DISINFO: UK MI5 spy chief peddles ISIS and Al Qaeda ‘threats’ to justify boosting budget
SUMMARY
An MI5 spy chief peddled ISIS and Al Qaeda ‘threats’ to justify boosting the agency's budget. Emphasising the presence of certain threats for the UK and Europe would make it easier to find and raise budgetary resources for MI5 from the British government.
RESPONSE
Allegations made by MI5 Director General Ken McCallum about a resurgent threat by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are backed by actual data. By downplaying it, the claim made in this disinformation story is an attempt to denigrate British and Western intelligence services.
Groups affiliated with both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have carried out record numbers of massacres in Africa. After the October 7 terror attacks in Israel, Al Qaeda called for further attacks against Jewish targets and for a new “vanguard of Jihad”.
Since late 2023, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province was involved in terror attacks in Iran, Russia, Türkiye and Afghanistan, and in multiple thwarted terror operations in Germany, Sweden, Austria, and the US. Other branches of the organisation also attempted terror attacks in Israel, the US or France. In July 2024, the UN assessed that the Islamic State – Khorasan Province was “the greatest external terrorist threat” to Europe. The Pentagon warned that ISIS had carried 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of the yar and was on track to double those of the previous year. One month later, the anti-ISIS US-backed militia Syrian Democratic Forces issued a similar warning, and the Wall Street Journal reported from a US base in Syria about a campaign to contain “a resurgent Islamic State”.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that UK intelligence agencies purposefully escalate international political-military situation to harm Russia, that UK is coordinating the global escalation of tensions, that as in Operation Mockingbird, the CIA keeps its Russophobic influence over media, or that Anglo-American spies try to destabilise Central Asia using Al Qaeda and ISIS.