After 9/11 Blair 'was proved right about al-Qaeda'

On news of the 9/11 attacks, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was convinced al-Qaeda were the culprits

By the summer of 2001, intelligence assessments by Britain's internal security service, known as MI5, indicated that Osama bin Laden and his supporters were well advanced in planning attacks on western targets. But it was anticipated they would strike in the Middle East. This assessment proved wrong with the 9/11 attacks.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the world's intelligence agencies were asking: who or what is Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation? What had motivated his followers to sacrifice themselves and carry out such appalling atrocities?

From the first news of the attacks, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was convinced it was the work of al-Qaeda and his immediate response was to offer his support to the United States. Britain's intelligence chiefs, principally the heads of MI5, MI6 – that is, the Secret Intelligence Service – and GCHQ, the government's communications headquarters, flew to Washington for urgent talks with their American counterparts.

However, notably absent was the Chief of Defence Intelligence, head of the Defence Intelligence Staff. This supports the United Kingdom government with vital all-source intelligence assessments and, although it has a counter-terrorism role, traditionally it is seen as a poorer cousin by the rest of the British intelligence community. Its US counterpart is the Defence Intelligence Agency.

It was clear that the perpetrators of 9/11 saw themselves as at war with America, but to what end? The UK had a good handle on Islamic militant groups, ironically because it had tolerated fundraising offices in London for so long. Osama bin Laden had clearly articulated his philosophy in the 1990s, calling for the imposition of Sharia law throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and holy war against America for supporting Israel and its occupation of Palestine, and the US military presence in Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden first came to MI5's attention in the early 1990s thanks to the activities of Egyptian Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became bin Laden's deputy, in Yemen. However, MI5 assessed that, outside Irish terror groups, the main threat came from state sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. MI5's view was that religious terrorism only posed a danger when fused with national self-interest.

Although it was monitoring radicalised British Muslims, MI5 missed the boat in predicting that they might engage in terrorist activity within the UK as well as outside. Likewise MI5 misjudged the possibility of a major attack within America considering the operational environment too tough.

By the mid-1990s, just as bin Laden was emerging as a force to be reckoned with, MI5 was convinced that the threat of international terrorism to British interests was lower than the previous decade. In fact MI5 dismissed fears whipped up by the media that there was an international Islamic network on the verge of launching terrorist attacks against western targets as "greatly exaggerated".

Nonetheless, in the wake of 9/11 British intelligence advice in Washington was that bin Laden was the only one capable of such an attack and that they did not believe any rogue states were involved. When the experts briefed the politicians the explanation was far from comforting. Bin Laden, they said, saw himself as the self-appointed defender of oppressed Muslims around the world, leading a coalition called the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders to fight the US.

His battle cry was that the Christian crusaders led by America were regularly being allowed to defile Islam. He and other Islamists were not so much advocates of a Pan-Arabic world but a Pan-Islamic one – or, more precisely, a Sunni-dominated Muslim world. Bin Laden dreamed of recreating the Islamic caliphate that followed the death of the revered Prophet Muhammad. The Arab Spring has since shown what a hollow dream this was.

It was after Blair met with President Bush at the White House on 20 September 2011 that Operation Enduring Freedom was born. Blair was of the view that simply removing bin Laden from the picture would not be enough – and he was right, as militant Islam was already much too well ensconced around the world.

Blair wanted a long term strategy for dealing with Islamic militancy. Bush told the then British prime minister that the focus would be Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban government. Washington demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden immediately or face the consequences.

For the very first time NATO invoked its mutual defence clause on 2 October 2001, whereby an attack on a member state is considered an attack on all. Five days later the American and British led coalition began systematic air attacks on the Taliban. The rest, as they say, is history.

Blair's legacy is tainted by his ill-judged foreign adventures with Iraq and Libya, but the verdict on Afghanistan remains to be passed. While he was proved right about al-Qaeda, it would be a decade before bin Laden was tracked down – by which time Blair's star had long fallen from grace.

Anthony Tucker-Jones is the author of The Rise of Militant Islam: An Insider's View of the Failure to Curb Global Jihad and the terrorism & security correspondent for Intersec