1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:06,120 It's with enormous pleasure and we are very lucky to have to steal some time on Cyber Roberts. 2 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:09,420 These are clearly within the hospitals, the president of Trinity College. 3 00:00:09,930 --> 00:00:21,150 You may not know that he had a lifetime service, 38 years working with the British diplomatic service, driving home to his time here at Oxford. 4 00:00:21,990 --> 00:00:26,370 And the sheer number of postings is very, very impressive. 5 00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:31,590 Paris, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Canberra, Vanuatu. 6 00:00:32,100 --> 00:00:37,900 He was then actually in London, then the head of the foreign press department, head of counterterrorism minister, 7 00:00:37,950 --> 00:00:46,830 the embassy in Madrid sheltering the person, the ambassador in Belgrade during the Bosnian war and of course, then the Kosovo operations. 8 00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:49,890 He then went on to Dublin as ambassador, 9 00:00:51,000 --> 00:01:00,180 particularly full time because the signing of the Good Friday agreement and he wrote as ambassador there until he was 26 and he was also 10 00:01:00,180 --> 00:01:11,070 has become an honorary chairman of archaeology opponents of Rome for five years and is still president of the Oxford Rugby Union Club. 11 00:01:12,300 --> 00:01:15,510 You may also, of course, I'm not aware of all this work, 12 00:01:15,510 --> 00:01:21,780 but he goes on to my involvement with this new edition that's coming out shortly on such a diplomatic practice. 13 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:30,330 You said that the manuscript is coming out to coincide with one of our three in January 2017. 14 00:01:30,550 --> 00:01:39,690 I think that's right. But he's also about to release book, which was not necessary proof of my former position, but is now on Milosevic. 15 00:01:39,780 --> 00:01:48,000 And that will come as nations later this year to sort of thank you very much, indeed and talk to us on war in Vietnam. 16 00:01:51,180 --> 00:01:58,530 Thanks, Robert, for that introduction. It would have delighted my father and my mother would have believed it. 17 00:02:00,950 --> 00:02:04,409 He also ran through a whole series of my postings. 18 00:02:04,410 --> 00:02:09,030 You may wonder why there are so many. Quite a lot of people in the Foreign Office specialise, 19 00:02:09,030 --> 00:02:18,150 but I think the Foreign Office concluded that I've done enough damage to bilateral relations in my first visit, that they didn't risk a repeat. 20 00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:31,620 But no, it was a long innings. Rob mentioned that I was in another life long ago the head of the Foreign Office's Counter Terrorism Unit, 21 00:02:32,340 --> 00:02:40,410 which was a newly created post at the time, quite, quite unlike any other Foreign Office job that brought you into contact with bodies. 22 00:02:40,500 --> 00:02:48,600 You wouldn't, as a diplomat, normally expect to encounter from intelligence agencies and to Special Forces. 23 00:02:49,400 --> 00:02:58,820 And I almost felt I had a posting to Hereford at one stage in my first few days in the job, 24 00:02:59,220 --> 00:03:11,820 the Church of England special envoy Terry Waite went missing in Beirut, which added to my list of ports of call. 25 00:03:11,820 --> 00:03:17,430 I used to spend a lot of time at Lambeth Palace talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his team, 26 00:03:17,700 --> 00:03:25,049 to find out what had been going on and why Terry Waite had taken himself off to Beirut. 27 00:03:25,050 --> 00:03:34,530 In the most propitious of circumstances and getting getting Terry Waite out of the clutches of Hezbollah proved a tough nut to crack, 28 00:03:35,010 --> 00:03:37,740 and it fell to my successors to achieve it. 29 00:03:38,700 --> 00:03:47,670 But at least we were reasonably confident that in the absence of an abortive hostage rescue attempt, he was unlikely to be killed. 30 00:03:49,050 --> 00:03:55,980 We knew roughly what Hezbollah wanted in exchange for Waite and the other Western hostages at the time. 31 00:03:56,850 --> 00:04:01,970 Because in prison in Kuwait, where a group of Shia terrorists known as that Don, 32 00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:07,680 was 17, who were in many cases related to Hezbollah as head of security, 33 00:04:08,220 --> 00:04:15,060 a man called Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in Damascus by an Israeli car bomb in 2008. 34 00:04:16,010 --> 00:04:25,320 But basically, we knew that our hostages were being held as a bargaining tool to secure the release of the these 17 in Kuwait. 35 00:04:26,490 --> 00:04:34,920 We had other terrorist threats to deal with. Of course, the Palestinian terrorist brand, Abu Nidal was extremely active in those days. 36 00:04:35,730 --> 00:04:43,710 And again, we knew that its terrorist attacks were aimed at forcing Western governments to impose territorial concessions on Israel. 37 00:04:45,180 --> 00:04:47,600 As authors of the Balfour Declaration. 38 00:04:47,640 --> 00:04:55,920 The UK was regarded as particularly culpable for the creation of the State of Israel, the nemesis as the Palestinians saw it. 39 00:04:57,120 --> 00:04:58,950 And there was of course, the IRA. 40 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:08,880 British withdrawal from the island of Ireland was the straightforward demand in exchange for which the IRA said we could have peace. 41 00:05:10,260 --> 00:05:13,829 That was then. Now we have two terrorist groups. 42 00:05:13,830 --> 00:05:21,720 We have al Qaeda, which, while extreme, is at least comprehensible in that it aims to are largely territorial. 43 00:05:22,620 --> 00:05:29,190 The removal of all Western forces from Muslim countries, the destruction of the State of Israel, 44 00:05:29,790 --> 00:05:37,020 and the overthrow of corrupt leaders in the Islamic world who dare to place manmade law above Sharia. 45 00:05:38,700 --> 00:05:42,239 And then we have Islamic State or ISIS, 46 00:05:42,240 --> 00:05:53,190 whose theology is strictly and literally based on earliest Islam and the twisted interpretation of the prophet's writings of 1400 years ago. 47 00:05:55,690 --> 00:06:05,590 Islamic State has no interest in seeing a peaceful outcome of the struggle between its pure form of Islam and what it sees as crusader forces. 48 00:06:06,550 --> 00:06:14,370 There are no concessions we in the West could make. No withdrawal of forces which would temper the bloodthirsty US. 49 00:06:16,280 --> 00:06:24,530 Last June, the ISIS leader declared the return of the caliphate with himself as the new caliph. 50 00:06:25,820 --> 00:06:36,440 Among other qualities, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi belongs to the Prophet Muhammad's tribe, the Karadsheh, an essential requirement for the caliphate. 51 00:06:37,040 --> 00:06:44,450 That explains why the caliphs of the Ottoman Empire were not always recognised by Muslims as Caliphs. 52 00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:53,030 Once a caliphate is declared with a legitimate caliph, all Muslims who recognise the caliphate are, 53 00:06:53,720 --> 00:07:02,570 according to Islamic State's Reading of Islam, obliged to come to live there and swear allegiance by to the Caliph. 54 00:07:03,590 --> 00:07:09,590 The Caliph himself cannot make permanent peace. He must wage jihad at least once a year. 55 00:07:10,370 --> 00:07:12,350 Nor can he recognise borders. 56 00:07:13,790 --> 00:07:23,930 Islamic State take a literally apocalyptic view of the future where the armies of Rome and of Islam will meet in Syria at Dabiq, 57 00:07:24,740 --> 00:07:31,760 which is also the name No Coincidence of Islamic State's online journal at Dabiq, 58 00:07:31,760 --> 00:07:37,580 as anticipated by the Prophet and were the final victory of Islam will take place. 59 00:07:39,260 --> 00:07:44,120 The instruments of terror used by Islamic State reach back into a medieval, 60 00:07:44,120 --> 00:07:51,620 even biblical world, where executions are carried out grotesquely by beheadings, crucifixions. 61 00:07:52,040 --> 00:07:55,100 Burying and burning. Unbelievers alive. 62 00:07:55,700 --> 00:07:56,840 Mass shootings. 63 00:07:58,410 --> 00:08:06,900 The justification to the extent that there can possibly be one, comes from the Koranic verses that talk of striking off the heads of unbelievers. 64 00:08:08,160 --> 00:08:15,480 But the main aim is to shock and awe the West and by its crude barbarity to attract, 65 00:08:15,630 --> 00:08:22,170 rather than repel recruits among disaffected and deluded young Sunnis worldwide, 66 00:08:23,130 --> 00:08:29,700 delivering victory and salvation and a form of empowerment, a grim sense of identity, 67 00:08:29,800 --> 00:08:34,680 identity and strength, which they don't feel they enjoy in the West. 68 00:08:35,880 --> 00:08:43,020 So the videos of executions by Islamic State are deliberately gauged as a as a sort of outreach program, 69 00:08:43,680 --> 00:08:53,010 appealing to young recruits who, far from abhorring the group's brutality, are attracted by specifically by its brutality. 70 00:08:54,150 --> 00:09:04,350 They go beyond Osama bin Laden's doctrine that when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse. 71 00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:12,780 al-Baghdadi's victory and through the victory through terrorism, signals to friends and foes. 72 00:09:13,290 --> 00:09:21,360 Not just that Islamic State is a winning horse, but it is conveying the message, Get out of the way or you will be crushed. 73 00:09:22,020 --> 00:09:30,719 Join our caravan instead and make history. The victims are not bargaining chips, as in the days of yore. 74 00:09:30,720 --> 00:09:41,490 In the days of Hezbollah, for instance, they cynically tried to exchange a convicted Islamist terrorist for a Jordanian pilot who had been shot down. 75 00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:48,060 In reality, the pilot had already been murdered, burned alive weeks earlier. 76 00:09:49,350 --> 00:09:53,490 However disgusting and however much in breach of every international convention, 77 00:09:53,970 --> 00:09:58,860 one could at least see some perverted logic in executing an enemy combatant. 78 00:09:59,610 --> 00:10:06,750 But executing people for who they are, not for what they do, however, is a whole new level of depravity. 79 00:10:07,650 --> 00:10:19,380 Christians, she, Shia and other apostate Muslims such as Yezidis have all been brutally murdered and some of their women sold into sex slavery. 80 00:10:20,400 --> 00:10:27,209 The latest horror the other day involved ISIS releasing pictures showing two allegedly 81 00:10:27,210 --> 00:10:33,810 homosexual men being embraced by militants before they were stoned to death in public. 82 00:10:35,430 --> 00:10:40,440 The mass executions a couple of months ago of 21 Coptic Christians on the shores of 83 00:10:40,440 --> 00:10:45,930 the Libyan Mediterranean was an example that provoked a furious response from Egypt. 84 00:10:46,900 --> 00:10:53,760 Though some may cynically claim that the murders have just provided the al-Sisi regime in Cairo with an opportunity 85 00:10:53,760 --> 00:11:01,830 to crush fundamentalists in the neighbouring country and provoked also an outcry throughout the Christian world. 86 00:11:02,700 --> 00:11:11,670 It also appears to go against Islamic tenets which in the Ottoman caliphate allowed Christians to live in peace and practice their religion. 87 00:11:12,240 --> 00:11:25,380 Provided they pay the tax. The GCR what marks ISIS or Islamic State out from other ultra purist Muslims such as the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, 88 00:11:25,920 --> 00:11:35,070 where Islamic State's roots are indeed to be found, is the important distinction that Islamic State sees itself as surrounded by unbelievers, 89 00:11:35,730 --> 00:11:46,469 just as was Muhammad in Medina, and therefore justified in visiting the most extreme punishments prescribed in the ancient texts beheading, 90 00:11:46,470 --> 00:11:55,830 crucifixions, slavery, etc. on apostates and non-believers confirms the leading Islamic State spokesman. 91 00:11:55,830 --> 00:12:03,630 Put it put it succinctly We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women. 92 00:12:05,520 --> 00:12:13,559 Some argue that Islamic State's ability to organise so quickly and extend their power structure so 93 00:12:13,560 --> 00:12:22,470 widely owes more to former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist entourage left bitter and unemployed 94 00:12:22,920 --> 00:12:30,780 after the US decision to dissolve the army and the Baath Party in 2003 and able to draw on 95 00:12:30,780 --> 00:12:39,030 Saddam's pro Stalin inclinations to create a regime addicted to totalitarian domestic espionage. 96 00:12:40,440 --> 00:12:47,190 While this may explain how the Islamic State, guided by old members of the secular Saddam regime, 97 00:12:47,730 --> 00:12:52,050 were able to acquire and consolidate so much territory and power so quickly. 98 00:12:52,830 --> 00:12:57,290 The reality is that Islamic State also needed a strongly. 99 00:12:57,790 --> 00:13:09,850 Orthodox religious call to actors, as one might put it, a weapon of mass attraction for disenchanted Sunni youth inside and outside the region. 100 00:13:12,380 --> 00:13:19,340 The outflow of maladjusted, disaffected young Muslims has really taken off with the declaration of the caliphate. 101 00:13:20,390 --> 00:13:27,800 Several thousand foreign Muslims have emigrated to join it in the months since its proclamation, 102 00:13:28,610 --> 00:13:35,660 including an increasing number of young, even teenage girls anxious to marry Islamic State fighters. 103 00:13:36,860 --> 00:13:45,610 One young woman from South London tweeted that she wanted to be the first female jihadi to kill a western hostage. 104 00:13:46,970 --> 00:13:49,190 The celebrated, if that is the right word, 105 00:13:49,190 --> 00:13:58,670 recent example of the trio of teenage female would be jihadis from East London illustrates graphically the influence of social media, 106 00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:10,700 which plays a pivotal role not only in radicalising putative jihadists through propaganda, but also in offering them practical advice on travel, 107 00:14:11,720 --> 00:14:17,930 evading control, and then also portraying a glamorous picture of life inside the caliphate. 108 00:14:19,340 --> 00:14:26,210 The reality, as these unhappy souls may have already belatedly realised, is horrendously different. 109 00:14:27,470 --> 00:14:32,960 Physical danger, sexual abuse and submission to the point of slavery. 110 00:14:33,110 --> 00:14:36,320 Slavery may soon temper their enthusiasm. 111 00:14:37,820 --> 00:14:42,380 Many immigrants to the caliphate set are willing to sacrifice their lives, 112 00:14:43,280 --> 00:14:48,260 which is just as well as foreign fighters are often the first choice of suicide bombers. 113 00:14:49,670 --> 00:14:59,840 Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, may have evaded that fate by volunteering to be chief executioner of Western hostages. 114 00:15:01,130 --> 00:15:09,050 Now that his identity is out, he may find himself more literally the dead man walking than he claimed to be five years ago, 115 00:15:09,500 --> 00:15:12,710 as he sensed that MI5 were closing in on him. 116 00:15:13,790 --> 00:15:24,350 But every day appears to bring revised accounts of the numbers, always revised upwards of young jihadis leaving Western countries to sign up. 117 00:15:26,370 --> 00:15:32,790 How we deal with this war in our own midst is one of the most urgent challenges facing Western governments, 118 00:15:33,180 --> 00:15:43,380 particularly those with a substantial Muslim population. To re-educate those who have been indoctrinated will be formidably difficult. 119 00:15:44,850 --> 00:15:53,010 But externally, it's one of the paradoxes of the current situation in the Middle East that the West and in particular the United States, 120 00:15:53,430 --> 00:15:57,270 bears some responsibility for the emergence of a new terrorism. 121 00:15:58,710 --> 00:16:02,160 This may seem harsh, but let us look at the facts. 122 00:16:03,240 --> 00:16:10,680 I said some years ago, not eight years ago, I think, in what were meant to be remarks under the Chatham House rule, 123 00:16:11,430 --> 00:16:19,800 but which ended up being front page news worldwide, that I thought George W Bush was al Qaeda's best recruiting sergeant. 124 00:16:20,790 --> 00:16:25,170 And so it proved. But George W wasn't alone. 125 00:16:26,370 --> 00:16:37,469 Looking back, since 1980, America has bombed, invaded or occupied no fewer than 14 Muslim countries ranging from Iran, 126 00:16:37,470 --> 00:16:45,660 Libya, Lebanon and Iraq to Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan and of course, Syria. 127 00:16:46,890 --> 00:16:53,360 This has been in part an attempt by the US to fill the vacuum left by the departing British from east of Suez. 128 00:16:54,480 --> 00:17:04,110 And we bear our own share of responsibility, not least in shaping the modern Middle East according to the tenets of the infamous Sykes Pico Agreement, 129 00:17:04,800 --> 00:17:11,670 which must surely now be in its death throes and may not see out its centenary in 2006. 130 00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:20,800 But the use of military force to effect regime change has proved a consistently spectacular fail at failure. 131 00:17:22,110 --> 00:17:30,810 It's always premised on the Wilsonian idea that a new democratic nation will emerge from the ashes of the military conflict. 132 00:17:32,340 --> 00:17:41,220 Unfortunately, the experience has been instead that regime change has led to a power vacuum and instability, 133 00:17:41,520 --> 00:17:46,230 which is most easily filled by radical extremist Islamists. 134 00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:53,760 Iraq is the locus classic case where the Iraqi government's failure to provide a minimum of competent and 135 00:17:53,760 --> 00:18:01,140 just government opened the door to Islamic State who didn't even find the door manned by an Iraqi army. 136 00:18:01,500 --> 00:18:04,530 Largely content at the time not to engage. 137 00:18:06,090 --> 00:18:13,919 Regime change in Libya has brought about a divided country with a strong Islamist presence in the capital, 138 00:18:13,920 --> 00:18:19,410 Tripoli, while the more moderate successors to Gaddafi are holed up in Benghazi. 139 00:18:21,120 --> 00:18:28,230 Meanwhile, the idea of the Taliban playing no part in the future governance of Afghanistan seems to me fanciful. 140 00:18:29,880 --> 00:18:32,790 Another country which entertained US armed intervention. 141 00:18:32,800 --> 00:18:40,500 Somalia has lacked a proper government for decades and is one of the many sources of instability in the Horn of Africa. 142 00:18:41,730 --> 00:18:50,730 It is also one of the primary sources of would be refugees now so vulnerable to the perils of the Mediterranean crossings to Italy. 143 00:18:51,900 --> 00:19:02,460 Yemen, too, is in a parlous condition. Nigeria, Mali, Niger and now Cameroon, while not being country, is subject to Western invasion or intervention, 144 00:19:02,940 --> 00:19:08,370 are increasingly exposed to Boko Haram or Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, 145 00:19:09,100 --> 00:19:19,050 all helping to create a crescent of instability from the Atlantic coast of Africa through to the Gulf and on to Afghanistan and Pakistan. 146 00:19:20,690 --> 00:19:25,610 When considering what to do about the new terrorist threat, it's easier to decide what not to do. 147 00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:36,980 The neocon solution. Military intervention on the ground has been tried and found wanting in virtually every theatre which has been practised. 148 00:19:38,090 --> 00:19:45,530 President Obama seems to have learned the lesson that invasion and occupation in the Islamic world inevitably fail. 149 00:19:46,640 --> 00:19:52,460 He's probably now grateful that he didn't follow his initial instincts to get involved in Syria on the ground. 150 00:19:53,660 --> 00:19:57,260 He's tried a different approach in the shape of air and drone strikes. 151 00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:06,920 There've been 600 bombs dropped in Iraq and Syria on Islamic State in the last month alone and Special Forces raids. 152 00:20:08,210 --> 00:20:14,480 These two, however, need to be executed with caution to avoid alienating further the Islamic world. 153 00:20:15,440 --> 00:20:19,070 And drone strikes, too, can cause blue and blue incidents. 154 00:20:19,470 --> 00:20:29,360 As with the death by drone strike of the Western hostages, Warren Weinstein and Giovani Lo Porto revealed by President Obama last week. 155 00:20:31,590 --> 00:20:38,310 If Western military activities certainly have the boots on the ground, variety is unlikely to pacify the greater Middle East. 156 00:20:39,090 --> 00:20:46,260 Should we be examining further ways of pressuring local governments to handle the threat posed by Islamist terrorists? 157 00:20:47,870 --> 00:20:53,059 Certainly a complete Western withdrawal from the Muslim world will reduce and remove 158 00:20:53,060 --> 00:20:58,220 some of the toxicity which is currently fuelling Islamic terrorism and jihadists. 159 00:20:59,480 --> 00:21:05,480 We should therefore, I think, practice a twin policy of containment, protecting our own borders, 160 00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:12,409 attempting to contain the problems of the greater Middle East within the region, while encouraging the moderate governments, 161 00:21:12,410 --> 00:21:21,620 which counterintuitively now include Iran, to put the Sunni Shia conflict back into the genie bottle to the extent that it is possible, 162 00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:27,920 and to use their military resources to confront Islamic State on the battlefield. 163 00:21:29,390 --> 00:21:39,020 Containment as a policy to handle the Soviet Union in its most aggressive form worked surprisingly well for 40 years and largely kept the peace. 164 00:21:40,220 --> 00:21:45,560 But it ultimately worked by promoting the dissolution of the Soviet Union from within. 165 00:21:47,210 --> 00:21:54,890 Is there a chance that a similar policy might bring a kind of uneasy peace, if not within the troubled region itself, 166 00:21:55,460 --> 00:21:58,910 then certainly as far as the streets of London and Washington are concerned. 167 00:21:59,690 --> 00:22:03,650 Might it also have a solvent effect on Islamic State? 168 00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:15,650 That is not underestimate the problem. Despite recent coalition advances, it would be rash to predict the early demise of Islamic State. 169 00:22:17,540 --> 00:22:23,209 It and its allies still control at least 40,000 square kilometres and choose 170 00:22:23,210 --> 00:22:29,840 about 15,000 square miles of Iraq and Syria area roughly the size of Belgium. 171 00:22:30,470 --> 00:22:39,230 Despite the recent losses of about 20% of their territory, the territory they still hold includes cities like Mosul, 172 00:22:39,230 --> 00:22:46,850 Fallujah and Tal Afar in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, oil fields, dams, main roads and border crossings. 173 00:22:48,170 --> 00:22:54,829 While much of its financial support individually came from individual in Arab Gulf states, today, 174 00:22:54,830 --> 00:23:01,490 it is a largely self-financed organisation earning millions from the oil and gas fields it controls, 175 00:23:02,060 --> 00:23:07,370 as well as from taxation tolls, smuggling, extortion and kidnapping. 176 00:23:09,100 --> 00:23:16,750 The offensive in Iraq has also been lucrative, giving it access to cash held in major banks in the cities it has taken. 177 00:23:17,620 --> 00:23:18,639 Not so long ago, 178 00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:28,030 Islamic State took the town of al-Baghdadi with gruesome reports of 45 members of the security forces and their families being burned alive. 179 00:23:28,510 --> 00:23:33,490 And all this only a few miles from an air base used by United States Marines. 180 00:23:35,260 --> 00:23:44,620 Whether the regular, ritualised killings and mass executions will eventually sicken, even the most gung ho jihadists is still an open question. 181 00:23:46,120 --> 00:23:55,540 More hopeful, the occasional reports from Iraq and Syria of desertions, perhaps prompted by an awareness that Islamic State is not invincible, 182 00:23:56,260 --> 00:24:02,440 witness its failure to take Kobani on the border with Turkey from the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. 183 00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:13,630 And the evidence that coalition air strikes are reducing its strongholds, allowing the Iraqi Shia forces to take back Tikrit and surrounding areas. 184 00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:24,760 Iraqi militant military leaders are now vowing to move this summer to liberate Anbar Province, a sunny Sunni heartland in western Iraq. 185 00:24:25,690 --> 00:24:31,720 But the militants still hold vast swathes of territory, including more than half of Anbar province. 186 00:24:33,650 --> 00:24:40,520 But we should take some comfort from the fact that the Islamic State is landlocked and surrounded by hostile states. 187 00:24:42,020 --> 00:24:47,390 The Iraqi government, Turkey and the Kurds. Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. 188 00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:55,220 Some of the Gulf states who've been accused of paying down guilt to Islamic State reject the claim, 189 00:24:55,220 --> 00:24:59,420 pointing out that formally they are part of the anti-Islamic State coalition. 190 00:25:01,100 --> 00:25:06,710 We in the West should work hard to ensure that their contribution is not merely one of lip service. 191 00:25:07,650 --> 00:25:17,330 Should encourage these countries to provide active money and support as part of the Second Awakening to the opposition to Islamic State within Iraq. 192 00:25:17,900 --> 00:25:24,230 To both Kurds. And to the tribes in Iraq's westernmost and largest, largest province of Anbar. 193 00:25:25,730 --> 00:25:32,870 The moderate Sunni states should be encouraged to swallow their distaste for Iran and work with Tehran to encourage Shia 194 00:25:32,870 --> 00:25:40,620 militias in their opposition to Islamic State and increase interest from outliers like Hezbollah to take up the challenge. 195 00:25:42,020 --> 00:25:48,260 Even the Assad regime in Damascus may become part of this strange group of bedfellows. 196 00:25:50,110 --> 00:25:57,010 So what is needed from the West is the role of facilitator between the groups who, while antagonistic towards each other, 197 00:25:57,610 --> 00:26:03,130 have a greater stake in halting and reversing the onward progress of Islamic State. 198 00:26:04,330 --> 00:26:13,360 Turkey has a key role to play and should be encouraged further to prevent the movement of new recruits into Islamic State territory, 199 00:26:13,930 --> 00:26:20,980 as Turkey is at present one of the key conduits and probably one of the best channels for military equipment. 200 00:26:22,570 --> 00:26:29,710 This policy of containment should at least prevent and ideally continue to roll back the expansion of Islamic State, 201 00:26:30,490 --> 00:26:33,850 an entity which is not without its own internal problems. 202 00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:41,260 And that must be part of the West's strategy to promote the undermining of Islamic State from within. 203 00:26:42,730 --> 00:26:48,580 President Obama has opted for a multilateral approach in places like Libya, Syria and Iraq, 204 00:26:48,580 --> 00:26:56,350 and the more he can involve regional states in this multilateral approach, the better its chances of success. 205 00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:05,970 One of the problems and dangers, of course, is that President Obama will find himself attacked both by those in the Republican Party 206 00:27:05,980 --> 00:27:11,590 and America who see anything short of a forceful military action as shameful appeasement, 207 00:27:12,190 --> 00:27:18,099 particularly if it involves dealing with the likes of Iran and the Assad regime and 208 00:27:18,100 --> 00:27:23,770 by Democrats who are reluctant to authorise open ended airstrikes and drone attacks, 209 00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:28,030 lest as they see it, they constitute the thin end of the wedge. 210 00:27:29,380 --> 00:27:33,550 On the other hand, given the disastrous results of military intervention, 211 00:27:33,580 --> 00:27:44,260 I've already touched upon Obama's more realistic and cruel assessment of where US interests lie may ultimately prove to have more popular support. 212 00:27:46,700 --> 00:27:50,840 I asked a Lebanese friend recently how we should deal with Islamic State. 213 00:27:52,220 --> 00:27:55,550 His answer was unequivocal. Airstrikes. 214 00:27:56,120 --> 00:28:01,249 No Western boots on the ground but arm the Kurds massively encourage, 215 00:28:01,250 --> 00:28:10,010 advise and support the Iraqi government forces and pressurise Turkey to seal their border with Islamic State territory, 216 00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:14,360 to deny them further access to arms, fighters and money. 217 00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:25,010 But if we are successful in putting in maintaining such a coalition, they can effect a constant reduction of Islamic State territory, 218 00:28:25,580 --> 00:28:34,580 confronting them with strong local forces and perhaps partially my Lebanese friend, the involvement of some limited Western special forces. 219 00:28:35,420 --> 00:28:43,940 This may pay the necessary dividends to demonstrate Islamic State's vulnerability without territory. 220 00:28:44,390 --> 00:28:50,090 As the American academic Graeme Wood has recently pointed out, Islamic State is hamstrung. 221 00:28:51,260 --> 00:28:55,250 He says caliphates cannot exist as underground movements. 222 00:28:55,970 --> 00:29:01,940 Take away its command of territory and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding. 223 00:29:03,790 --> 00:29:10,810 The Caliphate believes in an organised, structured society observing the strictest implementation of Sharia. 224 00:29:11,590 --> 00:29:14,710 It has no wish to be a guerrilla army like Al Qaeda. 225 00:29:17,110 --> 00:29:20,560 Tony Blair's former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, 226 00:29:20,830 --> 00:29:27,820 recently stated in an interview that we should recognise that we are going to end up talking to Islamic State. 227 00:29:29,020 --> 00:29:34,270 So he says the sensible thing to do now is to open up a back channel, 228 00:29:34,270 --> 00:29:42,580 as we did with the IRA back in 1972, a channel which can be used at some stage to negotiate through. 229 00:29:44,470 --> 00:29:47,380 But this seems to me a wildly unrealistic suggestion. 230 00:29:48,490 --> 00:29:56,080 Islamic State is so unlike any other terrorist organisation that territorial ambitions know quite literally no bounds. 231 00:29:56,650 --> 00:30:02,080 But to think in terms of a negotiated settlement with them sounds like a pipe dream. 232 00:30:03,310 --> 00:30:10,150 It pains me to say it both as a former diplomat and to contradict another former diplomat in the shape of Jonathan Powell. 233 00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:18,250 But I can't see any circumstances in which diplomacy can play a role in any contact with Islamic State. 234 00:30:19,270 --> 00:30:30,250 Our diplomacy should instead be focussed on bringing together, supporting and encouraging regional actors to collaborate in excising this cancer. 235 00:30:30,820 --> 00:30:31,570 Thank you very much.