Transcript
Transcripts:
Panel 1: France and America in Each Other's Eyes, with E.J. Dionne, Philippe Roger, Walter Russell Mead, and Justin Vaisse.
Panel 2: The United States and France After Iraq, with Philip Gordon, Jean-David Levitte, William Kristol, Therese Delpech, and James Steinberg
Summary of Remarks by Jean-Louis Bruguière: In an off-the-record speech at the CUSF fourth annual conference, Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's leading anti-terrorism official, warned that there remains a grave terrorist threat from Al-Qa'eda and similar radical Islamist groups. According to Bruguière, the war in Iraq has actually increased the risk of terrorism in the United States and Europe—including biological or chemical attacks—instead of reducing the threat.
Bruguière, a combination of prosecutor and judge in France, emphasized that there were no proven links between Iraq and Al-Qa'eda. Thus, according to Bruguière, the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime did not weaken Al Qa'eda or change the basic parameters of the terrorist threat. To the contrary, the war increased the level of radical Islam rhetoric and anti-Americanism in the Muslim world, aiding Islamist recruitment. At the same time, the war absorbed the energies and resources of Western political leaders and diverted attention away from the terrorist problem. Bruguière viewed the way the Iraq war was justified and managed as particularly troubling, as it created the impression within the United States that the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime represented a major step forward in the war against terrorism.
His speech also detailed the ability of terrorist networks to recruit new members, to make alliances with like-minded organizations, to use new technologies and financing techniques, and to maintain their global reach. Bruguière said that although U.S-French collaboration on terrorism remains excellent, a great deal remains to be done in order to foster the kind of international cooperation necessary to win the war on terrorism.
Bruguière described the movement of radical Islamist networks from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Central Asia and the Caucasus, especially within Chechnya. Since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, decentralized fundamentalist networks have re-established a base of operations in the region. Bruguière said that "Chechnya became after September 11 the last battleground for open confrontation between Muslims and non-Muslims ... The seizure of a theatre in Moscow in October 2002 is the sign of the 'talibanization' of Chechnya which is turning that country and indeed the entire Caucasus region into a 'new Afghanistan.'" He added: "This incident served as the final sign that radical Islamic terrorism has imposed itself upon Chechnya and that the Chechen issue is no longer just an internal Russian question."
Bruguière portrayed a thriving terrorist movement that is in the process of adapting to the war on terrorism and to the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Said Bruguière, "although weakened by the military operations in Afghanistan and the death or capture of a number of its leaders, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al-Qa'eda still has the capability of acting alone or in combination with other jihad-oriented organizations." "Since the September 11 attacks, Al-Qa'eda won over to the jihad cause, pro-Kashmiri sectarian organizations in Pakistan such as Lashkar E Ghanvi, Harakat Ul Mujahidin El Aalmi (HMA), successor to the Harakat Ul Ansar, co-signatory to Usama bin Laden's fatwah forming the 'World Islamic Front to fight Jews and Crusaders.'"
Bruguière indicated that radical groups have begun to successfully recruit ethnic Europeans and can easily move across borders. These groups finance their activities through "microfinancing" techniques that profit from small-scale criminal activities, particularly credit card fraud. "That type of financing is very difficult to identify, all the more because the normal financial system is not being used for transferring funds."
The reach of these radical groups continues to extend across Europe and into North America. According to Bruguière, "the porous U.S.-Canadian border presents for [terrorist] organizations a strategic advantage and, as a result, represents for the United States a far from negligible risk factor in terms of security," Bruguière described how recent French and European investigations have revealed that there is a very real and imminent possibility of biological or chemical attack in either the United States or Europe by radical Islamic networks. "While the British authorities arrested an Islamist cell possessing ricin, a dreadfully lethal poison, another network was dismantled in France in December 2002, just as it was about to launch chemical attacks using cyanide," Bruguière said such attacks could have killed hundreds of civilians.
Bruguière characterized U.S.-French cooperation in the fight against terrorism as very good and an area that has not been affected by the harsh political dispute over the war in Iraq. "Since September 11, we have very significantly developed our cooperation with our partners and notably with the U.S. That cooperation is a priority which we wish to strengthen in order to win the war against terrorism." Bruguière indicated that both the U.S. and French governments concur that "terrorism is a new form of belligerence, a genuine war," and that the two countries share a will to win that war. Nonetheless, much remains to be done to strengthen international cooperation. The terrorist threat is, in Bruguière's view, a transnational issue.
"Apart from Afghanistan, no state deliberately supported the Al-Qa'eda movement ... even if some states like Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia are used as sanctuaries by Al-Qa'eda. Today the situation is more complex, the distinctions blurrier, the organizations more dynamic and the evolution of the groups more difficult to predict." Terrorism must therefore be met by a global and multilateral effort that uses all available tools. Bruguière expressed concern that the United States' tendency to view the terrorist threat as linked to governments, as demonstrated in the Iraq crisis, has caused it to emphasize military means and to neglect, relatively speaking, other counterterrorist methods such as intelligence assets and diplomatic efforts.
Biography: Jean-Louis Bruguière is first vice-president of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, where he is responsible for coordination of the judicial aspects of the fight against terrorism in France. Bruguière has directed French efforts against Islamic terrorism since 1986. Judge Bruguière led the operation to find and arrest the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal in 1994, has helped foil terrorist plans to attack the World Cup in 1998 and the Strasbourg Cathedral in 2000, and in the wake of the September 11 attacks, disrupted one of the largest Al-Qa'eda networks in Europe.