Terrorist threat to UK

Britain's MI5 chief recently said that several thousand young people in Britain were being recruited by terrorist organisations. A growing number of them are seriously considering the possibility of becoming suicide bombers.

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified. More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas, by images on television, through chat rooms and websites on the Internet.

One of the biggest recruiting factors is British foreign policy over the last few years. These young people can watch on TV and see the devastating effects of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and for many what begins as a burning sense of injustice ends in the despairing decision to become a suicide bomber.

A very good analysis, with lots of links to sources, may be found at The People's Republic of Teeside: All apologies.