Examination of Witness (Questions 32-39)
23 NOVEMBER 2004
MS JANE
CORBIN
Q32 Chairman: The Committee meets
again Ms Corbin. You have been tracking al-Qaeda with Panorama
for the last seven years. You have recently worked on the insurgency
in Iraq and the evolution of al-Qaeda from a terror organisation
to "a movement". It is with both those areas of interest
that we seek your advice, so perhaps I may, therefore, first turn
to Iraq and ask you how, in your judgment, does al-Zarqawi fit
into the global picture of terrorism? We knew before the war that
al-Zarqawi worked in this enclave adjoining the Iranian border
and that was largely destroyed during the war, and now he has
moved somewhere near Fallujah, but he is operating fairly freely
within the country. How, in your judgment, does al-Zarqawi and
his own organisation fit into the wider al-Qaeda picture?
Ms Corbin: I think that al-Zarqawi
has sought to affiliate himself with al-Qaeda rather than being
sent to the region as an emissary for al-Qaeda and I think that
is important because it tells us something about the way the organisation
has evolved into a looser network of affiliated groups. His organisation,
Ansar, in that northern part of Iraq, as you say, was allied to
al-Qaeda and then, as it were, developed a life of its own, partly
I think because it was deliberately targeted by coalition forces
in the early stage of the war and was bombed, so you perhaps had
the element of revenge to add to what was already a very potent
view held by al-Zarqawi about America. However, and I think a
lot of people would agree, I think it is perhaps too simplistic
to say that al-Zarqawi himself is part of al-Qaeda or that bin
Laden deliberately sent him to the region.
Q33 Chairman: Does he have a subordinate
role?
Ms Corbin: He would like to be
part of it and in fact earlier this year when I was in Iraq an
interesting thing happened which was that a courier was intercepted
between him and bin Laden and a series of correspondence was revealed
in which al-Zarqawi sought bin Laden's help and support almost,
as it were, to give credence and credibility to what he, al-Zarqawi,
was trying to do in Iraq, and there is no question that he is
trying to pursue the same philosophy to destabilise and to attack
the coalition forces, but it was almost as if he was pleading
to have the umbrella of al-Qaeda over his organisation to give
it legitimacy and I think that is very much what he aims to do.
We know that he knows bin Laden, he has spent time in Afghanistan,
and he has, as it were, the stamp of the Afghan veteran on his
passport, so there are links in that way, but I think it is simplistic
to say he is part of al-Qaeda or he was sent there to fulfil a
role. I think he looks for credibility from bin Laden and he looks
to be part of his organisation, but we do not know whether he
is able to travel freely over and back, or whether he is able
to take any kind of instruction from him in any way. I think one
of the problems with al-Zarqawi is that we in the West, and I
think this is particularly true of America perhaps more than Britain,
we like to know the face of the enemy that we are dealing with
and we have perhaps accorded him a higher profile than he might
have had because with the failure to capture bin Laden and, as
it were, bin Laden disappearing from the radar screens, which
he did until fairly recently, just before the US election, there
was a need perhaps to give the War on Terror a face and that face
in Iraq certainly became al-Zarqawi. The media too had given him
a higher profile and closely linked him to al-Qaeda in a way which
does not reflect the reality.
Q34 Chairman: A higher profile than he
deserves?
Ms Corbin: Yes. It may be that
we are giving him more credibility and in a way by giving him
that profile, giving him publicity, it is a circle, it is a cycle,
and he then becomes, in the minds of those who would give allegiance
to such groups, a bigger figure and it is something we have created.
I think intelligence experts who have looked at him and his background
feel that he is a terrorist, but some feel that he is a psychopath,
that he is criminally insane as well as being a person who has
a terrorist philosophy, and, therefore, by giving such a person
a high profile, we have perhaps contributed to the myth of Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi which is by no means clear.
Q35 Chairman: How much popular support
does he enjoy?
Ms Corbin: I think he enjoys very
little popular support certainly amongst the Iraqis that I have
spoken to in the many months that I have been going there over
the past couple of years. I certainly see no support for him at
street level in the way that Iraqis would support some of their
own home-grown insurgents.
Q36 Chairman: But presumably if he were
able to move fairly freely, which means, one assumes, that people
are unwilling to report on him and he has safe houses, then, whether
by intimidation or otherwise, he has a certain almost invulnerable
position?
Ms Corbin: Well, I think he is
able to move freely because of the chaos in Iraq and he has been
able obviously to move in areas like Fallujah and the "Sunni
triangle" where that chaos is far more serious than it is
in other parts of the country which operate still in a reasonable
way, so I think that that is why he is able to move with impunity
and gather followers and to perpetrate some of the really awful
hostage-taking that we have seen.
Q37 Chairman: But he has a large price
on his head and there are many people who must observe what is
happening, so why is the intelligence not better?
Ms Corbin: I think that it is
very hard to penetrate some of those areas. It has been a problem
for Western intelligence right throughout this War on Terror,
their inability to act on the ground and to recruit people to
actually learn what is going on. When you see that al-Zarqawi
has managed to integrate himself and to, as it were, lose himself
in the general insurgency in Iraq, I think you can appreciate
why it is very, very difficult to find one particular individual.
Q38 Mr Illsley: We can separate al-Zarqawi
presumably from the insurgents, can we? He is not one of these
guys who is going to take a group of people on the street with
a rifle and take on the US Marines. It is criminal activity quite
separate from the insurgency?
Ms Corbin: I do not think we can
separate it from the insurgency. I think we could in the early
days when you heard more about foreign fighters and perhaps if
we go back to last August with the bombing of the UN Headquarters,
that was very specifically seen as Islamic militancy directed
against the UN, but from that time to where we are now a year
later, there has been a mixing, a finding of a common cause between
what was a secular insurgency and an extreme form of Islamic militancy
and I think that it is very difficult now to distinguish the different
strands. That may be why al-Zarqawi is able to hide more closely
and to infiltrate those areas because we have seen the development
of the insurgency in Iraq from what it was a year ago.
Q39 Mr Illsley: Is he likely to become
a leader figure to the rest of the insurgents? Is he going to
be revered as a—
Ms Corbin: I do not think so.
I think it is a marriage of convenience. I think that as long
as there is a common cause fighting the coalition, these groups
will act together in certain circumstances and on certain operations,
but I think that a person like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, even if we
were to accept that he has a certain leadership amongst the Islamic
militant tendency within those groups, I think it would be impossible
that he would become a leader in the broader sense—of the
Ba'athist elements, for example.
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