More and more frequently after September 2001, public buildings were surrounded by barricades. This year, the UK government has unveiled a new generation of security barricades. But will they keep us any safer?
Dubbed a “security wall” by the BBC, the technology is based around filling a network of steel rods with concrete and covering the result in layers of steel plating. On impact, the wall can stop any cars, as well as larger vehicles, driving bombs into a target. And a recent BBC report has shown just how effective the technology can be. In a simulated suicide truck bomb test, the wall practically guarantees that explosions will occur several metres away from any objective.
We might be forgiven our paranoia. The first attack on the Twin Towers was delivered not by civilian aviation, but in 1993 by an explosives-packed vehicle. In addition, the 7th July bombings in 2005 and the experience of suicide bombings in Iraq has led the United Kingdom to hope its major buildings are not exposed to terror-bombings.
But there is no guaranteed prevention of bombs. Not all roadside, car or suicide bombs can be found and defused, especially with unannounced and determined detonations. The British army – and British public – has learnt this to its cost. And although a new generation of barricade technology will mean better barricades, it will not mean an end to the threat of domestic terror-bombings. This is because no technology is able altogether to prevent terrorist violence. Instead, the technology and tactics of urban counter-terrorism acknowledge the reality that explosions cannot always be prevented. Instead, the aim of the new wall is that terrorist violence be imperfectly contained. The new wall acknowledges that the practicalities of anti-terrorism are limited. The best answer to explosives-laden trucks is to choose where – not if – any bombs will explode. And the limits to our safety do not end there. Daily public transport announcements remind us that ‘passengers must keep belongings with them at all times, reporting any suspicious packages to a member of staff or police’. This announcement possibly dates from the time of IRA terrorism (Irish Republican Army), when spotting a briefcase or suitcase might very well have meant the difference between life and death. Yet re-considered in the time of suicide bombers, the instruction takes on a quality of the ridiculous.
Today's terrorist will more likely than not follow such advice to the letter. The suicide bombers in London, on 7 July 2005, carried their belongings with them, blending into their surroundings, possibly shielded from suspicions by such advice. After 7-7, people are more likely to ignore such announcements as useless and instead eye any young Muslim male with a heavy bag.
So an important truth remains. The suicide bomber – on foot or by car – is too far inside our shared civic conduct to be confronted with water-tight security measures – and too far beyond any other effective recognition than blanket profiling and racism. Racism does not make us worth saving as individuals, a democracy or a state.
Public announcements and new barricade technologies are not watertight anti-terrorism measures. Instead, there is no rhetorical or practical line that can reconcile an effective prevention of suicide bombing with any civic discourse about why we are worth saving from terrorist violence.
How the new American administration will deal with the limits of security remains to be seen. Should President Obama slip up on either, charges of incompetence will prevail, with the trouble that neither security nor principles are certain bets in a post-Bush world. In the meantime, the UK government is investing in an excellent technology, one that decides the location of – but cannot prevent – a determined terrorist attack