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Al-Qaeda Back In Town
President George Bush said at the White House in October: "We're winning. Al-Qaeda is on the run".
Unfortunately, western intelligence and security officials beg to differ. America's CIA and FBI, Britain's MI6 and MI5 and France's DST and DGSE, all say that there is a continuing and serious threat from Al-Qaeda and its associates.
It is true that the Al-Qaeda network has, mostly, been evicted from Afghanistan. But intelligence chiefs believe that they have found secure enclaves in northern Pakistan and elsewhere.
John Negroponte, America's outgoing intelligence chief, has said in his last message to the Bush administration that the core Al-Qaeda leadership was "resilient". And that the terrorist organisation was moving to consolidate operations, with affilated groups, into the Middle East and further into Europe.
Britain's head of its security agency, MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Butler, is also concerned. She says home-grown radicals are "foot soldiers" trained and guided by Al Qaeda and on an "extensive and growing scale". MI5 has set up a new special separate headquarters on the outskirts of London to deal with emergencies throughout the UK.
A spokesman for MI6, the UK's intelligence service, has offered the brief comment that further attacks on the west, organised from abroad, were possible.
According to The Times, an SAS unit from Hereford, has been given a permanent base in London, and is on 24-hour standby for counter-terrorism operations. The unit includes surveillance specialists and bomb-disposal experts. Authorisation for action must be sanctioned by a home or defence minister or the security and intelligence co-ordinator at the Cabinet Office.
The Ministry of Defence has requested that the location of the new SAS unit be kept secret.
When it comes to fighting full-fledged terrorism, perhaps the famous motto of the SAS is appropriate: 'Who dares wins'.
