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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Lawrence Wright and Dexter Filkins on the resurgence of Al Qaeda.
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Lawrence Wright and Dexter Filkins on the resurgence of Al Qaeda.
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- [00:00]
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- [01:15]
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Friday, January 10th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. This week, Senator John McCain blamed the Obama administration for the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
- [01:31]
Lawrence Wright
We could have left a residual force behind. It was clear they were ready to do it. But this administration wanted everybody out. They got everybody out. And we predicted that without that residual force, this whole thing would unravel. It has.
- [01:44]
Dorothy Wickenden
That was McCain speaking to Fox News on Tuesday. Lawrence Wright and Dexter Filkins are here today to talk about Al Qaeda in Iraq's Anbar province and in Syria. Dexter the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Isis, which is a branch of Al Qaeda, has taken over Fallujah. You covered that particular battle, among others, in 2004 when Americans pushed out the insurgents. This must be crushing news to the Marines who fought there and, you know, terrible news for the Maliki government and for the US for that matter.
- [02:16]
Dexter Filkins
Yeah, it sure is. I got a bunch of emails this week from Marines I was with. It was November 2004, probably the biggest single battle of the war. Fallujah, which is about 35 miles west of Baghdad, was completely under the control of, I think, at the time they called it the Mujahideen Council, basically a bunch of extremist groups. And In November of 2004, 8,000 Marines attacked the city. I was with one of the Marine companies. It was an incredibly bloody battle. It was. I think, at the end of it, there were 600 Marines wounded and about 100 killed. I think there were several thousand insurgents that were killed. Just an extraordinary battle. And this week, once again, the black flag of Al Qaeda was raised over Fallujah, which is pretty depressing, I think, to everyone involved. I think the question for me is you have a kind of external dynamic, which is Syria, the Syrian civil war kind of washing into Iraq. But you also have this terrible internal dynamic in Iraq, which. I mean, Maliki, who's been Prime Minister since 2006, I think it's fair to say he's mismanaged his relationship with the Sunnis, the disaffected Sunni minority in western Iraq. He has so alienated them and he has so mistreated them. It's a question in my mind, you know, which one is more driving the violence? Is it Syria or is it Maliki himself?
- [03:40]
Dorothy Wickenden
And do you think, Dexter, that the Sunni rebellion was inevitable ever since the toppling of Saddam, really, and the purging of Ba'ath officials from the new government? Or is it, as McCain says, that the OB Obama administration needs to take a great deal of the blame here?
- [03:55]
Dexter Filkins
Three years ago, Al Qaeda. Four years ago, Al Qaeda was really decimated, and now they're back. And I'm sympathetic to Senator McCain's argument. I think what you're seeing could probably have been prevented if there had been Americans there, but they're not. And so, yeah, here we are.
- [04:12]
Dorothy Wickenden
Larry, I want to ask you about the metastasizing of Al Qaeda. You know, we've talked before about how it's been clear for years that affiliates have sprung up throughout the Middle east and Africa. And now the head of this. This group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, seems to be at odds with Zawahiri, whom you have written about at length. Who is this new figure whose ambitions seem to be even more sweeping than Zawahiri's?
- [04:39]
Lawrence Wright
Dino. There's been a split in Al Qaeda from the very beginning. There had been separate training camps in Afghanistan, and these were two competitive strains under Zarqawi. They finally merged with Al Qaeda, but they've. It's all.
- [04:54]
Dorothy Wickenden
Hold on one sec. Just remind. Remind us who Zarqawi is.
- [04:57]
Lawrence Wright
Zarqawi was the jihadi commander in Iraq that was responsible for more deaths than any single individual in that whole terrible conflict. And he was finally killed by American forces. And he was constantly bridling because of Al Qaeda's attempt to control his extremely violent behavior. At one point, Zawahiri wrote him a letter saying, is it really necessary to behead all these people? You know, can't you kill people more discreetly? And why do you need to wage a war against the entire Shiite population? Are you going to try to kill everybody? I mean, that was Al Qaeda's attitude then, and it hasn't changed very much since. Zarqawi's successor and protege, Al Baghdadi, has taken over and formed this larger group.
- [05:52]
Dorothy Wickenden
And what kind of support in the region does this group have?
- [05:56]
Lawrence Wright
Well, monetary support apparently is getting money from Saudi Arabia and probably Qatar. But, you know, there's an interesting trend going on right now. There's a reaction against Islamism all across the Islamic world. At the same time, there's a proliferation of these radical groups. So, you know, I see these tectonic plates moving. I don't know where it's all headed. But, you know, even within jihadi circles, there's a kind of civil war going on that's taking place, for instance, in Syria right now, where you have. Zawahiri has sent one of his major spokespeople, this guy named Abu Khalid Al Souri, to plant Al Qaeda's flag in Syria and to plant it against Al Baghdadi. So there are actually, you know, fighting each other inside Syria.
- [06:52]
Dorothy Wickenden
Yeah, let's get back to Syria. In a second. I just have another question or two about Iraq and what the Obama administration's plans are. As I understand it, Dexter, Obama wants to supply Apache helicopters to Maliki, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is resisting.
- [07:08]
Dexter Filkins
They're literally training camps, Al Qaeda training camps in Anbar Province in western Iraq. And they're just kind of sitting out there and nobody can touch them. And so they were saying, look, if you just send a lumbering Iraqi helicopter out there, an old Russian helicopter out there, it'll get shot down. And several of them have been shot down. So they need these Apaches to attack these camps. But they. There's a kind of feeling that if they actually had the Apaches, they could do some good. I think the concern is that, you know, Maliki will use these against his civilian opponents. You know, and that's. I think that's a reasonable concern.
- [07:41]
Dorothy Wickenden
Okay, now to Syria. Dexter, this week, the Nusra Front proposed a ceasefire among the rebel forces. What's going on there?
- [07:48]
Dexter Filkins
I think what's interesting about the conflict between the two Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria, the Al Nusra Front on one hand, and ISIS on the other, both of which are from Iraq, by the way. Al Nusra didn't even exist two years ago. What was left of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a bunch of guys kind of packed up and went across the border. They changed their names to sound more Syrian, and suddenly, within 18 months, the Al Nusra Front is the strongest, most powerful group in the country. They're doing operations everywhere. I mean, it's really. Their rise has been absolutely extraordinary. But I think they're fighting power, but they're also. What's interesting, and I think Larry alluded to this, was that there's a kind of different approach, and ISIS is the kind of old Al Qaeda like that we saw in Iraq. They've alienated the local population. They come in and they say, we're going to go back to the 4th century, and we're going to have all these really extreme laws, and we're going to imprison and execute anybody who defies us. That's what Al Qaeda did in Iraq, and that's essentially why Al Qaeda was ultimately suppressed and nearly defeated in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, because they had so alienated the Sunni population in Iraq that they finally rebelled against them, went to the Americans, and asked for help. What's interesting is that the Al Nusra Front appears to have learned from their mistakes in Iraq, and they've been much more careful about ingratiating themselves to the locals. And I think that's at the heart of the dispute right now.
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Dorothy Wickenden
Larry, the latest news is that these extremists in Syria are recruiting Americans and Europeans and then sending them home to sow terrorist attacks here. The Times reported today that tracking returning Americans has become one of the highest counterterrorism priorities.
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Lawrence Wright
You know, the parallel is Afghanistan and the blowback to all the Muslim countries that enthusiastically allowed their young people to go streaming into Afghanistan and then found within a few years that those people were coming home and sowing revolution inside Algeria, Egypt, all the countries that had fed that stream. And America has also had a number of Americans from especially immigrant communities have gone to Somalia and are now going into Syria. And so we do have a reason to be concerned about it. It's A far greater problem in Europe than it is here. But it is something to reflect upon that people are going to be trained in Al Qaeda camps and that Al Qaeda trainers are spotting people who are Westerners and directing them to go back home and carry out attacks here.
- [10:24]
Dorothy Wickenden
And Larry, it seems that this has direct bearing on the comment you wrote for the magazine last week that made an argument about how the US failed to stop 9 11. And I wondered if you'd talk a little bit about that.
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Lawrence Wright
Well, this comes from, you know, this recent decision having to do with metadata. And two judges came to completely opposing opinions about whether it was constitutional. One judge in Washington, Richard Leon, saying that it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and unreasonable searches. And another judge in New York, William Pauley, who said that it was lawful and effective. He said that 911 could have been stopped had the FBI had access to metadata. And you know, there is an argument that that would be true, but the fact of the matter is that the CIA and the NSA knew about Al Qaeda's presence in America and simply didn't disclose that information to the FBI. And this is one of the lingering mysteries and outrages of 911 because, yes, certainly true, the FBI could have stopped had they known 21 months before that Al Qaeda was present in America, but for whatever reason, the CIA chose not to reveal that.
- [11:52]
Dorothy Wickenden
Right. So my question, Larry, is given the fact that it now sounds as though these Al Qaeda trained terrorists are returning to American soil and European soil and planning future attacks, do we have the capacity to assess the intelligence we're getting in a way that we failed to do before 9 11?
- [12:11]
Lawrence Wright
Well, we've certainly reorganized our intelligence community with an eye toward making sure that this information is shared. That has not always been so effective. I mean there take the example of the underwear bomber. This young Nigerian man whose father told the CIA that his son was in Yemen and was a radical jihadist and he was afraid that he might carry out an attack. And, and the CIA had this information well before the flight that he took on Christmas Eve to Detroit where he tried to set off his bomb and his underwear. But somehow that information, despite all of our reorganization and the establishment of the Joint Counterterrorism center and so on, that never actually filtered into the hands of the FBI. So it's not a fail safe operation. We're still dealing with humans. And you know, we haven't gotten this down. The CIA and the and the FBI have both been arguing that metadata would solve this problem. And they proposed that there were three different instances where metadata collection really made a difference. But I talked to an FBI agent who was in charge of two of those cases, and he said that metadata was completely unneeded, that we had the investigative tools already to make those connections. So I don't think that the agencies have made a case that this is useful. The Supreme Court will have to rule whether it's legal, but whether it's necessary. I don't think that case has been made yet.
- [13:54]
Dorothy Wickenden
Jackson, the one thing we haven't talked about here in relation to the changing tectonics of the region is Iran, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about that. Tell us a little bit more about what is happening now and some of the softening in relations between the US And Iran.
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Dexter Filkins
One way to look at what's happening or what's been happening in the Middle east over the past several months is that there's a kind of a regional struggle going on, not just between, you know, the jihadis and the governments on the ground, and not just between Sunni and Shia, but also between Iran on one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other. And that struggle would ordinarily kind of put us on the side of the Saudis against the Iranians. But I think what we're beginning to see, at least theoretically, is a convergence of interests between the Iranians and the Americans over Syria and over the jihadi threat, which is largely, you know, over Al Qaeda. Basically, Al Qaeda and the Iranian regime are very much opposed to each other. I mean, the Iranian regime has sheltered Al Qaeda militants in the past, but by and large, they are ideological enemies. Al Qaeda is militantly Sunni, and the Iranians are Shiite, on the other hand, and certainly their allies across the region are, you know, killing each other. And so I think as the resistance in Syria has morphed into this very radical Sunni Islamist threat, dominated increasingly by Al Qaeda affiliates, there's a great deal of alarm, not just in the United States, but also in Tehran. And so if you then throw in the negotiations between the United States and the Europeans and the Iranians over their nuclear program, you begin to see the possibility. I think this hasn't materialized in any way, but you begin to see the possibility of a kind of a larger settlement that could possibly take place basically between us and the Iranians, that could solve a whole lot of problems and diffuse a lot of tensions, because I think our interests, at least in Syria and as the Al Qaeda threat has grown, our interests are very similar.
- [16:00]
Dorothy Wickenden
So presumably that's what John Kerry has in mind. If the Iranians are allowed to participate in these international talks, getting at some.
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Dexter Filkins
Of this, it's very hard for me to imagine a settlement taking place, in part because I think the Iranian regime feels like it needs Assad and the Assad regime so much and so deeply. I think one of the clerics in Tehran said, if we can't hold Damascus, then we can't hold Tehran. The Iranians are deeply committed to having an ally in Syria, which essentially amounts to a pipeline to Hezbollah, their other creation in Lebanon. And it's hard for me to imagine them letting it go. I think this is where Kerry is going. I think he. He's trying to imagine a kind of a larger deal. But I think there's one other thing to consider. When the new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, came to power, he was essentially instructed to try to make a deal with the west on their nuclear program. Go out and get the best deal you can, try to get the sanctions lifted. There is no evidence, and in fact, most of the evidence is to the contrary, that Rouhani, the Iranian leader, really has any power in making a deal on these other aspects of Iranian foreign policy, like in Syria. So, in other words, Iran's support for Syria and their nuclear program are not really connected. And so I don't think Rouhani has the power to make a deal. The view, certainly in the Obama administration, is that Rouhani is somewhat limited in what he can do.
- [17:22]
Dorothy Wickenden
Larry, a broader question. To end on war always has unintended consequences. What do you think the biggest unintended consequence of the war on terror has been?
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Lawrence Wright
The reshaping of American society. You know, we've become increasingly a security state. We surrendered quite a lot of our privacy demands. And empowering our intelligence agencies to the extent that we have, I think it's really shaped our society in many ways, and we don't know how it's going to turn out. It's very difficult once you award these kinds of powers to government, to retrieve them once they're given. And so in a time of emergency, we've allowed our government to become vastly more powerful in terms of its ability to intrude into our private lives.
- [18:13]
Dorothy Wickenden
And, Dexter, what about abroad?
- [18:15]
Dexter Filkins
Well, I just. When I look at the Middle east, you know, it's terrifying what's happening. I mean, if you just take a couple of events. You had a gigantic car bombing two weeks ago of the Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. Who took credit for that? The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. So what you have, what's developing in front of our eyes is this very terrifying kind of regional war, sectarian war, that is basically stretching from the Iranian border all the way to the Mediterranean. The longer this war goes on in Syria, the greater the impact in the region, whether it's Lebanon or Iraq or Jordan, where the monarchy is increasingly unstable. These countries are artificial creations. They were most of them were kind of, you know, drawn on a map in 1919, after World War I. And there's really an increasing level of concern that the kind of the post World War I settlement which created the modern Middle east, it's fragmenting, it's falling apart.
- [19:11]
Dorothy Wickenden
Okay, thank you both for this very sobering assessment. Lawrence Wright is the author of the Looming Al Qaeda and the road to 9 11. Dexter Filkins is the author of the Forever War about Afghanistan and Iraq. Both are New Yorker staff writers. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [19:30]
Dexter Filkins
You can subscribe to this podcast, the New Yorker Out Loud podcast, and the New Yorker Fiction podcast in the iTunes store. The weekly audio edition of the magazine.
- [19:38]
Lawrence Wright
Is available at audible.com Subscribers can access.
- [19:41]
Dexter Filkins
The digital edition for tablets and phones at no extra charge from the App Store or from Google Play.
- [19:51]
Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid
America is changing, and so is the world.
- [19:55]
Dexter Filkins
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [20:03]
Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [20:06]
Dexter Filkins
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [20:10]
Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [20:15]
Dexter Filkins
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:23]
Dorothy Wickenden
From.
- [20:24]
Lawrence Wright
PRX.