The head of Britain’s national intelligence agency says the Taliban’s acquisition of Afghanistan has “encouraged and encouraged” extremists and could lead to the return of major “plot-style” attacks. al-Qaeda “against the West.
LONDON – Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has “encouraged and encouraged” extremists and could lead to the return of major “al-Qaeda-style” attack plots against the West, the country’s chief minister said on Friday. British National Intelligence Agency.
MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum said the UK could face “more risks” due to the withdrawal of NATO troops and the overthrow of the Afghan government with international support.
“Terrorist threats do not tend to change overnight in the sense of targeted conspiracy or training camps or infrastructure: the kind of thing that Al Qaeda was enjoying in Afghanistan at the time of the 11th September, “McCallum told the BBC in a rare interview.
“But what happens overnight, even though those targeted plots and centrally organized pieces of terrorism take a little longer to rebuild … During the night, you can have a psychological boost, a raising morale for extremists who are already here or in other countries.
“Therefore, we need to be alert to the rise of inspired terrorism, which has become a real trend for us in the last five to ten years, along with the possible resurgence of plots aimed at the style of ‘Al-Qaeda’.
Britain has seen several violent attacks by Islamist-inspired extremists in the past two decades. The deadliest was on 7 July 2005, when four suicides killed 52 passengers on London Underground trains and on a bus.
The most recent knife and vehicle attacks have been largely the work of militant-inspired individuals such as the Islamic State group, but not led by them.
McCallum said British authorities had interrupted 31 attack plots in the past four years by both Islamic and far-right extremists. He said it was difficult to say whether Britain was safer or less secure, 20 years after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
“The number of plots we are currently interrupting are actually higher than the number of plots that came to us after 9/11, but on average they are smaller plots with less sophistication,” he said.