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Amanpour

Syria: The Next Somalia; Islamist "Trojan Horse" in U.K. Schools?; Imagine a World

Aired June 09, 2014 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Tonight the last U.N. envoy to Syria tells me that war could spawn the next 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAKHDAR BRAHIMI, U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY TO SYRIA: It will not only spread inside the country; it will spill over all over the place. This is what I

said in September '99 and nobody was listening.

In 2001, I think people understood what I was talking about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Lakhdar Brahimi reminding us of the red flag he sent up over Afghanistan.

And later in the program why justice delayed is justice only half- served for the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Syria is the next Somalia, a failed state overrun by warlords that risk setting the entire region on fire. That warning from my guest

tonight, ex-U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. He was sounding this alarm as he worked furiously for a political solution for the civil war before

finally throwing in the towel just over a week ago. As these latest pictures from Aleppo show, the scale of the devastation simply keeps

rising. A British doctor working and living in Syria describes the horror.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We cannot bear it anymore. There's no people anymore. If you can go around the city, you'll find there's no people, no

cats, no insects. There's nothing left.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Indeed, the only thing left on the table right now is a political proposal from Iran's President Rouhani, who's meeting

with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara today.

From Paris, Lakhdar Brahimi tells me that right now Syria has nowhere to go but down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Brahimi, welcome back to the program.

LAKHDAR BRAHIMI, EX-U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY TO SYRIA: I'm happy to be back, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador, the president of Iran is in Turkey. A Turkish official said to us on background, you know what, when it comes to Syria,

Iran has won; we have lost.

Accurate?

BRAHIMI: What I have been saying all the time is that the government, the regime side, the government side have been doing well and better and

better on the ground militarily these past few months.

Whether they will win a decisive victory as they think they will, I'm not sure.

I also know that the Iranians -- at least this is what they tell us -- they tell us that we think that the political solution is needed and some

kind of negotiation is needed.

AMANPOUR: Give me some details.

BRAHIMI: Cease-fire, that's what everybody wants. Some kind of executive to run the transition, this is also what everybody's talking

about. A revision of the constitution -- and they say that they want to revise the constitution to limit the powers of the president and then have

an election.

AMANPOUR: What do you see as the future of Syria, sitting where you're sitting right now?

BRAHIMI: I have always said that I don't think that Syria would be divided.

But the risk, the risk is that the country will be a new Somalia; if things continue as they are now by next year, Syria will be a failed state.

AMANPOUR: A failed state: that is very, very frightening, particularly since so many people are telling us right now --

BRAHIMI: Yes, sure.

AMANPOUR: -- that the blowback is already happening, that the jihadi terrorist extremist experience there is most definitely a risk to the West.

BRAHIMI: I don't think that much of the West. I think of the neighbors of Syria. You know, Lebanon is in immediate danger. They cannot

bear 1 million and a half refugees and growing. Jordan cannot bear also 700,000 or 800,000 of refugees. Even Turkey cannot bear the 700,000 of

refugees they have.

So the danger to the neighborhood is extremely serious and immediate. A conflict like this cannot be bottled up in one country forever. Either

you solve it or it will spill over all over the place.

AMANPOUR: Well, to that point, I would like to play you this little bit of an interview I did with Ambassador Robert Ford, who just resigned as

the U.S. ambassador to Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT FORD, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SYRIA: We warned, even as long as two years ago, that terrorist groups would go into that vacuum as

we had seen in places like Afghanistan and Somalia and Yemen and Mali.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Ford said that they'd been warning for years and basically people aren't listening.

It's very similar to what you said about your role in Afghanistan when you quit in Afghanistan in 1999.

BRAHIMI: Yes. You know, I have been saying that, again, you know, reminding people that if you -- if you ignore a problem like, it's like an

infected wound. If you don't do anything to prevent it from spreading, it will spread. And it will not only spread inside the country; it will spill

over all over the place. This is what I said in September '99 and nobody was listening.

In 2001, I think people understood what I was talking about.

So here you have the same thing. You have thousands of people in Syria who shouldn't be there.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Ford also told me that he resigned because he could no longer defend the Obama administration policy in Syria.

Why did you resign?

BRAHIMI: I didn't resign because I did not approve of the policy of the secretary-general of the United Nations. I think the secretary-general

of the United Nations and myself saw eye to eye.

I resigned because I was getting nowhere. And it was the only way left for me to protest the total inattention of the international community

and of the region to the situation in Syria.

AMANPOUR: I want to ask you specifically about President Assad. I mean, you've met him many times.

What is your opinion on him and the way he's handling this right now?

BRAHIMI: You know, I think he said several times and especially just before and after the Geneva conference that they were doing very well

militarily, that they are going to win. I think at one stage the words he used is that we are obliged to win. We have no other way but to win.

And I said to the Americans and the Russians, you are bringing both these two delegations screaming and kicking -- or is it kicking and

screaming? I don't know.

They are not coming to negotiate. Indeed, in Geneva, the opposition tried to put forward some ideas for discussion. But the government

delegation, I think their instruction was go to Geneva because our friends, the Russians, want us to go. But don't waste your time discussing or

making concessions or even listening to the other side.

AMANPOUR: What do you know about what Assad knows?

Do you -- did you ever talk to him about the torture, the barrel bombs, the 160,000 dead and climbing?

BRAHIMI: I certainly talked to him about the suffering of his people. I talked to him about the list of political prisoners, 29,000-plus of them.

And I gave the list to his office.

You know, I mean, do you really believe that he doesn't know about the barrel bombs that are being dropped almost every day by his air force? The

cannons, the tanks that are shelling the cities? It's impossible that he doesn't know.

Syria, people are very close to one another and I'm sure that he has relatives of people who have been tortured that he knows personally. He

must know people whose relatives have been tortured, perhaps even to death.

So yes, definitely he does -- he does know. And I think he will tell you that he makes it his business to be informed about what happens in his

country.

AMANPOUR: It's a sobering thought.

Ambassador Brahimi, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

BRAHIMI: Thank you very much for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: A chilling and violent situation indeed and we just heard, of course, what happens in Syria doesn't stay in Syria, but how do we

prevent homegrown terrorists trained and armed on the Syrian battlefield from returning to their own back yards to wreak more havoc?

A leading expert on counterterrorism has some surprising answers when we come back.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

As we just heard from Lakhdar Brahimi, there is a very real threat that a terrorist contagion could spread all the way West from Syria. Of

the 12,000 foreign fighters who flooded to Syria, more even than went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, some 3,000 or so have come from the West.

More than 700 from France, more than 400 from right here in Britain and lurking behind that fear are events like this, the London bombings of July

7th, 2005; 56 people were killed in a fully homegrown terror attack. And more recently the daylight murder of a British soldier by self-avowed

Islamic jihadis.

Now the effort to tamp down Muslim extremism has spread to Britain's schools, where a government report released today claims that schools in

Birmingham were used as, quote, "a Trojan horse," spreading a hardline Islamist message. It's the type of controversy that crops up in much of

Europe as government struggle to integrate their Muslim populations.

Richard Barrett is a counterintelligence expert, a veteran of the British secret intelligence service and he was head of the U.N. team

monitoring Al Qaeda and other extremist groups. He is now with the Soufan Group and he joins me now from New York.

Richard Barrett, welcome back to the program.

RICHARD BARRETT, THE SOUFAN GROUP: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Let me first ask you about what Lakhdar Brahimi said, that this war could turn Syria into Somalia and could spread and destabilize and

bring terror all the way around the region and here to the West.

Do you agree?

BARRETT: I absolutely do agree with him. Yes. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Brahimi and already the war is a complete disaster for

Syria. I think it's very fast becoming a disaster for the region. And unfortunately I agree with him also that it may in due course become a

disaster for the world. Certainly there's absolutely every reason to try and stop it as soon as possible.

AMANPOUR: I just wonder how you think that might happen.

BARRETT: Well, I think it's not going to stop just by Syrians fighting each other. Neither side is going to win, as I think Mr. Brahimi

suggested. So it really does depend on the outside powers. And that's not just United States and Russia, who are very key in that but also across the

region, powers as well, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran but also some of the others, Turkey included.

AMANPOUR: So you don't see a sort of a bogeyman in Iran. Obviously Mr. Brahimi thought that Iran had perhaps the strongest influence to play,

given that everybody says it was only because of Iran that Assad changed the momentum on the battlefield.

Do you think Iran does have a responsible role to play?

BARRETT: Well, I think that he's absolutely right. They've had enormously influential role in the Quds Force in the ring and Revolutionary

Guard have really stiffened the back of the Syrian army. And of course by bringing in Hezbollah as well, that's also helped considerably to turn the

tide against the rebels.

And so Iran is a real player there. And I think that it's interesting that over the last weeks maybe I would say Iran is slightly pulling back,

allowing more Shia militia from Iraq to go in and take the place of their forces and Libyans forces.

AMANPOUR: I'm not sure how good that is but nonetheless, the real fear is this blowback that we've been talking about.

Can the U.K. government or the French government or any other European government or even the U.S. government really stop this homegrown terrorism

or this homegrown jihadism?

BARRETT: Well, I think we ought to make a distinction right off that not all the people going to Syria to fight from Western countries are going

to come back as -- and -- to be terrorists. I mean, there's a big difference I think about being motivated to go as a foreign fighter and

coming back as a domestic terrorist.

But nonetheless, it doesn't take many. And if it's only 1 percent of 3,000 people already and counting, then that's going to be quite a problem

when they do come back.

AMANPOUR: Before we drill down on how to prevent and recognize, let me just put this to you. A lot of these people go there -- and I expected

this in Bosnia and elsewhere -- they go there because they say hang on, we're Muslims and the world is letting our fellow Muslims be slaughtered.

Don't the West -- doesn't the West have some responsibility and bear some accountability for all these Western citizens who are going there to

help their fellow Muslims?

BARRETT: Well, certainly that, I think, is a very real motivation in Syria as well, that the great majority of people going are going because

they think that's the best way to help their community and that their community is really suffering.

I think the problem comes when they're there and when they're exposed to very much more radical ideas, much more sort of global visions of who

the enemy is and what should be done about it. And there, of course, the Western nations do have some responsibilities, sure. But in many ways, the

Western nations, as Mr. Brahimi suggested, are in a bit of a bind here. What is the correct policy to conduct towards Syria?

And I think the retiring ambassador, Robert Ford, also suggested this. It's now a bit too late. But with hindsight, you would have done things

differently. But that's always the way . And very, very hard now for Western nations to correct a ply which would satisfy all their citizens

that they were doing the right thing.

AMANPOUR: So how do you think the Western governments are doing? Are they successfully trying to stop the potential ones who come back as

terrorists?

AMANPOUR: Look, we just had an arrest in France a few days ago. The first ever attack by a European Muslim jihadi who came back from Syria and

launched an attack in Belgium on the Jewish Museum.

What should the Western governments be doing?

BARRETT: Well, I think the Western governments have a very difficult problem in countering the narrative. You can go over to Syria and you say,

well, my government is not doing very much, but I'll do something. Now there are two things. If your government says on no account must you go

over there and if you do we'll take away your citizenship and throw you in prison when you came back and all that sort of thing, well, I think that's

a very harsh and very mistaken approach.

These people are going to go. And they're going to go for fairly genuine reasons.

If they come back like Mehdi Nemmouche, who you referred to has attacked the Jewish Museum in Brussels, well, clearly that's a real

problem. But one needs to know with that guy, for example, who spent a year, I think, with ISIS, with the most extreme group in Syria, why did he

go in the first place? What happened to him there? And why did he come back?

And I think those answers are really critical in deciding how you're going to deal with any particular returnee.

AMANPOUR: Now we mentioned many attacks, including the 77 (ph) bombings here in London in 2005 and of course the decapitation of a British

soldier, Lee Rigby, not so long ago. And Prime Minister Cameron has launched a task force to try to combat extremism wherever it might rear its

head in communities. and the result is a big controversy over whether or not there's a Trojan horse, as they say, in schools, particularly in the

Muslim heartland, Birmingham?

Now Ofsted, the school's governing body, has come out with a report, saying that there has been quite a lot of potential fundamentalization

there.

Is this an exaggeration about British schools?

Or is there really a risk?

BARRETT: Well education and countering balanced extremism, of course, go very much hand in hand. They should be very, very closely allied. I

mean, in Britain, there's a huge multicultural society. You have some schools where you have 50 different mother tongues, not one of them is

English. So it's a great challenge obviously for not only the teachers but also the boards of governors in being able to manage that sort of

multicultural atmosphere.

But the one thing that surely all education is trying to provide children in a country like the United Kingdom, is the ability to think

critically about what you're reading, what you're being told and so on, ask why is somebody tell you that, is it true, what other sources of

information do I have, and also this sort of basic acceptance that there are other people with other points of view and that you have to tolerate

that.

Well, if schools diverge from that and if schools begin to push a particular line to the exclusion of others so they isolate those children

within society, well, that's clearly a very bad thing indeed.

But I can't think there are many schools in Britain where that might happen.

AMANPOUR: On that note, Richard Barrett, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And before we take a break, what is in a name? In Russia today with an upsurge of patriotism following the annexation of Crimea or

the reunification, as many Russians prefer to call it, along with World War II commemorations like the 70th anniversary of D-Day attended by President

Putin that we all covered on Friday, one name has become a lightning rod for Russian patriotism and that is Stalingrad. The name still evokes the

bloody showdown between Nazi invaders and Soviet troops with their back to the frozen Volga River. They were ordered to fight to the last man by

Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin, who gave the city its name.

The Soviet victory marked the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler at a cost of some 2 million casualties. But Stalin's successor, Nikita

Khrushchev, purged the city's name, changing it to Volgograd. Now wanting to frame his moves against Ukraine as a similar renewable struggle,

President Putin has proposed a referendum to change the city's name back to Stalingrad.

And while few find the courage to stand up to the man they call Czar Putin, one courageous journalist who did has found justice eight years

after her murder. That story when we come back.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where it took eight years and two trials to bring the killers of a Russian icon to justice.

Today in a Moscow courtroom, two men were given life sentences for the 2006 murder of the famed investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Three

accomplices were also given lengthy prison sentences.

But who was she and why does her murder still stir the conscience?

Back in 2012, as part of the documentary called "Czar Putin," I went searching for answers about this remarkable woman, a child of the

revolution who became a leading critic of government corruption and organized crime and also Russia's war in Chechnya. And she ultimately

became the target of assassins.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Her name was Anna Politkovskaya. She grew up in an era when communism was still glorified and the Soviet Union still a

superpower. And like all good citizens, she started out as a young pioneer.

Anna Politkovskaya became a reporter for the newspaper "Noviya Gazetta." In her book, she blasted President Vladimir Putin for snuffing

out Russia's democracy.

Putin's government didn't want the public receiving any more bad news about Chechnya and Anna's voice was increasingly isolated. On October 7th,

2006, it was silenced forever. These CCTV cameras showed that Anna was followed into the lobby of her apartment building where she was shot four

times at point-blank range.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: In death, Anna Politkovskaya became a martyr to truth and a free press. But sadly, her murder wasn't unique. According to the

Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is the fifth most dangerous nation on Earth now for journalists. In fact, nine out of 10 journalists murders

in Russia go unsolved.

As for the masterminds behind the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, that equally important clue remains unsolved.

And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com, and follow me on Twitter and

Facebook. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.

END