Examination of Witnesses (Questions 310
- 319)
TUESDAY 3 JUNE 2003
PROFESSOR PAUL
WILKINSON AND
MS JANE
CORBIN
Q310 Chairman: This is a continuation
of our study as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the foreign policy
aspects of the war against terrorism. Today we welcome for our
first session Professor Paul Wilkinson, who is the Professor of
International Relations and Chair of the University of St Andrew's
Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. I believe
that is still your position, Professor.
Professor Wilkinson: Yes.
Q311 Chairman: Indeed we welcome
also Ms Jane Corbin who is a very distinguished journalist who
has spent substantial time in the region, and I note that you
are about to return to the region within the next few weeks. You
have completed five Panorama investigations into al-Qaeda
since 1998 and you have researched in detail the 11 September
plot and have interviewed, we are told, most of the key players.
Does that sound correct?
Ms Corbin: Some.
Q312 Chairman: Can I begin in this
way with a question possibly addressed to you both. We know that
on the 5 May of this year, President Bush said in a speech in
Arkansas that, "Al-Qaeda is on the run . . .they're not a
problem anymore", since when, as we say in Parliament, an
amendment has been moved and now we have had the attacks in Riyadh
and Casablanca. Is it your view that governments were becoming
rather complacent about the threat of international terrorism
and following the triumph in Afghanistan prior to the recent terrorist
outrages?
Professor Wilkinson: I think that
the American President was perhaps affected by the euphoria of
the military success of his forces in the Iraq war, but I do not
think that serious observers of al-Qaeda's activities really did
believe that the organisation was a finished organisation or that
it was in such a very serious state of disarray that one could
really talk about it being on the run. The implication was that
it was really falling apart. I do not think that that would be
an accurate description. Certainly al-Qaeda was damaged, severely
damaged by the war in Afghanistan, the removal of the Taliban
regime which had sheltered it so carefully and given it the advantage
of training areas and so on, and it was damaged by the capture
of very senior people, like Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
who was caught pretty well a year afterwards in Pakistan.
Q313 Chairman: If we could then turn
to Ms Corbin, do you broadly agree with that? How severely was
the al-Qaeda organisation damaged as a result of Afghanistan?
Ms Corbin: I think in the immediate
months after the Americans began their war against terror in Afghanistan,
there was a huge effect on al-Qaeda. They were effectively on
the run. In fact President Bush used very similar words at the
time. He said that they were a "spent force", that they
were "on the run", and there was some truth to it then.
Bin Laden himself made a last stand at Tora Bora, but was able
to escape and there is every indication, certainly I was in Afghanistan
at that time, that what was left were very much the remnants,
but I think they had a strategy and they always had a strategy
because they planned of course for 9/11 for between two and three
years. They had a strategy to disperse the fighting forces that
survived the war and to send them back, many of them of course
originally coming from up to 60 different countries, these Muslims
from around the world, to send them back to their own areas to
regroup, to retrench and to reform cells and to wait for further
instructions.
Q314 Chairman: And those areas would
be particularly the Philippines, Indonesia—
Ms Corbin: The Philippines, the
Far East, North Africa and of course the Gulf itself, Yemen, Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf States. I think that those waves of fighters
went back to those regions and formed, if you like, a second drive.
There was a six-month period when truly we believed they had gone
to ground. There were isolated incidents, but then I think we
saw very much the effects of that strategy with the Bali bombing
which occurred in the autumn of last year and of course the bombing
in Mombasa which thankfully was not as serious as it might have
been. It could have killed at least 300 to 400 people if the hotel
had been hit at the right time and if the plane had been brought
down. I think we saw very much a year after the 9/11 attacks that
they had regenerated and regrouped and were still a very ambitious
and deadly force.
Q315 Chairman: Professor Wilkinson,
you said that the comment of President Bush was in the aftermath
of the end of the conflict in Iraq. How relevant was the conflict
in Iraq to the war against terror?
Professor Wilkinson: Well, I think
although all of us would breathe a great sigh of relief at the
overthrow of the brutal Saddam regime, most observers on counter-terrorism
would accept that there was a very serious downside to the war
in Iraq as far as counter-terrorism against al-Qaeda is concerned
because al-Qaeda was able to use the invasion of Iraq as a propaganda
weapon.
Q316 Chairman: Did they need any
such weapon or was the Palestine issue sufficient?
Professor Wilkinson: They have
always wanted to latch on to issues that could be exploited in
very dramatic terms, and the proximity of American forces to the
holy places on the Arabian Peninsula seemed to be a very early
issue that they were exploiting to the full. They exploited the
Palestinian issue rather later. They did not come aboard with
a tremendous effort on the Palestinian issue early in the propaganda.
Q317 Chairman: The links of the Saddam
Hussein regime with al-Qaeda international terrorism, you are
highly dubious of in your welcome memorandum to the Committee,
saying in effect that the alleged meeting in Prague was highly
suspect, that the Ansar al Islam on the borders of Iran was outside
the control of the Saddam Hussein regime in any event. Do you
see any connection between that regime and international terrorism?
Professor Wilkinson: The only
connection that we can really say had substance to it is the connection
that we all know about of Saddam's providing a safe haven for
a number of secular terrorist groups which he aided over quite
a long period, groups like the Abu Nidal group, and he did not
of course favour helping groups that had the ambition of dismantling
regimes like his, so extreme Islamist groups would be the last
kind of group that he would welcome in his own backyard because
they had chosen to identify Saddam as one of their key enemies,
a person they wanted to remove because they saw him as an apostate.
Q318 Chairman: And no element of
co-operation or overlap?
Professor Wilkinson: They did
not have co-operation because their ideologies and political goals
are so completely in opposition and I think that basically the
story that there was a collaboration between them was dreamt up
in Washington. I am not quite sure who first planted the stories,
but I have found no substance to them when they are investigated.
Ms Corbin: I have found no substance
either, though I have to say that when I was in Sudan investigating
al-Qaeda's presence there, and bin Laden lived there for many
years earlier on in the mid-1990s, there certainly was a sort
of flirting with various groups trying to gain information from
each other, to get together for discussions and I think it is
true that were feelers put out between al-Qaeda and the Iraqis
and indeed the Iranians, a number of extremist groups both belonging
to Sunni and the Shia persuasion, but that was a very historical
background. I do not think anything came of it. I have never been
able to find any concrete evidence of links between al-Qaeda and
the Iraqi regime, certainly not organisational links. Certain
individuals in al-Qaeda's camp may have passed through Baghdad
and there have been allegations about one individual in particular
who received hospital treatment there, Mr al-Zarqawi. It is not
impossible to say that an individual did not pass through Iraq
at some time, but that is very different from organisational links.
I agree with Paul that Saddam Hussein instinctively distrusted
the kind of ethos that al-Qaeda has as being uncontrollable and
I think the whole question of whether or not weapons of mass destruction
would have been given by Saddam Hussein's regime to a terrorist
organisation like al-Qaeda to be very unlikely because of the
nature of Saddam's regime. If he had these weapons, he would not
wish to cede control of them to an organisation like al-Qaeda
which he had no control over, so I think that a lot of those claims
were exaggerated. I, in my researches, have not found evidence
of those links that are being put forward by some in America.
Q319 Sir John Stanley: Could I ask
you both, do you think on the balance of probabilities that Osama
bin Laden is still alive or not? Do you have any views, if he
is alive, of where he is most likely to be located? Lastly, do
you take the view that al-Qaeda are or are not managed to build
back their organisation inside Afghanistan, notwithstanding the
efforts of the US, ourselves and others to try to keep them out?
Ms Corbin: I believe that he is
alive and he is able to operate with some degree of freedom. I
believe that he never left Afghanistan, that he is still in the
southern or eastern portion of the country or perhaps just over
the border in what are known as the tribal territories in Pakistan.
When you go to the region, you realise there is no such thing
as a definitive border between those areas. Tribal allegiances
run on both sides of the border and I think that those are more
important rather than geographical considerations of whether he
is in X country or Y country. It is all about tribal allegiances.
I think he has never left, that he has gone to ground and that
he has the protection of sufficient people to ensure that he has
not been discovered to date. I think the fact that Mullah Omar
has also not been found is also significant, he moves in very
much the same circles and could expect protection from very much
the same kind of people. I think that the situation in Afghanistan
has deteriorated recently. We know that Hamid Karzai is at the
moment trying to exert control over areas where warlords operate
with impunity and I think that says something about the state
of Afghanistan and the fact that little more than a year after
the war against terror in Afghanistan we have not seen successful
nation-building there and we have not seen security extended.
This is the kind of environment in which al-Qaeda thrives and
this is the kind of place that, if bin Laden were alive, he would
wish to be, so I do not personally believe that he has travelled
to Chechnya or sought refuge in the Yemen or any of the other
theories that we have heard. I think that he never really strayed
very far from where he was in the first place.
Professor Wilkinson: I would like
to agree with that completely, so I will not waste the Committee's
time going over the same ground. I think that is a very accurate
assessment of bin Laden's likely whereabouts. I would like to
add something on Afghanistan, however. I think that when one considers
the very limited peace-keeping force that is now based in the
Kabul area, it would be so much better if we had been able to
devote some greater resource to assist the Karzai Government to
try and gain control over the full territory of Afghanistan. When
you think of the vast amounts of money that have been spent on
the war in Iraq, and I have said earlier that I very much agree
with the universal welcome to the overthrow of the Saddam regime,
nevertheless, if we were looking at it from the point of view
of defeating al-Qaeda as a network, then money spent on stabilising
Afghanistan would have been, in my view, far more wisely spent.
As Jane has said, the country is in a very serious state. Warlords
are becoming deeply entrenched and are siding with Taliban and
al-Qaeda residues and making it far more difficult for the Karzai
Government to maintain credible authority, so I think the challenge
to the Afghan Interim Government is really very serious.
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