Ignoring the Intelligence: How New Labour Helped Bring Terror to London

The primary obligation upon any government is the duty of care towards its citizens, a duty best expressed by the phrase "first, do no harm". The least that citizens can expect of their government is that it will not actively pursue policies that harm them, or place them in harm's way. Any failure to honour this duty of care renders a government unfit to hold office in the most basic and fundamental sense.

The Prime Minister is not unaware of this obligation. During an interview with the BBC, when it was becoming obvious that banned WMD would never be found in Iraq, Blair said that, "You can only imagine what would have happened if I'd ignored the intelligence and then something terrible had happened". That Blair's government had twisted the WMD intelligence deliberately as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq is a matter of record. What should now be focused upon is the intelligence New Labour chose not to distort, but to ignore entirely; the intelligence telling them that the chances of "something terrible" occurring - i.e. a terrorist attack on the UK - would be greatly increased if Britain proceeded to invade Iraq.

Five weeks before the invasion Britain's intelligence chiefs warned Blair's government in strong terms that military action would increase the risk of terrorist attacks against Britain by groups such as al-Qaeda. As the UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee noted in 2003: "The JIC assessed that al-Qa'eda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq".

As Britain's involvement in the occupation of Iraq continued, the government's advisers continued to warn of the possible consequences. A joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier, ordered by Tony Blair following the train bombings in Madrid, identified Iraq as a "recruiting sergeant" for extremism. The analysis was that the Iraq war was acting as a key cause of young Britons turning to terrorism. It said: "It seems that a particularly strong cause of disillusionment among Muslims, including young Muslims, is a perceived 'double standard' in the foreign policy of western governments, in particular Britain and the US. The perception is that passive 'oppression', as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to 'active oppression'. The war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam."

In 2005, the government was warned yet again. Just weeks before the London bombings, the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre - including officials from MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police - explicitly linked the Iraq war with an increased risk of terrorist activity in Britain. The report, leaked to the New York Times, said that "Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK".

Speaking in Parliament days after the brutal attacks on the UK's capital city, Blair rejected any link between foreign policy and the threat of terrorism. What Britain was facing, he asserted, was "a form of terrorism aimed at our way of life, not at any particular Government or policy". In saying this Blair was contradicting not only what his own intelligence services and government advisers had repeatedly told him, but also the consensus of mainstream expert opinion on the causes of so-called "Islamist" terror.

Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who headed its bin Laden unit from 1993 to 1996, is unequivocal in his rejection of Blair's stance. "It's a policy issue. Bin Laden is fighting against us, not because of who we are....that we have elections or women in the workplace.....[or that ] they hate us for our freedoms and our liberties. There's nothing further from the truth than that. Bin Laden has had success because he's focused on a limited number of U.S. foreign policies in the Muslim world, policies that are visible and are experienced by Muslims on a daily basis. Most of bin Laden's attacks since 2001 have been aimed at countries that supported the United States either in Afghanistan or in Iraq."

A recent study of suicide terrorist attacks conducted by Professor Robert Pape and the University of Chicago's Project on Suicide Terrorism came to the same conclusion. According to Pape, "what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective."

In an article praising the study, Michael Scheuer said that Pape "demolishes the relentlessly repeated assertion ....... that Islamist suicide attacks against America and other counties are launched by .....apocalyptic fanatics who are eager to kill themselves because [we] vote, have civil liberties, and allow women to drive cars. This assertion always has been transparently false....".

Pape's conclusion is that "The root cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation and the threat that foreign military presence poses to the local community's way of life. Hence, any policy that seeks to conquer Muslim societies in order, deliberately, to transform their culture is folly". Scheuer notes that "this reality, [as] Pape recognizes, will require changes in America's relations with the Persian Gulf states, getting our military out of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, and the implementation of an energy policy that makes Arab oil production substantially less important to our economy."

To return to the specific threat towards the UK, world renowned Middle East expert Juan Cole pointed out on the day after the London bombings that "The United Kingdom had not been a target for al-Qaida in the late 1990s. But in October 2001, bin Laden threatened the United Kingdom with suicide aircraft attacks if it joined in the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. In November of 2002, bin Laden said in an audiotape, "What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia." In February of 2003, as Bush and Blair marched to war in Iraq, bin Laden warned that the U.K. as well as the U.S. would be made to pay. In October of 2003, bin Laden said of the Iraq war, "Let it be known to you that this war is a new campaign against the Muslim world," and named Britain as a target for reprisals. A month later, an al-Qaida-linked group detonated bombs in Istanbul, targeting British sites and killing the British vice-consul."

Last year the International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual report said that al-Qaeda had been "spurred on" by the Iraq war, which had helped it recruit more members. The report said that the war had focused the energies and resources of al-Qaeda's followers, while diluting those of the global counter-terrorism coalition. It also noted the Bush administration's failure to recognise that the 9/11 attacks were a "violent reaction to America's pre-eminence".

Soon after the London bombings the Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, released a study which concluded that "There is no doubt that the situation over Iraq has imposed particular difficulties for the UK, and for the wider coalition against terrorism.......the UK is at particular risk [of terrorist attack] because it is the closest ally of the United States, [and] has deployed armed forces in the military campaigns ... in Afghanistan and in Iraq". According to the report, the Iraq war "gave a boost to the al-Qa'ida network's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qa'ida-linked terrorists, and deflected resources that could have been deployed to…bring Bin Laden to justice."

The blustering response of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to the Chatham House report was that "the time for excuses for terrorism is over". As a lawyer and a former Home Secretary, Straw clearly does not himself believe that to establish a criminal’s motivation is to excuse the crime. But for him to acknowledge the link between a deeply unpopular government policy and the increased threat of terrorist attack would be to admit a connection between his own actions and the deaths of 52 UK citizens on 7 July 2005. Faced with an overwhelming body of expert analysis (including that of his own department) which draws exactly that connection, Straw is left only with the most moronic of arguments with which to defend himself.

Following the government line, Straw went on to say that, “the terrorists have struck across the world, in countries allied with the United States, backing the war in Iraq and in countries which had nothing whatever to do with the war in Iraq”. He and other government ministers have repeatedly cited attacks on countries such as Tanzania, Kenya, Indonesia and Turkey as proof that al-Qaeda will attack anywhere; not just western targets. But, as those ministers are well aware (and as their own list of previous al-Qaeda attacks shows), these terrorist strikes were not targeted directly at those countries but at western interests within them. The attacks in Tanzania and Kenya were on US embassies; the attacks in Indonesia were on US and Australian government buildings and tourists; and the attacks in Turkey were on British holidaymakers and institutions.

New Labour’s position is not enhanced by the fact that, along with other craven apologists for terror (such as MI5, MI6, GCHQ, advisers from the Home Office and the Foreign Office, CIA veterans and eminent independent experts) stood the Prime Minister himself, until very recently. In 2003, speaking to the Intelligence and Security Committee, Blair said that, "there was obviously a danger that in attacking Iraq you ended up provoking the very thing you were trying to avoid". But the risk was worth taking, he went on to say, to deal with the threat posed by WMD: a threat that, as we know, was non-existent.

Most people in Britain never accepted the government’s (current) argument, and never wanted to take these risks to begin with. On 15 February 2003, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in London against the coming war on Iraq. At the time, 79% of Londoners felt that British involvement in the invasion "would make a terrorist attack on London more likely". In the wake of the London bombings, two-thirds of Britons expressed the view that the invasion of Iraq and the attack on their capital were linked.

Now, after a second attack on London in as many weeks, Britons may wish to take another look at those to whom they have entrusted their safety and security. They may wish to reflect on the fact that their government is deliberately and repeatedly ignoring the advice of the UK’s intelligence services, departmental advisers and independent experts, and pursuing policies that are increasing the threat of terrorist attacks on Britain. They may wish to reflect that, with 52 innocent people dead, many more injured, and the threat of further atrocities hanging over the country, the government is strenuously avoiding any honest discussion of the problem, preferring to obscure the issues with self-serving mendacity. They may conclude, by uncontroversial reference to the plain facts, that New Labour is clearly failing to discharge its duty of care and is therefore fundamentally unfit to govern.