ASIO has confronted seven Australian Muslims who have had terrorism
training overseas, including one particularly dangerous individual, and is
closely monitoring them, according to former agent Neil Fergus.
The seven were among the risk factors indicating a heightened threat of
terrorist attack within Australia because of involvement in the war on
Iraq, he said, and ASIO had put them on notice that they were not anonymous
in the community.
But a leading defence intelligence specialist warned yesterday that rather
than cause an increased risk at home, our involvement in the war meant
Australians were more likely to suffer terrorist attacks while travelling
overseas or working at embassies.
Des Ball, of the Australian National University's Strategic Defence Studies
Centre, said Australia's small population and lack of radical Muslim
support groups meant the risk of terrorist attacks on Australian soil had
not been greatly heightened by the war.
"But it (participation in the war) may well translate into more attacks
against Australian facilities and people overseas," Professor Ball said.
And although the coalition would undoubtedly crush Saddam Hussein and his
regime in a protracted conflict, the war would be lost in terms of its
broader political goals, he said. These goals included making the US and
coalition allies such as Australia safer from terrorism attacks; spreading
democracy in the Middle East; being perceived as liberators rather than
aggressors by Iraqis; finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in usable
quantities; and finding evidence of links with al-Qaeda.
"I think that over some months the coalition will capture or kill Saddam
and the top leadership but that the principal political objectives of this
war will have most probably already been lost," he said. "The security in
the long term of coalition members is going to be diminished. Australians,
I think, are going over the longer term to become identified as enemies in
this war (the wider war on terror)."
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