Terror threat to get worse as jihadists return from Syria
BRITAIN could face a greater threat from Islamist terrorism over the next two years, a security review warns today.
Intelligence experts fear battlehardened jihadis in Syria are dispersing to set up cells elsewhere from which to plot attacks on the West.
There are also concerns that die-hard fanatics could try and come back to Britain to carry out massacres.
These factors, on top of concerns that youngsters at home are being easily radicalised on the internet, point to a heightened terror threat, spies say.
The assessment comes after MI5 chief Andrew Parker warned last year that the terror threat was already the worst he had ever seen in his 34-year career.
A security shake-up will be detailed in the National Security Capability Review (NSCR) today.
It will state: ‘We expect the threat from Islamist terrorism to remain at its current heightened level for at least two years and it might increase further.’
The review comes in the wake of five terror attacks on British soil last year and this month’s nerve-agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury. It can also be revealed:
The UK will introduce a ‘fusion doctrine’ to use military, financial, cultural and diplomatic clout to quash threats.
‘Unprecedented’ levels of intelligence were shared with allies after Salisbury to make the case for action against Russia.
Russia, Iran and North Korea are identified as the key state-based threats.
So-called ‘soft power’ such as the BBC’s World Service and social media will be used to tackle misinformation.
The review will outline the threats facing the UK and how the Government plans to deal with them.
In it, Theresa May states: ‘Every part of our Government and every one of our agencies has its part to play. As long as we defend our interests and stand up for our values, there will continue to be those who seek to undermine or attack us. But these people should be in no doubt that we will use every capability at our disposal to defeat them.
‘Over the past year we have witnessed appalling terrorist attacks in London and Manchester. But also a brazen and reckless act of aggression on the streets of Salisbury: Attempted murder using an illegal chemical weapon, amounting to an unlawful use of force against the UK.’
She said national security depended on not only the police, security services and the Armed Forces, but ‘on our ability to mobilise... the full range of our capabilities in concert’.
A senior Whitehall official said the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury had shown how important it was to counter propaganda from Russia, which put out more than 20 different stories following the incident ‘to try to confuse the picture, confuse the charge sheet if you like’.
On top of this, up to 2,800 Russian bots – computer programmes that generate posts on social media – are thought to have tried to sow confusion after the poison attack by spreading fake information.
Officials have feared for months that IS jihadists defeated in Iraq and Syria could morph into a new terror group.
But the danger from Islamist extremists moving into Africa and other regions seems likely to increase the threat to British citizens. A source said: ‘There will be further cycles of it. There are cells in Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, as well as Syria and Iraq. They will still seek to project out. What will happen as the so-called caliphate has essentially been defeated, is that those militants who fought for it are diffusing. So the threat will shift. And some of that could affect us here.’
A senior Whitehall official said: ‘The biggest shift in the terrorist threat in my career has been that you can radicalise people in our own communities, people have been radicalised from Syria... through their interactions in cyber space.’