are still very much an ambition of the battered but still capable al-Qaida senior leadership. And naturally the instability that has succeeded the various Arab uprisings also poses a potential threat in security terms. But there seems nonetheless to be a search for new, acute threats to fill the space that the now less scary al-Qaida has left. For many years, the ultimate "clear and present danger" was the prospect of militants obtaining weapons of mass destruction. It was regularly invoked when the terrifying predictions of more conventional catastrophes started looking tired. Now the focus seems to be on new geographic menaces rather than new technological ones. For a while this was the Yemen , but most recently north Africa. "Operating largely from northern Mali, [al-Qaida in the Maghreb] presents an increased threat to our security," William Hague, the foreign secretary, recently told parliament. It's not often that someone based in northern Mali, one of the most remote, poorest and desolate parts of the world, is described as an increased threat to anyone, let alone the UK or Europe, and it is difficult to really see the al-Qaida in the Maghreb organisation as one that should particularly worry the British or other security authorities. It has 1,000 or so active members at most, limited resources and almost no reach into Europe beyond a few scattered sympathisers. Its operations have been largely local and, though some of their antecedent groups in the region launched attacks in Europe, it has yet to