned the fatwa but also the supposedly irreverent attitude of the writer, there were also opinions indicating that Rushdie had to face alone the threats unleashed by his book. “He had asked for it himself,” some said. A litany of opinions that has been repeated later in cases such as that of charlie hebdo or that of the Muhammad cartoons. But above the background noise of opinions and news, Stan knew how to raise his voice: “You can’t afford to threaten a British citizen. It is not receipt. It will work out,” Rushdie tells us he told her the night they met. It’s that simple. And the writer rested thereafter calmer.
Although I have only known Stan through literature, I have had the privilege of dealing with and working with many professionals like him. Bodyguards capable of withstanding insults and even attacks without moving from their spot or losing their concentration. Police or military personnel who may have the worst opinion of the person they protect or disagree with the assigned mission, but who would give their lives to fulfill their duty. In short, women and men from the Police and the Civil Guard, the Armed Forces and the National Intelligence Center (CNI) who dedicate their lives to taking care of us, to protecting us. And they do it, moreover, in silence. With that unique reward that the Royal Ordinances define as “the intimate satisfaction of duty fulfilled.” Like Stan and Ben, they also appear under fictitious names in the news and in books, and when they appear on TV we see and hear them with pixelated faces and distorted voices.
In today’s world, the work of all these security professionals would be impossible without a preventive approach. That is what attacks such as 9/11 or 11-M have revealed, including the recent attack on Rushdie. New technologies allow remote indoctrination and recruitment by terrorist organizations. The people and the capital that finance terror travel without restrictions to the last corner of the global village. It has never been easier to find the instructions to make a bomb or it has been easier to feel part of a terrorist organization without having had any kind of contact with it, as in the case of the so-called “lone wolves”. Without prevention, without intelligence, without international cooperation, the fight against terrorism would not only be asymmetrical, it would simply be a task doomed to failure in advance.
Of course, in the prevention of the terrorist phenomenon, mistakes are made or false positives are produced in the identification of suspects. It is also true that absolute security is a chimera: unfortunately, sometimes terrorists manage to carry out an attack. But the other pan of the scale is not empty. Not much less. The intelligence of the CNI and the preventive action of the Spanish security forces have saved thousands of human lives. And not only the lives of Spaniards or residents in Spain, because international cooperation is and will continue to be key.
Since the disastrous September 11, 2001, Western intelligence services have managed to prevent millions of deaths. There is no greater post-truth than offering statistics of detainees in operations related to jihadism finally exonerated without mentioning that Spain is one of the safest countries in the world, both in subjective security or perception of security and objectively (with a rate of 0.6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the average of 3.7 in OECD countries). Without a preventive approach, it would have been much more difficult to finish off ETA, one of the most bloodthirsty groups in the global history of terrorism.
«The dichotomy between freedom and security is false: without security there is no freedom, there is no life, there is nothing.»
Undoubtedly, it is necessary to refine the analysis tools of public security policies to determine their effectiveness. It is also essential to increase the culture of security, so that both political leaders and citizens know, as much as possible, the work of the intelligence and security services in the fight against terrorism. The prevention of terrorism requires citizen collaboration, the formation of collective or community intelligence, and the collaboration of community police and educational authorities. It also requires that our intelligence services have the latest technology available and the best trained analysts. It is not about falling into the trap of “repressive tolerance” advocated by Herbert Marcuse, but about building a tolerance based on respect for the democratic principles and values recognized in our Constitution. The dichotomy between freedom and security is false: without security there is no freedom, there is no life, there is nothing.
Some of those attending the event on August 12 in which Rushdie was stabbed commented after the attack to journalists, with logical indignation, that it had been more difficult to enter the premises with a coffee than with a weapon. The decline of Daesh and Al Qaeda, precisely the result of preventive policies, is causing the false sensation that the jihadist problem belongs to the past. The controls are relaxing. It is easy to fall into the temptation to think that we no longer need those preventive measures that have so far allowed us to win many battles, most of them unknown, in the war against terrorism. The threats are still there, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the best proof of this. Stan can’t be everywhere. And security, understood in an integral sense, is taking care of people, enabling them to develop their lives freely, with peace of mind. Minority reports it’s just a movie. Prevention is built day by day. And prevention is care.
