Threat to UK from Somalia has increased - MI5 Chief

Jonathan Evans, chief of the Security Service (MI5) has claimed that there is a significant threat to the UK from terrorists training in Somalia.

Mr Evans also said the threat to the UK from dissident Irish Republicans has increased over the last year.

At a speech in London yesterday, Mr Evans told the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals, a "significant number of UK residents" were training with Islamist militants in Somalia to be able to carry out terror attacks.

He said: "I am concerned that it's only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab [an Islamist militia in Somalia]."

He went on to say Somalia was growing as a base for British extremists, with the focus moving form tribal areas of Pakistan, which now accounted for half the plots against the UK instead of 75 per cent.

The Security Service boss said: "Al-Shabaab ... is closely aligned with al-Qaida, and Somalia shows many of the characteristics that made Afghanistan so dangerous a seedbed for terrorism in the period before the fall of the Taliban."

Mr Evans also warned that there were more signs of co-ordination and co-operation by dissident and often hitherto splintered Irish republican groups, he said there had been a 50 per cent increase in attacks, with 30 launched this year compared to 20 throughout the whole of 2009.

I have argued a number of times in this blog that the war in Afghanistan has become a terrible distraction to efforts against interntaionsl Al Qaeda inspired or related terrorism.

Uk and US operations in Afghanistan began with the intention of disrupting Al Qaeda operations bases and personnel; to prevent more attacks being planned and launched from the country.
But now western troops, and crucially, their supporting intelligence structures, including SIS, Security Service and GCHQ are busyfighting a local insurgency, the Taliban.

There is very little threat to the UK at home from the Taliban, if at all; even Mr Evans says the plots against Britain in the region stem from Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

Meanwhile extremists and dissidents are comparatively free to train, organise and plot while the security forces are looking the other way.

Britain has found itself stuck in a seemingly intractable fight in Afghanistan, and it is very difficult to know what to do.

Declaring victory and withdrawing would seem to once again abandon the country to a horrible fate, and would also be seen, rightly, as an ignominious retreat.

But to carry on regardless put the country at great risk of having the security resources pointing the wrong way, and should another attack take place in Britain, I believe, the distraction of fighting the Taliban insurgency will have been a contributory factor.