Blair Says Homegrown Terrorism Is Generation-Long Struggle
By ALAN COWELL - New York Times: November 11, 2006
LONDON, Nov. 10 — Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday that the threat from homegrown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that it was keeping some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist cells under surveillance.
The warning by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, in a speech on Thursday was by far the most extensive and somber of recent times and included assertions that about 30 terrorist conspiracies were under investigation and that “tomorrow’s threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.”
She also asserted that operatives for Al Qaeda in Pakistan were helping to guide some of the plots, reflecting British assessments that Qaeda operatives survived campaigns against them to steer conspiracies in Britain from afar.
“We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy,” she said. “What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, Nearer 30 — that we know of. These plots often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”
The British counterterrorism authorities say they cannot move too quickly to break up plots because they need enough evidence to prosecute suspects successfully.
Since the London bombings of July 2005, Britain has sounded frequent terrorist alarms, most notably last August when it issued a major alert alleging that Islamic terrorists planned to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners. And just this week, a judge sentenced a 34-year-old Muslim, Dhiren Barot, to a minimum of 40 years in prison for plotting a series of attacks in the United States and Britain from 2000 to 2004.
The news and warnings have left many Britons with mixed feelings: a sense of foreboding, but also some skepticism about the government’s motives in making such announcements since there have been no attacks for more than a year.
Among the more frightening aspects of Dame Eliza’s warning was her statement that support for terrorism among British Muslims was broader than previously known, as more young people had become radicalized.
“More and more people are moving from passive sympathy toward active terrorism through being radicalized or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organized training events here and overseas, by images on television, through chat rooms and Web sites on the Internet,” she said.
Moreover, Dame Eliza said, since the July 2005 subway and bus attacks, five other “major conspiracies” had been thwarted in Britain, “saving many hundreds, possibly even thousands, of lives.” MI5’s caseload has increased 80 percent so far this year alone, she said.
Historically, the head of MI5 does not make such public pronouncements. “Emerging from the shadows is not something they like to do,” said Neil Ellis, a domestic security expert at Royal United Services Institute, a research group. Indeed, Dame Eliza acknowledged in her speech to academics on Thursday night: “I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job.”
But it was a sign of changed times — and, perhaps of MI5’s campaign to secure more government money and expand its ranks of agents and recruits — that the text of her speech was posted Friday on the MI5 Web site, prompting some Islamic leaders to say the authorities were demonizing Britain’s Muslim minority of 1.6 million.
Massoud Shadjareh, the chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said, “Although we recognize that there is a real threat, the suggestion that we could even face a nuclear threat will only contribute to paranoia rather than safety and security.”
Dame Eliza echoed some longstanding arguments by Mr. Blair, who has resisted critics’ accusations that his support of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan had made Britain a target for terrorist attack. “Let there be no doubt about this,” she said, “the international terrorist threat to this country is not new. It began before Iraq, before Afghanistan and before 9/11.”
But she went on to say that terrorist recruiters had woven a “powerful narrative” of Muslim oppression. She said the video wills of British suicide bombers made it clear that they were motivated, in part, by their interpretation of British foreign policy, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, as anti-Muslim, but also by perceived worldwide and longstanding injustices against Muslims and an “extreme and minority interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence.”
She said the terrorist threat was “serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”
“It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents,” she continued. “It aims to wear down our will to resist.”
In a separate news conference on Friday, Mr. Blair said, “I think it’s absolutely right that it will last a generation.”
“It’s a very long and deep struggle,” he said, “but we have to stand up and be counted for what we believe in and take the fight to those people who want to entice young people into something wicked and violent but utterly futile.”
Dame Eliza has presided over a major, public effort to expand MI5, which deals exclusively with domestic security and espionage. In her speech, she said the MI5 staff now numbers 2,800, “an increase of over 50 percent since 9/11.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Ellis, of the Royal United Services Institute, said there had been a series of public statements by British officials warning of an increasing threat and seeking public support. Just on Wednesday, for instance, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, urged British Muslims to “speak up against extremism.”
From that point of view, Mr. Ellis said, Dame Eliza may have been trying to promote this “cultural shift in how the security services engage with the public.”
“If society is to engage in this battle of ideas,” Mr. Ellis said, “then perhaps we need to know the level, the size and the scale of this threat.”
For complete text of Dame Eliza speech, click here
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