British Ex-Spy Says Al-Qaeda Threat May Be Waning (Update1)

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The al-Qaeda terrorist network may be losing its capacity to carry out large-scale attacks in the U.S. and U.K. because of improved security, Richard Dearlove, former chief of Britain’s MI6 spy agency, said.

“It could be the movement is past the high point in its ability to mount mass-casualty events in the West,” Dearlove, 64, said in an interview in London late yesterday. “It’s because the bar has been raised, the door has been shut.”

Dearlove served as chief of MI6, known officially as the Secret Intelligence Service, from 1999 to 2004, a period that included the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. “There is much more international security cooperation,” he said, though “the threat is not completely removed.”

In a speech on defense issues at London’s Gresham College, Dearlove also said the British government sent troops to Afghanistan without sufficient equipment, and that a “surge” in North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, followed by a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, is the “only solution” to the war.

“Our armed forces have been under-resourced, this is a basic fact from which there is really no escape,” he said. “The Treasury has been squeezing the defense budget for approximately eight years.”

In the past two years, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has faced mounting criticism from lawmakers, members of the armed forces and military families who say the equipment supplied to U.K. forces in Afghanistan is inadequate, especially helicopters and armored vehicles.

Support Declines

British support for the war in Afghanistan has declined as the number of combat deaths increased, according to opinion polls. Dearlove also said the U.K. government has failed to adequately explain why British troops are in Afghanistan.

The war is as much about ensuring stability in neighboring Pakistan and securing its nuclear arsenal as routing the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies, he said.

Annual funding for the Afghan mission has been increased in recent years, and Brown and his cabinet ministers continue to make the case publicly for why British troops are in the country, a spokesman for the prime minister said in a telephone interview. The spokesman declined to be identified, in line with policy.

U.S. Surge

President Barack Obama is considering his military advisers’ request for as many as 40,000 extra U.S. troops to fight the Taliban. The U.S. contributes about 70,000 of the 110,000 members of foreign forces waging the Afghan war, which began in 2001.

“If we want a negotiated settlement, we need a surge first to put pressure on the Taliban,” Dearlove said. “To leave prematurely, the price we must pay for that is extremely high and far higher than what we are paying now.”

The U.K., which is mulling sending 500 more military personnel to Afghanistan, has 9,000 troops in the country, the second-largest contingent after the U.S. A total of 235 British personnel have died while serving there.

Dearlove, who joined the spy agency in 1966, had postings in Nairobi, Prague and Washington. He is currently master of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge.

MI6 gathers intelligence overseas and is the employer of author Ian Fleming’s fictional agent 007, James Bond.

Dearlove said that “anxiety” about the threat from terrorism and natural disasters has become a fact of modern life.

“We have probably never been safer but this sense of anxiety about threats both natural and manmade is a striking characteristic of our times,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Lysaght in London at blysaght@bloomberg.net.