London: Since the end of the Cold War thriller writers have been searching for a theme to replace it, and novelist Frederick Forsyth believes they may have found it in global terrorism.
In his latest novel, The Afghan, the 67-year-old describes how a British agent seeks to infiltrate the higher echelons of al-Qaeda in a bid to thwart a major attack.
The author of classic bestsellers including The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File sees many similarities between the standoff between the Soviet Union and the West and the phenomenon of violent Islamic extremism.
"A major difference, of course, has to be that the opponent in the Cold War was a nation state," Forsyth said.
"But that apart, (we have) the concept of undeclared war devolving really upon an intelligence war, special forces operations, clandestine, covert assassinations, secret interrogations," he said.
"This I think is going to be the new Cold War. It will be about bodies in alleys, people being infiltrated into terror groups, people inside terror groups being turned,” he added.
Forsyth's research for his novel was meticulous, and involved talking to British intelligence officials who told him it was virtually impossible for a covert agent to infiltrate al-Qaeda.
"I was told it couldn't be done," he said.
"Then I said, 'Do we (the British) have any officers at all who can pass for Arabs among Arabs?' And the answer was, 'Yes, we have three',” Forsyth said.
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