'We Are the Guardians of the World'; These People Stand Between Britain and a 9/11-Style Attack. ; the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Based in St Andrews, Is Ten Years Old This Year, a Decade in Which Terror has Become As Common a Subject As the Weather. Vicky Allan Asks Director Paul Wilkinson and His Team How Scared We Should Be, and Discovers What Kind of Person Spends Their Life Targeting Bombers and Gunmen

Sunday Herald › April 13, 2004

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Summary

The most quoted British academic in the United States has an office down a narrow, anonymous alley in genteel St Andrews. The roads outside are empty, just the occasional car and lone, out-of- term student. It would only take a couple of minutes to walk to the luminescent stretch of East Sands, five minutes to the Old Course and some indeterminate length of time to spot Prince William. But, on the walls of Magnus Ranstorp's room, are pictures from very different corners of the globe. There is Ranstorp with a group of Hamas children in Gaza. Ranstorp in grim black and white at the Oklahoma bombing memorial. Two Tamil Tigers, dressed in combat uniform, a stuffed tiger in the corner of the shot. And a newspaper cutting questioning how the IRA had managed to plant a Semtex bomb underneath a lectern at a London conference. Ranstorp was at that event in 1990, as was his boss Professor Paul Wilkinson, due to deliver a lecture. At the time there was speculation in the media that Wilkinson was one of the intended targets of the bomb.

This is the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, a politically independent research facility licensed by St Andrews University, powered by a small group of academics and 40 interns who gather endless material in an attempt to build up a portrait of 21st-Century world terrorism. Put simply, the people whose job it is to prevent a September 11-style attack on the UK, rely on the men and women of the Centre to provide the information they need in the fight against terrorism.

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Extract

'We Are the Guardians of the World'; These People Stand Between Britain and a 9/11-Style Attack. ; the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Based in St Andrews, Is Ten Years Old This Year, a Decade in Which Terror has Become As Common a Subject As the Weather. Vicky Allan Asks Director Paul Wilkinson and His Team How Scared We Should Be, and Discovers What Kind of Person Spends Their Life Targeting Bombers and Gunmen

The Centre is based not, as you might expect, in a glassy modern tower in New York or London, but in two small houses in St Andrews. The second of these is a white-washed cottage with a blue plaque saying 'History of Art Annexe'. This seeming camouflage and the fact that students and staff swipe security cards to come and go, helps lend the impression that there is some covert activity going on inside. But, in fact, it turns out these are new residences and they just haven't got round to changing the sign. Instead, they are much more preoccupied with the substance of what they do: jetting off round the world to discuss ideology with members of terrorist groups and advising those in power on counter-terrorism. Experts from the centre have briefed or lectured to the Colombian Military Cabinet, advisors to Tony Blair, the chief-of-staff of the Israeli Defence and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. They have also advised the Pentagon, the FBI, the insuranc...

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