UK spy chief warns Taliban takeover could fuel terror plots
LONDON -- The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has “heartened
and emboldened” extremists and could lead to the return of major
“al-Qaida-style” attack plots against the West, the head of Britain’s domestic
intelligence agency said on Friday.
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said the U.K. could face
“more risk” because of the withdrawal of NATO troops and the overthrow of the
internationally backed Afghan government.
“Terrorist threats tend not to change overnight in the sense
of directed plotting or training camps or infrastructure — the sorts of things
that al Qaida enjoyed in Afghanistan at the time of 9/11,” McCallum told the
BBC in a rare interview.
“But what does happen overnight, even though those directed
plots and centrally organized bits of terrorism take a bit longer to rebuild
... Overnight, you can have a psychological boost, a morale boost to extremists
already here, or in other countries.
“So we need to be vigilant both for the increase in inspired
terrorism which has become a real trend for us to deal with over the last five
to 10 years, alongside the potential regrowth of al-Qaida-style directed
plots.”
Britain has seen several violent attacks by
Islamist-inspired extremists in the past two decades. The deadliest was on July
7, 2005, when four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters on London subway trains
and a bus.
More recent knife and vehicle attacks have largely been the
work of individuals inspired by militants such as the Islamic State group, but
not directed by them.
McCallum said U.K. authorities had disrupted 31 attack plots
in the past four years, by both Islamic and far-right extremists. He said it
was hard to say whether Britain was safer or less safe, 20 years after the
Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
“The number of plots that we disrupt nowadays are actually
higher than the number of plots that were coming at us after 9/11, but on
average they are smaller plots of lower sophistication,” he said.
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