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Cameron sets out plan against ‘extremism’

UK

British Prime Minister David Cameron has outlined a new five-year government strategy to tackle what he termed as extreme ideology.

Cameron said that “the root cause of the threat” Britain faces “is the extremist ideology itself.”

He also said the Western foreign policy in the Middle East was not to blame for what British media described as ‘Islamic extremism.’

“When people say: ‘It’s because of the involvement in the Iraq war that people are attacking the West,’ we should remind them: 9/11 - the biggest loss of life of British citizens in a terrorist attack happened before the Iraq war,” Cameron said.

The British premier noted, “Others might say: it’s because terrorists are driven to their actions by poverty. But that ignores the fact that many of these terrorists have had the full advantages of prosperous families and a Western university education.”

He further warned those Britons who travel to the Middle East to join militant groups such as ISIL that they will only become “cannon fodder” for terrorists.

File photo of ISIL terrorists in Syria

Cameron also acknowledged past mistakes of handing out funding to “to self-appointed ‘community leaders’ who sometimes used it in a divisive way.”

“For all our successes as multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, we have to confront a tragic truth that there are people born and raised in this country who don’t really identify with Britain,” said Cameron.

He outlined a number of plans to tackle the issue, including the launch of a new study into how extremism spreads, finding ways to emphasize British values, addressing the problem of radicalization in prisons and online, strengthening the UK media regulator's role, to "incentivize" schools to become more integrated, etc, according to the state-run BBC.

This is while some observers have criticized the British PM’s new plans, with political commentator Shabbir Hassanally saying that the UK’s foreign policy especially in the Middle East has been one of “divide and conquer.”

“It has been... it always worked on the idea of creating sectarian strife and sedition,” Hassanally told Press TV on Monday, adding that if “someone says it’s not the case or not, it doesn’t make any difference. The reality is the reality.”

The latest plan by the UK government comes as the country’s authorities have estimated that over 700 British extremists travelled to join ISIL terrorists in Syria over the past years with nearly half of them returning home.


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