"We've never had a security problem like this in England before..."

"We've never had a security problem like this in England before. And it's getting bigger all the time."

Yehuda Avner writes in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Romy) about a revealing encounter with a veteran British espionage agent: Carefully combing a few long strands of gray hair over the top of his bald head, he retorted rather ominously: "In this war of ours on Arab terror all our bloody state-of-the-art technology isn't worth a damn farthing. Deploy as much highfalutin satellite surveillance and computer decryption as you like, it won't track down Bin Laden in a month of Sundays. The only way to go after him and his sort is by going back to the most primitive methods of intelligence in the book: personal counter-espionage."

"In other words, plain, straight forward, old-fashioned spying," explained Sir Herbert. And then, sardonically, "Allah will not be mocked. He toys around with our clever gadgets and laughs in our faces. Islamists wage their holy war by simply outflanking our technology."

"Precisely," snapped the other fellow. "So what we need are first-class operatives - people who look like them, talk like them, think like them, can infiltrate them, and then eliminate them. Your blokes are champions at that sort of thing."

"People of your tribe. Jews are past masters at duplicity. You have any number who can pass convincingly as Muslims. In your Mossad and Shin Bet you have Jews who speak native Arabic and can adopt Islamic disguises at the drop of a hat."

Sir Herbert interjected: "That's how you won the intifada, isn't it? Your intelligence was superb. Through infiltration, dissimulation and deception you got your killer almost every time."

"And that's why we could do with some of your human assets," said Sir Charles wistfully, knocking his liquor back and wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "We need people like yours - types who can pass muster as Arabs, win over their trust, crawl into the insides of their minds, gather hard intelligence. MI6 and the CIA simply don't have enough of them."

The MI6 man leaned toward me and in a conspiratorial manner, whispered: "Because our Muslims can't be trusted, that's why. Their first loyalty is to Islam, not to Britain. It's the same in the US."

My host concurred: "Islam poses such a powerful bond over its fellow believers that the problem of recruiting Muslim undercover agents is acute. Walk into a Muslim neighborhood and begin making inquiries about terrorists and you will hit a wall of silence."

Grimly, as if infected with an existential angst, Sir Charles brooded: "We've never had a security problem like this in England before. And it's getting bigger all the time."

As he spoke, a white-coated waiter glided between the armchairs and potted palms, holding up two liquor bottles in a pose of affability, pausing to top up a glass of whiskey here and bestow a drop of brandy there.

Scotch-refueled, the old spy rambled on: "It's not like Northern Ireland during the Troubles, when we could do our undercover work like a fish in water. Even the most diehard Irish Republican nationalist cracked under a little bit of coercion, or the promise of a little cash. But your average Muslim fanatic - he'd rather blow himself up first, and take you with him into the bargain."

Sir Charles' speech was now getting warped with whiskey, and he began to nod off. So for the next 20 minutes Sir Herbert and I talked quietly of other matters, particularly the latest Israel-Palestinian developments. Then we gathered up our belongings, descended to the Athenaeum's exit, and stepped out into the street.

Propped up against the nearby wall of what was once Joachim von Ribbentrop's ambassadorial London residence, an Evening Standard billboard bellowed: "POLICE BUST FINSBURY PARK ARAB TERRORIST CELL."

Sir Herbert, his long aristocratic nose white with resentment, blew out his cheeks and exclaimed, "This is the Battle of Britain Part Two, and it's more insidious than the last. Think about it: western civilization has been locked in an historic war with Islam now for 1,000 years. We had thought we had settled it for good in our favor, thanks to our technological superiority. But look what's going on now. All our modern gadgetry is impotent in face of their fanaticism. So, by George, yes - the MI6 and the CIA could do with a strong infusion of Mossad and Shin Bet savvy. Do me a favor and tell your people that when you get back home."

Pretty funny but also quite scary.

However, the British counter terrorist organizations should start with looking under their own beds. Here is a little piece by a former MI6 man. He later was promoted to serve as adviser to the EU High Commissioner on Foreign policy Javier Solana. I saw him a few weeks ago in debate on CNN where he advocated total appeasement with all Palestinian terrorist organizations, and also the Hizbollah.

The man has the very fitting name Crooke. Here is what he wrote in the Guardian:

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It is Essential to Talk to the 'Terrorists'

Alastair Crooke Friday December 10, 2004 The Guardian

The rhetoric that we in the west are engaged in "a war on terrorism" is so embedded in our thinking that most accept the phrase without question. So people in America and Britain recoil when it is suggested that they are not facing "terrorism" in the Middle East, but something quite different: a sophisticated, asymmetrical, broad-based and irregular insurgency.

Acts that we rightly label as "terrorism" do occur (and we certainly need to protect ourselves from them), but what the west is facing is a growing political insurgency. Terrorist acts are but a small tool to gain the psychological upper hand in a broader political struggle. Insistence on the terrorism label carries a high price. It has prompted the west to make the wrong assessment of what challenges we face in Muslim societies, and led us to deploy the wrong means to combat it.

One piece of evidence often cited by "terrorism experts" for the war on terror is the existence of "terrorist training camps" in Afghanistan, Yemen and the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. But these were not terrorist training facilities at all.

I knew these camps. For 20 years they produced guerrillas, in the tens of thousands, trained in irregular warfare techniques, in modules that allowed men with different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds to mesh as a single fighting unit. They were trained to fight an insurgency against western forces and against pro-western regimes in the region. We call these fighters terrorists, but this is not the way they see themselves.

By failing to call an insurgency an insurgency, we have clung to a misreading of the situation that represents all violence by Muslims as criminal and people who use violence as marginalised within their own societies. Most Muslims, it is assumed, want to emulate us and, given the opportunity, would emigrate to the west.

A small proportion of Islamists, the extreme jihadists, are marginal, and have alienated many Muslims by their capricious use of violence. But for both, this is a struggle to restore the standing of Muslim societies; to assert Muslim identity and autonomy from western imposition, and to find the transition to modernity of their economies and society on Muslim terms - not on western secular ones.

The west uses the pejorative tag "terrorist" to close off critical thought. Terrorists are like a cancer, the argument goes: you don't over-analyse your disease, you just kill it. This "terrorist" label is key to the mindset that projects the mistaken view that "they hate our values". The threat, we are told, is existential - "they want to destroy us". Therefore our only response can be to destroy them. Anyone who disagrees is either naive, an enemy, or guilty of legitimising the use of violence.

This is wrong. We do diverge on a few values, but the overwhelming bulk of Islamists and Muslims support elections, good governance and freedom (more so than in some European states, the polls show).

I have witnessed many insurgencies. The Afghan mujahideen understood warfare very well. They knew their victory was not about body counts. They understood that their task was to gain that psychological advantage and to keep it. They understood the need, day by day, that more and more people should be convinced that your current would ultimately prevail - not only in military terms, but by winning the struggle for legitimacy.

Never have I seen insurgencies defeated by bombing. Traditional military thinking categorises these actions as "wearing down the enemy". Generally, it just made ordinary people mad. I recall what is described as the "Jenin paradox". The Israeli military justified an incursion into Jenin in the West Bank on the grounds that there had been 10 terrorists in the city and after the military action there were only four. The threat was reduced. Six had been killed. But to others, and to Jenin's inhabitants, there was a different perception. There had been 10 resistance fighters, the Israeli military had killed six - and now there were 24. The question is: was the use of superior military force a tool for subtraction or multiplication?

This is why Conflicts Forum is calling for a new engagement with Islam. We need to recognise the "other" and acknowledge that Muslim values do not pose a threat to the strategic values of western society. Muslims do not hate our values. They hate our policies. We need dialogue at all levels. And we need to demonstrate in practical terms that there is an alternative approach beyond laying waste to large segments of the region's landscape. We believe it is possible to find common ground on the basis of respect for difference and a toleration of others.

Alastair Crooke is a former British intelligence officer who worked in the Middle East, Ireland and Afghanistan. He was until last year special adviser to Javier Solana, the European Union high representative, and is a founding member of Conflicts Forum ---------------------

I'm almost sorry to post this crap. I know it will increase the blood pressure of most people on this forum. However, I think the aritcle is important, because if this mirrors the mind-set of our intelligence organizations, or even a relatively large minority inside those organizations, then there must be a total overhaul before we can begin to catch up with the threat facing us.

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