Emman El-Badawy
Security and Opportunity: 20 years on from 9/11
Emman El-Badawy | Security and Opportunity 20 years on from 911 | 06.07.22
- Good afternoon and good evening, everybody. So, I am delighted to be joined today by Emman El-Badawy. She is the director of the Extremism and Policy Unit at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. She shapes the institute’s research and policy agenda on security and extremism. She specialises in the Middle East, political Islam, Islamist movements and counter-terrorism. And Emman is a regular contributor to broadcast media, including Sky News and BBC, and now, Lockdown University. And she’s also a fellow of the British Academy and the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. So, Emman and I are going to spend the next hour talking about extremism around the globe, and particularly, Emman, we’re going to start off, you know, just over 20 years on from 9/11, which you know, is often seen as a real watershed moment for people as they look back over the last several decades with regards to extremism around the world and its truly global impact. So, you know, do you think, 20 years on, that the world feels safer? Is that even a question you can ask? Do we have to take it continent by continent? But you know, how do you think the world feels just over 20 years on?
- Thanks, Carly and hello, everybody. Thanks for spending the hour with us. I’m hoping that it’s not going to be all doom and gloom and I’ll make sure that it isn’t. But to that first question, Carly, I don’t think the world definitely feels more unsafe than it has ever done in any era. I think there’s a lot of people who have argued that we’ve got less conflict around the world than we have in many other generations previously. But certainly, I think 9/11, as you say, was a major watershed moment, certainly for the generations who had sort of emerged out of the Cold War and it’s really shifted the psychology of the world, the fact that the United States could be targeted directly on home soil really, I think, changed the entire paradigm of the global security architecture. And for that reason, it has stayed as a monumental reminder of the threats that we all could face from, in this case, Islamist terrorism. And as a result from 9/11 onwards, Islamist terrorism was catapulted to the top of the international security agenda. And in those last 20 years, it has stayed there ever since. And certainly, if I look at today and look at the sort of matrix of the threat, specifically from Islamist terrorism, it has proliferated in those last 20 years, despite the efforts to launch counterterrorism operations all around the world where there has been reasonably strong global coordination. And that’s to do with the nature of the threat. And you know, we’ve been tracking in the institute, the Tony Blair Institute, for about five years at least, looking at the proliferation exactly of those Islamist terrorist groups globally at the sort of just before the pandemic where Islamist terrorism still managed to get some sort of airtime in global media broadcast.
We were tracking as many as 97 Islamist terrorist organisations active across the world and a stretch of about 64 different countries. And those countries were, you know, we could talk about fragility and conflict as being vulnerabilities for Islamist terrorism, but they were affecting, Islamist terrorist groups were active in countries that are very stable, democratised, developed, as well as some of the most unstable, fragile countries in the world. And so, in that sense, there’s almost increasingly not a single country that can say that they’re completely resilient against the threat of Islamist terrorism or could be a target to Islamist terrorism. And for that reason, it, 20 years on, has been a real moment for reflection, 9/11 anniversary, and it was an important anniversary for us to mark last year, certainly because our namesake, Sir Tony Blair himself, his entire political career in office was hugely shaped by the 9/11 atrocities and the tragedy of 9/11. And so, it’s an important moment for us to think about the security that we all face and the threats that we face even into the future. even with now a war in Europe, in Ukraine with Russia invading. Islamist terrorism is still a reality that we will all have to face, and the security alliances that we’ve built in those last 20 years is still confronting those.
So, let’s take a step back for a second. And, you know, terrorism has going, been going on, you know, forever, depending on how you categorise it. You know, since the first century, there are indications of terror activity. You know, is it naive to think that the world would ever be free of terror as one of the kind of challenges that democracies and others face? I mean, actually, if you think about the biggest victims of terror in the 21st century, in terms of actual death numbers, it’s not in the Western world, it’s actually in, you know, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen. Those are the countries that have actually suffered the most in terms of numbers. So, you know, are we oversimplifying it to say, kind of, is the world safer at this point?
Yeah, I think we are oversimplifying it to look at safety and sort of measure of safety in comparison to previous eras. But I think that one of the things that were quite important for us when it came to the 9/11 anniversary, and it’s still important for the debate and the policy conversations that have since sustained since the anniversary was marked, 20, the 20 year anniversary, was that 9/11 was not the beginning of the problems of terrorism and extremism. And it is certainly not for Islamist extremism. It was very much a culmination of a process, political, ideological, social, that had been going on for generations, long before 9/11. You could probably trace back the origins of the extremism that Osama bin Laden and his followers had mobilised in the form of Al-Qaeda right back to maybe even a hundred years in the Islamic world, the Muslim world, however you would see it. But until 9/11, I think that the Western world wasn’t forced to confront it. And that in itself is, when I talk about the psychology of how it affected this sort of world order and certainly the Western psyche, I think it had massively shifted.
I mean, in the UK, the UK was confronting terrorism on a different, of a different type, which was the IRA, and they had become really attuned to the reality that a lot of the security threats that we would be facing in the future may not come from state on state conflict, but may actually be driven by non-state actors. And that, in itself, required very different capabilities to keep their society secure and safe from terrorist activities or violence. And I think that was a critical shift that, at a later stage, the United States had come on board with and I think, I remember talking to a counterterrorism professional. He was working for the Met Police, the UK police forces at the time that 9/11 happened. And he remembers, now, he told me about this at the time that anecdotal sort of memory, he remembered calling an emergency, part of the emergency COBRA meetings in the UK where the prime minister would’ve called his cabinet together to react and plan for the post 9/11 mood. He actually recalls a meeting where they dialled in with United States FBI, CIA and security services with UK and it being quite plainly clear that the Americans, this was the first moment they had to realise that, actually, their biggest threat would be non-state actors, not a state on state conflict.
And they weren’t as attuned to what, for actually a good 10 years, the UK was dealing with, with the IRA even more than 10 years. And so, in that sense, I think it completely changed the way that both the West engaged with each other on where they had to share security cooperation and work together, but also the way the West would look at the outside world and the threats that were emanating from the outside world. And the ideological component of what was behind 9/11, I think really shook the Western world as well, which had started to simmer a little bit with the first Gulf War with the United States being very close to Middle East societies and being very present on Middle East soil and realising that there was a growing anti-Americanism in the region, but maybe not necessarily being totally aware of how deep that was, that had sort of set, and how long that had been a generational development in the Middle East. And so, very much, Middle East foreign policy became hugely shaped by the threat of terrorism, which is obviously what we saw with the War on Terror. And the big question I think coming to the 20 year mark was, how much do we continue that basis of engagement with the Middle East? That it is a security threat from which to contain the security threat, or how much of it actually is that we try to create a new type of relationship with the Middle East? Especially as we recognise that the Middle East is no longer the epicentre of that threat, the threat is actually emanating far beyond just that region alone.
There’s a few elements there I want to fall off on, but the first is the, quote unquote, “War on Terror.” You know, 20 years on, and actually we’ve pulled out of Afghanistan, you know, particularly I, you know, come to you from New York where, you know, the actions taken, started by the previous administration and kind of continued by this one, you know, were controversial in terms of, you know, a lot of work that was done on the ground, but as the foundation, you know, watching what is now happening on the ground in Afghanistan, you know, is traumatic, putting it mildly, to watch. So, you know, the world, particularly the Western world spends 20 years, you know, fighting this War on Terror, particularly engaging in Afghanistan. How do you think, you know, the pullout of Afghanistan actually affects this global fight against extremism and do we wind the clock back 20 years, or is any of the changes that were made on the ground sustainable?
Yeah, I mean, okay. To my mind, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was catastrophic in many respects, for the people of Afghanistan who had come to live, especially those younger generations who had come to live and finally have opportunities in their life, after the 1990s of Taliban rule. Yes, there were legitimate criticisms of the interventions in Afghanistan, but there was broad support and there certainly was much less support for a return of the Taliban. And I think the withdrawal seriously undermined the sense that there had been some achievements made in the last 20 years. And for the West, it looked like we had failed and that we were retreating at a time where I think it was premature. If I’m to be completely honest, there had needed to be some serious conversation around, what is the strategy and what is the trajectory of Afghanistan and the NATO presence in Afghanistan? And how are we making sure that we are creating sustainable stability for the country? And that may be addressing really systemic issues, for example, corruption, that was still really undermining the efforts that were happening in the military side, for example, as well as the political side for Afghans.
But I think, at a global level, us, meaning the UK, the US and other NATO allies, withdrawing in such a dramatic way, I think would’ve really undermined what, beyond the narrative of the War on Terror, what the War on Terror was really trying to achieve, and that was the softer side of the War on Terror in the sense that, behind the scenes of all of the features and all of the political rhetoric, there was a lot of people to people engagement on the ground around trying to build a much better understanding between local societies and the benefits of democracy, liberal Western democracy or a democracy of their own making, and try to create less fertile ground for extremist groups, Islamist groups to exploit political vacuums, social vacuums, even economic vacuums. And so, I think we really, we went down the route of taking a political slogan, the Forever Wars slogan or Endless Wars, and we were so focused on trying to at least tend to the growing fatigue that people had against sort of the War on Terror and counterterrorism at that 20 year mark without necessarily educating the global community on the achievements that were made and the support that Western allies and NATO allies had on the ground. And so, it was premature. It undermined the achievements and it looked like we had failed. And at the end of the day, the counterterrorism efforts were only one part of the puzzle. We always knew that, and that was always the case.
So, for any expert looking at counterterrorism, they know that counterterrorism and the security operations would only ever, at the best case scenario, contain a threat that was probably always to some extent going to be there. But there was some work that you could do, early intervention mode, early prevention, to avoid any more people becoming radicalised. And so, come a generation or two generations, the idea that you could use the Islamic faith, in this case, to justify the killing of one, two, hundreds, thousands of people would become almost archaic. And I think that was already organically happening because one thing I always find quite important to raise, 9/11 at the time, in 2001, it definitely galvanised extremist voices within the Muslim world, but it also, at the same time, hugely galvanised progressive voices within the Muslim world because they looked at the atrocities of 9/11 and they said, “Not in our name,” and they said that they would never want Islam to become synonymous with terrorism. And so, there have been huge efforts made by many Muslim voices, community leaders, political leaders, to make it really clear and work behind the scenes to make sure that Islam is reformed and that the dogma that has been used by groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS more recently, are corrected, so that those reforms can last generations to come. But I think that what we did with withdrawing is we sent a sign that you can’t commit to the Western world to stand side by side through to the end.
If you think that 9/11, the roots of 9/11 and the roots of the violence of Al-Qaeda, ISIS could be traced back ideologically to even a hundred years, which is what we did with the work last year, then you realise that 20 years in that picture is actually really small. You can’t imagine that you can actually rewind the radicalization that’s happened within Islam, the politicisation of the religion in 20 years and expect to see everything all looking fine and dandy. And so, I think that was the disappointment around the withdrawal of Afghanistan.
So, let’s push in a little on that. If the War on Terror and intervention, as you say, was only one piece, and that piece of the puzzle is no longer in play, what is it that you or the institute or Tony Blair advocates as a way to engage with this, you know, as you say, very long-brewing problem that isn’t a 20 year in the making but is now affecting every country in the world and in every various forms? Whether you look at like Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas or you’re looking at Afghanistan or, you know, homegrown terrorists in Europe? You know, there is a version of this everywhere you find. So, what are some of the other tools in the toolkit?
Very good question. I think that’s been something that I would say, probably in the last 15 years, not the last 20 years, has really been in progression where a whole range of different elements within societies all around the world have come together to try to work on interrupting radicalization and recruitment before the violence itself becomes an issue. And so, that has involved formal education systems as well as informal education projects at both the national levels and the community level. So, for example, the Arab states, at the time, recognising that the hijackers of the plane of 9/11 actually were of their own, they were their own compatriots. They realised that they had a problem of radicalization, in fact, they realised it for a long time. But this was the real impetus for them, in order to sort of, you could say, save face. But actually I think there was a real strong feeling that they needed to re-look at the education systems. And many Western nations have sort of highlighted the fact that if you look at school textbooks in the Arab world at the time, 20 years ago, there was really prejudicial views that hadn’t really ever been corrected, despite the fact that maybe the political course at the political leadership level had changed, maybe for example, towards Israel and Jewish people around the world or towards different Muslim denominations within Islam who are minority communities.
And these had very much legitimised prejudicial views that, later on, groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS were using to recruit young people and indoctrinate them. And so, at the bare minimum, the Arab states, across the board, had agreed and committed to rewriting much of school textbooks that would have any of that content and that include religious education where they would study their own faith and other faiths as well as critical thinking skills that would enable them not just the skills to operate well in the labour market around the world, but also skills that would allow them to push against very literal readings of their own faith or very dogmatic views of the outside world. And that, these were important developments that were made in the last 20 years. But that, again, that tells you a little bit about the horizon. That will take, even though if you write those, rewrite those textbooks, that’s going to take an entire generation, maybe two, to really start to see a shift in the way young people are thinking in those parts of the world. And we’re already seeing some of that. There’s a huge movement already in much of the Muslim world, not organised, which is part of the problem. But there are progressive thinkers in the region who are desperate to turn a leaf and move past the animosity that has shaped a lot of the social engagements and political relationships in the Middle East and in the rest, parts of the Muslim world, including, for example, Pakistan, Afghanistan.
But it remains that Islamists and extremist voices have tended to have a disproportionate impact on the narrative around political reform or social reform in much of the Muslim majority world. And that’s needs to, and that also requires, then, providing space for non-extremist voices, extremist individual, non-extremist individuals to work more closely together to actually have some sort of political representation beyond the many Islamist organisations and parties that we’re seeing pop up in sort of post-Arab Spring contexts. And so, that requires trying to understand why, even in the UK, Muslim community members are less and less likely to engage with politics. What is the sense that, why do they feel that they don’t, they can’t represent themselves and their own communities at the political level? And that in itself can help maybe challenge some thinking that institutions, political institutions are, for example, in the UK context or even the US context, of institutionally racist, that can in itself add to a grievance that can be then exploited and co-opted by recruiters. So, education’s one. Political engagement is another, as well as broader really good development projects that can happen on the ground that in itself, on their own, are very important to help create socially cohesive societies. But in an, sort of an added benefit is that they can also build the resilience of a nation against, and communities against extremist figures who look to divide communities from one another.
So, let’s say we are, and I think we could agree to somewhat disagree on this, but let’s say we are making progress in parts of the Middle East. Are we making that progress but actually losing ground on another continent? So, you know, I spent a lot of time in sub-Saharan Africa. I was recently in Tanzania and, you know, the concerns on the ground there, whether it’s in Mozambique, whether it’s in Nigeria and West Africa or Zanzibar, you know, places where, 10 years ago, as a woman by myself, it would’ve been safe to go. It actually no longer is. And the stories that you read about Boko Haram and their effect on that part of the world is, you know, incredibly concerning. The time we spend with the South African government, much of what they talk about is their concerns around, you know, extremism from Mozambique and, you know, what is marching towards them from parts of the continent. So, do you think the world is awake enough to those concerns? Or is that something that they think is an African problem? And what is being done to try and combat that?
No, it’s really interesting the way you describe your experiences on the ground as a woman in different parts of the continent, because I,
I wouldn’t go to Zanzibar anymore, you know? As a Jewish woman alone, you know, it, all it took was two girls from Northwest London to be acid attacked and across the front pages of the newspapers for, you know, people to feel that the Zanzibar holiday island is not anymore, you know, the place you want your 18 year old gap year girls to be able to go.
And it’s, this is, do you know what? This is exactly the, it’s exactly the narrative that we’ve often tried to develop as well because like, many people think that the problem with extremism arrives when there’s a terrorist incident or an attack. The harms of extremism on societies, on economies, in so many ways, beyond the violence itself, I think, is often really overlooked because we see extremism as a security issue. When it comes to Africa, I think that we have noticed for some time, at least in the last 10 years, a growing trend where Islamist organisations are growing on the continent and they’re also focusing increasingly strategically on the continent as a ripe ground for conducting insurgencies, creating space, which we often call safe havens, for those groups to build capabilities, train recruits. And for a while, we were looking at the Middle East and Africa, and you could see, if you traced the personal connections of high level and mid-level leadership in Al-Qaeda or in ISIS, you would tend to notice that the track of leadership that were Arab, the Arab contingent was very strong in Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
But then you would have a lot of the networks that would’ve formed, in terms of groups on the African continent, a lot of those individuals, the leaders of, for example, Boko Haram or Al-Shabaab, they would end up actually having fought back in the ‘80s in Afghanistan. So at some point, they had touched base with the same Arab contingency that had fought, that had formed Al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden’s guidance, had at some point worked alongside them and had pledged allegiance back in the '90s and early 2000s, but had then moved back to the African continent and established their own groupings and escalated the insurgencies there. And there hadn’t been a huge amount of, I guess, cross-fertilization of those networks after that. So, Afghanistan was almost like, that’s the time where those individuals met each other, inspired each other and then went away. And, you know, throughout the post Arab Spring period, after 2011, we were noticing that, for example, conflicts in Libya, which when you compare it to the conflict in Syria, which attracted many foreign fighters, conflicts in Libya were actually just attracting African related fighters.
And we felt that there was something where there was clearly a racism inbuilt within the global jihadist movement, which was a stopping African leadership working very closely with the Arab leadership that was dominant in the two main branded Islamist movements, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. But that has changed. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a very sudden shift in the, I’d say probably the last five years, where Africa has now become the new epicentre for ISIS and Al-Qaeda and they’re really doubling down on the continent, investing huge amounts of resources that they’ve never done before, where we’re seeing the outcomes of that through insurgencies increasing in some of the most unusual places in Africa. So, you say, you know, Zanzibar is a perfect example. We also had Maldives where there was an attack in 2020 where the first ISIS attack was claimed. Mozambique saw a really rapid, sudden increase in the escalation of an insurgency that had sort of begun around 2018. And so, this is something that, this is a trend that I think any expert looking at terrorism today, recognising that Africa is going to be the new epicentre in the same way that Middle East had been the epicentre in the sort of late '90s, early 2000s.
Do I think that the Western international community, Western world is really recognising it as an issue? I think any Western political leader who travels to the continent cannot ignore the fact that, for most of the African leaders today, they are most concerned with the security threat that’s affecting their country. It will massively undermine the progress that the continent stands to gain over, say, for example, the next 20 to 30 years. And they’re fully aware of that. But I think the biggest challenge is trying to create regional coordination across those borders because, of course, most of these insurgencies tend to straddle different territorial borders, which makes it increasingly important to have coordination. But that in itself can create complications around long, deep-rooted differences around what is whose territory and who’s responsible for what.
And so for example, Boko Haram, which was historically seen as a Nigerian organisation, is now increasingly becoming seen as a transnational threat because, of course, they’ve pledged allegiance to ISIS, but actually, irrespective of that, they have been orchestrating increasing attacks at deadly levels of very high capabilities along the Lake Chad Basin. And that in itself is, I think, causing even more concern where Boko Haram, for example, could start working more collaboratively with other organisations along the Lake Chad Basin and into the Sahel. And that can very rapidly increase the capabilities of those groups, if they can work together. And so, that’s always,
Nothing more scary than the thought of terrorist groups learning to collaborate. But yes, I mean,
Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, to be honest, there’s a limit to how much they’re willing to collaborate.
Yeah.
There’s a huge amount of arrogance.
Yeah, you’d hope, at some point, they’d turn their hatred on each other in order to see who was going to win, but,
You can always rely on them to.
Talking of those who’ve kind of, behind the scenes, pulled a lot of the strings for the last significant period of time, you know, the Saudis have been much of the finance in the past and you know, I will quote from a headline of an article, I’m reading “Blood and Oil” at the moment, if anybody’s not read it, I, it’s a book I recommend. But I, you know, there’s a headline that I will use from an article I read, which is, “Is MBS Defanging Wahhabism Rather Than Dethroning It?” And you know, Saudi’s made a lot of progress in the last two to three years, but you know, how much of the kind of financing and support for a lot of this, these terrorist efforts is continuing to be a problem? And how much do you see as Wahhabism having being defanged or dethroned?
Yeah, this is really, gosh, this is probably one of the most important conversations that should be had internationally. But I don’t think it’s a very common conversation, looking at, seriously looking at the reforms that Mohamed bin Salman is doing in Saudi Arabia today and its significance. But, you know, we were just talking about Africa before you brought this question up and I think there’s a link here because actually one of the really interesting things when we tried to look at, what is causing the ability for groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to recruit within Africa today? And actually if anyone who knows African Islam well, on the different denominations of African Islam, they will identify that there has always been a pretty liberal version of Islam in Africa. It’s not known for being ultra-conservative, in the same way, for example, that Saudi Arabia is synonymous with an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.
But actually, something did change in Africa, and I think most people would probably point to the 1970s as the turning point in Africa where Muslim communities started engaging increasingly with Middle East nations and Middle East scholars of Islam. And this was, in all fairness, awkward for the Saudis, but it was, in all fairness, a part of a project for the Saudis since the 1960s to proselytise a very specific version of Islam around the world. And it was, in part, also driven by a threat directly from Iran since 1971.
Don’t worry. We’ll come to Iran. they’re not getting out this conversation scot-free.
No, for sure. But even irrespective of the threat that came from Iran from '79 onwards, Saudi Arabia always saw itself as a leader of the Muslim world and the Saudi leadership did. And I think what Mohammed bin Salman has stated on the record is admission that they got it wrong and that they should never have politicised Islam in the way that they did. And that the mosques and the Qurans they sent abroad, many to African nations, to proselytise their version of Islam, Wahhabism, I think did have a huge impact on the way that institutions that taught Islam in Africa shifted their emphasis on certain issues in Islam that had, that continue to be major debates within the religion itself. And I think that shows, in part, the significance of what, if Mohammed bin Salman achieved successfully what he sets out to do, whether that is defanging Wahhabism or dethroning it, I actually think that that just highlights the importance of, the global significance of what Saudi’s doing at home, and therefore, abroad as well. This idea that they have rewound and defunded a lot of what they were doing in the past, a lot of their influence now is to promote the exact opposite to what they may have done, for example, since the 1960s to about, I say, probably, certainly the '90s.
I think a big turning point in the UK was the Salman Rushdie affair with “The Satanic Verses,” where you saw Ayatollah Khomeini actually use that situation to keep fanning the anger of Muslim communities all around the world, around what was quite a ridiculous issue, but continues today to sort of manifest in debates around the Charlie Hebdo cartoons or other sort of accusations of blasphemy. But I think Saudi Arabia has been on a trajectory, since the late '90s, certainly it was galvanised further in 2001 onwards to try to recorrect its course and its role it has played and to different degrees. But I think what Mohammed bin Salman is certainly doing is accelerating that even more and making it very clear that Saudi Arabia is on a recourse. And so, I think that the only option you have, really, if you’re to, if you’re, you know, if you’re a progressive trying to find a way where Islam and the West can finally live harmoniously with each other, is to work with those reformists and try to make it a success and know that there is going to be backlash. You know, Mohammed bin Salman himself, one of his most important constituencies will be the Ulama, the religious clergy, because Saudi Arabia was built on what we often call the Ulama state alliance, the alliance between the political establishment and the clerical establishment.
And actually, that Ulama state alliance exists across the Muslim majority world. If you look at almost every single nation in the Muslim majority world, including Turkey, despite the years of Ataturk and the secularism of Kemal Ataturk, there has been a very important relationship between the religious establishment, the Ulama, and the state. And a lot of what we’ll now have to see, if reformists of the region really get their way, is a re-imagination of that relationship and that will create backlash. And often, what you find is that the official clergy or the religious establishment are more inclined to work with that and work with the political establishment. But that there will always be fringe individuals or splits within that, that will lend itself more towards extremist narratives, which is what we’ve seen. And so, the journey could be turbulent, but the journey, in itself, I think is very admirable.
So, let’s say we take that view on Saudi, could one, perhaps, take the opposite view on Iran, where, you know, in the '60s and '70s under the Shah, this is not what the Iranian government at the time was focused on. You know, unfortunately, for the last several decades, perhaps Iran has been looking to step up to fill some the shoes of, you know, terror reach around the world that may have been left. You know, and particularly when it comes to Israel and Jews around the world, you know, Iran has made its feelings very clear. So, how do you see Iran fitting into this picture on global extremism? And even taking the JCPOA and the potential Iran deal, although, you know, every day you read a headline at the moment that suggests the deal that people are hopeful about is back on its knees again. But how do you see that positioning here?
Yeah, I think, so, Iran, I think is one of the top issues the day. And I think until we really build much better transatlantic alliance and consensus on the Iran issues, the better. There’s been some real challenges with forming Iran policy in the West and I think that has hugely alienated Middle East allies, including Israel, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for example. I actually, I remember, at the time, I think in 20, I remember 2018, there was a lot of optimism around ISIS because, around our sort of countering ISIS coalition, US as well as many other forces, I think,
Yeah, also included the Qataris. At that time, it was seen as a very kind of, you know,
Yeah, coalition against.
Meet some of the Middle East as a way to navigate this, yeah. 20,
I think there was, I think, I might be wrong, I’m sure people will Google this, but I think the coalition against ISIS, the anti-ISIS coalition was made up of something like 47 nations and many of them were Muslim nations. But I mean, that’s beside the point. I think what it had created was a unanimous agreement that they had to focus on removing ISIS from Iraq and Syria, which they achieved. And in 2018, Trump famously announced that, you know, ISIS is dead. It’s over, where, you know, they’ve been defeated. And of course, you know, most people were pretty hesitant about celebrating. But I think the point was, I remember it in 2018, I looked at the situation in Iraq and Syria and I remember thinking, this is not ending well. This is at the beginning of something that I think is going to become even more a problem. And the actual issue, after the Syrian Civil War, or you don’t say “After,” 'cause it’s still ongoing.
But throughout the Syrian Civil War, the radicalization of Shia men in Iraq had become really difficult to ignore. And it had been officialized, in the sense that Iraqi clergy as well as Iranian leadership had decided to mobilise Shia militias in a way that had never been seen before. There had always been proxy militias as part of the post-1979 Iran foreign policy. It’s what we’ve called the militia doctrine of Iran and the Iranian regime. But I think, 2015 onwards was a turning point where ISIS were targeting Shia shrines in Syria and Iraq and Iran used that situation to mobilise the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, which can only be seen as a, honestly, a terrorist organisation rather than a national army, which some Western policy thinkers would rather look at the IRGC as. But they used it as a way to mobilise men not part of any army or not recruited as part of some formal system, but to mobilise violence against ISIS.
Now, when you arm any militia, history tells you, it’s pretty hard to disarm them. And I don’t think that was ever the intention of Iran to disarm them. And so, once that Pandora’s box had been opened, I felt that we would probably end up witnessing the slow but certain long-term radicalization of Shiaism, in the same way that we saw Salafi-jihadism post-Afghanistan in the 1980s. And it would be the start of something that would be very, very difficult to rewind. And so, that was what led TBI to pursue a very concerted programme of work looking at Shia extremism, and within that, Iran itself. And at the time, it was not popular at all. If anyone was going to set up Iran programme, they would probably set up a programme looking at the nuclear agreement and the JCPOA, because everyone in 2018 thought the JCPOA was the best thing since sliced bread.
But there was so many other issues that we had to understand around Iran’s method of engagement in the region and the Syrian conflict had massively escalated the threat that that could pose because Iran suddenly had a lot more proxies that should Americans continue to operate in Iraq or in the other parts of the Middle East, they would be confronted with proxies that would have, that would be able to target Americans and other Westerners with enough plausible deniability that you would not be able to hold Iran to account, which was perfect. And that is exactly what we’ve had and we’ve tracked it ever since. We continue to raise the alarm bells on the IRGC and within the context of the JCPOA, we don’t believe that the original JCPOA went far enough to address the real concerns of destabilisation in the Middle East, which is what really bothers the Saudis, for sure, in especially when you think about Yemen, but also broadly across the region and also the Israelis who have had to confront the real life after effects of the Syrian conflict on the border.
I would say it also is, you know, the Iranians, you know, we, Israelis and Jews have a bit of an expression that, you know, we’ve learned through history, if people tell you they want to destroy you, it’s always a good practise to believe them. So, you know, I think, for the Israelis and Jews around the world, you know, JCPOA is a long way from solving many of the problems. But you know, what, going back to your point about non-state actors being the biggest threat, if Iran is the biggest issue of the day, is this not really a threat by a state actor just using proxies? And is that tackled differently than an ISIS or a Boko Haram?
And here lies the problem. How do you look at Iran? Do you look at Iran as a regime, a government, a state, like a conventional state? Or do you look at Iran as a cause, an ideology? Now, post-1979, I think you have to really realistically look at Iran as a cause and an ideology, and therefore, a movement. Now, that’s not to say that all of Iran and all of the regime is just some, you know, akin to an Islamist terrorist organisation, right? That would be super reductionist. But certainly, the most high ranking officials within Iran, the most zealot, concerted of those committed to the revolutionary zeal that Khomeini had set in 1970s, culminating in 1979 revolution, I do not believe that Iran sees itself, in terms of its external projection, as a typical nation state. It has never talked about itself as a typical state, and therefore, not a state that needs to necessarily follow the conventions of a military army following the Geneva conventions or what one would expect of training of military personnel.
You know, one of our, our team published a fantastically terrifying piece a couple of weeks ago about the rise of Mahdism in the Revolutionary Guard and the fact that the Revolutionary Guard in turn are also becoming much, much closer to the regime under President Raisi, who was sworn in last year. And this rise of Mahdism, I think, is something quite nihilistic. This idea that we’ve always talked about with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, at the end of the day, their end goal is to hasten the beginning of the end of the world. That is their journey, their sort of, their reward is in the afterlife. The significance of the Mahdist ideology that’s growing now in the most diehard corners of the ILGC, and therefore, the Iranian regime, is that they too are increasingly talking about their role on earth as trying to hasten the end of the world and the return of the Mahdi. You see it in propaganda material within the regime’s Revolutionary Guard training, indoctrination training. And they very much operate as a non-state actor, in a state, a non-state, in a state, with state support and capabilities. We’re tracking a lot at the moment on Afghanistan. We’re talking to people on the ground who are well connected.
We’ve maintained a lot of our relationships as much as possible with those who are well plugged in on the security situation, but had to flee Afghanistan after the withdrawal. And these are incredibly important connections that we maintain because we believe that there are likely to be security threats looming, coming from Afghanistan, sadly, and some of that information, at the moment we are looking at, but we are very concerned about Iran’s role in coordinating activities with Taliban and Al-Qaeda. And these are all issues that we’ve long in the West been concerned about. But we’ve long suspected Iranian cooperation with Al-Qaeda leaders. We know that Saif al-Adel, for example, the number two in Al-Qaeda today underneath Ayman al-Zawahri, was based in Iran as of, I mean, he flew to Iran back in the 1990s. He was educated there. Osama bin Laden’s son has been there since. And we know that there are strong links. It’s just been very difficult to prove those links. Our belief with what we’re tracking at the moment is that those links are only getting stronger. The question will be, how much of Iran’s leadership are prepared to take that risk of being associated with Al-Qaeda now?
But I think it is a really serious and plausible threat that I think we now have to look at the Afghanistan situation under the Taliban as a potential opportunity for the Iranian regime to add to their proxies with enough plausible deniability than they’ve had previously. And so, this whole question of non-state, state is very key to how we compute the threat from Iran, but of course,
So,
We have to remember that there are Iranian people who are not terrorist leaning. So, there’s a big difference between the Iranian regime and the people of Iran who are, as we speak, still protesting.
I was going to say, and not that you’d know from reading international media, but at the moment, they are in fact protesting themselves at great risk to their personal safety, so.
And remarkable, the scale, by the way, is utterly remarkable, the people who are prepared to risk their lives on the streets at the moment. Yeah, it’s definitely something to be watching.
So, I’m keen to channel Wendy and try and end on something positive. So, I think we should talk about the Abraham Accords which, you know, your boss always likes to talk about as a kind of great cause for hope and optimism and, you know, he hopes a real opportunity. So, when we come to talking about the threat of extremism, where do you see the Abraham Accords fitting alongside that? You know, is that an inoculation to kind of prevent it spreading further? I know, as part of the Abraham Accords, particularly take the UAE, you know, there is efforts around their curriculum and their syllabus and it’s, you know, the UAE likes to talk about its engagement around tolerance, but it’s also actually now, you know, a year and a bit into the Abraham Accords, starting to kind of seep into more of the structure. So, you know, how do you see the Abraham Accords fitting in? And is that a place for optimism?
Yeah, it’s totally a place for optimism, and I would love to be able to end on optimistic tones. I mean, I would say, before I hopefully end on more optimistic tones, that I think a big part of what motivated the Abraham Accords was as much a desire to smooth out, formally, this long animosity between Israel and the Arab world that I think, for many younger generations, but certainly even generations who lived through the wars, will have really felt that this obsession over the anti-Israel narrative has only really held back the region even further and that there’s a collaboration to be made around the future of the region and that Israel is an essential part of realising it. And we have a huge amount in the Arab world to learn from our Israeli partners. And the Abraham Accords was a huge sign that you could create some sort of regional impetus to move past, you know, 70 years of conflict. And I like to think that that can trickle down into the general public of the Arab world as well.
I think that’s going to take time, but I think it sends a huge signal for the political leadership of those countries to take the risk of formalising that warm peace with Israel and Israel vice versa to do the same. And I think it’s, often people, can listen to the worst and I’m sure people who live in the region don’t forget this, but let’s not forget that, in Egypt, we talk about the cold peace in comparison to the Abraham Accords. I’m Egyptian, and my father lived through the wars with Israel, and I don’t think the peace with Israel necessarily trickled down to the average Egyptian, and Sadat, who formed that peace with Israel, lost his life, in part because of making peace with Israel. And so, that it wouldn’t have gone, 100% would not have gone amiss to the current leaders of the Arab world who formed the Abraham Accords and the warmer peace with Israel that this would be deeply unpopular and could risk, they could risk their lives for it. And so, that in itself, as a signal to a future of the region that is built more on peace than on conflict, I think is something to celebrate and to support and to work really hard to make sure that it actually can realise its potential, economically and socially and politically.
The socially, the social bit, I think, is going to take a generation to really change some really deep set prejudices. And I hope that we can achieve that. But you know, I remember, I remember, actually we were talking about this today, strangely enough, but my mother actually told me a funny or concerning rather anecdote, we lived in Saudi Arabia until I was seven years old, and my mother’s English and her first experience the Middle East. And she tells me how we used to go to the airport multiple times between the UK and Saudi Arabia, and at the arrival of, in Jeddah Airport, we would have our suitcases searched. At the time, Marks and Spencers was, obviously, a very popular place to buy your clothes, and the Saudi authorities were blacking out anything that had Marks and Spencers labels on them, of course, because the association with Marks and Spencers as,
It was owned by the Jews. Yes.
Exactly. And these were patterns of behaviour that you start to see and you look back on and you think what bizarre behaviour that was. But that was obviously based on psychology and the psyche in the region. And I think that that’s, obviously, massively changing. I go to Saudi Arabia now and I definitely don’t get my Mark Spencers clothes blacked out, but it’s these sort of little cultural shifts, hopefully, and official shifts that I think can make real change in the region and set a new standard for generations to come.
So, we’ve done our best to end on an optimistic note. I’m not sure 52 minutes of doom and gloom and seven or eight of optimism quite balances it out. But, you know, I think, for those of our audience listening who want to dig a little deeper, you know, I think we’ve, we’re going to share some of the material and the reports that you and your team have worked on and, you know, a real opportunity to understand, you know, the way extremism now manifests itself around the world and, you know, what some of those great areas of concerns are. You know, we did a fairly big geographical sweep. But yes, I think we should take heart in the Abraham Accords whilst, you know, being realistic about many of the rest of the challenges. And we will see where this latest round of the JCPOA, you know, lands and, but as you say, I think thinking about Iran from the state actor versus non-state actor, you know, less traditional way of viewing them, you know, gives pause for thought as a way to consider their approach and behaviour. So, thank you very much for joining us for the last hour, and we look forward to having other members of your team with us soon.
For sure. Thank you, Carly. Thanks, everyone.
Bye for now.