Iraq Policy Spawned New Terror

Last Updated: Wednesday, 11 April 2007,
01:35 GMT 02:35 UK
BBC

The British and US policy towards Iraq has "spawned new terror in the region", a think tank report has said.

The countries had tried to "keep the lid on" problems by military force and had failed to address the root causes, the Oxford Research Group warned.

Global Instability:

It comes as a separate report from Oxfam said the Iraq invasion had "seriously undermined" Britain's reputation.

...In a report a year ago, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) highlighted four areas that it said were contributing to world instability.

Climate change, competition for increasingly scarce resources, marginalisation of the majority of the world's population as socio-economic divisions widen, and the increasing use of military force and the further spread of military technologies were all threats.

Its latest report said these issues were still the greatest threats, but added that the ongoing war on terror and the war in Iraq were increasing the risk of future terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11.

"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror... created a combat training zone for jihadists," it says.

Lead study author Chris Abbott said: "There is a clear and present danger - an increasingly marginalised majority living in an environmentally constrained world, where military force is more likely to be used to control the consequences of these dangerous divisions.

"Add to this the disastrous effects of climate change, and we are looking at a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century unless urgent action is taken now."