UK to shift focus of terrorism fight in north Africa

A meeting of the UK National Security Council will order a shift in resources and energy in its counter-terrorist strategy away from a sole focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East towards what David Cameron described as a "generational struggle" against al-Qaida-inspired militants in north Africa.

Speaking to parliament in the aftermath of the jihadist seizure of an Algerian gas field, which left 38 hostages dead, including six Britons and a Colombian-born British resident, the prime minister pledged to make international co-operation to fight terrorism a priority of his chairmanship of the G8 leading economies this year.

He suggested the national security strategy would continue to tilt towards investing in special forces, cyber-security, drones and intelligence capability, rather than conventional forces. He said the international community's response must be "tough, intelligent and patient", involving political efforts to tackle instability and resolve grievances in the region.

Raising the changing nature of the terrorist threat, Cameron told MPs: "Four years ago, the principal threat from Islamist extremism came from the Afghanistan and Pakistan region. A huge amount has been done to address and reduce the scale of that threat . Whereas at one point three-quarters of the most serious terrorist plots against the UK had links to that region, today this has reduced to less than half."

He said al-Qaida franchises had grown in Yemen, Somalia and parts of north Africa. These states were now no longer threatened by terrorists, he argued, but in danger of becoming "a magnet for jihadists from other countries who share this poisonous ideology".

In the short term, Britain is only going to send a handful of people to the EU military training mission in Algeria's neighbour, Mali, but Cameron wants to see a new intensity of international co-operation to prevent states such as Mali descending into the chaos of Somalia.