More wisdom from Paddy Ashdown

Last I outlined the peacekeeping wisdom of Paddy Ashdown, as set out in his new book, Swords and Ploughshares. However, he has been dispensing other wise words recently, as well.

On 11 July he was interviewed on 18 Doughty Street. As well as discussing his book, he sets out a frankly ominous prognosis for the future situation in Iraq and (worse still) Afghanistan. If we lose, he suggests, we face the beginnings of a regional civil war across the Middle East (in the sense that Mao Tse-tung saw the First and Second World Wars as European civil wars), the collapse of Nato and the end of our willingness to intervene to prevent conflicts around the world.

He also had some very interesting things to say about the liberal Democrats, however, and especially about Sir Menzies Campbell. He gave quite a good description of the House of Commons, Prime Minister’s Question Time and the difficulties of being the leader of the third party (7.30mins). As he later explains, “I would much rather have taken the risk of going into Sarajevo through the siege than standing up at Prime Minister’s questions the House of Commons. It seems far less dangerous and far less frightening.”

Of particular note is his comment on Ming’s performance in comparison to his own. “People forget this when they comment on Ming Campbell’s Prime Minister’s question, which I think have become actually quite good, I was a disaster. I was a disaster for the first year as leader of the then-Liberal Party. I was ritually handbagged in front of the television cameras of the nation… by Mrs. Thatcher, and people went around saying ‘Will this guy ever hack it?’ You just have to learn how to deal with that.” (8.30mins)

And what space is there for the Lib Dems in the new British politics. Ashdown cautions patience. The shine will come off both Cameron and Brown, he predicts. Ming should concentrate on sagacity, integrity, experience – these are the qualities that will work in our favour in the coming year or two.

He has many interesting insights into Tony Blair, whom he likes and admires and with whom he came close to working in quasi-coalition. In a particularly germane moment, he sums up Blair’s career in a manner that bloggers would have died to have managed only a few weeks ago. Ashdown tells us that Blair said to him that three things would define his term in office: 1) that Labour and the Lib Dems would realign British politics; 2) Blair would re-associate Britain with its historic role at the centre of Europe; and 3) Blair would do something about the widening gap between rich and poor. On all three he has failed.

Finally, the best moment has to be Paddy’s giggle when Iain tells him that when Iain heard Gordon Brown had offered Ashdown a cabinet job, he naturally assumed that it must have been foreign secretary (33mins). Paddy obviously didn’t think this was quite such a natural conclusion.

If they won't scratch our back...

I have been muttering to myself for some days (though, unusually, not on this blog) that if our NATO allies - with the honourable exception of the North Americans - are not prepared to pull their weight in Afghansitan, and if we are going to be obliged to plug the gap ourselves, then we should withdraw our Bosnia garrison.

Now it appears that the Government has decided to do just that. Of course, they’re being too diplomatic to say so. But the timing is very suspicious.

The Al Qaeda franchise

It is a commonplace these days to talk of Al Qaeda as a “franchise”. Osama Bin Laden’s organisation was broken up by the invasion of Afghanistan. While many of its leaders are still at large, and it still has money and committed adherents, its main role is now as a rallying cry and inspiration for jihadist groups across the world. Where in the 1990s it planned, funded and launched specific attacks, it is now more of a “brand” that other Islamist groups use to promote and justify their own acts of terrorism.

While there is undoubtedly truth in this, it is too clean a distinction. The truth is far more terrifying.

A few weeks ago Newsnight showed a Special Report entitled Inside al Qaeda - a spy's story, broadcast on 16 November. Details of the programme are available, as is the full broadcast. It was a truly terrifying look into the heart of this most committed and dangerous of enemies, and one of the most compelling 47 minutes of television I have watched in a long time.

While there was a lot of fascinating detail in the programme, one particular moment stood out. The interviewee, who spied on Islamist groups for many years and infiltrated Al Qaeda in 1995, described his time at an Afghan training camp. A CIA operative confirmed that tens of thousands of young men passed through the Afghan training camps during that time. What was particularly chilling was the interviewees description of how free they then were to take jihad abroad:

“They are just training you and you are free to choose your jihad. You are free – and I repeat, you are free – to say ‘No. I’m not going to fight there. I want to go and fight there.’”

To me, this explained much about the spread of chaos over the past decade. While Al Qaeda were training some particular individuals for special missions, tens or even hundreds of times as many young men were given long periods of military training (based, the CIA operative told us, on US and UK Special Forces training manuals) and ideological indoctrination, before being let loose on the world with no particular plan. These men would then travel to wherever they wished to cause mayhem.

This casts a new light on the tragedy of the July 2005 bombings. There was no need for Al Qaeda to coordinate these missions. Having trained the bombers how to run an operation and convinced them that it would be just, the leadership could release them, confident that they would bring terror to the West. They need not worry whether they would go through with it; if they did not, others would. We may rest far-from-assured that scores if not hundreds have been through these camps and returned to the UK. Even if some are caught it is no great loss to Al Qaeda; because they are autonomous groups, they will not be able to finger one another. This, too, might explain the copycat bombings on 21 July – having seen one group succeed, another was compelled to act.

It is a mercy that these camps have been broken up and that this level of training has ceased, but the danger that they have unleashed will be with us for years to come.