Beefing up security ahead of the Valletta Summit earlier this month. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

For the first time in modern history, liberal democracies are facing Islamic terrorists in possession of defensible territory, heavy weapons (including chemical), oil revenues and the grandiose vision of recreating medieval Islam’s sweep of empire.

The massacre on the streets of Paris may turn out to be the turning point in the fight against Islamic State (or Daesh, the pejorative Arabic acronym used widely across the Middle East), as the West and Russia are spurred into belated diplomatic and military action.

This battle will be the defining event of the first quarter of the 21st century Middle East.

The chilling warning by Daesh’s chief spokesman a few months ago that “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. Ifwe do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market” has been given horrific reality in Paris.

It could have happened in any of Europe’s major cities. The presence of barbaric Islamic malcontents from every corner of the planet – including on our doorstep in the failed state of Libya - constitute a geostrategic convulsion from which Malta is not immune.

France has invoked the “mutual defence clause” in the Lisbon Treaty which states in fairly imprecise language that if a member state is the victim of an armed attack on its territory “it can rely on the aid and assistance of the other member states, which are obliged to help”. Malta has responded appropriately by saying that, within the constraints placed upon it by the neutrality clauses in our constitution, it would support that request.

Has the scale of terrorism changedto such an extent that no security measures can counter it? And, in the light of the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting, is Malta especially vulnerable?

It is not the scale of terrorism that has changed. Terrorism has been a feature for decades. In the recent past, from 9/11 to Tunisia and Sharm-el-Sheikh, and for much longer before that (the IRA bombings in Britain, Bader-Meinhoff in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy and the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, to take but a few at random), terrorism has been a scourge claiming many innocent lives. Liberal democracies have triumphed over all of them.

What has undoubtedly changed today are two essential ingredients of that threat. The first is that the Daesh jihadist extremists carrying out attacks of terror in Paris, Lebanon, Turkey and elsewhere are prepared to kill themselves inthe process of killing others in the name of their perverted ‘religion’. This is a dimension which, in a free and open democracy like ours, is virtually impossible to guard against.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the information and telecommunications revolution of the past 20 years has transformed the way billions ofpeople, including terrorists, communicate with one another.

The ability of even the most sophisticated security services to monitor allthis data to provide up-to-date intelligence to prevent the kind of atrocity perpetrated in Paris – where fatal intelligence failures occurred – has become extremely difficult.

The centre-piece of successful counter-terrorism is first-class intelligence. Good intelligence and comprehensive surveillance can thwart (almost) any terrorist attack. But in a liberal democracy, intrusive surveillance has to be balanced against peoples’ rights to keep their data private.

As to the vulnerability of Malta to a terrorist attack, and specifically the state of security for the forthcoming CHOGM, for which the arrangements made during the recent EU/AU Valletta Summit were a dress rehearsal, the paramount duty of government is to ensure that its people are secure and safe, and that their liberty is assured. The complaints by some commentators about the ‘inconvenience’ of road closures or lack of access to some areas were misguided and a puerile self-indulgence by those trying to score party-political points.

Dealing with terrorism requires several tools. But the paramount defence is good security intelligence

On such occasions, with so many high-profile targets present, any government has the overriding responsibility to ensure not only their security, but also that the lives of Maltese nationals simply going about their business, who could be caught up in any collateral damage from a terrorist attack, are protected.

Malta’s location at the southernmost tip of Europe, close to the failed state of Libya and on the migration route from North Africa, obviously makes the island vulnerable. An assessment of the current threat leads to a range of possible dangers.

The infiltration of terrorists into Malta as a stepping-stone into mainland Europe with the aim of mounting a spectacular terrorist atrocity against a target in oneof the major European capitals cannotbe discounted.

The lone jihadist or a small cell bent on causing havoc against a high-profile target in Malta as a proxy for other EU targets (simply because it’s a member of the Union) is the kind of threat Malta must be prepared to counter.

The possibility of Daesh militia mounting a military assault on Malta from Libya seems improbable at present. A rogue air strike by jihadists flying a fighter aircraft from Tripoli is also remote. While, therefore, the likelihood of a terrorist attack in Malta is less than one on a world city, where the international political impact is spectacular, it would be irresponsible for Malta not to prepare against an assumed threat which must be deemed to exist.

Dealing with terrorism requires several tools. But the paramount defence is good security intelligence. The ability to expose terrorist networks or to pre-empt attacks is the central purpose of good peacetime intelligence.

Malta’s security services are inevitably limited in capability. I suspect they are mostly focussed on drugs and money-laundering and possess little technical capacity to carry out mass meta-data surveillance of potential terrorists.

But the US and British, French and German intelligence services are probably the best in the world and we must hope that the Maltese government’s liaison with them is close and that our security services are fully plugged in to intelligence-sharing through Europol.

As to how Malta counters this threat, it isn’t the smallness of our island that makes us vulnerable, but the inevitably limited size of our resources in surveillance, military and police forces.

No matter how small, however, good intelligence must go hand in glove with coordinated and rehearsed contingency plans to deploy well trained, quick reaction forces by the armed forces and the police, coupled with absolute vigilance at our sea and air borders to guard against any attempted infiltration by terrorists under the guise of immigrants, refugees or visitors from Libya, North Africa or the Middle East.

While I suspect that our forces still have some way to go in their leadership, training and professionalism, I am confident that for a set-piece security operation, like CHOGM, Malta will have in place all the necessary operational and intelligence capabilities to ensure a secure operation. Malta is being advised by external intelligence and security experts, and reinforced by foreign air and maritime military hardware.

The AFM and the Malta Police Force showed 10 years ago – albeit when the threat from Daesh was non-existent – that guarding CHOGM is within their capability. Despite their inevitable limitations, they can successfully do it again.