so much for watching we will be back here tomorrow i'm christine present now. it was that so much seven hundred fifty thousand israeli. mark lippman in the door and we all kind of franchise has been largely absent from the arab awakening a little. he's.

a charmer in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

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bold colors an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the com. you can. listen to. live. below and well come across 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. live can. live discussed in the arab world today i'm joined by and he's in washington he's a senior political scientist at the rand corporation also in washington we have given

them 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 on the hunger right derrick in austin you got up the earliest for this program so i'm going to go you first. is with one. thanks you know during the day we look at the 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 the people on the right wing of said be careful al qaeda is out there 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 but we haven't heard a lot about al qaeda lately and all sudden we 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 end but i do think that there's always the danger that when there's these areas of instability like this and al qaeda tries to insinuate itself but our i think you should always take with a grain of salt sometimes the united states intelligence community you know off the record pronouncements that al qaeda is insinuating itself into a situation because they're kind of the bogeyman that we've set up when we want to intervene somewhere and you know if i get to go to you in washington there was that cache of documents that came a cache of documents in two thousand and seven and it 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 a boogie man coming out and and this is just to try to convince people for 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 a a group in in libya the libyan islamic fighting group and this was. one of the many groups in north africa that had some degree of association with al qaeda what happened is that they cared nothing 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 it's because of the defeat of the levy on the salami fighting group in in libya now what happened in libya is very very before this latest crisis he's very very interesting because the they got their free government enter into. into these questions with the brazenly there are leaders of the libyan islamic fighting group and somehow their leadership of the group went through a process of reassess in the examining their ideology and they ended up really 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 revolt against gaddafi develop this is what i

don't think that there is a great danger that extremist groups will take over the world against the theory interesting but it's very interesting irrespective of the numbers here i mean and it in and al qaeda is always changing its mind if 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 but the 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 are 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 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 that. 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 a civil society that emerges from the civil war is going to have to be very vigilant 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 live in 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 can go back. to you 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. and they know the kind 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 deal of both a similarity between what is happening in libya today and what happened in bosnia

in the mid ninety's because usually called the during the the war in bosnia the bosnian muslims were beleaguered and they turned to for assistance you know iranians were the main supporters 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 side of the muslims of other mujahideen these were extremists. many of them were affiliated with al qaida a source who had these this situation in bosnia in the mid ninety's were it look see for extremist elements who are going to gain great influence and they did know what the united states and its associates partners and allies did in bosnia

is they engage with the most and for the nation comprising both the emotional and croatian sites and they put in place a program to train and equip the armed 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 the any and i was very he was a very interesting i've never heard this comparison of likely to derek an answer here the comparison between bosnia intervention in bosnia and intervention here in libya because france is they can guard is still a very powerful figure he he does have resources to keep back and i need hit back at the west the boston. didn't in that situation there it wasn't going to get more it was going to corrupt the entire region or go much further in this case it's still there ok maybe khadafi 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. the 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 good guys and bad guys in our media like for 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 have admitted that they had actually been in iraq and 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 about kind of for a 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 watch if fine go to you and me again and we just get a real quickly before we go to the break here is america helping or hurting its image with this i'm sure in intervention into libya. i think it's doing both actually and that 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 one short break now after that short break we'll continue our discussion on state of. the to the. to see. the look of. the of. the the. see see.

a little. more news today violence is once again flared up the first these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of kandahar. trying to look for a shelter all of that led. welcome back to our computer lavelle remind you we're talking about al qaeda in the arab world. lead. slim. but first let's see what russians think about this organization and. 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 ben 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 see al qaeda actions targeted only against some particular countries and it remains to be seen if civil war and foreign military intervention will play into the hands of al qaeda and other groups peter wright and hill inane washing if i go to you and we were talking just brand issue that kind of housing is 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 you see a lot of help 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 al qaeda does have some traction in some sense ok now again rebranding how did it what is that what do some 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 this out of awakening as you call it and the response of the west police police awakening those present some very very serious challenges to tell you that i think ok that would have been afraid that if the west had supported the troops because i would tell you that one of the guy that themes from the very beginning. they were struggling against the west because it was worse than war that can.

states as they call them up were state governments in place that was the whole theory of al qaeda that 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 keep on police like egypt. in tunisia libya of course returning to an armed conflict you know i would tell you this argument is we can't because if they see these. masses by seeing again i guess the they the regime and so far there is no indication that these are islamist rebels lucian's their democratic revolutions as far as we can see them get our human rights a spy work if they see their west super being that they will probably say should

process it makes it very hard for them to blame the west for the ills of the arab world the muslim world i should say so it is a pretty difficult problem for them and i don't see. where we are putting for al qaeda 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 to me 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 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 be 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 it does 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 living in

tunisia to start getting worried about this is going to grow and we see al qaeda using potentially using libya's a base because of the chaos that's going to worry a lot of people it's going to be hard liners new people the security hardliners to get a few in bolton him. well i think there are a couple points i'd like to make to the first is that so the earlier point you were asking the previous guest about what's the opportunity to hear what 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 to 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 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 empower al qaeda as. ideology and message what am i going to say as the united states empowering all kind of by accident to the law of unintended consequences by exactly its intervention there because that lot of people would say it least in the in the inside the beltway they'll 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 he's very pointed out in 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 in 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 in its reconstruction and 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 it has a high concentration of wealth in the hands of a 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 to you in washington 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 is derek pointed out is that you know if this goes on. for

a long enough though you know you could have a stream is a group saying look what democracy does these people want democracy it carries up countries it creates 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 it's very interesting that you know that. the end 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 that people in the other countries want democracy i mean that's that's

that's a sense that you get for an look in the egyptian media for example no one he said you see in the west of money relating the market or seem to establish some sort of control over the arab world i think the danger is the opposite then you're that if they're not happy sation feels the arab world will go back to that type of autocratic start think the genes that it has had for the last fifty years and missing fact there are representatives represent that if this of these regimes the fact that their bank responses to the needs of a population that has generated the valley police and the extremists that produce al-qaeda so if you look at the long term picture and not just what's happening today in leave yemen or other places you see that there is if the sources of radicalism are less eliminated the arab world needs to go through the same type of

the market i think evolution on that lot in america that east asia and eastern europe have gone through originally to give you all out what you want you want you're nodding your head. sure yeah yeah i want to be clear that i don't think that the united states' support of democratization is at all of threat to the united states or in danger is our image around the world but i think is the danger is the support of the united states militarily for for. actions that we're not sure about yet i think if he dares our web site down we're 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 us here arche see you next time and remember cross talk rules.

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