Trying to guess the mirror games of the secret state is a pastime likely to lead you into many entertaining absurdities. Sometimes though by reading against the grain of an information stream you end up with some interesting possibilities..

The Observer of 4/9/05 reports a "leak" from MI6
 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1562428,00.html
that a
"reveal[ed] that the FCO planned to spread anti-Western propaganda as a way of gaining the trust of Islamic extremists and then arguing that violence was not the way forward"
-- the rest of the article then meanders around in a rather odd way.

So, possibility (1), its as they say, and they wish to plant some moderators

possibility (2) is -- paradoxically -- to open space for agent provocateurs from the intelligence services who promote violence. Implanting a few noisy pseudo "hardmen" into Islamic networks, who would then accuse legitimate moderating voices of being state collaborators, would be an interesting way to disrupt the links between above ground Sinn Fein/Herri Batasuna type organizationsand the underground military cadres. This was experimented with with the IRA, and created a situtation in the Provos where those who had taken part in "military" operations had an unbalanced weight in the "Irish struggle". It is a way in fact to recruit assets among 'moderate' elements, who then become alienated.


The Observer (like the Times and Telegraph) has long been a channel for MI6 Iinformation operations, and I bet once again we are seeing something odd in motion here.