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"Anti-terror strategy needs overhaul"

Sandra Laville

THE FORMER head of British intelligence (MI6) on Tuesday called for a complete rethink of the strategy to combat the Islamist terrorist threat.

Sir Richard Dearlove said despite setbacks, Al-Qaeda was thriving and the position of Britain and the U.S. was "strategically weak" in Iraq and elsewhere. "A strategic rethink is probably the point that we have now reached," he told business leaders in the City of London. "Al-Qaeda is showing an extraordinary ability to mutate in response to our successes."

He said a new policy was essential to combat the worldwide terrorist threat, and specifically the threat within the U.K. from home-grown extremists who followed Al-Qaeda.

Sir Richard, who ran MI6 in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and the time of Downing Street's "dodgy dossier" on Saddam Hussein's WMD, said there had to be engagement with the Muslim communities. The best people to root out Al-Qaeda-inspired extremism in Britain were in British Muslim communities. What was needed was a policy in which Al-Qaeda was no longer seen as an attractive ideology to young Muslims.

"We need to create the circumstances, in the Muslim world, but beyond as well, in which Al-Qaeda becomes an isolated entity rather than a mainstream ideological force," he said. "At the moment it is very easy for Al-Qaeda to recruit its foot soldiers. The most effective way for Muslim communities to police the Al-Qaeda influence in the U.K. is to do it themselves. Community policing in the U.K. has failed in this specific area."

He said Al-Qaeda had created a very powerful and attractive brand. The West had to make its position as attractive. "If you wish to recruit from within the opposing forces you need a clear moral position to engage the Muslim elite," he said. Sir Richard said the longer the current situation went on the more dangerous the threat would become. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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