Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
PROFESSOR PAUL
WILKINSON AND
MR PETER
TAYLOR
19 OCTOBER 2005
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Welcome to the Foreign Affairs Committee. We are very pleased
that you have found time to come before us. As you are aware,
we are discussing a very important topic on which you are both
experts. I will get straight into the evidence session. I welcome
you, Mr Taylor and Professor Wilkinson, to the Committee. We have
seen recent attacks here in London and elsewhere in the world.
Do they indicate anything new about international terrorism? Is
there a change in recent months compared to what we were dealing
with in the period around 9/11 and just afterwards?
Mr Taylor: Are you happy if I
go first, Paul, and we can agree or disagree or whatever. I think
there is a fundamental change in the nature of al Qaeda and its
associated, but not necessarily directly related, groupings. That
is the result of the successes that the coalition had in removing
the jihadi training camps in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was denied
a base in Afghanistan, it tried to set up bases in places like
Fallujah, in Iraq. They were destroyed again by the coalition
forces. My understanding is that in the course of interrogation
of senior or middle ranking al Qaeda people they said they were
under orders to return to their countries of origin to recruit
and train for Jihad on home ground, recruiting home-grown would-be
jihadis, and I think what the recent attacks show is the operation
of those semi-autonomous cells that do not necessarily have any
directly linear connection with al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks were
the result of al Qaeda planning. Al Qaeda was the command and
control centre. It no longer works like that, so these cells are
their protean: they change; they are autonomous, or semi-autonomous.
What binds them together is a common association with the philosophy
of bin Laden and al Qaeda. This makes them all the more difficult
to identify and penetrate for the various intelligence agencies.
I think an indication of that is the attacks on Madrid. The Madrid
cell got under the wire, although there were indirect al Qaeda
connections with Madrid via Abu Dada, who has just got 27 years
in Spain. The attacks in Casablanca got under the wire, the recent
attack in Bali the other weekend got under the wire, critically
the London bombers, the 7/7 bombers from Leeds got under the wire.
There was absolutely zero intelligence on the Leeds cell, nothing
at all, and that is a problem. If the intelligence services, the
security services, are dealing with al Qaeda as such—a bit
like dealing with the IRA that I studied for over 30 odd years—there
is a structure, there is a precise goal and, once you know what
the structure is, you can begin to penetrate and take out the
various cells, al Qaeda and its associated groupings, and there
is a danger of putting the al Qaeda stamp on everything that happens—sometimes
it is justified, sometimes it is not—nevertheless, the threat
that these new kind of cells that subscribe to the same philosophy
as al Qaeda and bin Laden are extremely dangerous and I think
the evidence speaks for itself.
Professor Wilkinson: I agree with
what Peter Taylor has said. I would like to add that I think the
fact that this is a network of networks makes al Qaeda a movement
rather than a traditional type of terrorist organisation, but
we should not under-estimate its significance just because it
is different. In fact, as Peter has made clear, it does make it
far more difficult for the intelligence services and the whole
intelligence community of the coalition against terrorism to track
down cells and to identify new networks as they are created, but
it is even more complex than that. What we have in this movement
is an ideology which appears to be capable of travelling around
the entire Muslim world, not just in the countries which are populated
by the majority of Muslim people, but among the Muslim diasporas,
and it is not really the case that the London attacks were the
first instance of this, but what we are seeing is this trend towards
recruiting local networks which are, of course, in contact with
others in the global network but do not need to go to training
camps. They are inducted from the Internet, from the propaganda
that is available, from people they meet in the campuses, in prison
in some cases, in mosques in some cases, though we must me be
careful of assuming that the traditional mosque is the place where
all the recruitment is done. In fact, much of it is done outside
the framework of the traditional mosque because the young people
who are angry, alienated, likely candidates for recruitment are
in many cases alienated from the mosque community and the traditional
religious leaders; so these are people who are got at in different
ways; but the very fact that these networks are being created,
in some cases in the heart of our cities in western countries,
makes an enormously complex problem, and it is a problem, of course,
in terms of community relations of trying to establish better
relations with the moderate elements in the community who themselves
feel threatened by this extremism within their own ranks, and
I think the numbers are often quite small, but what we need to
remember is you only need small numbers: the 19 hijackers in the
9/11 attacks did terrible damage and took nearly 3,000 lives.
Very small numbers can be involved in deadly attacks, and therefore
we have every reason, I think, to regard al Qaeda as a serious
problem. It is the most serious terrorist threat that we have
at the present time and a more dangerous network internationally
than we have seen in the previous history of terrorism.
Mr Taylor: Can I add one point
on recruiting, because the process of recruiting young Muslims
as jihadis is absolutely critical and there is a distinct pattern
that I have studied in America in Buffalo Lackawanna, in Morocco,
in Madrid, in Pakistan and here, and the process that Paul has
outlined is absolutely right that potential recruits are identified
at radical mosques but the actual indoctrination—the showing
of videos, of Palestine, of Chechnya, of Kashmir and increasingly
of Iraq—is done privately in apartments, flats, etc, afterwards.
The other really interesting factor, and this applies to the Leeds
bombers and certainly applied to the Casablanca suicide bombers,
because I talked to the mother of one of those, is that by and
large the families know absolutely nothing about it. It comes
as a deep shock. You will recall that some of the families of
the London bombers got in touch with the police, saying, "Have
you seen my son?" Answer: "He is dead," and it
transpires that he blew himself up and killed lots of other people.
So we must not assume that families are involved in this. There
is a terrible danger, you are well aware, of stereotyping families
and stereotyping the community. That is really dangerous because
that is counter-productive.
Q2 Chairman: Can I probe you a little
bit more? You referred, Professor Wilkinson, to the Muslim diaspora.
Is this a Sunni Muslim diaspora you are referring to or is it
a Muslim diaspora in general? Clearly in Iraq we have seen statements
made against Shias by people purporting to be part of the al Qaeda
network. I would be interested if you could clarify whether we
are dealing with Islam in its totality or particular types of
Islam.
Professor Wilkinson: The network
is mainly established within the Sunni community. There are some
sympathisers and supporters in the Shia community, but they are
in a relatively small proportion, and, of course, the violence
perpetrated against Shi'ites in Iraq has made the Shi'ite community
very hostile and resentful of the violence that is being meted
by al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, because that is the umbrella name
they give themselves under Zarqawi. It is interesting that in
the recent communication that was published, the translated version,
in the Guardian the other day, of Zawahiri's letter to
Zarqawi, you will find that Zawahiri is warning that that could
be politically unwise because it would threaten public support.
I think the fact is that the majority of their support has always
come from the Sunni community, but in Iraq, because the Shi'ites
are in the majority and because al Qaeda's leaders undoubtedly
hope that they will be able to establish a kind of base in Iraq
to replace the base they lost in Afghanistan, the tensions they
have created between Shi'ite and Sunni that they may feel are
going to work in their favour may be a sign of the weakness of
this networking system. I do not think all the networking arrangements
necessarily favour the al Qaeda movement, because when you have
a movement which is constituted of a network of networks worldwide
there are bound to be some that begin to differ from the core
leadership in its strategy and tactics, and we are beginning to
see that. We see it in the communication that was intercepted
between Zawahiri and Zarqawi, but it has already been noted in
Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia, which is an affiliate of
al Qaeda heavily penetrated by al Qaeda in the late nineties,
responsible for the Bali bombing of October 2002, and Jemaah Islamiyah
has got a faction within it which is vociferously criticising
attacks which put fellow Muslims in Indonesia at risk. That is
an interesting development. None of the core leadership statements
in the past have expressed any remorse or regret about these killings
of large numbers of civilians in Muslim countries. Now there is
perhaps a dawning of a realisation that that is a counter-productive
tactic, and I think it is an interesting sign that they may run
into real problems with other elements in the network; so keeping
the network together, even though you have an ideology which is
quite simple and clear, is actually not as easy as it looks and
they may have over-reached themselves by imagining that they can
keep this whole enterprise together.
Mr Taylor: I commend to you the
letter that Paul refers to that was translated in the Guardian.
It is really significant: because there is a danger of dismissing
the al Qaeda movement, as Paul quite rightly refers to it, as
being a terrorist gang in the same way as we used to dismiss the
IRA way back in the seventies. They are politically sophisticated
to a degree that many of us do not realise, and that letter from
Zawahiri to Musab al-Zarqawi is really worth looking at. He also
warns in that letter—it is sort of friendly advice, it is
not a heavy number from bin Laden's number two to Mr al Qaeda
in Iraq—basically, "Cut out the beheadings because
it is not winning you any friends amongst the people whose support
you need. You need the water in which to swim." There is
an interesting parallel back with Northern Ireland in 1987 after
the Enniskillen bombs when Gerry Adams rarely and publicly criticised
the IRA and said, "You must not attack these kinds of targets.
It is counter-productive." Martin McGuinness did the same
after Paddy Gillespie was tied to his truck, his family held hostage,
told to drive to another check-point and then they detonated the
bomb. He was a human bomb, and that turned off a lot of would-be
supporters for the IRA. McGuinness spoke out. It did not happen
again. So I think that letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi is really
interesting and significant and gives us a different insight into
the way that they are thinking and operating.
Q3 Mr Maples: I would like to ask
Paul Wilkinson, but please come in, Mr Taylor, if you want to,
about what is happening in southern Iraq, particularly in Basra.
I think we were telling ourselves that we were doing rather well
down there—we were doing rather better than the Americans
and things were quite peaceful—but recently, in the last
few months, it seems to have got very ugly indeed. I wonder why
you think it is. Is this a vying for supremacy between Shi'ite
groups? It seemed that everything was about to fall into their
lap—we were practically ready to deliver the whole place
to them—so why has there been this upsurge of violence against
British interests and British troops, and, secondly, what role
do you think Iran is playing, because again one would have thought,
if you were the Iranian government, what you would want is a stable
but weak Iraq on your borders? Why are they trying to stir up
trouble now in the southern bit when it seemed likely that it
was going to fall into their lap anyway? I wonder if you can tell
me what you think is going on there?
Professor Wilkinson: My understanding
is that the politics of the Shi'ite community is quite complex
and that really there are some quite influential figures in the
religious leadership who really do want to keep on good terms
with the British because they believe that that has been advantageous.
They believe the new constitution, if it is accepted in the referendum,
will actually be favourable for them, but there are more radical
Shi'ites, as you know, who were opposed to the whole project of
a period of transition to a kind of democratic project master-minded
by the new government of Iraq with the Americans very much in
the front seat. I think that radical element have been much influenced
by the radical element in Iran, because of course the Iranian
political system has shifted rather with the election of the new
hard line leader, and I think those hardliners are taking advantage
of a natural coalition with the hardliners in southern Iraq. After
all, it contains the holy places which they almost revere as the
Sunnis revere Mecca and Medina. They see these as people who are
their people, and they want to work with them to create a revolutionary
Islamist extension, if you like, of the Iranian revolution in
Iraq. They have been in the minority, and I think they are still
in the minority in southern Iraq, but it does create a greater
problem for the British forces, who I think have been doing brilliant
job of handling this difficult situation. But the very fact that
the Iranians know that area so well, and have their contacts with
the pro Iranian hard-line elements in the militia means that they
are able to work to our disadvantage behind the scenes. I think
that was behind that confrontation, you remember, at the police
station where the two soldiers were being held and they were brought
out by the British Army. I think that the people who were behind
that were in league with the hardliners on the other side of the
border in Iran.
Q4 Mr Maples: So it is almost a struggle
for control between different Shi'ite groups. Is there evidence
that Sistanians or the mainstream, if I can call them mainstream,
disapprove of what is being done and what Iran is fermenting down
there or are they passively taking some of the benefit from it?
Professor Wilkinson: I think there
is some evidence that they disapprove. They would like to see
a stabilisation of Iraq which they think they can achieve with
the constitution giving them a real dominant position which, as
the majority, they believe they are entitled to, and they want
that system to work. They have spent quite a lot of time and effort
negotiating it and they regard the concession that the American
government made about agreeing to the constitution talking about
Islam being the basis of the society as a positive victory for
them, but, on that basis, the moderate Shi'ite leaders are quite
happy to continue with a constitution which has been hammered
out with such difficulty. Of course, one of the problems is that
if the Sunni community rejects it either in the referendum or
through the men of violence simply creating so much violence that
you cannot operate the constitution, the hard-line faction, supported
by the Iranian revolutionary guards and the new Iran leadership,
will undoubtedly try to push matters further. I think what the
British Army rightly feel is that the situation is getting more
difficult to calculate, more dangerous, because this conflict
is becoming much more open. It has been at covert level so far.
Q5 Mr Keetch: I want to turn to the
home-grown Jihad, as you put it. I have seen what you did on the
IRA structure. It was a military structure in a sense: you had
quartermasters, logisticians, reconnaissance groups; you had the
kind of thing you would get in any kind of army structure. I want
to understand the structure of the cell that attacked us on 7
July. Was the person that radicalised those people, in your judgment,
one of the people who blew himself up, or is there somebody beyond
the four that did the radicalising? Equally, in terms of the people
that then supplied the weapons, supplied the bomb-making expertise
and equipment, is there somebody else as well, or was this a group
that literally created itself, went into battle, that no longer
exists?
Mr Taylor: It certainly was not
a group that created itself. It was self-contained. It did what
it did entirely of its own volition and motivation. The answer
to the question we are unable to give at the moment. Perhaps Eliza
Manningham-Buller or Peter Clarke or somebody might be able to
provide a better answer. I doubt it at this stage. My understanding
is that the hunt, the search, for others who were involved—and
unquestionably there were others involved: cells do not just operate
like that, those are the front-line "soldiers" who are
prepared to conduct what they call the suicide mission, the martyrdom
mission. It is likely, I think, that there will be further arrests
in the fullness of time, be they sooner or later, but the hunt
is on for the other people. It is thought that there may well
have been, I hate to use this awful word, mastermind but certainly
a figure, who coordinated, directed them to do what they did.
This is all pure supposition on my part. This is precisely what
the intelligence service are trying to establish at the moment,
and, unlike the 21/7 bombers, who are in custody and may or may
not be talking, none of 7/7 bombers can talk because they are
dead, but the person who recruited them and radicalised them may
have been an entirely separate person. That person may have come
in from outside, may be indigenous, we simply do not know. These
are the critical questions that the security and intelligence
services are addressing.
Q6 Mr Keetch: I am not in any way
asking you to give away information that would affect that specific
case. I am just asking your opinion as an expert. Would you believe
that the people who did the radicalising, was that done solely
in the UK or was that done in maybe visits to Pakistan or elsewhere
or would it have been a mixture of the two?
Mr Taylor: I suspect it was a
mixture of the two. When I did the Pakistan film in my last series
"The New al Qaeda" I did two interviews with President
Musharraf and two interviews with the ISI head of the Counter-Terrorism
Centre, and I had to go back to Pakistan to address the questions
in the light of what had happened here. Both President Musharraf—because
he is informed by his intelligence services anyway—and the
ISI have not the slightest doubt that there is or was a mastermind
figure behind it. They for not surprising reasons wish to downplay
any possible Pakistani connection. As President Musharraf said
to me, "It is your problem. Those are British born Pakistanis.
It is nothing to do with us. They are your problem." I think
that is an over simplification. Two of them certainly did visit
Pakistan. They were there for a period up to three months. As
yet I am told it is not known, although I find it difficult to
believe precisely what they got up to, whom they met, what they
did, but I think the radicalisation and the training may have
happened in a Pakistani camp (although the President assured me
there are no such things now in Pakistan) or it may have occurred
across the border in Afghanistan, but I think it is probably a
combination of external influences and domestic firming up, if
you like.
Q7 Mr Mackay: May I come back to
Iraq for a moment. I will ask you both of you. At some point allied
troops will leave Iraq. The only question is when. I wonder what
impact now and in the foreseeable future that would have on terrorist
activity in Iraq. I suppose behind the question is: are we becoming
more of a problem than the solution of resolving terrorism in
that area?
Professor Wilkinson: I think that
is really one of the most difficult things for us to speculate
about, because of the unknown factors. It is certainly very important
to understand how determined al Qaeda is to try and take advantage
of the situation in Iraq. They are desperate to capitalise on
it, to establish some kind of base, if not the whole territory
certainly a chunk of territory created in some anarchic conflict
situation, and they would use that as a platform for expanding
their activities in the Middle East generally; but I think that
as far as the Iraqis are concerned, they are showing considerable
courage in standing for the democratic idea which many people
assumed they would not really be willing to go for, particularly
with all the threats made against them, and I think that is one
of the most encouraging and heartening aspects of the situation.
The turnout for the constitutional referendum was remarkable,
and so regardless whether one is for or against the original invasion,
one can see some possible really good developments coming out
of this, but so much depends on how successful the fragile Iraqi
government is in pulling the people together, especially the different
elements of the multi-ethnic new arrangements in Iraq, and how
effective the new Iraqi army and police can be at gradually taking
over a larger part of the burden that the coalition troops have
been carrying. I think a too hasty exit would be a disaster, because
there is clearly no will among the international community, the
UN Security Council members, the European Union allies, to take
on the burden that is being carried by the coalition troops at
present. If we were to just say that in a certain period of time—let
us say by summer next year—we will definitely be withdrawing,
that would simply be a tremendous invitation, a spur, to the terrorists
to keep on hammering away under the clear belief that they would
be able to take advantage of that situation and they would want
to build up to a position where they could grab as much territory
as possible and undermine their opponents. I think we have to
be very careful to concert our action with the new Iraqi authorities,
to do our very best to invest in the training and preparedness
of the Iraqi security forces which were, sadly, of course, completely
dismantled with the ending of the initial hostilities, and I think
if we could persuade some countries to join us to replace those
who have pulled out from Iraq so that we can share the burden
more effectively, and particularly if we could persuade the Security
Council, now that the situation has changed so much in Iraq, to
give its blessing to a peace-keeping operation to assist the new
democratic government in Iraq, that would, I think, be a way of
making the transition a great deal easier, adding a great deal
of legitimacy to the security operation. I know that that seems
rather distant at the moment, but I think we have to press for
that and keep on reminding the Security Council that this is a
problem that affects all of us, because it affects the stability
of the entire Middle East. It would have very serious implications
for the entire international community if al Qaeda managed, for
the first time since the toppling of the Taleban regime, to acquire
a territory in which they could again have training camps, conduct
research into weapons of greater destructive power, and so on.
I think we should be able to get the argument across, but, whatever
people felt about the dispute over the invasion, we are now in
a different situation, a much more dangerous situation really
for the international community, in which we need international
support and help to a larger extent than we have had it far; and
that would enable us to gradually withdraw our troops, who have
done, I think, professionally a brilliant job under the most difficult
and testing circumstances with, in many cases, great disadvantages
in not having the equipment they should have had and the resources
they should have had in the right places at the right time when
they were expected to take on this task.
Q8 Mr Purchase: Those of us with
any interest in political history will be dismayed to learn that
part of the movement, as you now term it, is intent on moderating
at least its public face in order to keep its recruits and maybe
to get even more, and it is always more difficult to deal with
people who appear to be reasonable than those who are not, but
I do not think we should be in any way persuaded that any one
faction is any less murderous than the other, and one way—a
dishonourable, a disreputable way—of dealing with political
schisms is by exploiting it by enterism. No doubt we are fully
tooled up for that, but what prospects are there in the face of
the ideology that we are seeing with al Qaeda for a successful
exploitation of any schism that might be present?
Professor Wilkinson: I think you
are right that the core of the movement is not in any kind of
way moving towards the idea of compromise, moderation, etcetera—that
is totally un- characteristic of all their propaganda. Even in
the case of this warning, as Peter rightly described it, from
Zawahiri to Zarqawi, it is not done in terms of moral critique
or of a kind humanitarian concern for his fellow Muslims. I think
we must not underestimate the sheer ruthlessness and brutality
of this movement. It is still acting on the decree, the fatwa
that was issued by bin Laden in February 1988 in which all Muslims
were urged to kill Americans and their allies, including civilians,
whenever and wherever possible. That is a very unusual position
for a terrorist movement to take. In fact, internationally there
has never been a network of the scale we have with a presence
in over 60 counties that has taken that very extreme position.
A colleague of mine who was a pioneer of terrorism studies in
America, Brian Jenkins, described terrorists in the seventies
as people who wanted a lot of people watching, not a lot of people
dead. In the case of al Qaeda, you have really a movement that
clearly still wants a lot of people watching but it also wants
a lot of people dead. We should, I think, bear in mind that in
all these attacks that have occurred since I last gave evidence
before this committee in 2003 large numbers of casualties have
been caused because they deliberately went out of their way to
kill people on a large scale through these attacks. Fortunately
they have not succeeded in doing anything as ambitious or as deadly
as the 9/11 attacks, although they certainly have plotted to undertake
more deadly attacks. In some cases those conspiracies have been
thwarted. In some cases we believe the plans may still exist,
they just have not been implemented, and it is a worry that they
may still try to implement them. So I share your view that we
must not under estimate the potential lethality of al Qaeda and
its potential ruthlessness, but what I would stress is that where
one sees a schism, where you see people with some political criticisms
of a leadership, that is a hopeful sign because the history of
terrorism shows that when they start to quarrel with each other
that is the beginning of their decline. In the case of the Red
Brigades, as I am sure Peter will remember because Peter did some
work on the Red Brigades as well, when the police went to the
safe-houses they would find stacks of communiqués and manifestos
and rival manifestos, because they disagreed with the leadership's
view; and that was the beginning of the end for the Red Brigades,
because it revealed so much about their internal differences it
could be exploited by the judicial system.
Q9 Mr Purchase: I think we have been
there?
Professor Wilkinson: Yes. I think
it is something we should certainly be encouraged by and, wherever
possible, exploit the divisions which take place, but it does
not mean that we can assume that the whole movement has somehow
shifted its centre of gravity to become a more pragmatic corrigible
movement, as it were. I would still view it as a particularly
incorrigible movement because of its dedication to mass killing,
because of the absolutism of its aims and because it is not just
aiming to change the political situation in a particular territory,
such as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, or the Kashmir conflict,
or Chechnya, it is trying to remodel the entire global system.
To us it seems hopelessly grandiose; to them it is a cause which
is going to succeed because they believe Allah is on their side
and because they believe that terrorism is a marvellous weapon
of asymmetrical warfare and they believe that they have carried
it to the heights of sophistication and that they can use it as
the major method of undermining the will of the western democracies
and of the Muslim states. You will remember they want to topple
all those as well because the regimes are seen as apostate regimes
which are betraying the true system that they believe in, which
they believe is true Islam.
Q10 Mr Purchase: Can I remind you
of Lenin and Trotsky.
Mr Taylor: Yes. They see Iraq
as the first domino, and the others dominos, according to their
strategy, then begin to fall. Saudi Arabia is high on the list,
Egypt is high on the list, all those leaders that are regarded
apostates are targeted and, finally, Israel is no more.
Q11 Mr Purchase: But is there a prospect
of any kind of infiltration, entryism, call it what you will,
of that delivering in the short or medium term?
Mr Taylor: When you say "entryism",
what do you mean by "entryism"?
Q12 Mr Purchase: I mean trained people
going into little cells.
Mr Taylor: You mean infiltration?
Q13 Mr Purchase: Yes.
Mr Taylor: It is very, very difficult.
The answer is I do not know, but I would be surprised if the intelligence
services had any significant penetration of the very cells in
the networks. If they had, as Paul quite rightly says, several
very serious attacks in this country have been thwarted because
of good intelligence, but although penetrating the IRA and the
loyalist paramilitaries was relatively straightforward, it is
extraordinarily difficult in dealing with these kinds of groupings,
and that is one of the main problems that the intelligence services
face. It is human intelligence in the end. It is having somebody
in the cell or close to the cell that knows its personnel and
its intentions that is going to provide you with the pinpoint
intelligence to stop whatever they are planning.
Q14 Sir John Stanley: Could I ask
you both, I have seen it written that the single most powerful
weapon that al Qaeda have in Iraq is the video camera, and I would
like to ask you both, have you come across evidence of video footage
being taken not on an ad hoc basis, on a chance basis, but being
taken on a deliberate systematic basis to construct videos which
on the one hand show, as they would describe it, "atrocities"
being committed by coalition and Iraqi forces coupled with "successes",
as they would describe it, against coalition forces for the deliberate
purpose of using these on the Internet and most particularly using
them in video form as recruiting drums for suicide bombers? Is
Iraq being used as a test-bed and an area where there is a systematic
use by al Qaeda of the production of these sorts of videos with
the express purpose of recruiting additional suicide bombers?
Professor Wilkinson: I think my
short answer to that, Sir John, would be, yes, but in Peter Taylor
we have an expert commentator on these matters. Some of you will
have seen his three documentaries on the New al Qaeda. Anyone
who has not managed to get hold of it, please have a word with
Peter because it is a superb series, the best guide to the new
al Qaeda that has been presented on television, I think. He shows
how they use this very systematic method of collecting images,
and I ought to let Peter describe it.
Mr Taylor: We devoted a whole
programme called "Jihad.com", and Ann has a copy of
three DVDs of the three programmes. The first one, "Jihad.com"
looked at the very issue that Sir John has questioned us about.
I think it is an issue of supreme importance, because they are
technically advanced, they use, they manipulate the situation
in Iraq, and I am very worried about Iraq. I see it as a potential
Vietnam. They use the situation there to recruit, to propagandise,
to fund raise, to train and also to plan and operate, and it is
the images that they film in Iraq, and it is very straightforward.
They go into a shop or have one imported for them, just a basic
video camera, they plan a suicide operation, and the classic case
in point is the awful case of the killing of the three Black Watch
soldiers which I questioned Dr Mohammed al-Masari about and had
him talk me through the video and said, "How can you seriously
allow this to be on your website?" and asked all those obvious
questions, but that is a classic case. They video the suicide
bomber putting his belt on, they video and record him in the truck
load of explosives going towards the target, which is the Black
Watch vehicle, they record him saying "Allah U Akhbar, Allah
U Akhbar, Allah U Akhbar", and then they record the explosion
and the deaths of the soldiers. They recorded, but, of course,
we did not show, the remains of the soldiers being kicked in the
dirt. All this is then simply slotted into a USB port of a laptop
and it is zoomed up into the ether, downloaded at point A which
is ready for it and then it is disseminated round the world, just
like that—it is as simple as that—and you cannot stop
it. That, I think, more than anything is one of the most powerful
recruiting tools that they have, and my information is that in
the analysis of the laptops of the Leeds bombers, the 7/7 bombers,
the laptops they used, the computers that they used outside of
their homes, the hard drives reveal exactly the kind of things—Iraq
beheadings, jihadi propaganda—that we delineated in the
programme. It is hugely important. The question is: how can you
stop it? It is very, very difficult. It is also a useful intelligence
base for the intelligence services, but I think the disadvantages
hugely outweigh the advantages. It is really difficult, but really
important. Iraq is the single most important recruiting tool that
they have, there is no question about it, and when the Prime Minister
made that remark about "It has got nothing to do with Iraq;
they will think of any excuse", I was surprised because the
Prime Minister has a very fine record on countering "terrorism
and political violence", and I was surprised to hear him
say that kind of remark about Iraq, which is patently not true,
in my view anyway.
Q15 Ms Stuart: I was interested in
Professor Wilkinson's observation in comparison with the seventies,
because I have been toying with the idea that there may be similarities.
I wondered to what extent. In a sense there was a similarity.
The similarity was that they wanted to change the world, and I
remember living through Black September and all that, but, given
the importance of propaganda and given, as Peter tells us, in
a sense we cannot do anything to stop their propaganda—and
I think it was Professor Wilkinson who draws attention to the
Voice of the Caliphate in your submission—are we missing
something in trying to put our story, kind of counter propaganda?
Are we sufficiently switched on to draw an alternative picture
through our means, whether it is major television, the BBC or
an Arabic television station? Is it that kind of thing? In your
view is there something we could do to be proactive?
Professor Wilkinson: I believe
we should be doing far more. I think we are failing on this particular
score. The Americans are only spending, we discovered, 3% of their
entire defence budget on public diplomacy on information. If you
compare that with the Cold War years where information was so
important—it ultimately helped us to end the Cold War—I
think it is absolutely incompetent of us not to be doing more
to use all the channels of communication that are open to us.
We have the people with the language expertise, we have the media
technology, but we are not making enough use of it, in my view,
and I think that is a big failing: because as long as those ideas
are unanswered, we are really creating new generations of suicide
bombers while we are busy trying to unravel the existing networks
and new ones are emerging. I think that the other point I would
want to emphasise at this stage, because it goes hand in hand
with the argument about the battle of ideas, is that observation
of human rights protection in the policies of our country and
all the countries in the coalition, including, of course, the
United States, is not just a luxury. You do get comments sometimes
from leaders within the coalition countries who imply that somehow
this is something we can hardly afford to worry about. I regard
it as absolutely central: because if your deeds are not seen to
be matching your rhetoric and your values, your claims to be upholding
the rule of law and democratic processes and so on, then, of course,
it is a wide open door for the propagandists at the other side
to portray your society as led by hypocrites who do not really
mean a word they say. I think it is really testimony to the fact
that democracy of the kind we have developed in western democracies
and the rule of law are attractive, that the Iraqi people, for
example, so clearly hanker for having that system within their
society, a peaceful secure society in which they have a constitution,
in which they feel they have a stake, and the bravery of the Iraqi
people coming out in the January elections, I think, was remarkable;
so although I was a critic, and still am a critic, of the strategic
decision to go into Iraq because I believe that it was bad for
the campaign against al Qaeda, a major blunder, I can see there
are some very positive things coming from this conflict which
we could make better use of in the broader conflict with extremism
from al Qaeda if only we had invested the effort, and I think
it is not too late. We should be doing far more of that. The money
we spent on it would be chicken feed compared to the sort of money
that is being spent on the deployment of our forces and the expensive
technology that that requires.
Mr Taylor: The BBC Arabic Service,
which is in the planning, will not be a propaganda vehicle. That
is not the BBC's job. We are not in the business of propaganda.
What it will do, I am sure, is present an alternative or a different
perspective on events to that propounded by an Al Jazeera, which
has been phenomenally successful. You go into any Arab cafe in
America or anywhere and they are not watching BBC World, they
are watching Al Jazeera; so I think the advent of BBC World will
go some way towards correcting the perceptions, but I stress,
it will not be a propaganda vehicle, it will be a sort of corrective,
if you like. I was talking to the World Service yesterday, their
producers, and we were discussing this very issue. Unfortunately,
the price of having a BBC Arabic service is the closure of several
of its European services, which is a great pity.
Q16 Richard Younger-Ross: The linkage
with other terrorist groups is only evidence that, particularly
in Iraq, al Qaeda are linking up with Hamas or Hezbollah or going
into Chechnya. You also spoke, or at least Peter Taylor used the
word "Vietnam"?
Mr Taylor: Potential Vietnam.
Q17 Richard Younger-Ross: Do you
have the opinion that the longer troops are there the harder it
is going to be to win the war against terrorism and do you think
there ought to be a clear extraction programme?
Mr Taylor: I will answer the Vietnam
question first. As I say, like everybody, I am enormously depressed
by Iraq because the reason President Bush gave for going in there
was as part of the war on terror post 9/11, and what we have done
is fanned the flames of terrorism rather than subdue them, I think,
by going into Iraq, but that is history now. I cannot see a withdrawal
from Iraq because, as Paul has said, it is a bit like Northern
Ireland again. I keep coming back to that, because although the
problem of terrorism and political violence is different—you
are dealing with different kinds of political violence, different
kinds of motivation—the principles of countering it remain
the same, and in the same way (and I used to make films about
it back in the seventies: "Bring the troops back home"),
but we did not do that, we stayed the course in Northern Ireland
and, as a result of staying the course there, we paid a high price.
In the end the IRA came to the table for rather complicated reasons,
rather simplistic reasons, and I think the prospect of a total
withdrawal from Iraq and leaving it to the security forces that
the coalition have trained, I cannot see that happening because
I can just see it falling apart. If governments are prepared,
our government is prepared, the American government is prepared,
basically to cut and run, because that is what would happen if
it is in the next one or two years, I think the thing is just
going to fall apart and I just see a deeply depressing picture.
As Paul says, I do not think—and again this is a personal
view—having gone into Iraq, whatever the rights and wrongs
of it, we are faced with the reality of it and my own view is,
reluctantly, I think we, the British government, the British Army—and
as Paul says, they have done a remarkable job in southern Iraq—have
got to stay the course because otherwise the other guys are going
to win. I am sorry to be so stark about it, but that is my grim
analysis.
Professor Wilkinson: I agree with
that. On the question of links with other groups, I am assuming
you mean groups outwith the network or networks, in other words
groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and so on. Interestingly enough,
it is not so much a question of the al Qaeda movement trying to
take them in as these movements anxious to keep their distance.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, for example, are well aware
that if they were seen to be getting into bed with al Qaeda and
being seen as part of that network, they would lose an enormous
amount of potential leverage in terms of the road to peace, so
it would be very unwise for them to do that. They have a totally
different agenda. They want an independent Palestinian state,
of course the militants want to destruction of Israel as well,
because they see that as an absolute ideological necessity, but
they do not have that same global ambition to create participation
with this Caliphate. That is much more al Qaeda's thinking. Many
of these traditional movements just have a very specific political
agenda, usually tied to a particular territory, and there is no
evidence that I have seen over the whole history of al Qaeda of
them making any progress in winning over what I would call those
traditional groups such as ETA, the IRA, and so on. They have
totally different types of agendas, modus operandi, and
so on, but that does not mean that al Qaeda is limited in its
potential for growth. What they have done is to concentrate on
this massive networking operation in over 60 countries. Actually
the American intelligence community believes it more, but as we
do not have access in academia to classified information, we are
going on the 60 figure which is one where we can prove from open
sources where they have a presence. That still makes it the most
widely dispersed international network ever. So although they
are dealing with fellow extremists and radicals devoted to the
idea of the aims of al Qaeda, they have still got enormous scope
for recruiting many, many more people. They are not short of potential
recruits, and that is why I take the view that it will take a
long time for us to unravel this network globally, but I am perhaps
paradoxically optimistic that we will ultimately be able to do
it because I believe that al Qaeda has misjudged, as so many terrorist
movements do, the effect of terror on the public, on the population.
The reaction of the Indonesian public to the Bali bombings, the
reaction of the Moroccan public to the Casablanca bombings, of
the Turkish public to the Istanbul bombings, again and again shows
that they then want harder measures against the terrorists because
they deeply resent being put in danger by these suicide attackers
who will very probably kill many of their fellow citizens. Terrorism
is a faulty weapon that often misfires. The terrorists do not
seem to remember this, particularly al Qaeda. They are so devoted
to the idea that terror is going to be the weapon that undermines
the will of the West that I think they over estimate its capabilities,
but that does not mean we have easy job unravelling the network.
It is difficult. It is going to take a long time. I do not think
it can be done by military means. There has been an illusion in
some quarters that military measures would be enough. Military
measures can certainly assist, as it did the in the toppling of
the Taleban regime which gave such valuable assistance to al Qaeda,
but it is not a panacea. You cannot unravel a network which is
hidden in the urban environment of cities in 60 or more countries
in the world by military means. You need absolutely high-class
intelligence, as Peter was arguing, and superb police and judicial
cooperation to really wrap up this network, and that is why it
is going to take a long time. But intelligence services are being
improved.
Chairman: We have to move on to Saudi
Arabia.
Q18 Mr Hamilton: Professor Wilkinson,
in June 2003, as you already alluded to, you gave evidence before
this Committee shortly after the bomb attacks in Riyadh, where
30 people were killed and I think over 100 injured. In that evidence
session you said that you felt that the Saudi authorities appeared
to have underestimated the danger of the al Qaeda recruitment
and cell structure within Saudi Arabia itself. New King Abdullah
recently in Saudi Arabia, in his first TV interview, vowed to
crush the scourge of al Qaeda within Saudi Arabia. I wondered
how much of a threat you feel that al Qaeda still is to Saudi
Arabia and the monarchy there.
Professor Wilkinson: I think it
is still a threat, because they would undoubtedly like to undermine
the royal family and change the regime radically, and that remains
a key objective, but I think they have suffered some severe setbacks
because there is no doubt that after the May 2003 attack in Riyadh
in which 35 people were killed they cracked down on al Qaeda very
hard. They have either captured or killed all but two of the top,
most-wanted list that the Saudi authorities issued. That does
not mean that there are no candidates for replacing them—I
am sure that they are being replaced—and there are plenty
of potential recruits in Saudi Arabia. We know that because of
the fact that there are people who are communicating with al Qaeda
and have often left Saudi Arabia to assist in projects that al
Qaeda is engaged in elsewhere. We know that money is still flowing
from wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia despite the Saudi effort to
regulate their charities and so on. That is very laudable but
from our studies it does not seem to have had the effect that
we were hoping for. I think there is more to be done in suppressing
the financial assistance that comes from wealthy Saudi supporters
of al Qaeda. But there is no doubt that the Saudi authorities,
from a security measures point of view, have really sharpened
their efforts against al Qaeda. Their security measures for the
energy industry are particularly impressive because they recognise
how damaging that would be to their economy if their energy industry
was badly disrupted as a result of al Qaeda attacks. So it is
a picture of improving response by the Saudi authorities but still
with this problem of many potential supporters and sympathisers
within their own society. I think there is sometimes a misunderstanding
that Wahhabism, which is the brand of Islam which, as you know,
is the dominant one in Saudi Arabian religious circles, is inevitably
going to provide support for the al Qaeda movement. Actually,
they are not the same thing. Wahhabism is essentially a religious
set of ideas, very puritanical, very fundamentalist, if you like,
but it is not a political ideology and, most to the point, it
does not include the belief that you have to wage an aggressive
Jihad against the rest of the world. So they are religious fundamentalists;
they are not al Qaeda radical Islamists. Remember that al Qaeda's
leader is a dedicated enemy of the royal family. He was expelled
by the royal family, and he feels bitter that the American forces
were allowed to operate near the holy cities, which was one of
the reasons he gave for starting al Qaeda in the first place.
So there is no love lost between the Saudi regime and al Qaeda,
and I think the Saudi regime will continue to take very determined
measures, but they have this difficult problem of the battle of
ideas that has to be waged within Saudi Arabia.
Q19 Mr Horam: How far are the authorities
in Saudi Arabia held back by the Wahhabi context?
Professor Wilkinson: I do not
think they are held back in the sense of being reluctant to use
the full panoply of their security measures. They talk about al
Qaeda as the "deviant" group, which is in a way a sign
of their contempt for the group.
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