“The one thing we can be completely certain of about the War on Terror is that it has failed. After 9/11, Al – Qaeda was made up of a few hundreds or very low thousands of people in a few camps in Afghanistan and on the North West frontier of Pakistan. Now similar organisations control an area bigger than great Britain in Syria and Iraq and a large chunk of South Coast of Yemen, about 250 miles in fact, the distance from Edinburgh to London. They control sections of Libya and they are a growing force in Central Damascus as well as important areas in Africa. They are becoming a real threat as we know in Europe. This book was partly written in the hope that the West will develop a more realistic foreign policy, but I am not optimistic.”

To read more, visit Counterfire.