British ‘Counter Extremism’ Operations as Regime Change?

In April 2021, London’s Quilliam Foundation abruptly closed its doors. The world’s first “counter-extremism” think tank, founded with much fanfare in 2008 by self-styled former Islamists Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, sought to oppose the alleged encroachment of fundamentalist Muslim ideology in Britain and advocate for Western-style democracy in West Asia.

Quilliam quickly gained a reputation for libeling peaceful religious organisations as terroristic, justifying surveillance and harassment of Islamic communities by British security and intelligence services as “good and right”, stoking xenophobic hatred of South Asians through scaremongering and outright lies, and aggressively lecturing the media, faith groups, and civil society on “deradicalisation”.

Understandably, British Muslims never trusted Quilliam, greatly blunting its counter-extremism crusade. Grave doubts about the true motives and objectives of its founders existed as long as the organisation was in business, not least due to the vast sums it received from Her Majesty’s Government in its initial years - several million pounds, by some accounts. 

Officially, this funding ended in 2011, and it operated independently thereafter, although, in the immediate wake of its closure, fresh questions were raised about the spectral interests Husain and Nawaz may have been serving all along. Hours after the news first broke, veteran journalist Ian Cobain exposed how Quilliam was secretly established by the Office for Security and Counterterrorism (OSCT), a shadowy intelligence agency based out of London’s Home Office. 

British spooks planned to fund Quilliam covertly, “with money appearing to come in from a Middle Eastern benefactor, but actually channelled by MI6.” Instead, it was granted overt government financing, a move “eventually judged within Whitehall to have been a mistake.”

“Should have run it from within the agencies,” an OSCT source lamented to Cobain. “They do this sort of stuff all the time. And you never find out.”

‘Be Careful...’

Quilliam’s founders frequently claimed their personal experiences of support for extremist causes made them experts on “deradicalisation”. However, the organisation’s definitions of “terrorism”, theories of how individuals are driven to political violence, and proposed methods of dealing with the problem, conspicuously aligned exactly with the British government’s own questionable narratives in every instance.

Indeed, Quilliam led a crusade supporting of Britain’s highly controversial Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) strategy. In the name of “deradicalisation”, this doctrine combines surveillance and “pre-criminalisation” of Muslims, multi-channel on- and offline propaganda blitzes via ostensibly “independent” media and social media assets, the creation of “astroturf” NGOs and campaign groups, and funding community leaders to publicly perpetuate pre-approved “counter-narratives” intended to dent the purported appeal of extremist messaging in Muslim communities. 

Despite this approach being based on faulty, unproven science and little evidence it is at all effective, London has exported it to the world at a cost of millions over many years. Which suggests a rather different rationale behind its operation than the purpose stated. 

Throughout Quilliam’s existence, its leaders played a key public role advising foreign governments, and Britain’s own, on CVE best practice. Cobain’s bombshell disclosures tend to suggest that rather than being merely an influence on and advocate for these policies, they were in fact a dedicated component thereof, publicly fronting as independent, grassroots experts while in reality working off a script prepared by British intelligence.

This interpretation is greatly reinforced by Quilliam’s intimate involvement in numerous clandestine British state-funded CVE blitzes overseas. Leaked documents show the organisation was one of three “internationally recognised agencies” that pitched together for a Foreign Office contract to “discourage support” for violent extremist groups in Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. The trio’s proposed method was an information warfare campaign, fronted by former Daesh fighters.

Morocco was chosen as their base of operations due to the country’s “active civil society sector” being ripe for exploitation as conduits for Foreign Office-approved propaganda. Quilliam moreover boasted of its “unique access” to “former Daesh members and supporters” locally, as it was a “key player” in the US State Department’s Families Against Terrorism and Extremism (FATE) project in Marrakesh.

FATE also granted Quilliam the opportunity to “leverage a network of local organisations” involved in that project. Together, they would “explode the myths propagated by Daesh, and demonstrate the positive alternatives of civic engagement” by creating “hyperlocal content… which captures the disenchantment and resentment of former Daesh members or supporters”:

“This could be through personal testimonies, stories told by family members, or animated content featuring formers but preserving their anonymity.”

The leaked files warn that “project staff, partners and in-country civil society members are likely to come under surveillance and monitoring” by Morocco’s security service, and participating organisations were urged to “be careful of what they discuss publicly and privately as well as the positions they take on issues in Morocco.” 

Quilliam’s public “independent” facade would be crucial in encouraging engagement among target audiences, as local communities were “untrusting or suspicious of CVE projects and perceive them to be a surveillance mechanism.” 

As Moroccan civil society organisations resultantly either rejected CVE work outright, or “wrap their CVE initiatives in the more palatable language of human development,” such as “youth engagement in governance, the socio-economic empowerment of women or conflict resolution,” the project would need to be framed “as a network providing alternatives to young people.”

Overthrowing Gaddafi

An open and ominous question is whether an “alternative” to joining Daesh presented by Quilliam et al included taking up arms in service of violent regime change, as long as it furthered Britain’s geopolitical interests. This certainly appears to have been the ultimate objective of a “deradicalisation” effort conducted by the organisation years earlier. 

In 2010, Noman Benotman, a founding member of the Al Qaeda-adjacent Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), became Quilliam’s president, a position he occupied until its closure. Three decades earlier, he fled his native Tripoli for Afghanistan to “fight Communism”, as the Soviet Union’s ill-fated intervention in the country neared its final stages.

“We trained in all types of guerrilla warfare. We trained on weapons, tactics, enemy engagement techniques and survival in hostile environments,” Benotman recalled years later. “We were also trained by the elite units of the Afghan Mujahideen who had themselves been trained by Pakistani Special Forces, the CIA and the British SAS.”

He left Kabul for Sudan in 1994 in order to develop the “capabilities” of LIFG. Their objective was “to overthrow the Gaddafi regime and establish an Islamic state in our country.” The Group was assisted in this scheme by British intelligence. A leaked MI6 cable from December 1995 outlines detailed LIFG plans to assassinate Libya’s leader in February of the next year.

In the event, the attempt failed and its members scattered overseas. Many, including Benotman, took up residence in Britain, where they were permitted to develop a base of logistical support for their anti-Gaddafi efforts and fundraise.

Yet, in October 2005, with relations between London and Gaddafi having warmed considerably in the wake of 9/11, LIFG was proscribed as a terrorist group. Its operatives were thereafter subject to control orders requiring them to remain at a registered address for up to 16 hours a day, wear electronic tags tracking their movements, limiting their access to telephones and the internet, and banning them from meeting or communicating with each other. Their passports were also confiscated.

Benotman was, for reasons unclear, one of a select few allowed to remain at liberty, which he exploited to significant effect. In 2007, Gaddafi’s once-arch nemesis was brought to Libya by the Colonel’s son Saif to “deradicalise” LIFG fighters who remained jailed in the country. As a result of this intervention, over 600 were released from prison in Tripoli, including its three foremost leaders.

Fast forward four years, and those same individuals were engaged in the Libyan civil war, in hot pursuit of LIFG’s raison d'etre. They were joined by many of their former Group comrades based in Britain. Not long after the upheaval commenced, their control orders were rescinded and passports returned. MI5 even intervened to ensure their safe passage to and from Tripoli.

Quilliam also did its part for the war effort. In late March 2011, the organisation boasted about how Benotman had been instrumental in the defection of Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa.

“It could potentially have a devastating impact on morale…Strategically, this move attacks the center of gravity within the regime,” Benotman told CNN. “I hope other senior figures within the regime now realize that they too need to be part of the solution and not remain part of the problem.”

Eight months later, in the wake of Gaddafi’s brutal televised murder, vast amounts of money, arms and fighters began flowing from Tripoli to Syria in support of the Western-created uprising. Before long, thousands of Libyan insurrectionists were battling to defeat Assad’s Arab Army alongside Daesh and Al-Nusra Front, while Ansar Al-Sharia Libya, an extremist group with connections to Al-Qaeda, recruited and trained combatants to travel to Damascus.

The fluidity with which these fanatical elements shifted from one British-backed theater of regime change to another quite obviously indicates Benotman's purported “deradicalisation” of LIFG was at best a failure, and at worst a charade. As such, it’s only reasonable to ask - is the ultimate objective of London’s CVE machinations to construct the “right” kind of extremist sleeper army overseas, which can be activated to stir up trouble and take down meddlesome leaders as and when the context requires?

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