Perfidious Albion and the dirty little secrets of British foreign affairs
SERPENT'S TAIL, £12.99, 460PP. £11.69 FROM THE INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOP: 08430 600 030 Secret Affairs, By Mark Curtis Reviewed by Kim Sengupta Friday, 30 July 2010 Shot in the back by UK policy? Gurkha Rifles in Helmand For years, violent Islamist groups were allowed to settle in Britain , using the country as a base to carry out attacks abroad. This was tolerated in the belief that they would not bomb the country where they lived and that, as long as they are here, the security service would be able to infiltrate them. At the same time mosque after mosque was taken over through intimidation by the fundamentalists. Police and others in authority refused pleas from moderate Muslims with the excuse that they did not want to interfere. There was even a name for this amoral accommodation: the "covenant of security". We now know that jihadists will indeed blow up their home country and that the security agencies signally failed to infiltrate the terrorist ce...