Examination of Witness (Questions 98-113)
PROFESSOR PAUL
WILKINSON
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2002
Chairman
98. Professor Paul Wilkinson, we welcome you
to the Committee. You are the Director of the Centre for the Study
of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews.
You are a prolific author, your most recent book being Terrorism
Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response, published last
year. Professor Wilkinson, let us start with the basics and definitions
of terrorism. There is no UN agreed definition of terrorism. There
have been various attempts to do so, and it complicates attempts
within the United Nations to reach consensus. In your judgment,
is there a realistic prospect of the international community ever
agreeing a definition of terrorism? Can you make an attempt to
give your own definition?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think, Mr Chairman, it is
going to be very difficult to get agreement in the United Nations
among all the members of the Security Council and the General
Assembly. As you know, attempts at a general convention against
terrorism, specifically using the concept of terrorism, failed
in the 1970s; and attempts to revive the project in the 1980s
and1990s also came unstuck. I think we are going to find difficulties
in getting a definition that satisfies everybody. However, because
I have been working in this field for over 30 years, I would record
an improvement in the understanding internationally of what is
meant by terrorism among diplomats, among international jurists,
among governments that have been increasingly concerned about
the threat of this mode of violence to their own populations,
to the security of their own diplomatic facilities etc. Therefore,
although this is one of those slippery terms in political strategic
usage which is very difficult to define in just a few words, I
think that the essential core meaning which differentiates terroristic
violence, the weapon of terror, whether used by states or by sub-states,
those core elements are more generally accepted than ever in my
experience in working in this field. There has been an inching
forward towards greater convergence. If I can attempt the second
part of your question: from a social science point of view I would
define terrorism as a mode of violence which involves, first of
all, the deliberate aim to create a climate of extreme fear; secondly,
it is directed at a wider audience than the immediate victims
of the violence—so in a sense it is a psychological weapon,
and has been very widely used by sub-states in an asymmetrical
conflict which seems to be a way of compensating for a lack of
military strength; thirdly, it involves random and symbolic targets,
including civilians. Of course, it is that which has created particular
outrage amongst communities in which this kind of violence occurs.
Fourthly, it is, of course, seen by those communities, and increasingly
by the international community, as a violation of the norms of
political dissent, political debate and opposition. I must say
this is even the case in countries where there has been very prolonged
terrorism. It is still something which causes outrage, shock,
grief, trauma among the population, however much they are battered
by it. Lastly, I think it is still the case that terrorism is
used primarily as a weapon to create political change, to cause
political change, along the lines desired by the perpetrators
and planners of the terrorism. That, of course, does allow for
the groups that claim a religious motivation and use religious
language but who have a political agenda, very clear political
agenda, to claim that they are doing it in the name of a Holy
war or Jihad in the case of political Islamist terrorists.
99. That is helpful. How great an obstacle is
it in terms of international cooperation that there is no agreed
definition?
(Professor Wilkinson) It is an obstacle to getting
a general convention, I think, in the United Nations. It is not
any longer, I think, a main obstacle to practical cooperation,
because so many governments, particularly since the tragic events
of 11 September, now accept that this is a form of violence which
is a strategic threat to the well being of the international community,
to peace and security and of course, as we have seen increasingly,
to the global economy; because you cannot divorce such an important
economy as the United States from the global economy. Because
that is understood much more clearly than ever before, I think
the practical cooperation does not get preceded, as it were, by
days of debate about what terrorism actually is. Actually the
way in which the international organisations have made progress
in this field, as you know, is by increasingly identifying typical
tactics that terrorists use, such as hostage taking, the hijacking
of aircraft, the sabotage bombing of aircraft, the bombing of
public places, shooting members of the public and assassinations;
and, having identified those, establishing international conventions
which are very important actually. The UN conventions are often
decried but they do form a very important set of standards. I
have discovered, in going round so many countries to talk to their
policy-makers, governments and lawyers, that they are using those
UN conventions as a basis for designing their own national laws;
because at least this provides a framework which then they can
incorporate in their own law.
Sir John Stanley
100. Professor Wilkinson, the stated objective
of President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and the international
coalition is the elimination of al-Qaeda as a terrorist organisation
worldwide. I am interested, first, to get your perspective as
to how far we are towards achieving that objective. Clearly, the
success of the military operation against the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan showed a speed of success that was, I think, way beyond
virtually anybody's expectations when that particular operation
started; but we are told that al-Qaeda operates in 50-plus countries,
and we know that Mr bin Laden and Mullah Omar are probably still
at large with some significant numbers of their senior people.
Could you help the Committee and give us your expert judgment
as to how far we are along the scale of possibilities in terms
of the elimination of al-Qaeda internationally? Do you consider
as of now, following the Afghanistan operation, that al-Qaeda
is mortally wounded; or would you say that al-Qaeda is seriously
but not fatally wounded; or would you possibly say that al-Qaeda
has really suffered only a relatively minor injury? Where do you
judge we are on the scale towards the ultimate achievement of
that objective?
(Professor Wilkinson) Sir John, could I just go back
to your initial assumption. I think actually the United States
Government has a more grandiose aim: it is to eliminate terrorism,
full stop. I do think that that is a very ambitious aim, having
followed for years the difficulties in doing this. I do not underestimate
the determination, and the tremendous changes that have been wrought
in public opinion in America and elsewhere; but I do think it
would be an extremely difficult thing to achieve the total eradication
of terrorism in our lifetime, or indeed in this century. It is
such a deeply embedded mode of violence. It is the most ubiquitous,
from the point of view of sub-state groups, the most widely used
tool of political violence, of all methods of political violence
available to them. It is very hard to see, with all the varieties
of terrorism, how one could possibly achieve that very broad objective.
One of my problems with that phrase "the war on terrorism"
is that it is rather like the "war on drugs" slogan,
it is so vague that it creates perhaps an expectation which is
going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil. The
other problem, of course, is this notion that war (which of course
the average person in the street takes to mean military operations
rather than the metaphorical use) that military operations are
going to be the be all and end all—if only you can bring
military force very effectively to bear on the bases, the training
camps and places where you know the leading personalities and
vehicles are based—that that will somehow cause the collapse
of the terrorist organisations. I think those are unfortunately
errors in our assessment of the nature of terrorism.
To come to the second part of your question—I
think that the military campaign in Afghanistan certainly has
delivered a great blow against al-Qaeda, after all it has removed
the regime which was giving it succour. It is clear from the information
we have now gathered we had an enormous intelligence gap about
al-Qaeda. It is true, much of this has only really come to light
since the military campaign; but it is clear that the Taliban
and al-Qaeda were interwoven, in a way, and probably Osama bin
Laden had considerable influence upon the policies of the Taliban
regime itself. This is an unusually close relationship between
a terrorist group and a government. I think it is also clear that
this campaign has disrupted the communications between bin Laden
and his lieutenants and organisers. However, I would not go as
far as saying, taking your options, that we are anywhere near
actually destroying the al-Qaeda network. I would take the middle
position. They have certainly suffered a severe blow, but they
are still very much in business. The reason for that is, inherently
this organisation is organised on transnational lines—it
has been from the start; and we underestimated (and by that I
am blaming us in the academic community too because we are only
reliant on open sources) the extent to which it had become diffused
all over the world, including in the Western countries themselves,
where they have taken advantage of the openness and freedoms of
our society to move freely across our borders, to entrench support
networks, cells and plan attacks with, as we have seen in the
case of 11 September, meticulous planning involved. We have here
a network that is still extremely dangerous. I think it is to
the great credit of HMG that that has been understood from the
start. I know that warnings have been given by the Prime Minister
and by the Home Secretary to head off any idea that we should
be complacent and assume that, because there has been a tremendous
speed in undermining and toppling the Taliban regime, this somehow
means we can sit back and assume that the problem is solved. It
is far from being solved, because of the horizontal network system
al-Qaeda has developed. This means that there are regional organisations
which are quite capable of operating autonomously or quasi-autonomously
with the ideology that has been inculcated into them with people
who are perfectly competent at terrorism. As we have seen, they
do make mistakes, thank goodness; but, unfortunately, not as many
mistakes as we need them to make if we are going to uncover and
dismantle all these cells. It means, therefore, that the training
facilities that were situated in Afghanistan that have been destroyed
does not mean that al-Qaeda is robbed of training facilities.
They can use camps in Kashmir; they are still using training a
facilities as far away as the Philippines, where they have kindred
movements or affiliated groups which are full of people who are
signed up to Bin Ladin's agenda. This is one of the problems that
we need to address in discussing with the United States the importance
of the international coalition. There is a tendency in some quarters
in the United States, perhaps particularly in the Pentagon rather
than in the State department, to assume that the coalition is
not really a terribly important part of the strategy; it is the
military force that they stress. I think the coalition is absolutely
essential if one is going to have an effect on this very transnational
network. We need the sharing of intelligence: we need the national
judicial frameworks within these countries that have cells within
their borders to take the sort of action which Britain, I am afraid
rather late in the day, and the United States, France, Italy,
the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, are taking now in the light of
the severity of the problem.
101. You have been extremely interesting but
have actually moved into my second question, and I would still
like to take it a bit further with you. What I was going to ask
you was that, if you received a commission from President Bush
or Prime Minister Blair—possibly you have from the latter,
I do not know—and were asked to write a paper from either
or both of them to advise them as to how, post the operation against
the Taliban and al-Qaeda regime in Afghanistan, they should set
about trying to make further substantial progress towards the
elimination of terrorism in toto, as you have put it, what would
be the guiding points of policy and practicality that you would
be pressing on the British government and on the American government
and on the wider international community? What would be your advice
to them?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think I would stress three
absolutely vital, in my view, components. Firstly, the intelligence
battle. We have to make up this huge deficit we have in intelligence
about the internal organisation intentioned plans of the cells
and the regional horizontal organisation of al-Qaeda, and that
battle can only be won by improving the quality of human intelligence—HumInt—which
we gather. Because there has been such a dependence on technical
intelligence, particularly by our American allies, we have a big
gap to fill. We need to train more people who are language qualified,
who have the Muslim faith, who understand the Muslim world. After
all, we have many, many law abiding and bright young Muslims in
our universities and technical institutes who I think should be
recruited into our intelligence effort, because they know that
their people have suffered terribly at the hands of terrorists.
It is not often realised that the majority of victims of civilian
populations killed and injured by terrorism have been living in
the countries where these groups originate, and therefore I think
we would be able to recruit them. Of course, it is a longer term
effort: this is not something you can do overnight, but that would
be the first element in my tripartite priorities. I think it is
absolutely crucial because, unless we get that, we are not going
to be able to be proactive and intervene to capture the groups
before they can carry out attacks of the sort that they carried
out in New York.
Secondly, I would emphasise the criminal justice
role, so often denigrated because it is slow, because it is cumbersome,
and because sometimes it comes to outcomes which perhaps surprise
the public and the law enforcement authorities. Nevertheless,
the track record in bringing leading terrorists to book in recent
years has been greatly improved. If you look at Carlos the Jackal,
Ramzi Yousef, the four involved in the bombings of the East African
embassies who were found to be members of the al-Qaeda organisation,
the evidence brought in those criminal trials was overwhelming
and very impressive for the international community. Justice was
seen to be done: it might have been slow but better slow justice
than no justice, and I think we need to improve the judicial co-operation
and get much greater grip on the problem of bringing these people
to justice. This means trying to wean the intelligence experts
away from the idea that intelligence has to be so protected that
we must never turn it into evidence that will stand up in court.
Somehow we have to re-educate those intelligence personnel who
are reluctant to take things to court that, at the end of the
day, the object is to protect democratic society and the rule
of law and you do have to bring them to court. If you have evidence,
you must prosecute and that will then at least take out of harm's
way those who are found guilty of terrorist crime, and I hope
the United States will be persuaded not to abandon its improving
record in criminal justice because it is much more effective in
persuading the international community of the justice of their
position than using a kind of limbo treatment of military tribunals
which can issue the death sentence without any appeal held in
large part in secret in which the courts would be staffed by military
officers. That is not going to carry much credibility, even with
our European allies let alone with the global community, and,
as I have said, we should be interested in keeping that global
coalition in being. This is one way in which it could be rather
undermined, I think, if we do not get that clear message that
America is upholding that tradition which I rather admired in
America—the tradition of taking criminal justice very seriously,
total independence of the courts, and the recognition of the rights
of the suspect, which are built into the American constitution.
My third pillar is one that we have neglected perhaps
more than any other which is, to put it crudely—and I am
afraid it is a shorthand but you will understand it is not a satisfactory
description but I think it gets the point across—we need
to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. The vast population
we often forget not only in Arab countries but in countries where
there are large Islamist minorities or where there are Islamist
countries outside the Arab world, and we need to try and maintain
their support for a campaign against a form of violence which,
as I said, has injured them gravely and set back their own development
and democratisation, and I think the way to do that is to ensure
that we make the leadership of the strategy much more genuinely
multilateral. Let us give the UN Security Council credit. They
did react quickly to the September attacks; they have set up the
Counter Terrorism Committee under the Chairmanship of our distinguished
representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, and they are making progress
in setting out the system for assessing how far countries that
have signed up to the conventions are actually implementing them.
That is a big step forward: it is the UN becoming proactive for
the first time ever in this business of monitoring terrorism.
So I strongly recommend and I would be urging, if I were ever
asked to write a paper by our Prime Minister, that the United
Nations be encouraged to take this much more leading role - something
they were reluctant to do in the 1970s and 1908s—and I think
they should be given every encouragement to embark upon greater
efforts in disarmament, often forgotten in looking at measures
against terrorism. If you can increase the impact of disarmament
and arms control negotiations to make it more possible to deny
these groups the weapons that they could use as weapons of mass
destruction in terrorism, that would be a greater contribution
to making the world safer. Unfortunately we framed all these conventions—Chemical
Weapons, Biological, et cetera—in an era where we thought
of rogue states as the only threat. There are now rogue groups
which are very dangerous. I do not doubt that, if al-Qaeda had
had access to chemical, nuclear or biological weapons, or a dirty
bomb which would be relatively easy for them to make, I fear they
would use it and therefore we need to concentrate on the weapons
issue and get international co-operation to staunch the flow,
the proliferation, of these materials into the hands of rogue
states and terrorist organisations.
Sir Patrick Cormack
102. You may not be writing a paper for the
Prime Minister but perhaps at some stage you would write one for
us, Professor Wilkinson, because it is very fascinating! I would
like to take you on, really, beyond the third of your pillars
because what is quite clear is that Bin Ladin and his associates
are venerated as heroes, almost saintly figures, in large parts
of the Muslim world and that obviously is extremely disconcerting.
You say that the United States and we have to win hearts and minds:
how do we best do that? Perhaps you could expand a little on that
because it seems to me that is at the root of winning the battle.
(Professor Wilkinson) I think that is a terribly important
but difficult question to answer. One of the things we must do
is to ensure that we demonstrate in our policies and in the way,
for example, that we go about the reconstruction and the rehabilitation
of Afghanistan and the way we deal with prisoners who come into
our hands in the coalition, that we are representing values which
are the absolute opposite of the values that are upheld by the
terrorists. Action speaks louder than words: if we show that we
can treat these problems with humanity and with the kind of restraint
that we have shown in the past, I would claim, in dealing with
terrorism, then that I think sends a message that we represent
the values of a rule of law, democratic society. That is one important
area.
103. Does it really send a message though, to
the suicide bomber, the young man who is absolutely persuaded
that he is going to achieve some form of bliss, nirvana, if he
sacrifices his own life? How do you get across to those young
people?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think that part of it has
to be done by the religious leaders of the countries concerned,
and we have neglected the business of involving the religious
leaders of the mainstream mosques and the teaching Imams in the
schools that teach the Muslim religion. We have failed, it seems
to me, to involve them more in discussions about the dangers of
violent extremism, and they are in a position to influence the
younger generation and to prevent their mosques being used, sometimes
without even the leader of the mosque being fully aware that their
facilities are being abused in this way. It may only be small
numbers recruited in places like the mosques that have been highlighted
in the press in London but these tiny numbers are enough to create
a further terrorism problem, because if they are, as you say,
fanatically committed to the cause and they are prepared to die
in the business of launching an attack, it becomes extremely difficult
for an open society to guard against it, so I do agree this is
a major problem. I think we need to enlist the religious leaders,
and, of course, enlisting their help means time and again emphasising
the message which our Prime Minister and, although I have not
seen so many comments of this nature, the President has issued,
which is that our quarrel is not with Islam and those who want
to set up a new clash of religions or world religious systems
are speaking a lot of dangerous stuff. I would strongly favour
emphasising the importance of a multi religious coalition against
terrorism because it is the nature of terrorism itself that we
are opposing: it is a threat to human rights: it is not a form
of violence which we can tolerate as a means of furthering objectives
in the international community, therefore we wish to enlist you
and the help of your religion in this task.
104. Is one of the other things we have to do
to support regimes which we may not regard as perfect but, nevertheless,
which have a good record of discipline with regard to terrorism
within their midst? Do you think we have to be a little ambivalent
in the advocacy of democratic principles, or do you think we have
to be absolutely down the line advocating democracy whatever happens?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think that we should be offering
bilateral help to countries which show a willingness to move against
this dangerous kind of extremism. Of course, some of them will
not be democracies on the Westminster or Washington model but
we should, nevertheless, try by bilateral diplomacy, by offering
a carefully calibrated technical assistance, to help them to deal
with the lawless areas in their midst because basically, and this
is a problem which I am sure you have addressed very frequently
in the Committee, our problem is that, even if we tomorrow succeeded
in closing down every remaining residue of al-Qaeda and Taliban
influence in Afghanistan, there are lawless areas where these
people still find it relatively easy to move funds, to train people,
to formulate their plans, and therefore we need to try to insist
on countries collaborating, co-operating peacefully with us. The
American model which they have recently adopted with Yemen and
are now offering the Philippine government is a very interesting
one, and we might from time to time, though being aware that we
are already overstretched and must be careful, offer to assist
in such roles, that is helping the host government in an agreed
programme to close down the terrorist training camps or systems
within their own countries. These should not be regarded as terrorist
states. In most cases the countries that have been mentioned by
those in favour of widening the war in the Pentagon are countries
which are failed or failing states that are simply not strong
enough to take the steps needed, and therefore we need to work
with them to deal with problems which, as in the Philippines,
are a terrible nightmare to the government of the day and help
them to resolve them, and I think that is a model which has a
great deal to commend it. It does not have the risk of a wider
war built into it.
Mr Olner
105. Moving along the same route, does the absence
of democracy in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states contribute
to the popularity of extremism?
(Professor Wilkinson) It would be in a way rather
heartening to think that it did but I do not think there is any
sign that the people who admire Bin Ladin's ideas are demanding
a kind of democracy on western lines. Their interest is in a theocracy
that would be rather like the Taliban theocracy, and you cannot
imagine a sort of voting to live under such a system. I think
that the problems of democratisation will need be addressed over
a long period. It is not going to be easy to bring that process
about, but I agree with you that it is something we should be
doing. It is rather like the peace efforts we are making in the
Middle East—Britain and other countries because it has to
be multilateral—to try and bring a rejuvenation of the peace
process. It is something we should be doing in any case, and we
have been doing for a long while. Democratisation it seems to
me is very important and, of course, we must hope that it succeeds
but in the meantime it is in our interest and the interests of
the international community to help these countries to steer themselves
away from the use of their territory by criminal gangs, many of
them into international organised crime in a big way—money
laundering, drugs, people smuggling and so on; it is in our interests
to reduce that illegality, and to encourage governments by other
channels and by all possible means to increase the democratisation
and liberalisation of the political system.
106. How do you explain, then, that young people
from this country and some young people from America are attracted
to forces like al-Qaeda and what-have-you?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think in part they are attracted
by the idea that this religious belief is a superior pure form
of Islam, which, again, is why it is so important to enlist the
mainstream religious teachers and schools to show that, in fact,
this is a very skewed interpretation of the Koran indeed. The
Koran does not give any legitimation for the idea of killing women
and children—it is specifically prohibited—and Mr
Blair in some very useful statements he made quite early after
the September 11 events pointed out the important ways in which
Islam had been traduced and libelled by the people claiming to
act on its behalf. I think what you are really seeing in the young
people who are lured into these extremist groups is people who
are gulled by very ruthless people who are committed to a skewed,
distorted idea of holy war and a hatred of the west and the United
States.
107. I do not disagree with what you are saying
but I am just wondering whether the west has won the propaganda
battle? We are not fighting Islam but it seems to some people
that they are fighting us.
(Professor Wilkinson) I think we have won the silent
majority. There is a great deal of —
108. Does it not worry you that they are silent?
(Professor Wilkinson) It does and yet, if one looks
at the traditions of those countries, if you take Pakistan, it
has been a very volatile country. You can understand people being
reluctant to come openly out into the streets when they know they
will meet people with absolutely diametrically opposed views who
are prepared to be quite violent or threatening, but the fact
is that our specialists, and they are in touch with specialists
who talk to other institutes and universities around Asia, are
quite sure that the silent majority in Pakistan did not want terrorism
to be taking over their government or dominating their system
and they are glad to see steps being taken against it. They see
it as dangerous to their own community and they are very upset
about what happened in America. This is the common view among
Muslims in India, as I have spoken to them, and Muslims in Pakistan
whom my colleagues have spoken to in the Centre.
Mr Maples
109. Continuing this line, can we focus on one
country particularly which is Saudi Arabia, where the whole structure
of the state is based on a deal essentially between the Royal
family and the Wahabi branch of Sunni Islam. We say this is not
a religious battle but do you not agree that this particular branch
of Sunni Islam is at the heart of al-Qaeda and Islam extremism?
Secondly, if the structure of the Saudi state continues as it
is, it is on its way to being a failed state. It is not succeeding
in providing jobs and standards of living, and has no outlet for
dissent except the mosque, which is why young people not happy
with the government do take to this kind of extremism because
there is no other outlet for any dissent that they might want.
There is no effort to introduce any democratisation and we are
terrified of pushing it too hard, because we have seen all over
South America what happens if you support essentially right wing
autocratic regimes. You get the revolution—you have it in
Iran. How do you see this unfolding? How does the west in its
policy to Saudi Arabia—which is unfortunately in this respect
crucial for oil supplies otherwise it would be rather easier to
deal with—square a difficult circle in trying to remove
the part that Saudi Arabia plays in this unholy equation?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think it is worth bearing
in mind that the Saudi Royal family took great exception to the
statements of Bin Ladin and expelled him and withdrew his citizenship,
and Bin Ladin has made threats against the Saudi system because
he sees it as having betrayed the principles of true "Bin
Ladin style" Islam.
110. But it is the foundation of Wahabi.
(Professor Wilkinson) Yes, but one has to remember
that there are groups within the Saudi system who are privately
helping by sending money to Bin Ladin but the official position
of the ruling family is that they are against the kind of extremism
that Bin Ladin represents. They are certainly unhappy about a
close long term involvement of foreign forces near holy places
because that is part of their religious position, but I do not
think that these rumours of an absolutely final conflict, as it
were, a showdown between the Saudi leadership and the American
government, are based on a really clear understanding of what
the Saudi authorities are about. What they are doing is trying
simply to ensure that they are given a chance to discuss these
future relationships with America. I do not think that they are
necessarily heading for a total withdrawal from alliance with
the United States because it would be against their own security
interests, so the Guardian story the other day which looked
somewhat apocalyptic to American commentators, was based on rumours
and private opinions of people who had been spoken to by the correspondent,
but I cannot find anybody in the State department or in the National
Security Council who can say there has been an official demand
of that sort from the Saudi authorities, so I think the idea that
there is a huge breach that is not going to be healed is a speculative
report that some of the press have taken up. I am not under-estimating
the dangers of the failure to democratise the arbitrary nature
of the system and, of course, the way in which some private individuals
are still fuelling the Bin Ladin organisation and similar affiliates
with considerable amounts of money. I think that is something
we must try to persuade the Saudi authorities to take action on.
111. I wanted to move back to some questions
Sir John Stanley was asking you earlier. Why do you think we,
by which I mean primarily the United States but, secondly, the
United Kingdom, did nothing about al-Qaeda in the 1990s when they
blew up American barracks and killed American soldiers, injured
5,000 people in the African embassy bombings, and in late 2000
around the time of the presidential elections they blew up the
USS Cole? Why did the Clinton administration not respond in any
way as far as we can see, even stepping up intelligence because
they knew nothing about the September 11 attacks until they hit
them, and do nothing in response to what was very obviously by
then perhaps not as extensive an international organisation as
we now realise it is but certainly more than a couple of terrorists
in a flat in Damascus? Do you think that the British authorities
tolerated the presence of Islamic extremists in Britain on the
understanding that as long as they did not do anything in Britain
it was okay, they could stay here, because it is now emerging
that quite a lot of these people were based here. I assume our
intelligence services knew who they were; some of them did not
hide themselves. In retrospect, was it not counter-productive
to allow these people to operate here on the basis that as long
as they did not blow up British buildings they could stay here?
(Professor Wilkinson) On the first point, intelligence
failure is the heart of the reason why the Americans did not understand
the severity of the threat against them. I do not think they really
had any idea of the extensiveness, as you put it yourself, of
this movement and the degree to which they were training for attacks
against American targets, not only in third countries, but within
the United States homeland. Secondly, the criminal justice system
has been very often regarded as a rather cumbersome and, if you
like, ineffective way of combatting terrorism and this may explain
why President Clinton turned down the offer of extradition in
1996 from the Sudanese. In retrospect that seems an absolutely
disastrous decision because he could have been brought to justice
at that time, and there was already a lot of material available
on the open sources to show what Bin Ladin was preaching and what
he was about. I think that was a tragic mistake and that was followed
up by two further opportunities that were missed—one offered
by Qatar, where they offered to extradite him when he was en route
from Sudan to Afghanistan with his retinue, changing his location,
and that again was missed, and I believe there was also a third
occasion, though the details of that are a little murkier. Nevertheless,
this was a decision made on a lack of intelligence about the severity
of the threat and a failure to want to take on the difficult—and
it certainly was a challenging—job of using the criminal
justice system to deal with him.
Chairman
112. And the UK position?
(Professor Wilkinson) The UK position I think is one
where we were concentrating rather understandably on the Northern
Ireland spillover of violence from the anti-agreement people,
and that has been a problem as you know, and I think we had a
tradition of rather assuming that, if people were not attacking
British targets, really we should not give such a high priority
to intelligence work on networks that were simply support networks
or were seen to be supporters and sympathisers in this country.
Incidentally, France had a rather similar record until it began
to suffer from the waive of GIA terrorism and I think it is interesting
that France learned from that. We, I think, did not learn from
the French lessons. If we had, we would have really stepped up
our monitoring of the Islamist extremist groups, and we would
have been ahead of the game. Instead of that, I am afraid we did
not do it.
113. How relevant in your view is the treatment
of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to the wider war against terrorism?
(Professor Wilkinson) I think it is extremely relevant
because I think it is crucial to keep the coalition strong and
united, and this is one of those issues which could cause a division
and possible fragmenting of the alliance which would be very serious
in my view. I hope that the British government's representations
behind the scenes do have the effect of persuading our allies
that this is something that they should attend to and that they
should handle under the norms of international law.
Chairman: Your evidence has been extremely valuable
to the Committee and I thank you very much.
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