LONDON, 31 August 2005 — British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw yesterday admitted that he approved a letter written by one of his senior officials in May 2004 warning that the Iraq War had fuelled extremism among British Muslims.
Michael Jay, Foreign Office Permanent Secretary, in a letter to British Cabinet Secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull dated May 18, 2004, warned that “the issue of British foreign policy and the perception of its negative effect on Muslims globally plays a significant role in creating a feeling of anger and impotence amongst especially the younger generation of British Muslims.”
Straw told BBC that the letter had the full weight of the Foreign Office: “What’s said in this letter is nothing different to what I said at the time — indeed I agreed the letter — nor which I fully experienced in my own constituency of Blackburn where 25 per cent of the population are Muslim.”
It is certainly the case, as this letter says, he continued, “that this perception of the negative effects on Muslims has created a situation which is used then by extremists to try and recruit to extremist organizations.”
But, he insisted that there was “no guarantee whatsoever” that Britain would not have been a target for terrorists if it had not taken part in the war in Iraq, and denied that the letter undermined claims by the Prime Minister Tony Blair and other ministers that the Iraq War did not lead to Britain being a bigger terrorism target.
“Would we have been safer had we not taken the military action in Iraq? Now, no one can say for certain but it is my judgment that, because we were in any event a target, and so was the rest of the world, for this extremist terrorism well before Iraq, that there is no guarantee whatsoever that we would have been safer had we not taken military action in Iraq,” he said.
Straw said that wrangling over the new Iraqi constitution was not unusual.
“Constitutional processes, trying to bring these together, always produce arguments,” he said. “If you certainly look at the history of the United States, if you look indeed across the water into Northern Ireland, where we are in a sense involved in a constitutional process, you see where you have people, opposed communities, trying to come together, the process is difficult.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair, who returned to from a fortnight’s holiday in Barbados, came under attack from other critics as well.
Controversial author Salman Rushdie questioned Blair’s staunch support for faith schools, especially Islamic schools.
Blair, according to Muslim sources close to Downing Street, is keen to push ahead with his radical agenda whether in domestic policies such as education, health and transport, and more importantly with his war on terror and extremism.
Despite the continued fall out from the effects of his policy on Iraq and especially repeated warnings from senior officials of the connection between British foreign policy on the Middle East and growing anger amongst British Muslims, Blair is determined to push ahead with his agenda of sweeping reforms aimed at eradicating foreign Muslim extremists from the UK by deporting them to their own countries.
Britain is on the verge of signing agreements with Egypt and Algeria which would give assurances from these countries that deportees would not be ill-treated or executed. London has already signed such an agreement with Jordan.
Already some of those extremists targeted are on the defensive.
UK-based Saudi dissident Mohamed Al-Masari, who has attracted attention of the British authorities for displaying footage of three Black Watch British soldiers being blown up by a suicide bomber in Iraq and encouraging insurgents in Iraq to attack foreign troops, yesterday removed the offensive footage from his website.
