hello and welcome across town for all things are considered. to be inevitably of blowback in the perverse logic of terrorism ever since the us embarked on its so-called war on terror acts of terror and terrorist networks of political raided the recent deadly massacre in kenya is a case in point so is washington's anti-terrorist strategy like a cure that is worse than the disease. to cross out the war on terror i'm joined by richard barrett to new york he is the senior vice president at the soufan group in washington we have kelly she's

a journalist at antiwar dot com and in san francisco we cross is steven zoon as he is the chair of middle eastern studies at the university of san francisco point folks cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it kelli if i go to you first you know thinking about kenya when i look think about kenya i think well what what everything that went wrong in somalia so somalia is broken and now we have these other groups which many would say american policy and western policy in somalia generated these groups and now it's spreading further as i said is the cure worse than the disease here when we look at the war on terror. well let's consider for a moment what's been going on for the last twelve years in somalia we've had cia covert operations we've had joint special operations command forces doing covert operations we've had private contractors centcom military operating in somalia since nine eleven they've been conducting targeted assassinations air

strikes drone strikes all of affected to billions they're. they've scattered. groups but also created new ones and clothing al shabaab which has been which has taken responsibility for what happened in kenya. the united states has worked with ethiopia and kenya to bring invading forces into somalia which have been responsible for brutal human rights violations create the united states has created an intelligence infrastructure in somalia the notorious jail or prison interrogation center in at the airport there as reported by jeremy scahill in which they have assisted somali government officials in interrogating. people that they've dragged off the streets in these day and. they dirty drug infested. insect infested cells underground so yeah the idea of blowback here is

a surprise we are we are seeing. the remnants are of the outgrowth of what our policy the united states' policy it's been in the last twelve years there ok stephen in san francisco that's not what motivates me optimistic report there i mean i just don't see the learning curve here i mean you go in to try to stabilize somalia some only becomes a broken state a failed state and then it exports what's wrong with that country i mean what's the security interest of the united states and in trying to continue down this path of fighting terror. but even goes back further to the years united states support of the bahraini regime and his the former somali dictators brutal repression and divide rule policies which upon his overthrow in a popular uprising in early one nine hundred ninety one created this power vacuum of which initially was filled by various clan militia and then with the u.s.

intervention and other miscues created this power vacuum that islamist hardline islamist tried to take advantage of and sort of working with some more moderate elements like in the islamic courts the united states came down hard with drone strikes and other forums or intervention either directly or by proxy and indeed we've created this this kind of monster now and the good news i suppose is that. bob has been losing support in somalia not just from. military intervention or the early battles with the somali government but because their style of leadership is very unpopular and somalia their cultural hardline and this interpretation of islam their dark kone and their practices does not have that much popular support and indeed i think and it's because of they're losing ground they're getting desperate i think they went and did this desperate act in in kenya

so what i'm saying is i think the good news there on the client i think their call that the intervention you know from the west is making making things worse and that the decline would happen inevitably just because the somalis don't like or that kind of rule the kind of violence don't like that kind of extremism richard if i go to you in new york i mean but then again going after these groups these fanatical groups here it creates more blowback what i'm getting at from what we just heard from kelli and from stephen it ends up being a very vicious cycle here when we have extremists and terrorists and then we this response drones changing governments manipulating governments it's a vicious circle it feeds on itself. well al-shabaab is a product of what's going on in somalia of course and you know as stephen said it's a very complicated situation there were lots of clowns involved with the struggle for power in various different areas of the country or the country as it was since one thousand nine hundred one when the government collapsed and the forces in that

are of course originally african union forces but now the u.n. forces that amazon is a is a u.n. force trying to allow the transitional federal government to establish some sort of stability and out shabaab is fighting the u.n. forces and of course all members of the united nations and security council in particular have mandated those forces to try and help the transitional federal government and al shabaab yes it's attacking outside of the type of course income palin twenty ten during the world cup final that because uganda is also a troop contributing major troop contribute to the u. forces as the as they had then where and of course kenya and kenya is particularly active of course in the area of southern somalia where al shabaab is trying to maintain its support and indeed kicked out to conspire the main port and half of the main source of their revenue but i think we have to look at this in two ways

first fold as a somali issue going on here and then there's an international issue if you look at the statement made by al shabaab of about the westgate attack one thing was kenyans you better get out of somalia or else you'll face more than this and the second thing was the international community you bet assume stop supporting the kenyans and supporting the others in fighting in in somalia so there's a sort of transition there from a local issue to an international issue and stephen made a very good point about the unpopularity of al shabaab and the divisions in al shabaab which of course led to a great deal of bloodletting in recent weeks and months within al shabaab ok kelly put it in the last twelve years again we go back to ninety ninety one when we are considering what stephen had to say is africa a better off place or worse off place because of america's anti-war and i'm sorry anti terrorism strategy me worse off off better. well i don't want to say worse off better off i just i mean i would

take a look at what's going on in somalia now are the people less or worse off i would say they haven't been able to move forward since one thousand nine hundred one and that's that i think that's an important point to make we are meddling in somalia which dates back to as stephen said before one thousand nine hundred one before september eleventh has created not only a power vacuum but also a humanitarian crisis at add in a famine there add in a refugee crisis and i cannot say that the people there are any better the people are civilian casualties due to u.s. airstrikes civilian casualties due to drone strikes. invading forces coming in raping pillaging the fact that there is no stability in that country right now i

agree with stephen that al-shabaab is on the decline there because of its unpopularity with the people but that doesn't make the country any more stable and we can look at other places nigeria the congo libya as well as mali and we can see that the islamist movements you know that have been born and then from us i'm getting created. even to go to but i mean over the countries we can we just mentioned there are a lot of them have to do with western interventions i mean this is what i'm getting i mean makes things even worse and these groups are replaced by other groups ok it's it's a get this this cycle continues and i don't see it being broken it just of the american dream to expand their presence in africa because all my goodness look what happened in kenya something must be done we keep hearing that something must be done go ahead. it does become kind of a game of whack a mole you know smashing down one terrorist cell here another one pops up

immediately and there's a reason for that that you know just as during the cold war the united states. would. intervene in the name anticommunism not recognizing that it's a movements of power came not from their study of marx and lenin but from their from nationalism and that it was over here many economists movements were reaction or comments led movements were a reaction to western imperialism to. western involvement by some by propping up right wing dictatorships and bombing and intervening we are creating more communist then we were suppressing same thing has been happening in the so-called war on terror that the that the us intervention is creating it this backlash effect it's a it's creating the very enemy that we're trying to trying to suppress that you have these extremist islamist groups that are taking back to taking advantage

of this national reaction that people have to a foreign intervention and those wishing and outsiders coming in and trying to run things and so you know the you know the fact is i've been going into the middle east for more than thirty years and the it's clear that the more the united states to militarize is the region the less and less secure we're becoming ok richard you want to react to that intervention interventions is probably one of the clearest indicator it's the biggest advertising recruiting for these kind of extremists. well the. intervention we're talking about here i mean if you are looking at west africa for example as i think stephen was mentioning kelley was mentioning i mean in nigeria the opposition to book is entirely local the didn't islamic magreb well of course the french moved in to try and push them out of mali but generally speaking of the work against al qaida and some of the drug

has been essentially regional. towns and just been here i'm sorry which is you can jump in here i'm going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the war on terrorism stay.

wealthy british. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy. economic down in the final. days. and the rest of life. will be a briefly. welcome

back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle remind you

we're discussing america's war on terror. ok kelly i want to go back to you in washington i think as most people watch this program on a regular basis i'm a cynic at heart ok so i'm going to say my cynical thoughts here when i look at these interventions of the meddling in these countries in africa it seems to me that the west particularly the united states thinks they can control the things on the ground once they get things started but it never seems to work out. that way there's always of a ripple effect it spreads someplace else maybe you can control the place for a short while and then you get these unintended consequences and it seems to happen over and over again to go back all the way to the the soviet experience in afghanistan all the way to kenya last weekend. yeah and i you know we're just talking a little bit about mali for an example i mean what are airstrikes the u.s. led airstrikes in libya had a ripple effect and which

a lot of the weapons that were poured into that that caused the rebel cause there has to have found their way to islamist fighters who were fighting in the coup and subsequent insurgency in mali so that's a perfect example. when going back to a little bit about whether or not africa is worse off when the things that you know i failed to mention is that the humanitarian aid from the united states has not kept up with the military aid that we have poured into africa president obama has not he has not followed through on many of his promises to to create to help with the famine and the humanitarian crisis there but he has helped in spreading the footprint of u.s. military throughout africa as over five thousand troops there and in i think at least twelve different countries and i just read today that they're expanding the

base in djibouti so we're looking at a situation where military intervention has come first before humanitarian assistance and i think a lot of the blowback much of the blowback is is from from people like you you know had pointed out they're reacting we're reacting to our meddling and not any you know assistance that we been. given kelly said the right word footprint and in again being a city could this is a great way you have to fight terrorism these terrible people that what they do to you we have to send in the troops we have to arm these people we have to find and you know this is the same thing over and over again and again being very cynical and i don't want to be misunderstood is that this was a wonderful enemy to have because it gives and it's a very clear reason we have to do something and we must be. these people i mean i was listening i was listening to lyndon johnson in the tape recordings about how he didn't want to get into vietnam and all these people were saying but if you don't

to this is going to happen you're going to look weak and these people going to take over it's just amazing the duplications that's going on right now it's all about the first print it's the footprint. well it's very much about this idea of imposing military solutions to complex of political social and economic problems and it's not that some form of force isn't sometimes necessary here revealing with dangerous terrorist cells i'm not saying that you know that us or the country shouldn't send in advisors and and and and counterterrorism support in certain again very narrow cases where you have actual intelligence about specific cells but when you go in and you start you know bombing and country when you bring in troops when you give lots of military aid to regimes that in the name of counter terrorism use it to suppress legitimate political dissent i mean i think that's where it becomes a problem i remember saying some specifics i'm going to come to foreign aid question

because i remember saying something major ten years ago that the only place the islamic world that public opinion of the united states had gone up since nine eleven was in ahci after the tsunami and part of northern pakistan after a major earthquake where the u.s. sent in large amounts of humanitarian aid this is this is the way to to win hearts and minds not by militarizing situations not by supporting repressive regimes because you know the you know an ironic way president bush was right even when he said that repressive governments you know end breeding terrorists of course obama's top bush is talking about spreading them ocracy for the masses to tehran and while i agree that syria and iraqis more democracy he wasn't talking about spreading democracy from riyadh to cairo or any number of the capitals of. the dictatorships of the u.s. of course where most of these terrorists actually come from but the might but the

underlying point is that it is as john kennedy said those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable and if we're really interested in stopping terrorism we should stop supporting dictatorial regime. as an occupying armies and start militarizing these are complex situations you know richard we've already hit on this point in the program but you know giving aid in technology and investment that that's a lot less sexy than sending in the marines ok and you can and when you send in the marines you can affect something it leaves very quickly it may not be the outcome that you want ultimately but it's you get friends and allies and sarah gets on the ground but aid and development takes a lot more time and it's not as popular during times of austerity in the west. well indeed but you know there has there's a massive amount of humanitarian aid going into africa and particularly from western countries and indeed didn't president bush who was a bit of an interventionist as we well know was is very well known in africa for

his aids campaign support full of the anti aids campaign there and he did a great deal of good in that and since the first term of president obama since the election two thousand and eight there's been a huge withdrawal of america from this sort of intervention as policy and i think that's matched by other countries as well i mean does it with draw from iraq and withdraw from afghanistan and the thing about terrorism is obviously it's a scary thing and the international community particularly the major powers have to consider you know their own domestic security as well as some sort of international responsibility but just by giving aid you didn't solve the problem if you look at the united nations for example we've been at attacked in mogadishu the u.n. d.p. offices there the world food program attacked in pakistan the you nama offices attacked in afghanistan the u.n. building in our budget are attacked in nigeria you know said the u.n. which does you know is essentially humanitarian organization isn't immune from

these attacks so i think the real answer when you're country in terrorism is not to just flit from military support to humanitarian support to try and get those in better balance it's more to understand why people are becoming terrorists in the first place why do they think they can only achieve their aims so feel this sense of empowerment and identity and so on by being violent why why is it that they don't have better outlets to express their concerns and i think a lot of people think because they are victims of violence itself from western countries i'll tell you what it is one of the issue i want i want to address in the from not from weston go ahead richard go ahead not from western countries i didn't think i don't think they're victims they feel they're victims from western countries i think they may feel. they're victims from their local governments which are supported by west and places fair enough but then again they're terrorists because they're a group which find no way of exerting their voice you know without maximizing their impact through terror because there's not enough of them of course you know like in

the arab awakening for example you didn't see al qaeda flags in tahrir square or in tunisia or enough even earlier on in syria and so on you know in those revolutions even in libya too you saw a popular movement and where the popular opinion can have an impact can have an effect then you get change without violence ok kelly that we we know at least it's been alleged that a number of americans were involved in this attack in kenya this is very interesting in looking at the recruiting of these organizations i don't know all of them and i don't know all the details but more and more western nationals are involved here syria is a good case in point here this is very interesting as well is because this is not only something happening far far away but it's something getting closer and closer to home i don't know i think the last count it was over one thousand e.u. nationals in syria fighting with the rebels i mean this is another one of the blowback is the cancer that this war on terror creates.

well yeah and i think i think stephen alluded to this that the attack that we signed kenya the other day was the result of a splinter within al-shabaab you have these competing forces on one on one side you have the who is fighting to get the kenyans in the ethiopians out of somalia it's a more localized effort and then you have the more transnational al-shabaab that's affiliated with al-qaeda and has broader transnational aims. and we see in recent reporting that the the latter had one and we saw that in the massive attack on the mall the other day that transnational effort includes like you said. many fighters from across across the globe including fighters that have come from. close to the united states is minnesota there's

a huge somali population there the f.b.i. has been watching them for years turns out that they've been doing. and al shabaab has been doing some very effective recruiting that population well it's not only so readily seen it's amazing why did the n.s.a. find this you know what is the n.s.a. doing ok they're not finding people like his it's extraordinary go ahead jump in actually was there there was some news that came out just a year and a half two years ago that there had been a number of somalis americans living in the twin cities that had been recruited by al shabaab they were following up on that so this is a new information but does raise kind of a bigger question. you know u.s. policy is alienating not just muslims abroad but you but even muslims at home and again raises serious questions about you know whether this kind of this kind of

counterterrorism strategy which you know put so much emphasis on the military side is doing more harm than good i think that one hopeful sign we had initially i think was the arab spring in the way that it showed that massive nonviolent action was far more effective the bringing down western baghdad taters like like like those in . egypt and tunisia and yemen then was al qaida and their kind of apocalyptic idiology and genocidal tactics. but unfortunately the you know the way things have gone in syria and libya and the and the struggles are consolidating democracy in egypt and yemen i think is has maybe given new life all right the city especially here frustrated seems to me the stream war on terror has nothing to do with. in the world many thanks today to my guests and watched in new york and in san francisco and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember across topples.

interview.

comes to the future. technologies the name in aviation is the game bush's latest stealth politics a piece of the much noble postal springs innovations new heights and only grown the game night shape lots of things come to be updated here on. the central. front. loading up something that is quite simply. ways was no way oh. clearly they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. and sold to the u.s. and turned over to the u.s.

for. the soul that could be buried alive. was saved with great over. and they wanted to turn me into a terrorist they wanted me to admit that i was a member of al qaeda or taliban but i felt with them. about time i didn't even know what al-qaeda is. nevertheless there are people all. brave enough to start a fight. something's going to be done that's going to be done by me and it's been a short amount of time but it's going to impact me i be prosecuted but it's going to impact. the wife my daughter. the one time a trap. on our teeth. on the new will show how many watches the bank immunology face either so i feel.

a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. i'll pull over my language of all but i will only react to situations i have read the reports to let you know for instance of a no i will event to stay current a comment on your latter point of the month to say it's ok as a car is on the docket no. joke no more weasel words when you made a direct question be prepared for a change when you throw a punch be ready for

a bad. freedom of speech and little down to freedom to cross. friday is expected to see rare unity and the u.n. security council as its members could vote in a serial resolution which has been elusive for years. several russian news services removed photographs from their websites in protest at the detention of a photographer held together with greenpeace activists who tried to scale an arctic oil rig. and living how to bring the beautiful game to doha human rights groups sports fans and footballers calling fifa to move the world cup after revelations of horrific conditions causing daily deaths among laborers.