The former head of MI5 delivered a devastating critique of the invasion of Iraq today, saying it substantially increased the threat of terrorist attacks in Britain and was a significant factor behind the radicalisation of young Muslims in the UK.
Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry into the UK's role in Iraq: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – not a whole generation, a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack upon Islam."
Asked by Sir Roderic Lyne, a member of the inquiry, to what extent the conflict exacerbated the threat from international terrorism facing Britain, she replied: "Substantially."
She was not surprised, she said, that UK citizens were behind the 7/7 attacks in London nor that increasing number of Britons were "attracted to the ideology of Osama bin Laden and saw the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their co-religionists and the Muslim world".
Invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein allowed al-Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq which it had never previously managed. "Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before," Manningham-Buller told the inquiry.
She referred to assessments by the Joint Intelligence Committee, of which she was a member, warning ministers that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to Britain. If they read the reports, she said, ministers would have been in no doubt over the threat.
