Lecture 3 - International terrorism: is it still a strategic threat?

by Dr Jamie Shea, Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the Secretary General

  • 22 Dec. 2009
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  • Last updated: 29 Feb. 2012 14:10

All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming. I am actually introducing a man who no longer needs introduction – you're all here for Jamie Shea. Today this lecture is about terrorism. Jamie...

Shea: Anthony thanks again.

Thanks, as always on these occasions, to you personally and to the Institute for hosting us. I am grateful also to the audience for coming today. I realize that it's exam time or if you are not doing exams you're probably thinking about Christmas celebrations, Christmas turkey... International terrorism is probably the thing you want least to think about this time of the year and for good reason, so I am very grateful to you for being here.

As Anthony said, we now with this lecture are reaching half-way stage of the series of six lectures on new threats and challenges in the 21st century and today, as you know, I'd like to talk about something, which has been much talked about over the last 6 or 7 years. It's really been a defining challenge so far in the 21st century and that, of course, is international terrorism.

Since 9/11 and the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people, as you recall, the Western countries have really put this almost at the top of their agenda. Only, now do we really see terrorism as a preoccupation becoming displaced by issues, such as climate change, which I spoke on last time, or energy security or proliferation or other things?

Now, the first thing, of course, is that terrorism is not really a 21st century topic at all.

It's been in existence for thousands of years already. The Assassins were in fact a group in the Ancient World, in Babylon, also the Sicarii in the Middle East, which operated hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. And those of you who, like me, have studied your history will know that terrorist movements have appeared off and on for the last centuries in different forms usually linked to nationalism, national liberation movements.

My country, the United Kingdom, has had a long experience, as you know, with Irish Republican terrorist organizations and Irish Protestant Organizations as well. And the first attack by what today we call the “Irish Republican Army”, but which used to be called the “Irish Republican Brotherhood” was against the prison in London – Clerkenwell prison, in 1867.

You could perhaps also call the Russian anarchists, who assassinated Tzar Nicholas I [correction: Alexander II], terrorists.

And, indeed, if you really want to look at the most “spectacular” terrorist action so far in human history it's probably the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914 by the “Young Serbia” Serbian “Black Hand” movement. If the aim of terrorism is to cause massive destruction and disruption, I don't think anything really beats the10 million dead of the WWI.

At the same time though because the “classic” terrorism that we have had to confront was usually linked to national liberation movements in specific territorial areas and the terrorism did not go much beyond those territorial areas, we've also seen the strange phenomenon of many former terrorist leaders ending up as respectable prime-ministers and presidents and statesmen.

For example, one thing of Menachem Begin in Israel who was behind the blowing up of King David Hotel where British Forces were stationed in Jerusalem in 1946.

Or the President of Ireland Eamon de Valera throughout the inter-war period who grew up in the ranks of the IRA. Even Yasser Arafat, who was at the head of PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) organization, lived long enough to become the legitimate head of the Palestinian Authority.

Now, that said, why today do we believe that international terrorism has become more significant or more threatening or more dangerous than in the past? Why is it going, if you like, from a local problem that certain countries have with particular national movements, for example the Basks in Spain or Irish Republicanism or other movements, such as the Palestinian Cause?

Why has it mutated into a global issue, which has global outreach and which all of us, wherever we live, have to be frightened of or threatened by and feel responsible for reacting against?

Well, I think the first reason, of course, is that we live today, now, increasingly in urban environments. A few years ago the UN recorded for the first time that the majority of people live in cities rather than villages or the countryside. We depend increasingly on highly sophisticated “just-in-time delivery” supply networks, we rely upon electronics more and more for every aspect of our professional and even our personal lives.

So globalization has made terrorism a more attractive activity by groups that believe that it is the weapon of the weak against the strong. And globalization has generated more targets and made it easier for even comparatively small attacks to achieve disproportionate impact.

If one thinks, for example, of the 9/11 attacks of al-Qaeda against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, experts believe that the organization of those attacks, although highly impressive, costs no more that 250,000 dollars.

Joseph Stiglitz in his book “The Trillion Dollar War”, which came out already two years ago, calculated that by then the American response to the 9/11 attacks had cost the American taxpayer 1.4 trillion dollars. And the latest estimate, which I have seen, which goes up to 2011 is that the cost of responding, both in terms of homeland security, in terms of the US operation in Iraq, the current NATO-US operations in Afghanistan – by 2011 the cost will be up in the region of 2 trillion dollars and rising.

In other words, the response to the attacks of 9/11 will have cost about the same as the United States spent confronting the Soviet Union for the fifty years after 1945 throughout the Cold War period.

That is why Osama bin Laden has spoken of “economic jihad” – the notion that this is an extremely cost-effective way of getting the West's attention for certain causes.

The other aspect, of course, of globalization is not only has it made us more vulnerable, but it has greatly increased the ability of terrorists to organize and to carry out attacks.

For example, the Internet. A lot of attention is going to madrasas – the religious schools in places like Pakistan where young Muslims are deemed to be radicalized by being given a very severe, very narrow religious education.

Those schools do exist and, no doubt, they've played a role in radicalization and recruitment, but Internet now means that all recruitment, all radicalization could take place purely online without anybody ever having to go to a madrasa.

The Canadians have a very effective security intelligence service, which has calculated that young Islamists need only spend ten days between first going onto these web-sites through empathy, then to sympathy and finally to the decision to become actively involved in the planning and execution of attacks. In other words, what used to take years can now be narrowed down into ten days.

And in fact the Head, the former Head of the British Metropolitan Police Sir Ian Blair (no relation to Tony Blair) who was in charge of the British reaction to the July 25th attacks on the London underground – you remember that? His study of a group that in 2006 planned another spectacular attack – fortunately this one never took place, but it was an attack against 7 airliners – some British, some American that would be in the air at the same time crisscrossing the Atlantic using liquid explosives in shampoo bottles – that the perpetrators of those attacks – and the last one, by the way, was convicted in a court in London only yesterday – they had gone from being normal people to becoming terrorists in a matter of weeks, all through Internet recruitment.

In other words, this form of electronic media today allows messaging, allows propaganda, allows the transmission of know-how, expertise, particularly in terms of making explosives, planning attacks, engaging in secret, encoded communications on the web-site and then finally to the planning and organization of actual attacks. So something, which, of course, most of you as students will probably think is as a great tool of liberation in terms of a work one is able to carry just with a Blackberry, a kind of instant encyclopedia into all human knowledge, of course, also has its dark side as well. And this has allowed a new phenomenon, which is that of a global terrorist network exemplified in al-Qaeda.

In other words, as I said, earlier terrorist movements tended to be linked to nationalist movements in limited areas. They basically did not recruit outside their own immediate compatriots. Very local affairs, they were mainly family affairs, by the way, a great deal of recruiting to Irish Republican Army was done basically within families that passed the Republican tradition on from uncle to nephew or niece, father to son, grandfather to grandson.

But globalization has allowed now franchising.

Al-Qaeda, which existed originally in Africa in the beginning of the 1990's, now has al-Qaeda central, which we believe is somewhere in Balochistan or the federal tribal areas of North Pakistan, but there is also al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Yemen. Al-Qaeda in Somalia in Africa. Now al-Qaeda of the Maghreb as well. So below this al-Qaeda centrals, which exist with Osama bin Laden and his deputy al-Zawahri, still at large, below that you have a group, which is al-Qaeda directed and inspired, the sort of sub-branches.

And then there is a third level, which is deemed to be the group that carried out the attack on the London underground in 2005, would never be known to the police before, as I've said, which had no direct links, but which was al-Qaeda-inspired.

In other words they took their “inspiration” as well as some of the know-how from the al-Qaeda web-sites and 9/11 is typical of that. It was an attack, which was financed in Asia, which was recruited and planned essentially in Spain and Germany, in Europe, and then, of course, which was carried out in the United States itself.

The globalization and financial flows, as well as the Internet, allowed terrorists now to recruit well beyond their immediate “catchman areas”. And this is not just by the way religious or Islamist type of terrorism. For example, one of the more dangerous organizations in the recent years was, in my opinion, Aum Shinrikyo, Japanese cult although it was global. You remember when it released sarin gas on the Tokyo underground network killing 11 people some years ago? And it had 60,000 members and a budget of 1 billion dollars and was actively attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Now there is some debate, of course, among terrorist experts as to whether al-Qaeda as an organization still essentially controls and directs the global operation or whether, quite frankly, the American response in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 has created the situation where Osama bin Laden isn't directing anything any longer and is essentially in hiding hoping that he is not going to be spotted by the American drone flying over Pakistan and that therefore the groups are now autonomous.

I don't know the answer to that basic question. The experts differ. But what we do know is that al-Qaeda is still very much there, very much in existence. The fact that there has not been “a spectacular” since 9/11 should not make us think for one minute that these groups are not actively plotting. The problem is that failures get the publicity and the intelligence successes – it's in the nature of intelligence to be discrete – do not get any publicity at all.

Those who studied terrorism will know that since 9/11 the al-Qaeda has plotted a whole series of spectacular attacks. I mentioned the 7 airliners of 2006. There was also a plot to blow up the fuel pipeline system at John F Kennedy airport in 2007, a major attack against Frankfurt airport in 2007 – also frustrated by intelligence. In fact, former director of MI5 in the United Kingdom Stella Rimington would regularly give interviews saying that her Agency was following at any one time 3000 British citizens of Pakistani origin who had been in Pakistan attending terrorist training camps and between 200 and 300 terrorist plots, which would have been planned at any one time and that's in my country, the United Kingdom, alone.

So there is absolutely no room here for any kind of complacency. At the same time, we also now see a new kind of terrorism, which is terrorism whose level of ambition greatly exceeds anything that we saw with the “old” nationalist groups seeking the liberation of a small portion of the world's territory.

For example, if you look at al-Qaeda it has not one aim, but five. First of all, and I am quoting here from al-Zawahri, the deputy to Osama bin Laden: the eviction of the Jewish crusader alliance from Muslim lands. There was the radical separation of the Islamic world, or the Muslim countries, from others. Number two, which is almost like undoing globalization. Number two. The deposition of corrupt upper-state governments such as the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia across the Muslim world.

The imposition of Sharia Islamic law, the restoration of the Halifate – a single Islamic nation which has gone since the demise of the Ottoman Empire and finally the destruction of what he calls “Zionist Israel”.

This has let some experts to talk of a distinction between nationalist terrorism, which is negotiable – you may not like it, you obviously are not going to approve of its methods, but you can at least see that if, for example, IRA converts into a political party Sinn Fein, some kind of ultimate compromise is possible. Terrorists can be brought in from the cold, as what is happening now with the Northern Irish peace process, and then it's inside. But there are some individuals to talk of a new kind of terrorism, which is called “transformational” or “irrational” terrorism. In other words, a terrorism whose level of ambition is so absurd, so exorbitant, so transformational in terms of our ability to negotiate on its particular demands that no political accommodation is possible. Although I mentioned before Menachem Begin or Eamon de Valera, Yasser Arafat or others, it's very difficult to believe that one day Osama bin Laden could convert himself into a respectable statesman in charge of a country wherever is possible.

That said, we should be very careful, ladies and gentlemen, not to believe that all terrorism is of the jihadist, extreme, Islamist type, although the focus has been on that.

Robert Pape – let me just pick up my notes here – Robert Pape, who is one of the foremost American experts – reminds us that 50 per cent of suicide attacks are not carried out by radical Islamist groups, but by others. And there are many others.

We have had until recently one of the most deadly in the world – the Tiger Liberation Movement – the Tamil Eelam Tigers in Sri Lanka. We have also had the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), which was giving a lot of grief to Turkey over the years. There is the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, which is Christian-inspired. Other religions also pop up in some of these movements. We've had al-Aqsa Brigades of the Palestinians and many others. And the existence, of course, ETA of the Basks separatists in Spain shows that even defeating the nationalist movements continues to be very difficult indeed.

Well, that said, the trendlines are not particularly favorable. In 1993 there were only 9 recorded suicide attacks, in 2005 – 350 and in 2006 (the last year for which I have figures available) – about 250 attacks. So there has been a sharp rising in terrorist attacks and between 1998 and 2006 there were 24,187 recorded terrorist attacks in the world claiming just under 39,000 victims. Although, interestingly, if you compute the average it works out at 1,6 fatalities per attack. So most of the attacks, in fact, did not cause loss of live at the scale of 9/11 and indeed it has also to be said that the vast majority of the attacks are in certain areas, like Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan.

This has let some terrorist scholars, again quoting Robert Pape, the American, to conclude that terrorism is essentially linked to what he calls “areas of occupation” in other words, where international forces are deemed by terrorists to be occupying their territory.

Still, even if Robert Pape has a point, we are dealing with global phenomenon.

So, ladies and gentlemen, what is terrorism? A fundamental question, but we still don't have an internationally accepted definition of terrorism, although we are quite close. And there are still many people who believe, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan of a few years ago: “one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter”. This is what Yasser Arafat argued when he spoke at the UN General Assembly back in 1974.

Other scholars have been prepared to sort of understand – in inverted commas – terrorism if they believe that no democratic recourse is possible. Terrorism is bad in states where there are democratic means to redress grievances, but it could be, so they say, understandable where there are no democratic recourses. I think if we start making a distinction between “good” terrorism and “bad” terrorism – frankly – we are going to be on a very, very slippery slope very, very quickly.

And therefore I think it is extremely important that we condemn any act where innocent civilians are the target. Not just the by-product, but the target of an attack and that we do not resort to double standards by saying that my kind of terrorism is fine and your kind of terrorism is bad.

All terrorism is to be condemned and therefore it's just as important that Israel condemns an Israeli terrorist who shoots Palestinians, as Israel would condemn a Palestinian terrorist who shoots Israelis.

What we do know, however, is that – first – terrorism is politically-inspired. It is not just an act of rage. You know, one goes out with a gun into the US army base, US schools or anywhere else and shoots people. There has to be a political inspiration. It has to serve a political objective even if, as I said, the political objective is a rather amorphous one.

Secondly, civilians have to be the targets, not serving military officers, for example. I am not saying that they cannot be victim of a terrorist attack but terrorism as such targets directly civilians who are not caught up directly in a conflict.

Third, and this is in dispute, but I believe that terrorism has to use actual violence. I therefore don't believe in cyber-terrorism. Yes, I believe in cyber sabotage and we will have a lecture on this next year as part of my series, I believe in cyber security, yes, but I think that terrorism has to be an act of physical violence, not just turning off a switcher or hacking into a computer.

Fourthly, terrorism, as I said is the arm of the weak against the strong. And therefore I do not believe that it aims to defeat an enemy. Al-Qaeda cannot defeat NATO in Afghanistan or the United States. The differential in terms of power is simply too great. But the aim of terrorism is to sort of inspire resistance, as they see it, and to send a political message.

Number 5. The act has to have symbolic significance. So - the World Trade Center, the symbol of Western capitalism, the Pentagon, the symbol of American power. These are carefully chosen.

Next. I think it is very important that terrorism be seen as a sub-state activity. In other words, can you have a terrorist state? Well, no. You can have an aggressive state. Nazi Germany certainly comes into that category. But terrorism is normally the activity of sub-states. In other words, maybe they want to be a state, they can even be supported by a state, they could get weapons from a state, but they are normally sub-state actors.

Some of them are by the way powerful because we often look upon a terrorist organization as being a group of individuals with limited means but if you look at the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE in Sri Lanka - they had tanks, they had aircraft, they had artillery, they could go from actually being a conventional fighting force to actually being a terrorist organization. Suicide bombers were invented by the Tamil Tigers by the way, not by al-Qaeda or anybody else.

Finally, I believe that in defining terrorism the act is not so much intended to appeal, or not to appeal but to impact on the adversary. The act is more intended to mobilize one's own community. Palestinian terrorists normally record videos before they commit the act of suicide bombing. And they do that to show...to encourage, to motivate their community, to show that they are organizing some act of resistance.

So, terrorism, as I said, is used to sort of mobilize one's own supporters more than to affect the judgment of an adversary. I think, if you're going to deal with terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, it's very important to understand what it is and what it isn't right from the very beginning.

Next. Who are terrorists? Well, I cannot obviously give you some kind of police, standardized sort of portrait of the typical terrorist. Probably that person does not exist, but research does tend to indicate the following. A disaffected individual, somebody who obviously does not feel at ease in the society. For example, in the United Kingdom it's often been individuals who are second-generation immigrants, for example, who don't feel sufficiently close to the original culture because they were born in the United Kingdom but don't feel as if they have integrated into Britain either, they feel sort of on the margins of society.

Often they act in order to gain renown, to become famous, to do something, which is going to give their lives meaning. I mean that they will be remembered afterwards in their community. Secondly, we know that terrorists do not just become terrorists like that. You need an enabling group; you need a group that gradually supports that person's inclination to commit a terrorist act.

Often that form of indoctrination or training or preparation can last for a while. That has to be, as I said, a political cause or legitimizing ideology.

Terrorists to the extent the research tells us anything tend to have a very black-and-white view. It's not to say that they are silly. They are not. The perpetrators of the 9/11 had master's degrees in engineering. Many, nearly all of them came from middle class Saudi or Egyptian families, but they had a very black-and-white view of who is right and who is wrong. They were very certain of their view of the world.

The next is that there is a desire for revenge. What is very clear of all terrorists who have been interviewed is this idea of being on the defensive. They are under pressure, you know, the United States is occupying their land, they have suffered humiliation, they are the underdog, they are the victim and therefore the act of terrorism is a desire for revenge, a desire to show that they are responding.

That said though, a number of terrorist organizations, the al-Qaeda, and this is again a big difference from the “old” IRA, ETA, nationalist form of terrorism, is parasitical. Al-Qaeda has not so much a political project of its own but tends to sort of highjack other peoples' causes in order to get more of a global anger going. So one minute they talk about Guantanamo and the way, in which Muslims are being treated there, this is in the past, or Abu-Ghraib, you remember, a few years ago in Iraq, or the Palestinian problem or the way, in which sanctions, UN sanctions against Iraq a few years ago during the days of Saddam Hussein led apparently to the death of half a million Iraqi children or the problems of collateral damage, as we say, caused by NATO air strikes in Afghanistan and whatever causes out there, which are likely to sort of aggravate the gulf between Muslim communities and the rest. They play on, they have not so much a political project of their own, but where they can exacerbate.

So, ladies and gentlemen, can terrorism be defeated? Ahh, this is a difficult one. The lesson of history would tend to say: “No, it's probably something that is always going to be there”. Even when we think we have defeated it, it tends to re-erupt and give us a nasty shock. In my country, the UK, a year or so ago everybody was very upbeat about the Northern Irish peace process.

Former IRA figures, such as Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness are now in the Government. We have had an extraordinary amount of reconciliation and yet a few months ago a British policeman was shot by a Republican group outside of barracks. A car bomb outside the Parliament building in Belfast. It didn't go off, thank God, but was discovered a few weeks ago. There is always a splinter group out there. We had the IRA and then the Provisionals, and then the real IRA and so on.

Just like Spain, which has gone to extraordinary lengths, as all of you know, over the years to come up with a federal structure, decentralized. Basks have a great deal of autonomy more than many other provinces of countries in the European Union. Their language is respected and so on. But even these enormous efforts do not seem enough to flush away all the remaining elements. So, one has to be cautious.

Even those who claim a military victory. Like the Sri Lankans, who now believe that they have militarily defeated the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) over the last couple of months, have to ask themselves a question: “If you have defeated or you think you have defeated a terrorist organization militarily, but then you don't follow-up with outreach to the community, to the Tamils, to integrate them into the political life, well, you may think that you have won a military victory, but a few years down the road the group may come back”.

So, clearly, if you look at what we call a “coercion theory” - you need a balanced approach. The experts call “coercion theory” or “strategic coercion” something, which consists of a denial – you've obviously got to keep the terrorists on the run, don't give them time to organize, obviously, harass them totally, which is what the United States is doing with al-Qaeda today on the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but you've also got to do two other things to be successful. You've got to reduce the local support for the terrorists and you've got to reduce the international support for the terrorists.

The UK started to have some luck with the IRA a few years ago when we effectively persuaded the United States Administration to clamp down harder on gunrunning activities and fund-raising and so on, which was taking place in the sympathetic Irish nationalist circles in the United States. So, you've got to do those three things.

Ladies and gentlemen, how ultimately therefore can we win or at least succeed enough to make terrorism something, which is not a strategic threat to us? Well, I think the first thing is to have a defensible and achievable goal. Mussolini famously declared a war on flies. I am not sure if any of you have been to Italy for the summer holidays, but did you see some flies? Yes? So, Mussolini's war on flies didn't succeed. It's a noble, but unrealizable objective.

And therefore to declare, as some people have done since 9/11, that their aim is to eradicate evil from the world, or a war on evil or a global war on terrorism, are obviously declaring war on an abstraction. You can't declare a war on an abstraction.

You can aim to defeat terrorist groups, disrupt them, but you can't really defeat terrorism as such. So we have to have a defensible and achievable goal.

We have to distinguish between strategic success and tactical success. The Bush Administration, for example, had enormous success in capturing or even removing – if I can use this word – from the scene the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks within about a year, 25 per cent of those responsible for 9/11 have been apprehended. Not bad. But, of course, as Don Rumsfeld - you remember Don Rumsfeld? - as he famously argued in a memo – if the methods that the United States was using were simply encouraging more recruitment of terrorists, if for every 1 arrested 5 were joining the cause, were you really succeeding in the long run?

So, it's very important when you deal with terrorism to measure what is significant and not just what looks good on TV. Have defensible goals. You may have to do things that you do not particularly like doing as well, which is giving amnesty to terrorists if they are people who can be, if you like, changed into normal citizens, which is something that the Saudis have invested a great deal in.

Of course, the hard-core, those who will never be converted have to be put behind bars. Obviously, but you cannot really defeat a terrorist movement in the long run if you can't convert or co-opt a great majority back into a political solution.

I think the next way to deal with it is to stick to our values and our principles. Benjamin Franklin, he once said: “Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty, nor security”. And I think he is right. One of the things that really does play into the hands of terrorists is the idea of “double standards”. That, you know, we preserve the life of our own people, but we disregard the life of Muslims, for example caught up in battles. We count our own casualties, but we don't count their casualties. As if human life is not equal. We have to be very careful that we do not feed terrorist propaganda by using undemocratic methods ourselves.

And there has been a whole argument about Abu Ghraib and Extraordinary Rendition, as you know, the whole question of what kind of methods can you use to interrogate terrorist suspects. We have to measure the gains against the costs in this respect, which is, I think, one of the reasons why President Obama took the decision on the first day that he was in office to close Guantanamo and now, this is even controversial in the United States, to insist that terrorists be tried in civilian courts through the normal American system.

After all, the perpetrators of the attacks against the World Trade Center, you remember in 1993 – some of you maybe are too young to remember this – but there was an attack against the World Trade Center in 1993! Eight years before the really spectacular one. The perpetrators of that one were actually successfully tried in the American civil court system. So, it can be done.

So, stick to our principles, stick to our values!

Then, you must know your enemy. We have a habit to think that terrorists are crazies, that they are psychopaths, that they are mad that they have no rational reason in being terrorists.

But I like Dostoyevsky on this – I think you can learn a lot from Dostoyevsky, the greatest Russian writer. If you've ever read his “Notes from Underground” there is a phrase that has struck me all my life: “While nothing is easier, nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing is more difficult than to understand him”.

Terrorists do believe that they have a rational reason for acting the way they do. And we need to understand that if we've got to be successful in dismantling terrorist networks.

One way is to penetrate their organizations. The UK did very good penetrating the IRA, eventually 70 per cent of planned attacks by IRA were canceled because they knew that they had been penetrated by the British Intelligence Service.

Be careful about prisons - we have evidence that a large number of terrorists were recruited in prisons. Prisons are not just the university of organized crime, they are also the university of terrorism. John Walker Lindh, Australian picked-up in Afghanistan, Jose Padilla, the famous perpetrator of the radiological bomb, the dirty bomb, picked-up in Chicago, Richard Reid, the famous shoe bomber – you remember, a person that had bomb in the shoe – all recruited in prison.

So we have to be very careful that we try to get inside terrorist networks – intellectually, not just destroying them and getting inside them. For example, some people even believe that we should negotiate with terrorists, such as Louise Richardson, who is the principal of St. Andrew's University, very famous American expert on terrorism. She argues that negotiations are good way of gathering intelligence on terrorist organizations, because when you negotiate with them you understand their strength and weaknesses, even their internal divisions better than if you don't talk to them at all.

We have to separate terrorists from their communities. The guerrilla fighter is like fish in the sea and terrorists need a very major support network of active and passive sympathizers, safe houses, money laundering and so on in order to operate. Therefore, it is very important that representatives, for example, of moderate Muslim community or others speak out against terrorism and make it clear that they do not represent, that they are not legitimate representatives of the that community. That message is far better coming from the head of a Muslim mosque in London that if it is coming from a Christian, or whatever, Hindu, member of the British Government. You have to separate the terrorists from their community.

Then also, and I have almost finished, to engage others in countering terrorism with us. It's not something where we can succeed alone. International cooperation is indispensable. In exchanging data, for example, the Schengen arrangements of the European Union.

You associated it with the fact that you can drive across the frontier between Belgium and the Netherlands at 200 km/h in the middle of the night – which I never do, of course. Passport-free travel, but if you are in the security area you identify Schengen with a great deal of data exchange, a linked-up computer system of the police and intelligence services in the European Union. EU has a common arrest warrant, which facilitates the paperwork. It used to be the case that French terrorist in Britain could not extradited because the paperwork was simply too complicated, too incompatible.

That, I am glad to say, is now over. Common arrest warrant. Extradition agreements. Ability to jointly track money laundering and money flows and, of course, transportation. So, international cooperation is vital.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, as I come to the end, I think the key thing though is a slogan of Britain during WWII “keep calm and carry on” which was used to be up in every air raid shelter in the blitz during WWII . And today we would sort of say “Have patience and keep your prospective”.

As Michael Howard, a great British commentator has said “To wage war on terror requires secrecy, intelligence, political sagacity, quiet ruthlessness, but also infinite patience. There is no “quick fix” solution”.

But we have to keep in proportion. 17,000 Americans die in traffic accidents every year – far more people that are killed in terrorist attacks. So, keep a sense of proportion.

Another thing. Why is there more crime today? Easy. More things to steal. Years ago people didn't have mobile phones, high-speed cars, laptop computers, digital cameras – you know, the whole consumer society means that there are more things to steal. And, as I said, there are more terrorist targets to attack. So this is going to remain attractive for certain extremist groups. We have to develop social resilience. Redundant electricity networks, redundant transportation networks. We have to achieve better coordination of our emergency rescue services so that attacks, if and when they occur, do not cause disruption, for example, in New York shutting down the banking system or Wall Street for six days after 9/11. The quicker we are seen as responding to terrorist attacks, the less likely terrorists are to believe that they can achieve much by planning those attacks.

But above all - and this is what I want to end on - we need to focus on the major threat of all, which is that terrorists could acquire weapons of mass destruction. What we've had so far have been attacks using aircraft, even box-cutters -- those were comparatively simple means and we can recover from those kind of attacks, even at the time they are truly spectacular, but one of the things it would be so much more difficult to recover from would be a terrorist group using a radiological or biological weapon or a nuclear device and, although I am not trying to conclude today by scaring you and convincing you that this is about to happen, nonetheless it is something we are going to take very seriously because it's so potentially catastrophic.

There is evidence that al-Qaeda has tried to acquire highly enriched uranium. Osama bin Laden tried to buy kilograms of the stuff from the South Africans in 1992. Al-Qaeda had talks with Pakistani scientists involved in the nuclear programme towards the end of 1990's.

Western intelligence services calculate that about 43 kg of uranium have been stolen and trafficked since the Berlin war came down 20 years ago and although a lot of thishas actually been discovered in police operations, nobody knows if there is not more out there and you only need about 1/3 of that amount to produce a functioning nuclear bomb.

So, there is evidence that al-Qaeda has been trying to get the know-how. For example, they had in Afghanistan, at a place called Darunta a training camp on chemical weapons where they used dogs as guinea pigs to see to what degree chemical weapons could work and we know very well that, coming back to globalization, that they have employed PhD scientists, they have employed PhD computer hackers, as I said, don't believe that fanatics are coming from the uneducated areas of our society. Far from it.

One worry in particular is the expanse of bio-technology in the private sector today, which is one of the biggest growth areas. The fact that even government research institutes are increasingly looking there, enormous amount of research that is going into diseases and epidemics, like SARS and avian bird flu and so on. All of these if you only have like a man who was working in the American laboratory and he took anthrax out and organized the anthrax attacks in 2001.

If you only have some kind of disgruntled official who takes somebody's bio-technology or whatever away and gives them to a terrorist organizations you can have a weapon of mass destruction rather quickly. In fact, even, and forgive me for this pronunciation because I am not a chemist, but even thiodiglycol, which apparently is what you use as ink in you ballpoint pens, acquired in sufficient quantities is an extremely powerful chemical weapon.

So, in a nutshell, why we cannot hope to prevent any kind of terrorist attack or always know in advance? We have to sort of focus our efforts on the area, which could be most potentially catastrophic to us, which would be as George Bush I said, and here I think George W Bush was right, what would happen if the worst weapons have got into the hands of the worst people. That's not to give you nightmares for this evening, but remember there is something about terrorist organizations, which makes dealing with terrorism very difficult and this was incarnated by the IRA when they tried to blow up Margaret Thatcher.

Well, some of you at the back are nodding, which means that you are almost of my generation. Others, if you are looking, are not. But in the 1980's the IRA tried to blow up Margaret Thatcher during a Conservative Party conference in Brighton. They didn't blow her up, but they injured quite a few members of the Conservative Cabinet and afterwards they, in a rather cynical telephone call they said “well, you know you have to succeed all the time (in order to stop us) – but we only have to succeed once”.

So this is an incredibly asymmetric type of threat where, you know, we have to be vigilant all the time, never sleeping, 24 hours a day, joining up the intelligence, making sure that our domestic intelligence is working with our external intelligence, is working with the police, that the information is going across borders, yet these guys can fail and fail and fail again, but still achieve what they see as their objective purely by being lucky on one occasion.

That asymmetry means, as I said, that this is going to be a very tempting form of action for the malcontents of this world, and therefore the best we can do is to contain terrorism rather than hope to ultimately and completely defeat it.

Thank you very much and I'll take any questions...if there are any.

Q: - You have been talking a lot about asymmetrical warfare and the war of intelligence services and police agencies and how do you see the role of NATO in fighting this asymmetrical situation?

A: - I am glad you've asked me that because, of course, coming from NATO I should have obviously spoken about the role of NATO, but I realized that I was running out of time, so I am really grateful. and I can assure the audience that this question has not been planned in advance, no money has been transferred to this lady, but thank you for the question.

I think that NATO's role is quite limited in fighting terrorism and I say this without any guilt or shame. I don't think NATO to be relevant, has to show that it can play a major role on every issue – you know, climate change, proliferation, cyber, whatever. No, there are certain issues that fit NATO's capabilities better than others. Now, I think, and it's clear from what I said, that terrorism is essentially an issue for the intelligence agencies, anticipating attacks, stopping them, sharing information, the police obviously monitoring terrorist suspects, even home offices, Ministries of the Interior, which work on radicalization or deradicalization, reeducation, reinsertion programmes, working, for example, in my country with the moderate Muslim organizations in order to get them, to sort of send a message of moderation and tolerance and multi-ethnicity. I mean this is much more important than the military role.

That said, there are, of course, things that NATO can, is doing and maybe can even do better. One, of course, is, and you can make an argument, and I think NATO people will make the argument, is that what we are doing in Afghanistan today, hopefully by creating a viable state there, a viable governing structure makes it impossible for al-Qaeda and the extreme Taliban to come back. I say extreme Taliban because hopefully some of the Taliban can be absorbed into an ultimate political settlement in Afghanistan.

But the one thing I don't think anybody wants is that NATO leaves Afghanistan and it once again becomes a failed state, a black hole, with terrorist training camps coming back as they did before 9/11. You can make an argument that these sort of nation-building exercises are part of the international struggle against terrorism. You can't just wait to be attacked at home, you have to try to cut it out off source, where you can. In other words, you mustn't give terrorists sanctuaries, that's the last thing you want to be able to do.

The second thing is, I think, that the Alliance can do is policing the seas. A lot of worry today is focused on terrorists using the seas, first of all, to ship weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, radiological weapons, missile components or even terrorists and we have had since 2001 in the Mediterranean an operation called “Active Endeavor” - even the Russians participated, not only NATO countries, which attempts to sort of monitor shipping, to see if ships are being used potentially for terrorist activity.

Now, I don't want to call pirates terrorists, I don't think they are. Terrorists have a political motive, pirates have a commercial motive. You know, it's not the ideology that drives them – it's a prospect of taking a 2-million-dollar ransom and buying a house or a sport utility vehicle when they get home. But still, we all have an interest in law and order on the oceans, as well as on land.

And what NATO, I think, can also contribute to is this idea of the multinational maritime task forces, which can, for example, prevent terrorist attacks on shipping. They have happened. I mean, there have been terrorist attacks on oil tankers. One French oil tanker was targeted in the Persian Gulf a few years ago. Terrorists tried to blow up, for example, the Abqaiq petroleum refinery in Saudi Arabia. OK, that was on land, but still...

So, the idea of protecting critical infrastructure where you have a big facility like a massive oil refinery – that is something where you need international cooperation, training. So, there are a lot of things NATO can do.

Another area, although this is slightly... this is more towards the weapons of mass destruction is that if a terrorist uses a bacteriological weapon – how would you know about it? The answer is - you wouldn't. Chemical weapon you know you have been attacked immediately. The poor British soldiers in the trenches during WWI when the mustard gas came over in 1915 they knew immediately that they were being attacked.

Biological weapon – you don't. If I am a terrorist, I use Q fever against you. For six weeks you are going think you've just got influenza. And it's only after six week you suddenly realize that you've got something worst than influenza. So you need therefore, military medicine to be able to do studies, to very clearly identify if a weapon like that has actually been used, so you can immediately start a programme of mass vaccination, for example. Like anthrax.

And NATO has been doing a lot of work in that area, which, I think can be useful to the civilian authorities for emergency responses to, particularly, the use of biological weapons if terrorists get the hands on them. But let's not pretend that we are as important as the intelligence or the police services because they are definitely at the front line.

Yes, ma'am.

Q: - First you said that there are no terrorist countries, but how would you define countries that are governed by terrorist groups? And second – it's more a remark than a question – I'm coming from Israel and I would say that probably the main reason why there is such a hard struggle with terrorism is because of the public. Because every other thing, let's say – global warming or road accident if the governments say they want do something, or the international community wants to do something they can do it. But if it's about terrorism, the public gets so emotional, that it's not going to be so much easy. If you're going to put a terrorist in prison or to do any other thing that will help, I don't know, the environment or something – the public is not letting you do it so easily. And this is the difference when dealing with a road accident.

A: - I do understand this. Because nothing outrages people more than the deliberate killing of innocent civilians. People who are young, like for example, in Tel-Aviv. Palestinian group, you remember, blew up the discotheque and you had lots of 18-year old, you know young people, probably just slightly younger than you getting killed.

The sense of outrage and therefore a desire to hit back, to strike back. An eye for an eye – you remember? Like in the Bible – a tooth for a tooth. I am not saying that the country should not retaliate. For example the United Nations was very clear after 2001 that the United States having established that the attack came from Afghanistan was perfectly entitled to retaliate against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Nobody has disputed that for one minute, but I do believe that one also has to be careful because the terrorists want the overreaction. That's what they are looking for. I mean, a terrorist act is specifically designed to elicit a massive response, which then, of course, naturally, immediately helps recruitment. For example, one has to be frank, and I say this as a friend of Israel – but nobody denies that Hezbollah was created after the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 1982. Again, is this the idea of resistance?

So, what I personally support, is what Tony Blair did after the bombing in July 2005 when he was at the Gleneagles G8 Summit meeting in Scotland. He came on TV and he gave a very measured, very moderate response. You know, he didn't sort of declare a “global war on terrorism”, he didn't promise more than he could deliver. He spoke about the resilience of the British people, that we would, sort of, go after the networks and all of that. He praised the intelligence services for their bravery. He did everything he could precisely not to play into the hands of terrorists by immediately declaring vengeance and provoking a counter-reaction they were seeking.

So, I personally think that the best thing is that of Roosevelt – you remember Teddy Roosevelt? -“speak softly and carry a big stick”. – Very effective in dealing with terrorism. Be effective! Yes, go after them. You remember, you've all seen the film “Munich” - very good. You see exactly what Israel did in order to go after the perpetrators of the massacre of the Israeli Olympic team, you remember in Munich in 1972?

But, you know, don't talk it up! Into some clash of civilizations or global war because the terrorists want to be seen as warriors. Osama bin Laden doesn't see himself as a terrorist, he sees himself as a noble warrior, like the great heroes of the past. And to talk in their terms about jihad, or war, clash of civilizations -- this is precisely the propaganda victory – you know, ennobling their cause is what they are seeking.

So, I totally understand the need to capture the people, to retaliate. But it's best to, as I said, talk less about it and make your action effective. That's the best answer I can give you on that one.

Yes, Sir.

Q: - OK, my question is more about Afghanistan and terrorism. Jim Johnson of the US Administration said recently in a television interview that there are less than 100 operatives of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and other US prominent politicians, like John McCain, have said that al-Qaeda is weaker than ten years ago. You stressed a number of times that the objective of terrorist attacks is to mobilize its people, but when these organizations become smaller do they have a necessity to mobilize more people? And is the threat bigger today than it has been before?

A: - Well, I think that al-Qaeda is weaker today than it was before. This is in terms of al-Qaeda central. That's to say the central organization. It is weaker than it was before 9/11. Absolutely. The United States has managed to... what's the word? - well, yes, kill – one has to be frank here -- about 400 al-Qaeda operatives in the Pakistani tribal areas. We don't have the exact statistics. Through the use of intelligence and so on.

And this certainly means that if you're Osama bin Laden, I think, you're permanently in hiding, going from one house to the other to escape arrest and that doesn't give you much time to plan attacks keeping al-Qaeda always under pressure and on the run is, I think, a crucial part of being safe.

But that said, one has to be very careful not to, sort of, always place oneself on yesterday's paradigm because what I tried to describe in my lecture today is a mutation of al-Qaeda since 2001 away from being one single central organization, rather like a company, you know with a hierarchy and thousands of people, all in one place – Afghanistan – and more towards a sort of franchise where they give the brand, they give the ideology, via internet they give the “do-it-yourself” terrorist kit.

All kinds of little groups that spring up very quickly, very quickly and spontaneously and which are much more difficult for the police to apprehend. And, as I mentioned, there are now several al-Qaeda's. There are about six or seven. There was an al-Qaeda in Iraq also until recently when its leader al-Zarqawi, as you know, was killed by the American forces.

And, you know, if you've seen lately in terms of somebody's activity in Saudi Arabia, you realize that they have this ability to operate way beyond Pakistan. So, in that respect you've got to sort of see an organization, which is very adaptable, very adaptable. As soon as one avenue is closed off, they find other ways.

You know – just like in terms of attacks. If an air alliance is becoming very, very secure they look at container traffic, they look at banks, or Western interests or Western nationals: if they can't attack the United States they try to attack American nationals outside the US, etc, etc, etc.

Given that this is a type of threat, which mutates and metamorphoses very quickly, we've got to make sure that we have agility that we are not going after yesterday's organization, if you like, but the reality of what it is today.

The other thing, of course, is that although al-Qaeda, its presence in Afghanistan has been reduced, as long as they have the sanctuary just over the border in Pakistan – fortunately, it's not the sanctuary for many more, because the Pakistani army, as you know, has recently been much more active up in the tribal areas and in terms of attacking their bases and so on... But if you do allow them to have this sanctuary on the other side of the border, they could come back in Afghanistan in five minutes. So, what did somebody say: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”? Something like that. But it means that there is always the potential to come back very quickly. You can't declare that this is the final solution to the problem.

Q: - I just would like to have a very brief comment from you because I don't want to make the session too late. First of all, thank you for another brilliant exposition. What is your opinion on the latest news that the new code of jihad was drafted in a Libyan high security jail of the so-called “reconverted” terrorists? Have you seen anything on that on the BBC in the past 15 days?

A: - No, I must confess I haven't. But there is some good optimism in the region. You can in fact sort of convert, as they call themselves “jihadists” if you put them back through some sort of educational system. The Saudis claim, I can't verify this statistics, but Saudi Arabians devoted a lot. They've been very tough on going after terrorists, but they also were very keen on organizing sort of reeducation programmes.

They claim that half of the terrorists in their jails have now been released and, they claim, that only 1 per cent have gone back to sort of radicalism as a result of re-education programmes they've been through. I don't know. I mean, this seems a very impressive figure and I suppose you have to see it over a long-term period, but one of the things that everybody is interested in is what leads to radicalization?

On the other hand, also, how do you de-radicalize? Like, you know, you have a drug-addict, how do you get drug-addict off drugs? So he doesn't want to go back on them again afterwards. I think that one thing is pretty clear – and I will give you a general answer here – is that there is a correlation between development, jobs and terrorism. I am not naive and I am not arguing for one minute that Osama bin Laden became a terrorist because he was poor. Clearly, not! He's very wealthy and he financed not just the al-Qaeda but he actually financed Afghanistan for quite a long period of time out of his private fortune.

So, the leadership often do come from middle class, intellectual families. Absolutely true. But a lot of the “foot soldiers” clearly are doing it because their families have forced them to do so – that's the case of the Taliban, or because it pays more than being in the Afghan police, or because it's a job. And if you look – I'd quote some statistics, I didn't have a chance to quote them in my lecture -- but in the Arab world the population in 1995 was 187 million. Today it's 280 million and it's calculated that by 2020, so in just ten years, it's going to be 410 million. So, almost double. And more than double in just 30 years and 40 per cent of that population would be under 14. So nearly half will be under 20 or under 18.

And it's calculated - this is the World Bank statistics – that at the moment there are 15 million unemployed young people. That would then be by the end of the next decade 35 million and the area will have to grow at least some per cent a year in order to absorb all of those unemployed young men and if you believe in a testosterone factor, sort of young people's frustration, then this is going to be disruptive. So I do believe that there is a development, economic relationship between, you know, jobs, employment, the ability to get married and have a normal life and defeating radicalism.

I am not going to argue that creating a perfect society will not have terrorists. For example, in Germany in the 1970's you had very, very, very prosperous society but you still had Baader Meinhof, the Red Army Faction, you still had disgruntled left-wing students who committed terrorist acts, but I think in terms of massive movements definitely development, decreasing unemployment is going to make it more difficult for these people to recruit. So, that's the best answer I can give on that.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very grateful. Thanks again for coming today. Those of you who are still around next week, which may not be many, given the university term, I'll be talking about energy security. It's very mild at the moment, so you're probably not very worried about energy security, but if it suddenly got very, very cold – you might get worried about. So, if you are still here, please come along next week.

Thank you.