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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 36-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
FOREIGN POLICY ASPECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM
Tuesday 1 February 2005 MR OLIVER MILES Evidence heard in Public Questions 118-179
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday 1 February 2005 Members present Donald Anderson, in the Chair Mr David Chidgey Mr Fabian Hamilton Mr Eric Illsley Mr Andrew Mackay Andrew Mackinlay Mr John Maples Sir John Stanley ________________
Memorandum submitted by Mr Oliver Miles
Examination of Witness
Witness: Mr Oliver Miles, MEC International, examined. Q118 Chairman: Mr Miles, may I welcome you warmly to the Committee? You are the Chairman of MEC International, Deputy Chairman of the Libyan British Business Council and you have an extensive personal knowledge of and experience of Libya. We hope to cover areas like terrorism, the relationship of Libya with the European Union, bi-lateral relations. As you know, the remit of the Committee is essentially to look at the subject under review and to make appropriate recommendations to the government. Having once been in government, but no longer, perhaps you could help us as to where you think the British Government performance can be improved. Mr Miles: Personally, I am very satisfied with the British Government's performance over Libya. I think that the breach of relations in which I was personally involved back in 1984 created a vacuum. I, myself, could not see how that vacuum was going to be filled until both Margaret Thatcher and Muammar Qadhafi had left the international scene. I was very impressed by the finesse shown by our former colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - I had, by that time, retired - in somehow bridging this gap, finding a way forward, setting it out in a joint document which was published in 1999 at the time of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and prudently following the guidance which was laid down in that document. Q119 Chairman: So, as a precedent, given the warming in relations, what more do you think the British Government can do in the current context? Mr Miles: There is quite a lot to do in all the usual areas of the development of relations with a country such as Libya: there is trade to worry about, there are human rights to worry about and there are cultural relations to worry about. All those areas have a flow of problems and I think that government has to address them and find ways to deal with them. Q120 Chairman: And specifically? Mr Miles: They seem to have reached a good understanding on the cultural relationship, which is excellent. There are now many Libyan students in Britain; as a matter of fact, there always were quite a lot. Q121 Chairman: Is that under a formal bi-lateral agreement? Mr Miles: Yes, it is now. An agreement was signed just over a year ago and I believe the British Council are even now looking for premises in Tripoli, which will mean re-opening there are a breach of something like 30 years. I think that is a good move and one in the interests of both countries. The trade side, in which I am personally involved at the moment to some extent, through this Libyan British Business Council, has been making rather limping progress. There seem to be no serious obstacles on the British side: there are obstacles on the Libyan side such as their very poor performance over the issue of visas to businessmen and a number of other semi-technical issues like that. I think the government is right to go on pressing for a better performance, and I think they will. It will not be easy and of course we are not the only country which is facing these problems. Libya's other trading partners face them too. Q122 Chairman: Are there any recommendations which you would make to the government to improve performance? Mr Miles: To take the visa question, which is an important one, my own view is that the government have been a bit soft in that we have been willing to give Libyan's visas more freely than they give visas to British citizens. I think that that has been done in the hope that the Libyans would mend their ways and they keep saying that they will mend their ways, but they do not actually do it. I am afraid we ought to be a bit tougher with them and I think that if senior Libyans had to go through the kind of performance that senior British people have to go through in order to get visas, you would find the system would change more quickly. Q123 Mr Hamilton: Welcome Mr Miles. I think you will agree that recent years have seen a remarkable turnaround in Libya's attitude towards weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Some I think would argue that this change was brought about by the war in Iraq, others that it is the culmination of a long process of re-alignment. I wondered what your views were on why Libya has now re-aligned itself and made a rapprochement with the international community. Mr Miles: On the whole I tend towards the second of those two schools of thought. The process of abandoning support of international terrorism has gone on for quite a long time now. I am not absolutely certain of my dates, but I think that it has been evident since the late 1980s and certainly the early 1990s that Libya was no longer, so to speak, offering open house to the national liberation movements, however disreputable, of the world; in particular the Palestinian groups were closed down in Libya, which of course was a very sensitive issue for any Arab government. The reasons behind this I think are very wide and I think I mentioned some of them in the memorandum I put to you. Essentially, all this goes back to a time, first of all, when international affairs were being played out against the background of the cold war in a bi-polar world, where any country which appeared to be standing up to the United States had at least some chance of getting support from Moscow and that is no longer the case. Secondly, it was at a time when the anti-imperialist feelings of the third world generally and more particularly, the Arab world were much more focused than they are now and where Arab governments and the Libyan Government in particular felt it incumbent on them to support the Palestinian cause against Israel and therefore, against the United States. The Libyans have seen that feeling, that idea dissolve gradually as more and more Arab states have taken a more conciliatory position towards Israel and they found that they were left isolated. The Committee suspended from 3.08pm to 3.20 pm for a division in the House I think I had said everything I wanted to say on the first half of your question which was about terrorism, but you also asked about the decision to give up weapons of mass destruction. I think that the explanations which the Libyans themselves have given on this are reasonably convincing, namely that they saw it as a dead-end policy, that it was not contributing to the security of Libya. I think one can interpret that in the light of the Iraq war and not only the Iraq war, the American pressure in general on the weapons of mass destructions and indeed international pressures. They could see, clearly, that whether or not Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction, it was not deterring anybody from attacking him. Now, as I said in my memorandum, I do not think that the actual move to start the process of getting rid of weapons of mass destruction can be attributed to the war itself, because I think, although the evidence is a little bit confused, that it happened before the war. Of course, if you remember the period before the war, there was a period of war fever and so it is rather a fine distinction. You may have seen that Qadhafi himself commented, this week I think, in an interview in Time Magazine, where he said something to the effect that if somebody attacks you and you defend yourself with a nuclear weapon, you are in effect attacking yourself. I think that is a lesson which has gone home. When you add to that the fact that weapons of mass destructions are extremely expensive, extremely dangerous, they take up a huge amount of national resource and so on, you do not have to look any further for the reasons for the decision to abandon them. Q124 Mr Hamilton: Thank you for that. May I continue though, in the same vein? I wondered how committed you thought Libya was to its new foreign policy stance. As I understand it, Libya has moved away from the Arab League towards a greater role in Africa itself. How long lasting will that be? Are they really committed to this new foreign policy attitude? Mr Miles: I do not give very much credence to that myself as a long-term policy. Libya is more of an Arab country than it is an African country; of course it is both in a sense. I think Qadhafi's decision to play the African card, if you like, over the last 10 years or so was a result of extreme frustration and bitterness at the way he felt he had been handled by his Arab brothers, if you like to put it like that, but I do not think it goes very deep. Certainly it does not go very deep with anyone except Qadhafi himself. The Libyan people are much more interested in the Arab world than they are in the African world, and so I would not expect that to be a long-lasting change. If you want to ask the same question in relation to the normalisation process, the return to a kind of more balanced relationship with other countries, including Britain and Europe and also the United States, I think it is very much in Libya's interest, I think Qadhafi has done it deliberately and has put quite a considerable amount of effort into it, but I would not necessarily assume that he is totally committed for the future. If things went wrong, he could change again. Q125 Mr Hamilton: And therefore, is he really committed, and is Libya really committed to the war against terrorism and is Libya providing any useful help or information or intelligence? Mr Miles: I am sorry to be difficult, but personally, I do not really recognise such a thing as "the war against terrorism", but, more to the point, nor does he. He distinguishes very carefully between Islamic fundamentalist violence, which he sees as a threat both to himself and to America and to others on the one hand, and, on the other hand, national liberation movements, resistance to occupation both in Palestine and Iraq, which he would not for a moment associate with terrorism. Q126 Mr Hamilton: So do you think there is a little bit of self-interest in his move back towards a rapprochement with the West? Mr Miles: Yes, of course. Q127 Mr Hamilton: That in fighting the fundamentalists, he is trying to protect his own personal position. Mr Miles: He has to. He has been fighting the fundamentalists a great deal longer than we have and one of his reactions after 9/11 when President Bush said that anybody who harboured fundamentalists should be bombed, was to say "Well, you can start with London" and a very reasonable comment. Q128 Mr Maples: How are these postures by Libya viewed by her Arab neighbours? Is she in some sense returning to a more mainstream view, which a lot of the Gulf States would have shared, of its relations with the West, uneasy though that was, or is he simply just doing his own thing and do they regard him as a sort of maverick, as we did for a long time? Mr Miles: My impression is that the Arab governments and Arab public opinion, if there is such a thing, has never really taken Qadhafi very seriously. They have always regarded him as a bit of a buffoon, going right back to Abdinasir, who was Qadhafi's hero, but who had no time at all for Qadhafi as far as one can make out. I suppose objectively speaking these changes are welcome in that nobody wanted to see Libya continue as a troublemaker, as a centre of problems and difficulty, but I do not think they are taken seriously in any real sense by the other Arab governments or by Arab opinion. Q129 Mr Maples: What are relations with her neighbours like, Algeria and Tunisia and Egypt? Mr Miles: Like most neighbours, I think they have plenty of problems. They have tried in words to patch things up and of course they do have common interests. For example, there are many Egyptians, Tunisians and Algerians working in Libya and earning good money and sending it home, so there is a basis of a relationship there which is beneficial to both sides. At the government level, however, it is fraught with problems and Qadhafi's relationship with the Arab league and its members remains very unsatisfactory. Q130 Sir John Stanley: You expressed doubt as to whether President Qadhafi recognises the war on terrorism. I am sure, however, he would recognise acts of terrorism and in any moment of candour he would admit that his government had had a very, very long track record in this area. Casting one's own mind back to the outrages which led to the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, I suppose most notably the taking of the Achille Lauro liner and the tipping overboard of the Jewish American paraplegic in his wheelchair, the shooting of the woman police officer in St James's Square, the successive shipments of Libyan weapons and explosives into the hands of the IRA and of course the endless negotiations over the bringing to justice of those responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, against that background, how far do you think President Qadhafi is willing to co-operate really positively and actively with our own intelligence services, the American intelligence services, other European intelligence services in trying to identify those who may be responsible for committing acts of terrorism in the future? Mr Miles: If I might first just comment briefly on the background as you describe it, what you say should be remembered, but your catalogue is not complete. You did mention the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi by the Americans from British bases which of course the Libyans remember, particularly as Qadhafi's adopted daughter was killed in one of those raids. You did not mention the shooting down of a Libyan airliner over Sinai by the Israeli Air Force. There are a good many examples throughout history which, as with all these bilateral lists of ghastly events, one side remembers and the other side forgets. I just make that point because you laid a lot of stress on the first part of your question. Coming to the question itself, I think it is quite clear that Qadhafi has every interest in trying to uncover and destroy what I would not call the global war on terrorism, but I would call it something like the Bin Laden franchise, if you like, the people who associate themselves as violent Islamic fundamentalists with Bin Laden. These people have tried to murder Qadhafi in the past. There was an incident in 1998 which was the one which led Qadhafi to put out an arrest warrant for Bin Laden through Interpol and there have been other incidents as well. This has been the most serious internal threat to Qadhafi's regime ever since the beginning of his regime in 1969. So, yes, he has every reason to co-operate. Does he in reality co-operate, does he provide intelligence of value to the British and Americans and others? I believe the answer to that is yes, but I have not been privy to the exchanges themselves so I cannot answer with total confidence. Q131 Sir John Stanley: And in terms of trying to get the best assistance from President Qadhafi in the war against terrorism, what would be your view as to the particular policies that the British Government should be following to that end? Mr Miles: As I said in my first answer, I think the British Government have followed a skilful policy of building up a relationship in these very difficult circumstances. It is still not a very good relationship, but it is a darn sight better than it was. I think that policy is the right one. On this particular issue though, I think we are pushing at an open door. I do not think there is any great need to do more in order to strengthen the co-operation on intelligence. My understanding is that it is pretty well as good as it could be. Q132 Mr Hamilton: Libya has a unique form of government in the Jamahiriya, if I have pronounced it properly, a state for the masses. I wondered whether you felt there was any prospect of political reform there, because there are undercurrents of discontent which have no expression or no way of being expressed. Do you think there is any likelihood of political reform, especially since Colonel Qadhafi himself has no formal role within the revolutionary republic? Mr Miles: During the last year, there seems to have been some opening towards political reform of various kinds. Some of the human rights issues which were completely closed until more of less the time when the announcement about WMD was made, which was the end of 2003, have now been opened. It is only a beginning, but I think that the visit of Amnesty International to Libya in the middle of last year was regarded as a useful and successful visit and one which opened up some of the human rights issues which had been completely closed before. Indeed, it seems that as a result, the revolutionary courts either are being or possibly even have been abolished. Some prison visiting has begun; not to the most notorious prisons, but this is something new which did not happen before and it is genuine, it is actually happening and I know Libyans who have taken part in it. In some sense the political reform agenda is more open now than it was a year ago. Coming to the heart of your question, the Jamahiriya system, the system of popular assemblies so called and the general assembly which is the peak of them which is fundamentally different in principle from a parliamentary system, is still not being questioned it seems by Qadhafi himself. So reform on that, if it is to come, has not started yet. Q133 Mr Hamilton: Where is the main opposition in Libya, given there is no formal method of dissent or opposition, that political parties are not allowed? We know that there has been, as we have mentioned earlier, a great deal of suppression of Islamic fundamentalism and that there are people in prisons going back perhaps 30 years. Where is the main dissent coming from? Is it religious, is it political, is it fundamentalist? Mr Miles: It is very difficult to answer those questions in a country which, until recently, was really pretty closed and remains to a considerable extent closed in terms of expression of opinion and so on. The best answer I can give you is that those essentially religious, if that is the right word, or religious-based opposition elements were far the most serious that Qadhafi has had to face. He has faced them quite intelligently, because he has faced them not only with repression when it has been necessary, but also with provision of alternative outlets for religious sentiment and religious activity in the country, which has been kept under reasonable control. Political opposition in the more conventional sense is not visible; that may be simply because it is kept from our view. However, I do think one needs to bear in mind also that Libya before Qadhafi, certainly if you go back to the beginning of the 1960s, and Qadhafi took power in 1969, Libya was one of the poorest countries on earth. So expectations were very low and people's lives now are in many ways much better than they were in their parents' time. I think this has some impact on people's attitudes towards Qadhafi. It is a very young country, the average age, I do not know but one is constantly told that half the population are under the age of 25 or thereabouts. These are people who have never experienced any kind of state in Libya; many of them may have travelled outside Libya, but they have never seen anything inside Libya except the Jamahiriya system and it has given them some benefits. Q134 Mr Chidgey: As you have already indicated, Mr Miles, there is a great deal of renewed business interest in Libya from the West, but it is quite interesting that, as late as November of last year, Colonel Qadhafi was voicing his disappointment that, if I may quote in his words "Libya had not been properly recompensed" for giving up weapons of mass destruction. He noted "This provided little incentive for countries like Iran and North Korea to dismantle their nuclear programmes". He said he was seeking security guarantees from the US, from Europe and Japan as well as "civilian-use technology in return for abandoning military technology". That leads me to the question: do you think that Libya is satisfied with the benefits it is receiving since he gave up its WMD programme? What more would Libya like? Mr Miles: I think the answer to that is, in general, yes. I do not take those comments by Qadhafi too seriously myself. He does shoot from the hip. One can constantly find things which he says, which - his ministers make no bones about it - are explained away afterwards as, they do not actually say this but, "It's just the old man" is the implication. So I do not think that is to be taken too seriously. What was he trying to achieve? He was trying to achieve some of the obvious things, more and more benefits for his people, a better life for his people and so on and for himself no doubt and for his family, but one major objective which he had in mind was a better relationship with the United States. That was very slow coming, because the Americans, for good reasons or bad - personally I am rather critical of their reaction - took a long time to respond to the changes in Libya but they have responded now and that, I think, is a source of satisfaction to him and to Libya. It is quite an important factor and rather irritating of course, if you are a British or European company and you suddenly find that all the American companies are getting favourable treatment in front of you; but there it is, that is life. Q135 Mr Chidgey: On that point actually, may I now turn to Libya and the European Union? I think I am right in saying that Libya is the only country around the Mediterranean which does not have formal relations with the EU at present; Libya merely has observer status at the Barcelona process. Mr Miles: Yes. Q136 Mr Chidgey: Yet the official aim of the EU is for Libya to become a full partner to that process. If you look at the trade figures, it was interesting you made the comment about the US, my understanding is that several of the EU Member States have extensive trade relations with Libya, particularly Italy, Germany, as well as ourselves and France, so can we not see a movement towards better relations, trade relations with Europe perhaps to balance those that Libya has with the US? Do you think Libya, for example, would consider signing up to the Barcelona process? Mr Miles: Yes. I think I would distinguish between relations with individual countries, and relations with the European Union or with the Barcelona process or whatever. Libya has good trading relations with a number of Mediterranean countries, Italy particularly, France, Germany, not a Mediterranean country, Britain too and these trading relations are long standing and continued quite legitimately throughout the period of UN sanctions because, as I am sure you know, the UN sanctions were not comprehensive, ordinary trade was not affected by them directly. So those are long-standing relationships. The Americans unilaterally withdrew from trade with Libya back at the beginning of the 1980s and this was frustrating for the Libyans. They never wanted to sever relations with the United States, but they found that the United States had severed relations with them including trade relations, not that that prevented the likes of Halliburton and Brown & Root doing big business in Libya under the British or German flag, but, in principle, the American administration said the door was closed. That has changed and that has had a big effect on their attitude towards Britain, for example, because they are not as interested in us as they are in the United States. Coming to the question of the European Union and its various institutions, the Barcelona process and so on, my feeling is that they are not really widely understood or appreciated in Libya and that Qadhafi himself probably does not spend very much time worrying about them and does not in a sense know what the fuss is about. I think he probably looks at the relationship which Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt have established with those European institutions and wonders whether there is really very much in it for him. There is a price to pay. If he chooses to join those institutions, he has to accept the acquis which opens a lot of difficult subjects, most obviously perhaps the one we were talking about just now, the question of democratic institutions and so on. Does he really want to sign up, as the Tunisians, and the Algerians and the Egyptians have apparently signed up, to a row of undertakings about democratic institutions which he does not believe? Q137 Mr Chidgey: You have actually half answered my last question. What I think you are saying to me is that Libya does not really see any benefit from treating the EU as a monolithic bloc; it is quite happy with its bi-laterals with the various trading nations. Therefore, there is not really any effective leverage that the EU can use with the United Kingdom to improve human rights and encourage reform. Mr Miles: I would not go so far as to say there is not any leverage, but I do not think there is much. If I might just add to that, if you were discussing this with Qadhafi or his people, they would say "The proper people to talk to a united Europe are a united Africa not Libya". Mr Chidgey: That is very helpful. Chairman: Mr Miles, you gave a very helpful memorandum to us, you have answered our questions well. My only regret is that we have again been summoned by bells. May I thank you very much indeed on behalf of the Committee? Memorandum submitted by Dr Hugh Roberts Examination of Witness
Witness: Dr Hugh Roberts, International Crisis Group, examined. Q138 Chairman: We turn to Algeria and the evidence of Dr Hugh Roberts currently head of the International Crisis Group's North Africa project, which focuses on Algeria, especially the Islamic insurgency and political and economic reform. Dr Roberts you are currently based in Cairo and travel regularly to Algeria, formerly a senior research fellow at LSE, where you ran a research centre on Algerian studies. May I one, welcome you, two, thank you for your most helpful memorandum and three, give warning that, alas, again the Committee may have to leave to vote? May I begin on the question of violence? What is your judgment on the level of violence currently in Algeria? It clearly has fallen since the high point of 1999 and so on, but has it ended. To what extent is the violence continuing and who is now responsible? Dr Roberts: It is very, very greatly reduced. There was already a very clear reduction between, for instance, 1996 and 1999. As early as 1999, when I was there for the presidential elections, there was a much more relaxed feeling in Algiers and in the other parts of the country I was able to visit. That trend has continued and it has been manifested, for example, in the attitude of the Algerian security services towards foreign visitors. Q139 Chairman: We have to be in the country next week, so the question has a certain relevance. Dr Roberts: For example, people such as journalists used to be obliged to have a security escort wherever they went. This is no longer the case. That is an index amongst others one could mention of the extent to which the situation has been brought under control. Clearly at the same time the violence does continue at a much reduced level. There are parts of the country that remain dangerous, there are parts of the country that are certainly dangerous to travel through at night and I would not travel through them. Q140 Chairman: And who is responsible? Dr Roberts: There are two main groups. The most important is this group called the GSPC which is a French acronym standing for, in English, Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat). The GSPC was based initially and primarily in the area not far from Algiers, the eastern edge of the Matigia[?] plain, south-east of Algiers, which is the western edge of Kabylia region, also the southern Kabylia region, so this is, if you like, east-central Algeria, within 100 to 150 kilometres of the capital, a very populated, but also mountainous area. The other main area of the GSPC implantation was near the Tunisian border around the town of Tebessa in the south-east of the country; I am talking about Algeria north of the Sahara. Then, very unexpectedly, two years ago, there was this sudden development of GSPC activity in the Sahara with the abduction of 32 tourists, which was a very remarkable and unprecedented development. So there has been this third front if you like, the Saharan front to the GSPC's activity. Q141 Chairman: During the savage war of independence, the Kabylia was always the centre of turbulence. Dr Roberts: The Kabylia was certainly one of the main centres of the liberation army, that is perfectly true and it is classic maquis country, classic guerrilla country. So there is nothing surprising about the GSPC being implanted there. What I think was surprising was the Saharan dimension. Before I say a little bit more about that, could I just mention the other two groups that are still active? There is a rump of the old GIA, Groupe Islamique Armé, the Armed Islamic Group, which was the most prominent and most notorious group in the mid-1990s. It should be explained that the GSPC is a breakaway from the GIA; the GIA ended up splitting because of the controversial nature of the tactics it employed, alienating some of its own commanders who disagreed with indiscriminate terrorism and broke away from the GIA as a result. The rump of the GIA still exists in the area south of Algiers to the south-south-west of Algiers, again within a relatively small radius of the capital. Finally, there is a group further away in western Algeria is the Ouarsenis mountains called the Guardians of the Salafi Call, or mission, Houmat Al-Da'wa al-Salafiyya (HDS). They also are a western fragment of the old GIA that broke away at the same time as the GSPC in 1998 for substantially the same reasons. They are less prominent in their activity. Q142 Chairman: What are the links between those groups and the informal economy? Dr Roberts: Very clear in the case of the GSPC. Both in the Kabylia region where it is notorious that they are linked to what is locally known as the sand mafia, le mafia du sable, which is an occult network which is engaging in environmental predatory activity is relation to the environment, taking sand out of the river beds and the sea shores. They are also known to be involved in money laundering. In the Tebessa area, they were involved in trafficking of containers and of livestock and in the Sahara, this is the connection with the Sahara, there has been a longstanding trans-Saharan smuggling racket, particularly cigarettes, what the Algerians call the Marlborough Connection. The person who is regarded as the king of this traffic is linked to and involved in the GSPC, this person called Mokhtar Belmokhtar. There is a nexus which makes one think that in fact this activism for people like Belmokhtar is no longer anything to do with a political project, it is almost a way of life; it is basically criminal banditry. Q143 Sir John Stanley: Do you think that the present British Government and indeed the previous Conservative British Government should have taken more rigorous measures to check the security background of many people with an Algerian background before giving them rights of entry and residence in this country? Dr Roberts: It is not an issue which I have personally studied in any depth. I have concentrated my efforts on trying to figure out what is going on in Algeria, rather than debating issues here. At the same time, I think that, as I understand it, there is no extradition arrangement with Algeria. There is therefore a problem. There are as least two different aspects to the problem I think you are raising. One is of course the internal security problem for Britain, which of course has become more visible over the last three years, but there has also been, of course, the problem in British Algerian relations. Whether or not that is something that one attaches a great deal of importance to in the British Government, certainly in Algiers there has been festering resentment over the question of Britain providing some sort of a haven for elements which are involved in movements causing them headaches. My own understanding of this is that one needs to make a distinction in the question of the diaspora in relation to al-Qaeda or similar brands of Islamic terrorism. Quite a lot of the Algerians who came here in the early 1990s were FIS supporters, that is to say sympathisers or supporters of the Islamic Salvation Front which had been banned in 1992, who found that they could not stay in France and they came to the UK as a second resort, as a second best solution. Some of those ended up being involved in, or sympathising or active on behalf of the GIA. Now that is the kind of activism which is over-spill from Algeria where the orientation is very definitely to the internal Algerian situation. That kind of activism of course did not incline these people to engage in terrorist activity in Britain against British targets. I think one needs to distinguish that category from the quite distinct category of the North African diaspora in Britain and more generally Europe, much more established of course in places like France and Spain, where the orientation is not to an ongoing internal conflict in their country of origin, but is to this much more ideological doctrinaire brand of activism, of which the example before them is al-Qaeda. That is the category from which this Moroccan Zacharias Mousawi, who was allegedly the 20th hijacker on 9/11, came from. My point being that I think that in the majority of cases of the Algerians who came here in the 1990s, there was not a very strong reason for the government to fear a security threat to Britain as opposed to an inclination to be active in relation to terrorist movements in Algeria. I think that what is regrettable is not so much that they did not take more rigorous measures, I do not have an assessment of how rigorous those measures were, so I withhold judgement, but what I do think is problematic is the lack of co-ordination or discussion or consultation with Algiers about some kind of co-operative approach or co-ordinated approach to a problem which, after all, has two ends and which is shared. Q144 Sir John Stanley: I should like to come back to that in a moment, but first of all on the point you made about extradition, is it your own view that there should be a proper extradition treaty between Algeria and the UK? Do you believe that the Algerian judicial system is such that it is a country to which the UK should be willing, be able to take people back to Algeria to face trial? Dr Roberts: I certainly do not have a rosy view of the Algerian judicial system and this is an important issue in the whole issue of reform inside the country. That might well constitute a reason for being reluctant to remove them. The question is: what is British general policy in these matters? Does one only have extradition treaties with countries whose judicial systems one has full confidence in? I do not know. One might have nonetheless discussed the matter along the lines of, if certain improvements or reforms or safeguards or guarantees could be developed at the Algerian end, one might be willing to consider an extradition treaty. My understanding is that this is something which simply has not been addressed and that I think is really quite a strange omission when we think that this issue has been theoretically relevant now for 13 years. Q145 Sir John Stanley: When you refer to the lack of co-operation and co-ordination between Algeria and the UK, particularly in relation to potential terrorists, are you indicating a lack of co-operation between the intelligence services, or a lack of co-operation politically at high ministerial level? What are you particularly highlighting? Dr Roberts: From 1992-93 onwards, Algeria found itself in a general position of quarantine, very isolated diplomatically from most of her former, or potential partners. There is no particular reason to single the UK out in that context but, nonetheless, my impression is that there has been to date very little attempt to engage with the Algerians on matters of common concern. It may well be that that is now beginning to change, but certainly it was very, very striking right through the 1990s, that there was virtually nothing happening here. I am simply conscious of the degree of resentment that existed at the Algerian end about this. Reading the Algerian press regularly, one very frequently came across quite bitter diatribes about British policy, the point that Oliver Miles made a moment ago about London being a haven of terrorism and so forth. This is something you should be aware of, given that moves are beginning to occur towards improving and developing relations; there is a bit of a track record to live down, so far as Algerian attitudes to the UK are concerned. Sir John Stanley: Thank you. You have given us some very interesting issues to pursue. Q146 Chairman: What about links with al-Qaeda? Are there any such links between those groups internally and al-Qaeda? Dr Roberts: There is no doubt that there are links: link of course is a very vague word. The two groups I mentioned are fragments of the third group; they all come from the GIA. The GIA, as its core, was set up by people who were veterans of the Afghan war and therefore had links, before engaging in armed activity in Algeria, links to the people around Bin Laden. A key personality involved in setting up the GIA was very close to Ayaman al-Zawahri, Bin Laden's principal lieutenant, the leader of the Egyptian Jihad group. So there were connections, going right back to the beginning of the violence in Algeria, to the people we now call al-Qaeda. We should be wary of anachronism: al-Qaeda as we speak of it today did not really exist in 1992. Having said that, there are several points which should be made to qualify this question of links. The links do not seem to me to be very significant. First of all, there is no doubt that when the GIA became most savage and most indiscriminate in its terrorism in the mid-1990s, particularly 1996, 1997, 1998, this involved a break with al-Qaeda because it was operating a doctrine that al-Qaeda did not endorse, a doctrine that considered the entire society as apostate; that is not al-Qaeda's doctrine. That was the doctrine that rationalised the indiscriminate killing of civilians by the GIA. When the GSPC and the other movement, the HDS, broke away it was partly because they were rejecting that doctrine; in so far as they were rejecting that, they were getting back to the doctrinal position of al-Qaeda which regards only the state as impious, as a licit object of Jihad, not the society. Doctrinally you could say that the two main movements, the GSPC and the HDS have the same outlook as al-Qaeda. What they are not doing is participating in global Jihad activities. Their agenda is inside Algeria. The GSPC has had networks outside Algeria performing support functions, ancillary functions, fund raising, propaganda, arms procurement, but these networks have not engaged in any terrorist attacks outside the country. Its Jihad is a local Jihad, its conflict is with the Algerian state and as such, I think that it is quite striking that the link with al-Qaeda and even statements that imply allegiance to al-Qaeda have been, so far as one can see, lip service rhetoric, formal allegiance, not actually having any practical translation. Q147 Mr Chidgey: Picking up from that point if I may, Dr Roberts. It does appear that things have moved on since the appalling atrocities of the previous decade. It does appear that significant progress was made with the 2004 presidential elections. However, it does also appear that serious concerns remain about the legal system. What are the prospects for a genuine process of political reform? Dr Roberts: It entirely depends on what you mean by reform. My view is, as I think I briefly stated, that what we are seeing at the moment is, in some respects, an authoritarian development, but on the basis of primacy of the civilian wing of the regime and the effacement of the military. The price for this is being paid in part by formal political pluralism; the political parties are being marginalised as part of this process. That is because of the extent to which the political pluralism of the 1990s, from 1989 onwards, was actually linked to the primacy of the military. The military operated through a strategy of manipulation of political parties with the shift of power from the general staff of the army to the presidency under Bouteflika. Bouteflika is taking control of the political sphere; he is taking it away from the generals and from their proxies in some of the political parties. What we are looking at at the moment has two faces: a very considerable reinforcement of the presidency, which I personally argued throughout the 1990s has been a condition of a resolution of the crisis of the state, that the weakness of the presidency has been one of the premises of the continuing crisis because it has meant that no civilian figure has had the authority to impose any kind of binding arbitration or impose any kind of strategy for resolving. No-one could do a De Gaulle in this situation. So Bouteflika strengthening the presidency is something I personally think is positive, but it has a cost. Where might this go? My own view is that over the next few years, there will be a change in the political climate in the country as the prospect of l'après Bouteflika emerges on the horizon. Bouteflika is 67, soon 68. Under the present constitution he is not allowed a third term and therefore minds will have to be concentrated fairly soon. My own view is that formal pluralism continuing to exist, we can look for some kind of a new development in the party political sphere which might well permit some kind of recovery of a democratic development in the society. In the short run however, what we are seeing is an authoritarian approach which is concerned first to end the violence through a process of national reconciliation, for which Bouteflika feels he has a mandate from the elections, because that was the principal plank in his electoral manifesto and second, an attempt to re-launch the economy, an attempt that is rather dirigiste in spirit and may not be very effective, but it is also an important element of strategy of national reconciliation. Q148 Mr Chidgey: You pose a rather interesting paradox in suggesting, I think I understood you properly, that with the withdrawal, or perhaps forced withdrawal of the army from politics, so obviously party democracy has been weakened. It is not something we normally find in a state. Dr Roberts: I have always argued that the party pluralism which existed in Algeria was really rather phoney, that these were not real political parties, these were relays for the generals operating as representing different positions about identity, Berberism, Islamism and so forth. None of these parties was capable of being alternative governments. None of them had programmes addressing the general range of issues that any Algerian Government should face. None of them actually constituted an alternative to the status quo and that is why they were so congenial to the generals. It was a way of organising divide and rule. Q149 Mr Chidgey: Referring to an earlier answer you gave to Sir John, I think helps me answer my question myself in a way. You always made it clear to us that as far as the war against terror is concerned or, if you like, the international war against terrorism is concerned, in Algeria this has been an inward concept of terrorism, rather than an international concept, so consequently that is not a card for the army to play to restore themselves to any position of power. You need the army involved in politics, in governing the country, to be involved in the international war against terrorism. Dr Roberts: Well, it has turned out that way, but a couple of years ago it looked as though the army was using the war on terrorism quite effectively to shore up its position. Q150 Mr Chidgey: International war. Dr Roberts: Yes, yes, precisely; as a source. The Algerian attitude to the war on terrorism was "Thank you for at last joining our war on terrorism". There was an element of a sardonic aspect of the Algerian discourse on this, which reflected the fact that there was a longstanding critical attitude to the West in general, but the US in particular as being originally part of the source of their problem. Everyone in Algeria knows perfectly well that their problem has been, amongst other things, part of the fall-out from Afghanistan. Q151 Mr Chidgey: Yes, I see. Dr Roberts: When 9/11 happened, the Algerians immediately declared their position four square alongside the Americans. They saw this very lucidly as an opportunity to consolidate their own emergence from diplomatic purdah and the army, I believe, also saw this as an opportunity to secure external backing and external legitimation for its own position. Surprisingly in some respects, it has not worked to keep them at the front of the political stage and the argument which has prevailed within the Algerian army is a rather different one, that in order to maximise the benefits from security co-operation with our Western partners, particularly NATO, we need to withdraw from our over-exposed role in the system of government back home. That is the argument which has prevailed and that has been a premise of Bouteflika's ability to get a second term. Q152 Mr Chidgey: Does that therefore mean that there is now an opportunity with the backing off of the army, if you like, to make some progress towards improvement in the human rights situation? Dr Roberts: I think there is definitely an opportunity there. This is a matter in debate. The problem, however, is, as often happens in Algeria, that the debate gets bogged down in extremely septic issues, the most septic at the moment in this context being the issue of the disappeared. We have a number of different organisations beavering away on this issue, we have a state-sponsored organisation which is functioning as the flak catcher on this issue, the cut-out, to moderate the problem and deflect pressures. I am rather pessimistic about this going anywhere and the Algerian Government is past master at deflecting pressure into unproductive avenues, where passions run high. What no-one is really addressing effectively in my view is the underlying problem about human rights, which is linked to the underlying problem of the judiciary, the fact the judiciary is not independent; you do not have a robustly independent judiciary. The Algerian judiciary is in a worse condition that the Egyptian in that respect. Ultimately this is a function of the fact that you have a very, very weak legislature and therefore an unaccountable executive; the judiciary ultimately does come under enormous pressure from the government, from the upper echelons of the executive branch and all of this means that arbitrariness is built into the way things work. Human rights violations are simply the most brutal expression of a general tendency to arbitrariness and it is something that, as at present, a substantially unreformed political system cannot really address except in a superficial way. Q153 Mr Chidgey: Some commentators argue that there is now a very urgent need for national reconciliation after the years of conflicts in Algeria. In your view, is this being taken seriously by the Algerian Government, by the president? Dr Roberts: It was the most important reason why people voted for him last year. I was there at the time and I listened to his speeches and they evoked enthusiasm and it was a recovery, at any rate of the level of rhetoric, of the Algerian national idea and people voted for it, they liked it. It was, amongst other things, saying "We are fed up with all this identity politics, Islamism, Berberism, what have you, we are all Algerians, we are all Muslims. What is this?". He is now under some pressure to deliver. He has raised expectations. I also think that as president he has an institutional interest in delivering. He does have an interest in the violence ending. There were grounds for suspecting that the Algerian army did not have any trust in the violence ending, that the Algerian army had a rather cold Machiavellian attitude that a certain level of violence was something that they could live with and it actually had dividends. Q154 Mr Chidgey: Just so far as they are involved. Dr Roberts: Yes. I do not think that that applies to Bouteflika; I think he has a genuine interest in putting an end to it. He also knows that he cannot do this without a degree of political negotiation. It cannot be done by purely military means; there has to be some sort of a deal offered to the GSPC, as was offered to earlier movements which accepted a deal and dissolved themselves. He cannot make that deal if there is not political backing in the society, in the wider political class. There are grounds for giving him at least the benefit of the doubt as to his being in earnest about this and he has made some interesting moves recently, including enlisting Algeria's first president, the very elderly Ahmed Ben Bella in a key prominent role in organising a national commission on a general amnesty. These are controversial issues, but the signs are some movement is occurring towards making something happen. Q155 Mr Chidgey: Finally, is there a role for the European Union? What would the role be in improving the socio-economic situation in Algeria and for the Algerians, or would they too look towards the AU rather than the EU? Dr Roberts: They have signed an association agreement and this is a bit controversial, there is a lot of criticism in Algeria of the implications of the association agreement. On the other hand, there is absolutely no doubt the Algerians know perfectly well that they are locked into an eternal relationship with Europe and they want to make the most of it. In this context there has been a very definite improvement in Algerian-French relations. The government is very concerned to balance the US and the French connection so that they are not in the pocket of either and make each work in a renegotiation of the terms of the other. In relation to the European Union, my own view, and the view that the ICG has argued, is that specifically in relation to the question of terrorism or the security question, the EU can help, should help, or should certainly explore the possibilities of helping the Algerians in relation to the link we have already discussed between terrorist activity and mafia economics; smuggling, illicit movements of goods and money and also, of course, human flows. This is something that the EU really should address and it links up perhaps to a wider and much bigger can of worms, the general question of the Western end of corruption networks. Certainly the EU could help there and we also feel it could help, and should help, in the security sphere. The EU should be concerned with the wider security implications of what may or may not be happening in the Sahel region to the south of Algeria. There is, as you probably know, this American pan-Sahel initiative. The Americans are involved in developing anti security capacities in several of Algeria's southern neighbours, Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania. Q156 Mr Chidgey: Francophone Africa. Dr Roberts: The rationale for this being that there is a major security threat in this area, which in fact has not manifested itself in any real activity and therefore I am certainly sceptical about this. One should not of course ignore the possibility that they may develop and I personally think that the EU has an interest and could play a role in complementing US assistance in that area. That would be something in which the Algerians would be quite interested, should the EU wake up to that possibility. Mr Chidgey: That it very interesting. Thank you very much. Q157 Mr Illsley: Dr Roberts, I wonder whether you could shed some light on an issue which was raised with us a few days ago in relation to Algeria's relations with Morocco regarding prisoners held by the Polisario movement, somewhere in Western Sahara but obviously within the remit of Algeria. We were told that something like 410 of these prisoners have been held for over 25 years and they were referred to as the longest serving prisoners ever held anywhere in the world at the moment. Do you have any information on the relations between the two countries in relation to that? Dr Roberts: Are these Moroccan prisoners or Algerian prisoners? Moroccan prisoners. Q158 Mr Illsley: Moroccan prisoners held by the Polisario, perhaps with the connivance of Algeria, I am not sure. Dr Roberts: It would be with Algeria's knowledge and consent or acquiescence. Yes, it is horrifying. I am not sure what I can usefully tell you about this. It is not something that I have made a specialist study of, but clearly there have been these human victims of this terribly blocked situation. The position on the Western Sahara is immobile; we have seen James Baker give us in despair and as a consequence there are these human victims and it is appalling. Precisely why it should be politically impossible to release them, pending any kind of breakthrough on the actual substance of the conflict, I am not sure but I assume that it is simply a cold-hearted political calculus operating here that does not necessarily only operate in one direction. I would not want to encourage you to assume that there are only Moroccan victims of this impasse, but it seems to me that there is a problem. It is very likely to be connected to the general problem of the unwillingness of the Moroccans to treat the Polisario as an interlocutor. That in itself is an inhibiting factor. Q159 Mr Illsley: Does it affect relations between Algeria and Morocco to any great extent? Is there an acceptance of this situation and a resignation that the thing is going to exist in this state for some more time to come or does it periodically flare up into differences of opinion between the two countries? Dr Roberts: My view of this is that it is quite impossible for the Moroccan Government to withdraw on the substance of its claim to the Western Sahara. The internal political costs would be enormous; it would quite possibly destabilise it. Therefore, it has no reason to take any chances in moving significantly. On the Algerian side, the Algerians also have little incentive. The status quo is something that does not cause them any major burden. It has a potential dividend for both sides in that, of course, it is an opportunity to bang the nationalist drum when you need to do so as a distraction from other problems. There is a perfectly understood element in the repertoire of both governments that this is something they can use when it suits them to do so and that there just is not sufficient incentive to move out of the trenches; maybe that is because the nature of the problem has been conceived in a way that has led to the impasse and that a new approach is required, but it is not clear what that might be. Q160 Chairman: How do you respond to current British policy to Algeria, the Foreign Office, the British Council and the World Service of the BBC? Are there any areas where you think that we are failing, any improvements that you would have in mind? Dr Roberts: The Foreign Office, British Council and the BBC. I have for a very long time felt mystified by the refusal of the British Council to go back to Algeria and I understand that it maintains this refusal, maybe I am not up to date, but the last I heard was that it was still adamantly refusing to go back. Q161 Chairman: Because of the security situation? Dr Roberts: I find it impossible to take that pretext seriously. Other countries are active in the cultural sphere. The British Council had a high reputation in Algeria and it was not an insignificant event when it closed down and pulled out. While you could of course explain that and explain it away for the period of really intense violence in the mid-1990s, since the end of the 1990s, it has been pretty difficult to explain in those terms and it is something which I think vitiates attempts to renew and develop British-Algerian relations. Q162 Chairman: Are you saying that the Alliance Française and the Goethe Institute are in place? Dr Roberts: I would not swear to those particular institutions being there, but what is clear is that there are very intense cultural exchanges between France and Algeria in particular, as you would expect, in terms of visits in both directions and so on. The security question is not invoked to justify cold feet at all and I do not think it does justify cold feet. There is that question: why does the British Council refuse to go back? I talk to the Foreign Office from time to time. My feeling is that, had developing British-Algerian relations been a priority for the Foreign Office, it could and would have done other things. My assumption is that the reason why it has not done very much over the last decade or more is because it has attached a very low level of priority to the Algerian relationship. I think that it has allowed a lot of potential opportunities to go begging as a result. Q163 Chairman: Commercial? Dr Roberts: Commercial in the long term, yes, although clearly there is a tendency amongst British businessmen to feel inhibited about the Algerian market. That inhibition seems to me to be to do with - it may be self-reinforcing - the feeling that this is a French preserve or culturally alien and so on, but of course those factors do not really prevent British businessmen engaging with the rest of the Arab world. It is as though Algeria is somehow regarded as peculiarly forbidding in cultural terms from the point of view of British business. My point being here that I think that if one had wanted to develop relations, one could have done a lot and that there has not therefore been the will. In that context, I am struck here that there seems to be an element of irresolution in our diplomatic approach, because particularly recent ambassadors have taken a higher profile in Algiers, have given interviews, have articulated a British interest in improving, upgrading and so on relations and yet there has not been follow-through. Interviews of this kind might then be followed by a decision to make it harder for Algerians to go to the consulate over visa applications, things of this kind. It is as though there is no coherence in the British approach to and relating to the Algerians. As a result I think the Algerians feel very, very strongly that this is not a relationship in which they can have any confidence. If one wants to exploit the opportunities that arguably exist - certainly in the business sphere, this is a country which has grown rapidly in population terms and will continue to grow as an important market - one does need to give some consistency over time to the way one approaches the Algerian partners. Q164 Chairman: Clearly there is a new focus on relations with the Arab world as a whole. I am asking how we can improve matters. How would you advise the Foreign Office in that respect concerning Algeria? Dr Roberts: I think that I should like to see action. I should advise action on a number of different dossiers. Action first of all to get the British Council back, secondly, action to tackle whatever inhibitions are operating at the level of British business circles. In other words, some sort of initiatives in relation to British business circles about informing, arranging seminars, contacts, breaking the ice, breaking this source of inhibition, supporting the improved knowledge of and familiarity with and that of course means promoting exchanges and links of various kinds. There is a lot of scope in the cultural and academic sphere to promote and encourage exchanges. One should not under-estimate the fact that the Algerians have been convinced for years that they need mastery of the English language. It is as though the British still assume that Algeria is still really Algérie française. It is not at all. The Algerians know they have to have English and they are going to the Americans rather than to the British in order to make their entrée into the English speaking world, which seems to be another opportunity we are missing. I should be in favour of a sort of multi-level approach which explores the possibilities for activity in these various spheres. Q165 Chairman: Finally from me on this, the World Service of the BBC, that there is again an enhanced emphasis on the Arab world. What, from the vantage point of Cairo where you live, can you say about the quality, the impact, of the World Service on the North African littoral countries? Dr Roberts: There is a predisposition in all of these countries to respect the World Service. If you want my own judgment on its performance, I think that radio is far superior to the television in terms of the seriousness of its coverage, especially its political coverage; there is far less cliché in the radio coverage, but even there, there is a certain amount of cliché. On the whole, it is not bad and it is certainly not something to be worried about. Where Algeria is concerned, I would say this: that I think there has been a tendency in the World Service to rely on people, a rather rapid turnover of people covering Algeria, who do not really know the place. This ultimately suggests a lack of commitment to doing the country justice and it carries with it the implication of a certain indifference to the place, which is a pity. I think that may be the way the BBC World Service actually operates: it distrusts the idea of the specialist or the person who really knows the terrain. That is something which comes across in errors in the discussion, in the coverage they provide. Chairman: I understand we are about to have a division, but may I thank you for your evidence? May I thank you also for the memorandum, which is most helpful? We know that you have come especially from Cairo and we are delighted.
Witness: Professor George Joffe, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, examined. Chairman: As an old friend of Parliament, Professor Joffe, may I welcome you and introduce you as a senior research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Studies in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) and a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Studies at Cambridge University. You are also engaged in consultancy work on North Africa and, particularly apposite to the current period, honorary secretary of the Society for Moroccan Studies. I personally visited Morocco last year, at the invitation of the parliament for the state opening by His Majesty King Mohammed VI, therefore I can only chair, but Mr Illsley will be opening the discussion. Q166 Mr Illsley: Professor, welcome to our Committee meeting. The first question I should like to ask is in relation to international terrorism and to suggest that Morocco perhaps avoided much of what happened in the rest of that part of North Africa in the 1990s in terms of terrorist atrocities until of course 2003 when the bombings occurred in Casablanca. Following that there was a suggestion of a link between the Madrid bombings and the Moroccan ones. Prior to May 2003 had the Moroccan authorities been somewhat complacent about the threat of domestic Islamist terrorism? Professor Joffe: One needs to distinguish between two separate things. First of all, the events in Madrid in March of last year should be separated out from events inside Morocco itself. The fact was that the Moroccan security services were well aware of the dangers which occurred in Algeria repeating themselves in Morocco and therefore a very strong attempt was made by them to ensure that should not occur. In particular in eastern Morocco, where there were certainly contacts across the border, they made sure that Morocco was isolated. Indeed in 1995 relations between the two states were broken off and the border was closed largely for that purpose. There was, in that year, an attempt coming from France to initiate that kind of terrorism in Morocco. To a very large degree Morocco survived the period of the 1990s without any major terrorism incident of any kind. In the wake of that, it is probably true to say at the beginning of the crisis which begins in 2001, the Moroccan authorities did assume that in some way they would escape the problems which had existed elsewhere. Although they were vigilant, they did not pay attention to certain indigenous developments which were actually quite evident to those who wished to look for them. It was clear that the domestic situation had changed from the nature of the Islamic movements which had existed in the 1980s and 1990s, which were fundamentally movements calling for social and political change and were of very long standing, and the growth of increasingly acute and extreme views in some of the poorest parts, particularly of towns like Casablanca, but also Fez and also Tangiers. The authorities assumed that things would not become dangerous and were therefore taken completely by surprise by the events of May 2003. Those events need to be seen in context, that is to say there were certainly people involved in them who had been in Afghanistan over the previous 20 years and to that extent you could argue they had links towards al-Qaeda and similar movements. That should not be over-exaggerated and I would strongly agree with Dr Roberts that those relations were links in the loosest of senses; they did not imply a commonality of ideology or purpose. Again, the events of May 2003 were fundamentally directed at Morocco and they were directed at the Moroccan state and at attributes of the Moroccan state. Many of the targets were Jewish, but you have to bear in mind that in Morocco the sultanate has always been seen as the protector of the Jewish community, so there was a clear link between the state and the actual targets. To that extent it was a localised, internal matter. The interesting thing is that although the networks were mopped up very quickly indeed and although a very powerful anti-terrorism law was introduced, bringing back the death penalty, in fact there has continued to be low level violence in Morocco ever since; certainly up until May of last year there was evidence of networks existing in the countryside and indeed of there having been the use of traditional "musem", which is a kind of pilgrimage, to act as cover for training camps that were used. That has all been stopped, but nonetheless the evidence of the networks still persists. We have to assume that there is somewhere there a kernel of violence, but again it is internally directed, it is not connected with the outside world. It is for that reason I wanted to make a distinction between the situation in Morocco and that actually in Spain in March 2004. The events in Spain do form part of a much wider pattern. I do not think they argue for a conscious and deliberate link with al-Qaeda, however you care to define it, but they do form part of the same ideological approach at a trans-national level. The fact that they occurred in Spain, that they involved Moroccans but were led by an Egyptian, which is quite significant, do suggest two things: one, that they formed part of the generic and general Salafi jihadi ideology of confrontation with the state and its replacement and, secondly, and this is perhaps the important point, they form part of a much wider movement amongst North African communities in Europe, which also adhere to similar values and similar ideas and do not necessarily reflect origins inside their countries of origin. Q167 Mr Illsley: You have probably answered the second question I was going to ask, about diaspora Moroccans involved in international terrorism and whether they were involved in the domestic situation and links with al-Qaeda. There is a reference to the informal economy, the suitcase trade. Professor Joffe: Yes, the tijara shunta. Q168 Mr Illsley: Perhaps you could say a few words about that. What is the linkage between these small groups, the suitcase trade and the bombings? What is the rationale behind their involvement? Professor Joffe: First of all, it is very dangerous to make two clear distinctions between these phenomena, because of course they have contact at some level and maybe links as well. For analytical purposes, it is more helpful and more accurate to treat them as being separate. May I just make a comment about the state in Europe at the moment of the migrant communities? The danger is that very often their activities may be mistaken as being connected with terrorism when they are not necessarily so or they may only loosely be so connected, because they also involve exactly this element of the informal economy being mixed in with political action and political alienation. One has to be very careful about deciding quite what the significance of some of these events actually is. I should point out that amongst the 612 arrests carried out in this country, only 17 people have actually been accused or tried for terrorist offences. That is quite striking, indicating the way in which it is very dangerous to assume that the whole gamut of offences which are committed and for which people are arrested necessarily relates to a common terrorist cause. As far as the situation in Morocco is concerned, and here it is a parallel to that in Algeria or indeed in Libya, there is a vast informal economy. It is the essential component which soaks up surplus labour and guarantees a degree of social peace. It is therefore, although disliked by government, because it cannot be controlled and cannot be taxed, tolerated and to some extent encouraged. It is not necessarily a mechanism by which you achieve economic efficiency I should point out, because very often it operates with the formal economy lying on top of it and therefore carries additional cost. It is in effect a four sector economy. The point about that trade is that what it does is build up networks and the networks can communicate inside the country and outside it and as such it becomes a very useful vehicle on which you can piggyback political movements. Therefore it is very often connected, in some way, with movements connected with political violence or political opposition. That has been true in part in Morocco, but not in the same way perhaps as has been the case in Algeria. If you look at the movements which have been identified in Morocco, they are located in certain quarters of certain towns. They are related often to the presence of charismatic preachers, often of people who have been involved in events outside Morocco, but they are then localised and there are linkages between them around the country, between, for example, Casablanca and Fez, Fez and Tangiers, but they are not necessarily the same links as you will find through the informal economy. Having said that, the fact of the informal economy, the implication of social and economic deprivation that it implies, is of crucial importance in explaining why there is, as it were, a background against which terrorism and violence can exist. One needs to bear in mind that none of these movements can survive if there is not a generalised sympathy in some way with their wider objectives and that is certainly true in Morocco. Q169 Mr Illsley: You may have heard me ask Dr Roberts the question about the prisoners in the Western Sahara. I just wondered whether you had any view on that. Professor Joffe: Yes, I do have a view on that. First of all, one should bear in mind that there were over 1,000 a year ago and the Polisario Front has, as a gesture, released the majority. That already indicates that the prisoners represent a diplomatic and political opportunity for the Polisario Front. They use them as a mechanism to try to engage the Moroccan Government in direct negotiation. The Moroccan Government has, and it did do so through the Houston agreement and through the good offices of James Baker, but it does not like doing so. It argues that the real responsibility for the crisis in Western Sahara rests with the Algerian Government because it is the Algerian Government which gives the Polisario Front use of territory. The Algerian Government, in a sense, provides the facilities for the Front to continue to operate and therefore it should be talking directly to the Algerian Government. The Algerian Government rejects that and argues that this is a matter to be settled in accordance with the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity resolutions and in turn the Polisario Front points out that there are 400 Moroccan prisoners being held in the Western Sahara by the Moroccan authorities. What you are seeing is the use of these pawns in a wider political game. The Committee suspended from 4.53pm to 5.07pm for a division in the House Q170 Mr Mackay: I want to move on, following Mr Illsley's comments about counter-terrorism, to the political situation in Morocco. We try to follow it, but clearly nowhere near as closely as you do. We have noted that there seems to have been quite a number of democratic reforms, from 1996 onwards in particular. We watched the 2002 parliamentary election, the 2003 local elections, both of which observers appear to say were broadly free and fair. Could you give us a quick overview as to where you think the political process is now and whether it is continuing to move forward? Professor Joffe: Yes, I should be very happy to do that. To understand the political changes in Morocco you need to go back to 1990, which is when King Hassan II, made a conscious decision that Morocco had to develop a more constitutionalised form of government and indeed that human rights formed an important part of that agenda. Although the progress during the remainder of his reign was perhaps not as certain or as determined as one might have anticipated or heard there was undoubted improvement. Freedom of the press began to develop and by and large it was possible to express an opinion, except on the monarchy and over the Western Sahara, without threat of any kind. The king made it clear that he recognised that he would not be able to bring in full democratic reforms, but that he thought that would be something left to his son. That turned out by and large to be the case. The result has been that since his death in 1999, a spate of reforms has been taking place, often against considerable local opposition; I think there particularly of reforms of family law which were brought in at the beginning of last year. Initially, when they were proposed in 2000, they were rejected by public demonstration by a large part of the political spectrum, but they have now been brought in giving women in Morocco virtually the same rights as exist in Europe. This is a quite remarkable achievement. It is also quite clear that the security services were reined in, issues of ill treatment of prisoners by and large disappeared, political prisoners were released, except in the context of the Western Sahara, and a process of confronting the past also began. This has been very impressive. Not only were those who have been in prison been paid compensation, but at the end of last year the Moroccan Government engaged in a process which in North Africa is completely unique of publicly confronting what had occurred. A series of public investigations was broadcast on radio and television on some of the most notorious abuses of human rights, with those involved actually stating their cases, stating what was done to them and the issue being confronted in public. This was quite remarkable. From that point of view it looks very good, but it is not quite as good as it looks. There is a fundamental problem and the problem revolves around the operations of the royal palace. Traditionally in Morocco the royal palace has run a parallel system of government alongside formal government, to which it has been superior. That system has not been dismantled, in other words the king still rules quite directly, he does not simply reign. One of the purposes of the reform should have been to transform his position into a constitutional one of reigning rather than being directly involved in the process of government on a day-to-day basis. That means that there is still an element of arbitrariness inside the political system and the danger there is that at moments of crisis that can always be enlarged. That of course was the danger faced in May 2003, when it appeared as though the security services were to be unleashed again and thereby reverse many of the democratic reforms. That action did not happen and the Moroccan Government and the royal palace deserve credit for being restrained enough for that not to occur. It does mean simply that the potential is always there. The most hopeful thing recently was the passage at the end of December of a new bill outlawing torture and prescribing very severe penalties indeed for its use. All in all, even though I do not think Morocco is yet a fully democratic state, I would consider that it is the most advanced state inside the Middle East and North Africa by far in the progress it has made. The evidence seems to be that that progress will continue. Q171 Mr Mackay: That is very helpful. We have informally heard from another source, who suggested that the king was backsliding a little and that there is a view in Morocco in some circles that he is not pursuing his father's objective and is only going through the motions. What you are saying is that that is not true, but there is still this inevitability about a structure where the royal household operates separately from the main source of government and is more powerful than it. Professor Joffe: Yes, I think that is correct. May I just comment on those views because they are quite often expressed? It is certainly true that if you take a very hard line over the question of what in fact represents democratic governance, there are still many defects in Morocco. It is also true that the king has on occasion shown himself to be more hesitant than might have been expected. In part that reflects the actual political situation in the wake of the events of May 2003, which were a tremendous shock. They also reflect something else which one needs to bear in mind, which is that there is a tradition in Morocco that the son of a monarch is never as good as his father. Although it sounds trivial to say it, it actually is quite a significant fact, because it means that until he has confronted the first major crisis he does not carry the prestige and credibility that his father would have done. Mohammed VI has suffered from that problem in part. There is a further problem too. You need to bear in mind that Mohammed VI's first moves were to dismantle the system of control his father had created, particularly around one leading figure, Driss Basri, who was the Minister of the Interior. Mr Basri was removed from office - with great care it should be said; it was not a violent transition at all - and his departure from office meant that the king had to reconstitute the type of apparatus that Mr Basri had run. He did this in part through the army, which was a break with his father's tradition, in part through his appointment of a new security head, General Hamidou Laanigri. That caused some anxiety because these were figures from the old regime and therefore it was argued that he was actually engaging in backsliding. I do not think the evidence really supports that except possibly over the Western Sahara issue. Q172 Mr Mackay: Returning to the backsliding phase which seems to crop up quite often for the critics and moving on to human rights which you have already largely covered in answer to my first question, you presumably would by and large refute that following the Casablanca bombings there has been a backsliding on human rights and there was an overreaction to an inevitably very difficult crisis. Professor Joffe: I do think there was a backsliding on that occasion. The security services were given a degree of freedom which perhaps they should not have been given. That has now been corrected and I would quote in support simply the latest Amnesty International report which goes out of its way to congratulate Morocco on its progress on human rights, despite its anxieties about certain specific areas. Q173 Mr Mackay: Earlier in your replies to Mr Illsley you touched upon the growing number of slums on the edge of many big cities; you mentioned Casablanca, Fez, Tangiers. Would you agree that a more serious problem is the socio-economic policy which is probably going backwards, whereas you paint a quite positive picture in the political and human rights field? Professor Joffe: Yes, I am afraid I would have to agree with that almost completely. The evidence is, not just in Morocco but elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, except perhaps Tunisia, that by and large the economic restructuring programmes which have been proposed have not succeeded in their objective. That objective was really very simple: it was simply to provide employment through economic development. That was the crucial consideration. By and large, despite very great efforts at economic restructuring, none of the countries concerned, and particularly not Morocco, have succeeded in overcoming that particular problem. One of the reasons for this is that they do not have the kind of comparative advantage which would attract foreign capital in the way say, for example, you will find in South East Asia. That is a major problem. Another reason has been that in many cases legislation has not been appropriate to attract foreign capital. The third reason is that no questions have ever really been asked as to whether the methods by which economic restructuring was supposed to occur and produce the desired outcomes were appropriate or not. To a very large extent the evidence seems to be that they were not really very appropriate. Let me give you one very small example. One of the consequences of Morocco's acceptance of the removal of tariff barriers under the Barcelona agreements and the World Trade Organisation requirements has been that a large part of government revenues has simply disappeared. They were to be replaced by indirect taxation, value added tax, which was introduced four years ago. The evidence seems to be - and here I quote the IMF - that countries which have done this have rarely been able to replace lost customs revenue by additional indirect taxation. That means that government cannot provide the services it requires and therefore it cannot create the conditions which will attract foreign investment. You are caught in a vicious circle. Although the Moroccans have tried since 1983 to achieve effective economic reform, they still have not achieved it and the evidence is the growth in poverty around the main cities. Q174 Mr Mackay: Would you like to comment on another potential burden to economic and social growth, that is the huge increase in the population? Professor Joffe: It is true that the population has increased dramatically, as it has again in Algeria in particular; the two countries have populations of more or less the same size. Actually, however, since 1990 both rates have dropped and therefore the growth in population has declined. What we are seeing now is that birth rate bulge up to the labour market and that is exactly the same problem as in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Middle East. That produces an enormous challenge for government and it is a challenge, which quite frankly, it is unrealistic to think they can meet. Q175 Mr Mackay: Finally, relationships with the EU. What more can the EU do? We have heard from official Moroccan sources that they would of course like more to be done. They vaguely seem to talk - or perhaps I have failed to understand what they are saying - of some half-way house between full EU membership and the current association agreement which they find inadequate. Could you comment or help me on that at all? Professor Joffe: Yes, I can indeed. What they are actually talking about is a policy introduced by the Commission in 2003 at the instigation of Romano Prodi. This is the European Neighbourhood Policy, as it is now known, which is meant to operate alongside the Barcelona process; indeed it is supposed to operate within the Barcelona process because it is a bilateral arrangement between particular countries and the European Union. The European Neighbourhood Policy proposes to offer the same economic advantages to countries which engage in it as are offered by membership of the European Union, but no membership of the institutions and therefore no participation in decision-making powers. The problem is that these are based on access to economic advantage through positive conditionality, which implies political change. The one thing which is lacking is that, unlike the situation inside Europe, there will be no cohesion funding, there will be no structural funding and those of course were absolutely key to the successor countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece. One has to ask the question: to what extent are these countries going to have to suffer considerable short-term pain before any benefits of these policies might then emerge? That is what Morocco is looking for: closer association. Q176 Mr Hamilton: May I ask whether there are any links at the moment with the UK through, for example, the British Council and whether the World Service is active in Morocco? Professor Joffe: Yes. The British Council has long been active in Morocco and has continued to be active. It is very highly respected, it competes with the American equivalent; it competes too with the French and the Germans. It represents for Moroccans - and this is exactly the same as in the case of Algeria - a mechanism for access to the wider world. English is recognised in Morocco now to be perhaps the most important foreign language. The British Council's language services are very highly respected indeed. They are vastly over-subscribed and it is an irony to have to say that the British Council has cut back the funding it provides. I would argue that should be immediately increased and it would be money very well spent. As far as the World Service is concerned, it is a great pity that the World Service has not been prepared to locate its correspondent for North Africa in Morocco; he is actually located in Tunis, which is a long-standing arrangement but it is a pity because it means Morocco gets neglected. I think that one hears far too little about North Africa in general and Morocco in particular, not just on the World Service main services, but also on the Africa service. If you compare it with, say, French international radio, coverage on North Africa is much better. It is a pity because this is part, in effect, of the European periphery and it is directly connected to interests in this country. We have a growing Moroccan community in Britain which has been here for quite some time. We have an interest therefore in knowing what is going on. I have to say that the Moroccan embassy here has gone out of its way to try to promote cultural exchange and contact, but there has been very little support for that from the British side. Q177 Mr Hamilton: Why do you think that is? Is the Foreign Office not interested in Morocco or North Africa or the Maghreb countries? Professor Joffe: Without wishing to tell any tales in court, as it were, I did note that I was once told by the Foreign Office that the Barcelona process was a very good idea, but whether its time had come or not was not yet clear, which for a policy which is actually in being I thought was quite amazing. That does seem to me to indicate that there is not a general interest in North Africa generally or in Morocco. We have other areas which seem to us to be more important, they are much larger trade areas of course, so you can understand that sense of immediacy, but it is missing out on an area of potential importance and an area with which we are connected by the Barcelona process, by the nature of the migrant communities in Britain and by the nature of the migrant communities in Europe. It is also a question of what you do with restricted resources. The Foreign Office has limited resources, it has to choose where it is going to make its focus and it has not chosen North Africa in particular or Morocco for that purpose yet. Q178 Mr Hamilton: What do you think this parliament, the United Kingdom itself, the British Government through the Foreign Office can do both to encourage further democratic development - you have already outlined the developments which have taken place and they are very encouraging - and to help Morocco provide a model to other Arab countries in North Africa and the Middle East of democratic pluralism? Professor Joffe: I think there is a much greater need for cultural and political exchange, that is to say Morocco may well desire to create a democratic political system, it may have put in place the legislation for that purpose, it does not yet necessarily have the habits of mind by which that can be achieved. Local administration for example is often inept, the political parties often do not fully appreciate their responsibilities inside the political system and therefore much greater contact at those sorts of levels will be immensely useful in building an infrastructure which would operate an effective political system. Q179 Mr Hamilton: Is there a lot of corruption? Professor Joffe: Oh, yes, there is a lot of corruption in Morocco, but, again, it is reduced in parts. That also reflects two things: one, generalised poverty; two, the way in which entrenched elites preserve their own interests and preserves. Chairman: There being no other questions, Professor Joffe may I thank you very much indeed on behalf of the Committee for renewing your long links with parliament. |