the hour hair in the russian front of the headlines fourteen a year on the poland and russia remember the victims of the plane crash that killed president lech kaczynski and ninety five others believe his all the two countries are set to meet at the site of the tragedy which is one of the scribe has problems first since. another shocking incident of an american mother using her adopted russian son is once again drawing attention to cases of big let

me. put a new regulation between the two countries maybe saw anderson is made. on libyan leader agrees to a cease fire plan proposed by the african union and the talks in tripoli but the rebels say they'll let me agree to pay six hundred dollars feel this planets around . for next to people of ellen his cross talk guests discuss whether the foreign intervention in libya or pave the way for al qaida to take root in the country. can. start. to think. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter

lavelle opening the door to tear the al qaeda franchise has been largely absent from the arab awakening in north africa people appear to be embracing democracy and not radical islam however this may change the military intervention in libya and the violence in yemen could be an opportunity for al qaida. can. still. discuss al qaeda in the arab world today i'm joined by an old abbas like he's in washington he's a senior political scientist at the rand corporation also in washington we have been rami he is a human and civil rights program director at the muslim american society freedom and in austin we go to derrick crow he is a political director at the brave new foundation in another member of our cross talking you know on the hunger right derrick in austin you got up early as for this program so i'm going to go you first. is thanks to you know during the day we look

at the transformation of the arab world the him the embrace of democracy and getting rid of these vicious dictators have been around for for decades the dictators and some of people on the right wing of said be careful al qaeda is out there going to take advantage of it but we've seen successful growing successes in the arab middle east but now we have the intervention in libya and we're hearing al qaeda again do you feel that there is a strong enough evidence to believe that al qaeda is trying to infiltrate itself into the ranks of this civil war is what's happening right now in libya i mean we haven't heard a lot about al qaeda lately and also we well we get word from the cia there's a flicker of activity how do you reflect on that. well i'll i think al qaeda is always looking for ways to insinuate itself into situations where there's chaos or a lack of law and order like we're seeing in afghanistan right now we're hearing that even though we've got thousands and thousands of more u.s. troops into there somehow we still have al qaeda cells popping up and that that really shows i think the brokenness of the u.s.

strategy there for on one hand but i do think that there's always the danger that when there's these areas of instability like this that al qaeda tries to insinuate itself but. i think you should always take with a grain of salt sometimes the united states intelligence community you know off the record pronouncements that outside is insinuating itself into a situation because they're kind of the bogeyman that we've set up when we want to intervene subway and you know if i go if i go to you in washington it was that cache of documents that came out cache of documents in two thousand and seven and there was revealed in iraq that a number of volunteers to be suicide bombers came from libya from eastern libya now again is this going is this just the bogeyman coming out in a and this is just because you convince people for or against intervention because again they'd be. pure coincidence that a lot of these people came from eastern libya apparently our new ally in the region as this civil war goes on what do you think about that is how true is it. well

there used to be a group in libya the libyan islamic fighting group and this was. one of the many groups in north africa that they had some degree of association with i would tell you that what happened is they get their feet government was successful in essentially crushing this group most of the of the leaders ones up in jail and the ones that survived migrated to other places of. of conflict so this is this is why you find libyans for example in high positions with the al qaeda core in pakistan afghanistan area is because of the defeat of the levy and islamic fighting group in libya and now what happened in libya is very very before this latest crisis it's very very interesting because the

they got their free government enter into. into these questions we the recently there are leaders of the libyan islamic fighting group and somehow the leadership of the group went through a process of reassessing the examining their ideology and they ended up we now seeing violence and as a result of these a number of them were let out of prison so basically i would tell you that the not have a strong presence in libya when the revolve against gaddafi develop this is what i don't think that there is a great danger that extremist groups will take over the early eighty's early on but it is very interesting libya and it's very interesting irrespective of the numbers here i mean and it in and all kind is always changing it's like you play him if i know you in washington i mean it's it's kind of an interesting irony right here i mean maybe formal al-qaeda biti there are calls to arm these rebels i mean it.

there is a great of historical irony there isn't there i mean these people that were. sworn to destroy western influence and their allies in the region or could be armed by the united states and nato it's a i mean it's kind of like the mujahideen and possibly if it works out. well that's a possibility i think we have to understand that al qaeda is not a political organization in the conventional sense of the word it's not structured around an ideology it's really a terrorist group. whose primary purpose is to create situations that destroy human life and that insinuate themselves and political situations that will ultimately lead in some attack perhaps on the united states of america or other western countries the sense that i have right now is that civil society in libya and the civil society that emerges from the civil war is going to have to be very

good visual and also very much aware of the fact that tolerating that kind of violent extremism is not a benefit to either the evolution of democracy in libya or to libyan coexistence with the rest of the world so my sense is further that those of us who really reject violence and reject violence as a means of moving the arab world forward and specifically libya forward will ultimately have to be not only aware of that potential danger but also build up civil society to the point where those kinds of attitudes and those kinds of extremist ideologies are not are not tolerated or supported ok if i if i go back to . it's very interesting and we feel look at the. how the intervention is changing the kind of the discourse that is going on here i mean only a few weeks ago we were talking about the great rise of democracy now more of the focus is on civil war is an opening for al qaeda to say look i mean the the

americans are nato allies they're going to protect some of their dictator friends are going to let some of them go it's a lot more ambiguous than this narrative it's the freedom of nations in north africa they can take advantage of that but it is and they kind of tell you that could the first speaker mentioned oh. it is always looking for opportunities to take advantage of chaos let me mention one thing i see a great the show of both a similarity between what is happening in libya today and what happened in boston the in the mid ninety's because usually called the during the the war in bosnia the muslims were beleaguered and they turned to for assistance you know the iranians were the main support of the response of the of it was in muslims in the early stages of the war there was

a danger of infiltration by extremist elements there was a whole brigade fighting in bosnia on the site of the muslims of other mujahideen these were extremists. many of them were affiliated with al qaida so you had these this situation in bosnia in the mid ninety's were it look as if extremist elements were going to gain great influence and they did know what the united states and its associates partners and allies did in bosnia they engaged with the boston for the nation comprising both the a muslim and croatian sites and they put in place a program to train and equip there are forces of the boston for the nation so there was this direct engagement and what that did is it provided the united states with the lead british that it needed to drive out the influence over there any and i was

very he was i was very interesting i've heard this comparison intellectually derek and i asked here the comparison between bosnia intervention in bosnia and intervention here in libya because france is a can da faecal is still a very powerful figure he he does have resources to keep back and i mean he's back at the west but bosnia. in that situation there it wasn't going to get more it was going to corrupt the entire region over a much further in this case it's still there ok maybe could offer you didn't get rid of all of those nasty weapons ok maybe there's a few hanging around still so the computer comparison is not very good in that sense how do you feel about that i mean you know this intervention is giving a message that you know it looks could be critical for many people in the region bahrain and example saudi arabia it's like i said earlier it's not it's not the same narrative all the way through. i think there's a real ambiguity here there's not clear lines between you know good guys and bad

guys in our media life or trade here in the united states like you mentioned earlier at the top of the program the region in which the united states is backing armed forces inside libya is a region that is sent numerous people to fight americans in iraq and afghanistan and there are actually members of the libyan resistance movement that if admitted they have actually been in iraq in afghanistan fighting against the americans and these are the same folks that we're trying to arm with with expensive united states weapons and and trying to back with airstrikes but you know back to the topic of a kind of first second we had mentioned that they want to take advantage of chaos i mean al qaeda is in a brand a crisis right now like there's these democratic uprisings in egypt and other places have really kind of shown how how impotent their. ideology is in speaking for the aspirations of the people across the muslim world and it's a real threat to them when people without weapons stand up and try to take control their own destiny rather than going through al qaeda is broken ideology but you're

right that the overall point that you're making here is that there's some real moral ambiguity here and for the united states to charge in like we're defending quote unquote freedom fighters versus an evil dictator there's no no real indication that that's how it's going to come out to watch. me but i'm a fine go you i mean again we just get a real quickly before we go to the break here is america helping or hurting its image with this intervention into libya. i think it's doing both actually i'm mad is the irony i do agree with the the assessment that there is moral ambiguity there is no very clear game plan or exit strategy that we can discern on the part of the rounds on that point there gentlemen i'm going to jump in here we're going to we're short break and out of that short break we'll continue our discussion out stay with . kate snow. and.

they say steve this is not a provocation but a warning that. a force should say everybody is sure to support the trieste because they have no idea about the hardships to face. plate one it's this is all of them too nice to bring the army to life ever you see is the most precious thing in the world. uses of self-sacrifice and heroism but those who understand it fully but you have to live a. real life stories from world war two. to three thousand nine hundred forty five dollars on t.v. dot com. download the official publication q i phone

the i pod touch from the i choose our still. life on the go. video on demand keys and mine comes and says feeds now in the palm of your. com. welcome back to our stock computor all about free mind you we're talking about al qaeda in the arab world. and. the same. but first let's see what russians think about this organization. with democracy in the air many in the arab world now have hope and expectations of

change to the people's power appears to have marginalized radical fundamentalists and other groups though only then yemen this may not be the case and there is growing evidence that al qaeda is on the move in both countries the public opinion foundation asked russians what is the target of al qaeda thirty nine percent of the respondents say it's the entire non muslim world and another thirty two percent say al qaeda is actions targeted only against some particular countries it remains to be seen if civil war and foreign military intervention well play into the hands of al qaeda and other groups peter right and how inane washing if i'm going to you know we were talking this brand issue that al qaeda has it's a really big problem as pointed out earlier part of the program but they are resilient and it isn't going to go away i mean expansionary we see events unfolding

in yemen which again we'll see a lot of of from event people on the ground seeing western hypocrisy there they will go in and take out one person but not another ok but this is where our kind of does have some traction in some sense ok now again rebranding how do they what is the what is an effective strategy for them to rebrand if they can embrace democracy but they can still point out the hypocrisy of the west well i think the awakening as you call it anderson spawns of the west police police awakening those police and some very very serious challenges i would tell you that i think ok that would had the benefit that if the west had supported the taters because the. guy there themes from the very beginning that they were struggling against the west because it was western support the care. states us they call them up

or state governments in place that was the whole theory of al qaida they had to strike against the west in order to weaken western support the freeze up of state play games that if the west were forced to we throw in support they would fall with the democrats that we are seeing. the most of the session process that we are seeing in countries like egypt. in tunisia in libya of course returning to an armed conflict you know i will tell you this argument is we can't because if they see these. masses by seeing again i guess that they are sheep and so far there is no indication that these are islamist revolutions their democratic revolutions as far as we can see them are human it was a spot where if they see their west soup or think that they will probably say should process it makes it very hard for them to blame the west for the deals of

the arab world the muslim world i should say so it is a pretty difficult problem for them and i don't see. very good opening for. itself in a way that would be convincing to the muslim population of the middle east well derek if i go back to you i mean that's a very interesting point here but i suppose maybe we're all getting ahead of ourselves too because we have to see where this democratic process is going to go in the region it's still very very early days i mean anyone this crusade democracies failed in the in the in the or in north africa is it is just really it's a street premature we haven't seen where it's going to go to the events in tunisia are still being played out in egypt and unfortunately in the middle is this awful civil war being played out in libya how much it can it you think can induce if these events in libya depending on how long it can take will slow down the democratic process because you know even the countries on both sides may be internees are going to start getting worried if this is going to grow and we see al

qaeda using potentially using libya as a base because of the chaos that's going to worry a lot of people it's going to the hardliners and the people the security hardliners get if you are involved in again. well i think there are a couple points i'd like to make the first is that to the earlier point you were asking the previous guest about what's the opportunity for al qaeda here what the the worst thing that could happen is that in the united states conduct of the war we screw up and there are a lot of civilian casualties right like how we conduct our support of these rebels if it goes badly that's probably our best opportunity in the region and that's unfortunate and related to that is how the rebels conduct themselves and how the revolutionaries conduct themselves if they retake power or in the areas where they have power if if we're seen to be backing a regime that's going on a spree of revenge killings or unjust imprisonment and there's been some indications of that with that with the revolutionaries then that really hurts us in

those areas and we're seen as propping up a corrupt regime the same we were seen as propping up a corrupt regime in afghanistan now as far as the instability goes you know one of the excuses the united states used to get into this situation was that if we lead if we let this situation get out of control then the instability there would affect what's going on in egypt and around the region but what i think that analysis fails to take into account is that what's going on in libya is in a large part a result of the instability around it with the democratic uprisings in the countries nearby and you had that enthusiasm reach the libyan street and they decided in some areas that it was their turn for an uprising and in some cases it's gone much worse than it has in the places in egypt and in the region but you know to the larger point you brought up about western hypocrisy the other opportunity for what's going on in bahrain quite frankly i mean there's a there's a very serious crackdown on people who want reform and that's been tacitly

supported by the united states by a lack of condemnation there so i mean there are a lot of traps here for the united states if we're not careful to get boxed into a situation where we actually in power as. ideology message when i go to you is the united states empowering all kind of by action and the law of unintended consequences why exactly it's intervention there because a lot of people would say it least in the in the inside the beltway will say look this is our opportunity regain momentum in the north africa because well the americans in the western capitals have been pretty red faced all their buddies are leaving power one way or another and they probably will continue to with this demonstration effect but the united states jumps in there and being humanitarian and has derek pointed out and these types of situations you inevitably kill civilians americans are very good at killing civilians in afghanistan and on the pakistani border ok there's no reason we believe it's not going to happen continue to happen in libya. well i think inevitably it happens all the time in war and it

does create a very real question about the motives for the intervention i mean just yesterday we heard the american secretary of state state that the only way the bombing is going to stop is for the gadhafi forces to pull back and ultimately to relinquish power and ultimately for khadafy to go into exile and that's not humanitarian intervention that's regime change the other question that really is very pressing is what is the real character of the of the so-called revolution going on right now is that a real democratic revolution or is it simply hatred of gadhafi being replaced by possibly something that is non-democratic and not necessarily friendly to the west so i think that the nature of military intervention in a complex situation is such that we really don't know how it's going to turn out and how it's going to play out so i would say that the best strategy is to do what's necessary to protect life but to let the political dynamics of the situation

sort themselves out and to be ready to support civil society and its reconstruction mind you the the real growth of extremism happens primarily because people have no real options in terms of food clothing and shelter in a society that is highly stratified and that has a high concentration of wealth in the hands of very few people i understand that that is very much the situation in libya so the question becomes can we can the world in the muslim world in the muslim american world support a transition that is really democratic and support those elements in civil society in libya that want to see reconstruction without an ongoing armed conflict i think that is the question and that's what's in front of us and we'll find out here in washington and it's interesting i mean we all agree here that democracy is not the favorite card al qaeda likes to play its rejects with democracy but it is derek pointed out he said you know if this goes on. for a long enough bill you know you could have a stream is group saying look what democracy does these people want democracy it

tears up countries or create civil wars and you still have western intervention the west is still calling the shots here so is it really just a matter of time and intensity before this would go either way before people say look you know embracing this always democratic ideas it's the west trying to manipulate what's who's going to be in power and if this goes on longer and longer we're supporting people we really don't know very well. you know the it's very interesting that you know there is a great deal of criticism of the west in the in the arab world in the arab media for its interventions i have never i have not heard the argument made in the context of the democratic revolution on that is going on in the in north africa and other parts of the arab world today that is not what people are saying the people in the arab countries by and large want democracy i mean that's that's that's a sense that you get from looking at the egyptian media for example no one he said

you see in the west of manipulating the market or see to establish some sort of control over the arab world i think the danger is the opposite the danger is that if they're not have the station feels they are world will go back to that type of. games it has had for the last fifty years and is in fact there on representatives represent that if there is of this against the fact that there aren't responsible for the needs of the population that has generated developed at least some of the extremists on that produce al-qaeda so if you look at the long term picture and not just this was happening today in libya in the yemen or the other places you see that there is if the sources of the coalition are we less eliminated the arab world needs to go through the same type of the market i think

evolution got lucky in america east asia and eastern europe have gone through very carefully review out what you want to do what you are not in your head great america. sure yeah i want to be clear that i don't think that the united states' support of democratization is at all a threat to the united states or in danger is our image around the world what i think is the danger is the the support of the united states militarily for factions that we're not sure about yet i think if you dare say what i think the most are going to give you more time but it was a very interesting point many thanks my guest today in washington and austin and thanks to our viewers for watching is here arche see you next time and remember cross talk rules.

for the full story we've got. the biggest issues get the human voice face to face with the news makers. home. from. it.

all.