Mothers the latest weapon in U.K.’s fight against terrorism

Another UK initiative to reduce radicalization and extremism:

Now British police are hoping to tap into that mother’s instinct to protect her children. In April, they launched an unprecedented program to encourage Muslim women to contact authorities if they suspect their loved ones are planning to travel to Syria or have already gone.

Women are often best placed to intervene, says deputy assistant commissioner Helen Ball of the Metropolitan Police, one of three senior female police officers running Britain’s counterterrorism operations.

“This is very much about prevention and protection,” says Ball, who devised the program. “It is women who . . . notice a change in behaviour very quickly. We want women to feel confident to come forward, whether it is to police, or a community member they trust or a school teacher.”

Such initiatives — from the benign to the extraordinary — are being taken by governments as they struggle to reduce the number of western Muslims joining the war in Syria for fear they return to cause carnage on the streets of their homelands.

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the issue a “global crisis in need of a global solution.”

“The Syrian conflict has turned that region into a cradle of violent extremism. But the world cannot simply sit back and let it become a training ground from which our nationals can return and launch attacks,’” Holder said in a speech to Norwegian diplomats and national security officials in Oslo.

… But as Einas Deghayes [mother of an extremist killed in Syria] insists, it is often the mothers who are the last to know what their children are up to.

Mothers the latest weapon in U.K.’s fight against terrorism | Toronto Star.