Blair Says Terrorist Threat To Last ‘A Generation’

Taken from the New York Times, November 10, 2006
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, Nov. 10 — Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the threat from home-grown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist cells were under surveillance.

The estimate by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, was by far the most extensive and alarming report given by the government. It included assertions that some 30 terrorist conspiracies were under surveillance and that “tomorrow’s threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology.”

“More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards 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,” said Mrs. Manningham-Buller.

Historically, the head of MI5 does not make such public pronouncements. Mrs. Manningham-Buller acknowledged in a speech to academics 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 funding and expand its ranks of agents and recruits — that the text of her speech was posted today on the MI5 Web site, prompting some Islamic leaders to say the authorities were again demonizing Britain’s 1.6 million Muslim minority.

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.”

Mrs. Manningham-Buller’s speech came just four days after a judge sentenced a 34-year-old convert to Islam, Dhiren Barot, to a minimum of 40 years in prison for plotting a series of terrorist attacks in the United States and Britain. And on Wednesday, the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, urged British Muslims to “speak up against extremism and correct the skewed world-view of the terrorists.”

Mrs. Manningham-Buller echoed arguments made 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.

“The video wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims; an extreme and minority interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence; and their interpretation as anti-Muslim of U.K. foreign policy, in particularly the U.K.’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

She said the terrorist threat was “serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation.”

In a separate news conference last night, 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.”