Conflict of Interest | Series 1

James Taylor: This episode contains descriptions some listeners may find distressing. You can find out more information in the show notes.

Clip: Case number IT9937I the prosecutor versus versus Slobodan Milosevic.

James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.

Carl Warner: I'm Carl Warner. I am the head of narrative and curatorial at Imperial War Museums, and that means that I'm responsible for, uh, the team of curators that develop the collection. So 
all of the things you see around you, uh, we are responsible for either bringing into the museum or making sure that people can understand the significance of it.

Deborah Frances White: Well, you seem extremely busy and important 'cause this is a, a fizzing exciting museum. I am Deborah Francis White. I do the Guilty Feminist Podcast. I'm a comedian and 
writer, but I'm best known for the Guilty Feminist, uh, which has a sort of remit for contemporary feminists who aren't perfect and are happy to admit that.

James Taylor: Deborah has joined our curator, Carl Warner, in the Imperial War Museum in London, to try to understand what are the major conflicts of our times. And in this episode, we explore the Yugoslav wars

Carl Warner: That old phrase, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

Slobodan Milosevic: It is illegal. Being not appointed by UN General Assembly...

Carl Warner: you'll remember a rhyming couplet if somebody drums it into your head over and over and over again.

James Taylor: Tito, Milosevic, Srebrenica just some of the words associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected, and how much further back does the story go?

Clip: You left all of those heavy weapons against unarmed people, and now you come to film us. Why didn't you come to film us there?

James Taylor: On our way, we'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection and meet someone with an in-depth knowledge of the conflict so that we can all, for at least one moment in time, 
understand what happened and when and how it wasallowed to happen.

Clip: There is a rooted philosophy of impartiality and non-violence, which however, admirable was not suited for the conflict in Bosnia.

James Taylor: All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor, and this is Conflict of Interest.
We begin in the Imperial War Museum's Cafe where Deborah and Carl have been thrust together by well-intentioned producers to find out what Deborah already knows.

Carl Warner: So what comes to mind when I say Yugoslavia or, or, or more pertinently, the Yugoslav Wars?

Deborah Frances White: Uh, well. I think of words like, uh, Milosevic, Serbo, Croatia, uh, Bosnia. Um, I think of, there's a star on the flag. So I spent the, my first awareness of 9/11 in Croatia up all night watching TV at my friend had a, like a really shaky holiday house. Like it was a very, very basic. I remember the heat of Croatia and how rocky it was, and we sat there watching 9/11 all night and the next day we went out. Um, I remember there was a, like a Time Magazine cover with a man at the end of the war who... it looks like a similar image to the images you see of, uh, concentration camps in the Holocaust being liberated. And he's very, all skin and bone and he's wearing jeans. Uh, lots of stories about violence against women and some of those, I'm, I'll be honest, I'm a little bit frightened to look at them because I know that they, they linger with me for so long, and I then, I also feel like a 
bad feminist for saying that because if people can live them, how can I dare not look at them? Those are my associations.

Carl Warner: Thanks, Deborah. Um, okay, well we're gonna try and, um, together fill in some of those gaps maybe, and, and expand on the topic a little bit. So let's, let's take a walk around the museum.

James Taylor: They move from the cafe passing the Baghdad car installation and weave their way to the first stop on this unique tour of the museum.

Carl Warner: You know, the nineties was my sort kind of formative years.

Deborah Frances White: Yes. It's all kind of mixed in with Britpop and, and the Spice Girls and things like that.

Carl Warner: Yeah.

Deborah Frances White: We were having a very different reality and a very different experience and I think it's just so easy to look away from things that are very, very difficult.

Carl Warner: Yeah.

Deborah Frances White: But also to find them very difficult to process and understand how someone else's reality can be so different from yours.

James Taylor: Yugoslavia, meaning South Slavic land was created in the aftermath of the First World War with the Treaty of Versailles when Europe was carved up and borders redefined by the Allies, it 
brought together Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians Bosniaks, and Kosovar Albanians under a single state. Identity in Yugoslavia was often split along religious lines. The Serbs were 
affiliated to the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Bosniaks were Muslim while the Croats subscribed to 
Catholicism.

Deborah Frances White: What was former Yugoslavia like? You know, I talked about Croatia being very rocky and heart in my experience, uh, you know, it was a big place. What are the landmarks?

Carl Warner: It, it was a big place, but it had... because of the fact that it brought so many different cultures together, it absorbed the artistic styles, the architectural styles of all of these different areas. So somewhere like Mostar, somewhere like Sarajevo, stunningly beautiful place of, of mixed architecture representing hundreds and hundreds of years of growth from different parts of Europe and, and the east. One of my memories, I think I was 10 when the Eurovision Song Contest came from Zagreb and the bit in the middle was the all about tourism in Yugoslavia. This was in 1990 and you know, obviously Eurovision tends to give a fairly glossy view of a place, but it looked absolutely stunning. One part of the, of the cultural tragedy that that accompanies genocide is the, is the things of meaning, things that are selected for preservation by people as representing their, their identity, 
their cultural heritage. That includes architecture, that includes these things. And to see them destroyed, see them burned sometimes deliberately. Um. It's heartbreaking.

James Taylor: They have arrived at the First objects, two maps, one of Yugoslavia after the first World War, and another after the Second World War. And just as the two World Wars have some similar 
themes, so too does the history of Yugoslavia. Karl has a phrase he uses to describe these moments. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

Carl Warner: So things that happen in the kind of the pre-history of Yugoslavia, always Nations and the, and the, and the, the history of... across the 20th century tend to bubble up and, and repeat themselves in a way that starts to edge countries apart. So Yugoslavia comes into being in the Second World War. It's invaded by, by, by the Nazis. Part of it is given a kind of... so autonomous status and behaves pretty atrociously to another part of, of the country. That's the, the independent state of of Croatia there. Yugoslavia is known for its partisans for the people who who resist the Nazis, the leader of which is Tito, um, who becomes the leader after the Second World War and essentially hangs together these, these republics with different identities, with different, uh, ethnic mixes and hangs them together under this kind of flag of 
brotherhood and unity. Okay, that's the, the kind of thing that will hold, hold together.

James Taylor: Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron fist suppressing the nationalist hate that had emerged during the Second World War. His slogan was Brotherhood and unity, and he was determined to 
preserve Yugoslavia as a multi-ethnic communist state.

Deborah Frances White: In a way, is it like the United Kingdom, which is really four different countries?

Carl Warner: It, it, it is, and if, if you imagine that the United Kingdom have had a very recent history where there was intense violence and occupation and forced movement and all of these kind of things.

Deborah Frances White: Some parts of the United Kingdom might say that. They have experienced that.

Carl Warner: But I mean, incredibly recent as in the 20th century.

Deborah Frances White: Northern Ireland, you might say.

Carl Warner: You might, and the, I think that the difference would be the fact that you then go from, uh, that dislocation in war to an authoritarian regime during the Cold War.

Deborah Frances White: Mm-Hmm.

Carl Warner: And of course, Yugoslavia sits in a kind of little extra position because it, Tito breaks with, the Soviet Union. They form their own kind of semi market based communism. They're fated by the West and the East. So Tito kind of holds this grouping together.

Deborah Frances White: Mm-Hmm.

Carl Warner: Just with this idea that we, we are all these separate provinces, but we are equal.

Deborah Frances White: And Tito's in Croatia.

Carl Warner: Tito is in the whole of Yugoslavia.

Deborah Frances White: but Ti.. So, but is Croatia, the England? Where's the, where's the London rveryone hates?

Carl Warner: Uh, well, what comes to be the dominant power in Yugoslavia, arguably is Serbia. But you're a federal, it's a federal country. So you, so we have a, a president, it, it all comes together, which is fine, and then Tito dies in 1980.

James Taylor: Tito's death marked the beginning of a turbulent decade in Yugoslavia's history where change was also happening on a global scale. The Cold War was coming to an end, most famously with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
and the collapse of the communist government in Yugoslavia left a power vacuum in its wake. It was against this backdrop that different nationalist forces began to reemerge in the region, and 
tensions started to rise.

Deborah Frances White: Can't you keep referring to ethnicity?

Carl Warner: Mm-Hmm.

Deborah Frances White: But is that a bit of a misnomer in a way? How ethnically diverse are people and how much is it more about language and religion?

Carl Warner: I don't think you can divorce the three.

Deborah Frances White: I mean, one of the terms I really remember from the nineties was ethnic cleansing.

Carl Warner: Yeah.

Deborah Frances White: And that seems like such an, a horrible turn of phrase, ethnic cleansing. It's just, it's so ugly, isn't it? And but you still hear that used today. Why is that not seen as a more problematic term?

Carl Warner: Well, I think it, it is because it was used as a almost a synonym for genocide and, you know, as the course.

Deborah Frances White: Like a literal whitewashing, like a sort of.

Carl Warner: Yeah.

Deborah Frances White: Cleansing is such a horrible turn of phrase.

Carl Warner: The whole thrust of it is that there are parts of particularly ... there are, there are parts of, of, of Yugoslavia as it breaks up. Um, they want to have ethnically homogenous nations. Now, the problem with Yugoslavia, inverted commas, "problem" is that there has been so much spread and mix that if Croatia, we all have an independent Croatian state and then thousands and thousands of Serbians living in it.

Deborah Frances White: Yeah.

Carl Warner: Um, that's not us, right? We're, we're this. Now where that becomes dangerous is where you have people mixed in and living harmoniously side by side and then one side says, no, actually this is our territory,

Deborah Frances White: Right.

Carl Warner: So everybody, every mosque must go, every Muslim house must go, and you target people based on the fact that they do not meet a set of criteria that you establish for the dominant 
ethnic group in your society.

James Taylor: One of the most complicated parts of the Yugoslav wars are the number of players involved. Carl does his best to break them down.

Deborah Frances White: Can you tell us what the languages and religions are in play here?

Carl Warner: And if we start with the, the kind of the national identity Slovenes, Croats, Serbs. Um, Bosniaks are Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs. You have a variety of different people who have a different kind of, uh, heritage in their mind as to, as to as to who they are. You then have a series of different religions. So as I say, you have Muslims, you have a variety of different forms of Christianity. So you have Serbian Orthodox, you have predominantly Catholic areas.The way it is looked at and also, or preyed upon internally is it's people's religion and national. Identity. That's the, that's the the crucial thing. I am Serbian, I'm Croatian.

Deborah Frances White: Mm-Hmm.

Carl Warner: Um, I'm Bosnian and, and so on. One of the issues that comes up, of course, is that in large areas of Yugoslavia, people are living together happily. It's not the kind of ghetto wise ethnic, you know, non mixing that that would be suggested from what happens afterwards.

Deborah Frances White: How did they get people to turn on their neighbors? Because presumably people were living together, they were working together, they were married to each other. There were all sorts of, uh, ways in which they were a community. How do you get people to suddenly turn on their neighbors?

James Taylor: It's an excellent question and one that will introduce a new voice to the episode.

Arminka Helic: My name is Arminka Helic. Uh, I was born in the country that no longer exists, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I was a citizen of one of the six republics of Bosnia, Herzegovina when the war broke out in Bosnia in 1992, I was living there. And, uh, towards the end of 1992, I came to the United kingdom where I have become a British 
citizen and, um, fully fledged member of the House of Lords.

Deborah Frances White: Well, hello Arminka and, uh, what an incredible CV that you have and combination of identities. And I'm really excited to talk to you today and get to know more about former Yugoslavia and Bosnia and your experiences in it.

James Taylor: We return to Deborah's question, how did this multicultural multi- ethnic collection of Nations turn against each other?

Arminka Helic: I think it came out, uh, not from the bottom up, from from the top down. It was through the exploitation of nationalism, it was through injection of, uh, dehumanization of the other. It is through realization of how strong and how able and capable Serbian nationalism could be used as a tool to control, not only the rest of Yugoslavia, but uh, to discourage those who wish to not be under that tutelage from thinking freely.

Deborah Frances White: Was there a similar rise in nationalism in Croatia and in Bosnia?

Arminka Helic: If I can take you back to 1987, a little known, uh, communist apparatchik called Slobodan Milosevic. He's the one who actually was the first one to cite this powerful weapon that could be used, and its name was Serbian Nationalism.

James Taylor: Previously a banker and a communist bureaucrat, Slobodan Milosevic rose to prominence as president of the Serbian Republic in 1989. There were served minorities in many of the Yugoslav 
Republics and provinces, and Milosevic was successfully able to whip up nationalist resentment amongst these groups.

Deborah Frances White: Arminka, you were young, you were a teenager, and then a university student when the conflict began and, and when you left Bosnia, what are your memories of that time?

Arminka Helic: I was a teenager and then, uh, when the war started, I was in my early twenties and I remember clearly, uh, Slobodan Milosevic, uh, giving his speech in Kosovo where the first reaction against this nationalism came. I've never seen anyone whipping the, the passions and, and that sort of, that, that we're somewhere out there in the people and, you know, trying to kind of rise it to the point of really weaponizing. In some cases, you know, you, you think about it today, nationalism does not necessarily have to be negative if it's not turned against the other. Nationalism can be, you know, can express it in pride. You can express it in in different ways when you start expressing it by lacking intolerance towards the other that you identified as your, uh, adversary or your enemy, that is when nationalism becomes dangerous.

James Taylor: Arminka is talking about the Gazimestan speech. This is an address given by Milosevic in Kosovo in 1989, it marked the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. This battle was fought between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Orthodox Christian Serbs. And the speech was given to a massive crowd of ethnic Serbs becoming a symbol of the ascendant Serb nationalist movement.

[A Clip in Serbian]

James Taylor: With nationalism on the rise across Yugoslavia, there is a disintegration of the bonds that kept the different Nations together. War breaks out in 1991. Starting with a 10 day war, which results in Slovenia, breaking away from Yugoslavia. Soon after, Croatia has its own war of independence, also hoping to secede from Yugoslavia.

Carl Warner: And then finally war comes the, the locus of war moves from Slovenia, Croatia into Bosnia and Herzegovina. And of course, the issue there is that there are, um, a significant number of people in, uh, Bosnia. I mean, but Bosnia Venia breaks down this sort of roughly, um, I think it's about 44%. Bosniaks, so Bosnian Muslim, um, you think another third sort of Bosnian Serbian. And the Bosnian Serbs are essentially saying, well, no, hang on, we, we want this to be part of Serbia. Croatia is also involved and saying, well, actually there are Croatians living in, in, in, in parts of Bosnia. So effectively what happens is you get conflict in Bosnia, which is that kind of third 
phase of these wars. So. Slovenia, very short war, Croatian War of Independence, then war in Bosnia. And that the location of that conflict, that is some of the most brutal, um, horrific, uh, violence that you can imagine.

Deborah Frances White: How did it escalate into the kind of violence against women that we associate with this war? I mean, that's one of the biggest horrors for me as somebody who's, uh, my, I'm known as a feminist. Um, that's something Ireally remember from the nineties that was something that I hadn't seen before on the news.Um, what, where did that come from?

Arminka Helic: I think if it came from, uh, you know, the war in, in Bosnia wasn't some sort of organically grown, uh, conflict that came out of nowhere. One thing that often gets overlooked is 
that Bosnia was devastated. Not by itself, but devastated by an invasion by US national Army that was controlled and mainly Serbian in its construction. Serbia actually intervened in Bosnia at the pretext of defending its ethnic braden and that rape and sexual violence, uh, against women. Uh, that was so well depicted in, in, for example, films like Grbavica uh, by Jasmila Zbanic, who's got a film now about, about, uh, genocide in Srebrenica or in Angelina Jolie's film, uh, in the Land of Blood and Honey. Rape was a part of dehumanizing, of destroying communities, of destroying lives, of uh, not only 
women, but of all the families, of all the communities. And it was a very cheap weapon of ethnic cleansing. Because in Bosnia, small towns are scattered all over the, the place. If you hear that, for example, in one town, paramilitaries backed up by Yugoslav, national Army, or the remnants of it came in, separated men from women. Men were sent to uh, camps and women sent to rape camps and kept there until they were impregnated and they were no use to anyone. That was a very effective way of sending a message that we are on our way. And don't forget, the aim at the beginning of the war was to carve out parts of Bosnia and cleanse them from anyone but Bosnian Serbs so that you could end up in a position where that part would eventually secede. Or would eventually become part of what has always been a dream of creation of a greater Serbia.

Deborah Frances White: Are you saying that they deliberately went out of their way to find men who had a history of violence to go and do this?

Arminka Helic: Yes. Yes. If you look, if you look at paramilitaries, if you look at. What we call Red Berries. If you look at Tigers. If you look at Arkans, uh, paramilitaries, those were not, those were not, uh, uh, regular soldiers. Those were thugs who joined the paramilitaries because crossing the border, crossing the river drain between Bosnia and Serbia, and having a weekend warriors who would go and plunder and burn and, uh, protect their, what they saw as the Serbiandom, but also in that process have an opportunity to go and commit crimes of the worst sort of nature. And rape was very attracted to these people. This was sanctioned from the top because they were deliberately organized on the borders so that you can cleanse the, the area they deliberately organized in the north, in Prijedor, in, in Kozarac, atc, where the majority of population was 
Muslim. And they occured and through this uh, policy, they ensured that people would leave in absolute fear, and that was very effective.

Carl Warner: Yeah. Tha thank you very much Arminka. That's fascinating to hear you talk about that and, and I think one of the crucial things that, that we're gonna look at here is, is, you know, when we talk about, you know, I think the international criminal trial pointed out there were about 86 different paramilitary groups operating as alongside the six warring factions, and then, and then a greater number of, of people who were even outside of, of those groups, but they weren't acting autonomously.One of the things in, in our collection, there was a gentleman serving in former Yugoslavia, and one of his things he decided to do in order to kind of almost keep track of these, these vast numbers of these different paramilitary units, as well as the actual, uh, units of the war in factions, was to collect the badges that they produced themselves to for, for their units.

James Taylor: And now Carl and Deborah have been presented with a tray of those badges, embroidered fabric with many emblems and styles of illustration.

Carl Warner: So some of the things you see here are a mixture of badges that, um, give you a sense of the, of the, the range of different sides and the conflict. That's Croatia, obviously Croatian Defense Forces.Um, we have Serbia.

Deborah Frances White: Why is the Croatian badge a frog with a gun?

Carl Warner: That's a very good question. I think the, the crucial, the crucial thing actually is, is more on the, the, uh, red and white checks.

Deborah Frances White: I mean, you say that he's on a gingham background, but in a very real way, the focal thing is he looks like a Disney cartoon of a frog with a gun.

James Taylor: This pattern was a symbol used by the Ustaše, a Croatian Ultranationalist group that carried out mass atrocities against Serbs Jews and Roma in the Second World War. And amongst the ethnic violence of the 1990s, these symbols began to make a resurgence.

Carl Warner: I mean, you know, cartoon characters are always used in conflict. You just have to look at the side of an airplane with, you know, there is a lot of playing with all sorts of different symbols in conflict. But I think the interesting thing here is that that, um, colouring that, that those red and white checks were the symbol of the Ustaše in, in, in Croatia, they, they were the people in running the Nazi fascist state in Croatia that killed hundreds of thousands of, of, of people. And, and the re the reawakening of this symbolism, it's one of the reasons chosen because the frog is very distracting. But the symbolism within former Yugoslavia to this, um, at the time was quite alarming. And that was one of the areas where. Arminka mentioned, you know, this kind of, sort of arms race of fear. Well, you know, if, if, if one side moves towards nationalism, another side moves in response. Arminka, do you know why it's a frog?

Arminka Helic: Maybe it is a distraction from actually the main symbol, and that is the symbol that, uh, is black, uh, white and red flag of Croatia which bears resemblance and hunkers back to the days of independent state of Croatia from the 1940s on.

Deborah Frances White: There's another one here that's got a sort of, basically like a gun on a stunt that looks a lot more aggressive, and then another one of two eagles back to back with swords underneath. And these, the, the eagles with the swords underneath looks a lot more like a typical crest. The one with a gun looks a little bit more like a sort of gorilla.

Carl Warner: This is, this is representing a Mujahideen, uh, unit. So obviously one, one of the, that happened in Bos... in, in, in Bosnia and is that, you know, when, when people are identified and singled out and killed or exiled or, or, you know, their, their, their culture destroyed. One of the consequences of that is it draws people together under the banner of, of religion. So there's all of these elements of ancient history. Slightly more recent history that are drawn on and and pulled into all the identities that then start, start fighting. I think as we were talking about earlier when we talked about history rhyming, the point of that is that you'll remember a rhyming couplet if somebody drums it into your head over and over and over again. And one of the things that, certainly Milosevic did, and certainly Se... Serbia did, was that picking on these elements of, of, of pre-history, of past history and saying that's the one that, that should define your relationship to your fellow citizens and your relationship to this conflict. And that is kind of what you then see when people badge it up.

Clip: Snowflakes fell like teardrops from heaven as Sarajevo buried yet another of its children.

James Taylor: As the fighting in Yugoslavia worsened international news outlets started to uncover the terrible violence being carried out by these paramilitary groups.

Clip: The sound of so much grief hangs in the air as she's lowered into her small, shallow grave.

Deborah Frances White: How much do you think the internet would've changed what happened in Yugoslavia? Do you think it could have stopped it or made it different or less horrific?

Arminka Helic: There was no political will in the West to do much about this conflict. There was, this was immediately after the Cold War and this, this phrase, ancient ethnic hatred provided exit route to anyone who didn't want to get involved, who didn't think that they were needed to get involved. And on the other hand, we need to also think about the amazing war reporters and journalists at the time like. Christian Amanpour, like Ed Vulliamy, like, uh, Maggie O'Kane, the photographers like Ron Haviv, uh, Annie Leibovitz, who spent time in Sarajevo in 1993. These people were the internet of the time. These people were the information that that, that was 
put through. And if you think about Britain at the time in the 1990s, it was the biggest kind of  like gap between what the politicians were saying and what the reports and the media were saying about the conflict dead.

James Taylor: Time for another object, on this occasion in the form of a YouTube clip.

Carl Warner: So we've got a video here of an example of a, of a type of music that was state sponsored, uh, jollity. Um, Turbo Folk, now as some

Deborah Frances White: Turbo folk?

Carl Warner: Turbo folk.

[MUSIC SERBIAN CLIP]

Carl Warner: So this is, uh, a piece of Serbian music, and I use that in the loosest possible sense. That is, that is effectively saying that, that they're in the wrong, that Serbia is in the right and,

Deborah Frances White: I have to say Carl

Carl Warner: obviously using imagery

Deborah Frances White: it was quite catchy at the beginning and I found myself, uh, tapping my foot and then I saw the lyrics and I stopped.

Carl Warner: Yeah

Deborah Frances White: cause they were extremely hostile and nationalist.

Carl Warner: Yeah, nationalist, hostile, um, racist, xenophobic. To our eyes, potentially, it looks like a fairly blunt form of, of propaganda. And of course, you know, we look at it and go, oh, you know how ridiculous isn't the music terrible? But it's when you're coming out of a, a single party state, communist state, and where news and culture is fairly, uh, restricted and state led, the production of this kind of material fits into, into a general diet that reinforces the messages that, that the politicians are looking to, to get across.

James Taylor: And now we come to one of the most infamous moments of the Yugoslav Wars, the massacre of Srebrenica in Bosnia. The events at Schnitzer were especially shocking for what they symbolized. The massacre was carried 
out in a territory assigned as a safe area by the UN, where local people were supposed to be under the protection of un peacekeeping forces.

Deborah Frances White: It's so scary and it ended in so much horror and trauma, generational trauma, I assume. Carl, can you tell us about trea and. Uh, it's as hard to talk about genocide, but can you explain to us, when we hear the word genocide in association with Yugoslavia, what does it really mean?

Carl Warner: It's a, it's an enormous but very important question. I mean, genocide as, as a word, you know, first coin by Raphael Lemkin, it, it's not a synonym for mass murder. It has other components to it. So mass murder is part of it, but it's about eradication. Genocide is about eradicating and completely wiping out a group of people. So all of the components that we've looked at today in terms of, you know, and we've used terms like ethnic cleansing because that, that was sort of related to it. They, they fall under a kind of banner of activity that was genocide. And was dis and was found to be genocide in the international criminal trials that that followed. There are various forms and things we've talked about. Dislocation, you know, forcibly removing people, forcibly taking away their culture, destroying their, their mosques, destroying their, their places of religious worship, destroying the National Library of Sarajevo. All of these things, um, are part of that. But what obviously people think first is, um, the sort of. Genocide that accompanies things like concentration camps and massacres and deliberate, uh, murder of thousands of people.One of the things that happened in Bosnia was increasingly because of the violence, there were enclaves areas where Muslims grouped together. The idea was that the urine will protect them. Now as it turned out. When tested in several areas, the UN failed. Srebrenica was of course the most famous example of that, where unfortunately, the men and male children of the village were taken and executed.And pushed into mass graves about 8,000. If you add that, that to things like the, the camps that, that we've talked about, the sexual violence, this is where all of these things kind of coalesce into, into this, into this word of, of, of genocide and Srebrenica came to represent almost a failure to recognize that it was again, possible or happening even despite all of the, um, the coverage that was starting to come.

James Taylor: The massacre at Reza became a powerful symbol. It was the most extensive genocidal act carried out in Europe since the Holocaust, and a failure of the world to live up to its post-war promise of never again.

Deborah Frances White: When you go back now to any part of former Yugoslavia, uh, do you see a healing? Is the trauma from this horrendous war, uh, in any way healing over?

Arminka Helic: I can see progress in terms of people moving on and lives in a way improving, but I don't see that these people, uh, whether they are survivors or perpetrators, have left a trauma behind, or that there hasn't been sort of element of transferring that to trauma to their children because this goes very, very deep. And I would also say that those on, in, on his behalf, on whose behalf these crimes have been committed or were committed, they don't have a, they have sleepless nights as well.

Carl Warner: What do you remember from, uh, the 1990s of, of the way the world perceived this and, and the reaction of the international community?

Deborah Frances White: I feel like at first there was a, oh, we don't wanna get involved with that. Let the sort out themselves reaction, and then it went on for a long time and then the UN started to get involved and other countries started to get involved and, uh, step in and try and stop the worst atrocities.

Carl Warner: And I suppose you also have to remember that there were other things going on in, in the world. You know, I mean the Maastricht Treaty, for example, the first Gulf War, you know, things that, that, that, that competed for attention. And I, you know, we, we often talk about that, don't we? You know, the, the, the way that what news stories get bumped when a big event happens. You know, the thing that would've been on page one is suddenly on page two, the thing that was on page two is on page three, we have our interests, uh, shaped by the way in which they're presented in, in, in, in the media and the relative importance that's shown.But I think one of the things that Arminka obviously can speak to this is, is, is the way in which the people over there felt that they were struggling to get the story out. And the, the main reason for that was that that things remained terrible for a very long period of time. Even when the United Nations moved in, we talked about Srebrenica, we talked about some of the problems that that happened there that resulted in the massacre, the setting up a safe areas, you know, it was a, it was a slow process, and that's one of the things that journalists talked about. You know, why is there no, why are we still reporting on this?

[NEWS CLIP]

James Taylor: As the war continued, the UN was forced to confront its own inaction.

Clip: I think there is no doubt that the UN or the international community has had and has a responsibility for the safe haven.

James Taylor: A few years later, a camera crew from UNTV, the United Nations Television Network documented some of the reaction of refugees in UN care during the conflict with mixed results.

Clip: Why didn't you come and see how it was? Why didn't you come? You left us in hell to be beaten up to be slaughtered, abused. They were burning everything.Destroying you. Left all of those heavy weapons against unarmed people, and now you come to film us. Why didn't you come to film us there? Why didn't you come to hell as well to save us? Instead, 
you come and film us here.

Deborah Frances White: I mean, that's a pretty horrific clip and you can't blame that it looked like a teenage girl. You can't blame her for her anger there. And it just makes me think there are 78 million people displaced today, and in large part, the world is turning its back and pulling up its borders and saying, well, it's not our problem. And we do have a responsibility to civilians who are pawns in this game and suffer the horrendous consequences and lose their homes and lose their families and lose everything. And we, we need to start treating people like people. I don't know. Uh, Arminka, what, how does that make, how does that make you feel as somebody who was a refugee?

Arminka Helic: Well, I, I, I've been listening to you saying that you know, the numbers of refugees in the world today, and, uh, simply ignoring this issue is not going to make it go away. And I would also add to this, I. Like on, on average a refugee stays in a refugee camp for around 18 years.

Deborah Frances White: Oh,

Arminka Helic: That is shameful. Imagine if you are a child of five, you are 23. Uh, before you can make your life somewhere, what can, what has your life become

Deborah Frances White: and how have you been formed? How have you managed to develop? What have you learned?

Arminka Helic: Well, absolutely. What have you learned and what kind of citizen of whatever country you're going to be. And I just think that we have reached, you know, the time has come that we, where we have to stop and think.I know that intervention is not popular. I know that boots on the ground is not something that is easily justifiable. I know that there is a deeply, particularly in the UN rooted philosophy of impartiality and non-violence, which however admirable, was not suited for the conflict of Bosnia and is not suited for any other conflict. At some point, if you saw a big guy beating up a small guy or a, or, you would want to have something to say. You wouldn't sit there and say, well, let's be impartial. See how this one ends up, because it, it doesn't, it never ends up well.

Deborah Frances White: So how did the world intervene, Carl? And what was the result of it?

Carl Warner: Well, as we've seen that there were. Um, mixed, uh, signals sent by the world to, um, the protagonists in the conflicts. I think it's fair to say for a significant period of time, certain aspects of the reporting, certain aspects of the information that came out really did, I think, galvanize opinion.

James Taylor: In 1995, as a response to the massacre in Srebrenica, NATO began Operation Deliberate Force, an aggressive air campaign to weaken Serb forces in Bosnia.

Carl Warner: The extensive reporting of Sarajevo NATO airstrikes on Serbian positions we, we heard in that video the woman saying that, you know, you didn't take the heavy weapons away. Well, this is part of the thing. You know, all of these weapons ranged against these artillery pieces that were indiscriminate, shelling places like Sarajevo. So when NATO, when the UN NATO finally did say, well, actually we will use airstrikes to push the, uh, Serb forces back, and also that will effectively cause those sides to come to the negotiated table and, and the settlement, a peace settlement was uh, was negotiated. That wasn't the end of the wars in Yugoslavia, as we know. You know, what happened then later in Kosovo, which had a similar trajectory in terms of international involvement and, and the, the, the, the kind of the outcry for international involvement, but it led to peace. It led to the establishment of, as Arminka talked about in Bosnia of these two separate parts of Bosnia, but still, still. Uh, Bosnia, the end of the war in Croatia when, you know, uh, you know, where there was actually a, a, a push led by the, by the Croatians against the Serbian areas that we talked about right at the start. And of course, along the alongside that was running this idea of how does the world come to terms with the crimes that were committed in Yugoslavia. So the foundation of the international. Criminal trials for Yugoslavia and the eventual, creaky, slow but inevitable process of justice weaving through that and some of the people responsible for some of the crimes, uh, being brought to justice.

James Taylor: The date and agreement of 1995 brought an end to the violence and led to the creation of a single state known as Bosnia Herzegovina. However, violence did continue in other parts of Yugoslavia, including in the Kosovo War in 1999.

Clip: Case number IT9937I the prosecutor...

James Taylor: Following the war, the UN set up an international criminal tribunal, a court of law that dealt with war crimes carried out during the Yugoslav Wars. This is former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic speaking at his trial in 2002.

Slobodan Milosevic: I considered tribunal, forced tribunal and indictments, false indictments. It is illegal being not appointed by UN General assembly.

Carl Warner: One of the things that you, you obviously see there is the enormous task facing the ICTY, not just because of the enormity of the crimes, but of the issues on defining those crimes and defining the legality of bringing people to justice under international law. There were debates, well, is it, is it an internal, does international law apply to these sorts of things? And then of course, that gives the, the very first, you know, appeal from many of the 
defendants say, well, I don't recognize this, which is, you know, you fairly recognizable from most war crimes trials. I do not recognize the, you know, you are, you are right to try in on all of these sorts of things. But the fact that they, they, they worked through that and I think it was about 160 convictions and there'd been like 20 acquittals. I I certainly think that, that after a conflict of the magnitude of, of the wars in Yugoslavia, that sort of process, however imperfect, led to some pretty extraordinary admissions and pretty extraordinary, uh, levels of conversation about what had happened.

Deborah Frances White: Arminka how do you feel about your homeland now, and what, what are your hopes for it?

Arminka Helic: I always, every single day when I wake up, I, uh, check the news from Bosnia because I am fearful for the future of Bosnia. I. Uh, uh, as I say, the war aims that were set in the 1990s were achieved with the Dayton Peace Accord in, uh, 1995, 1996. The stabilization of the country and prosperity has in, in certain aspects succeeded. But if each day when you wake up someone who leads a particular ethnic group in Bosnia Herzegovina. Uh, wakes up and says, I hate this country, I don't want to be a part of it. You're taking away my freedom. I want to join another country. You wonder, I. What, what kind of, uh, messages that is sending to 
the wider population. And also you wonder what kind of children are growing up in the, in the country that used to be so multi-ethnic that now is divided along the ethnic lines. And, uh, it, and it makes me, makes me fearful for its future. What are my hopes? What I would love to see, I would love to see Bosnia Herzegovina, that is a homeland for every single citizen that lives there.

Deborah Frances White: And what are your hopes for the refugee crisis? I think you are an example of somebody who has brought a lot to Britain with you. If you could speak to all of the world leaders who are, are looking away from refugee children and young people, and you would say yourself, you were a university student when you came to Britain. What would you say to encourage them to be humane to people who are displaced in the victims of war and terror?

Arminka Helic: I would say start from the beginning. No one becomes a refugee out of choice. No one wants to leave their school, their family. No one wants to leave their friends behind. No one is seeking to learn a new language, new customs. No one is seeking to try to occasionally be invisible in order to be able to, to be accepted and to be integrated. So that is not a choice that anyone makes. A refugee, a genuine refugee is someone who is seeking support, help and protection when their lives are in danger, when their families are being destroyed, when their, their, their women and their daughters and are being threatened and raped. The, think about where those people come from. Think about them as someone who can contribute to your society. Don't stigmatize them as people who are burdened, people who are going to take away your social security, people who are going to take your jobs because if you give them an opportunity,they will give you back. If you treat them with respect, they will treat you with respect. They will want to give back something to the country because there is no bigger gift than a gift of security and safety. And I cantell you. As someone who has gone through this process, there isn't a bigger dream that you can have when your life is under the threat. They're the people who have dreams and they're the people who want the best for their children and for themselves. And don't take that away from them by treating them as second class or lower than, or treating them as others. Treat them as a fellow human being and when you can help, do help them when they come into your country. If you have already taken them in, give them an opportunity, they will give you back.

Deborah Frances White: Thank you, Arminka. That's a beautiful sentiment and very moving, and I hope that the world leaders are listening to this podcast and take this on board.

James Taylor: It is almost time to leave this Conflict of Interest. Deborah and Carl returned to the cafe to pick up their coats and consider what they've seen and heard.

Carl Warner: Deborah, what have you, uh, learnt today? What would you take away from the conversations that we've had with Arminka and the things that you've seen in the museum today?

Deborah Frances White: Well, I've certainly learned a lot about the logistics of the conflict that I didn't fully understand before, but more than that, I've learn from Arminka the emotions of the 
conflict, and that's what's really important because that's what will help the human race. At some point, we hope get beyond these horrors. So thank you very much to the Imperial War Museum for facilitating these conversations. I hope that the cure that we've held in our hands today through this story is permeated around the world.

James Taylor: And with that, our time at the museum must come to an end.

Why not leave us a short voice message on your thoughts on this episode, and we'll include some of 
the best in an update later in the year. What are your memories of the reporting of the Yugoslav Wars? What stays with you from the 
conflict? Email your voice memos to [email protected].

Thanks again to our guests, Deborah Francis White and Baroness Helic, as well as our curator this 
week, Carl Warner. If you have been affected by any issues raised in this program, please see our 
show notes for organizations who can help.

Next week on Conflict of Interest.

Jamali Maddix: This opinions probably worth as much as a, a sack of shit, but I don't know, it doesn't sound like we won or we lost either. It just kind of sounds like it was.

It's comedian, Jamali Maddox confronts the history of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. To hear that episode, follow conflict of interest on Spotify, apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums.Thank you for listening and goodbye.
 

James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.

Ed Butler: As you will know from the announcement by President Bush, military Action against Targets inside Afghanistan has begun.

Clip: There are three parts all equally important to the operation of which we're engaged, military, diplomatic, and humanitarian.

Jamali Maddix: Hello, I'm Jamali Maddix. I'm a comedian and I've made some documentaries, uh, one of them being, uh, Hate Thy Neighbor, where I went around the world and spoke to, uh, extremist groups.

Amanda Mason: Welcome Jamali to Imperial War Museum. Nice to see you here today. Uh, my name's Amanda. I'm a senior curator in our contemporary conflict team here at the museum, and my specialist area is Afghanistan since probably back. 2010.

Jamali Maddix: Oh damn.

Amanda Mason: Um, so my role here is to look after our collections that relate to that conflict, to acquire more material and everything. We have to interpret it and to catalog it.

Jamali Maddix: So the lady to talk to.

Amanda Mason: Hopefully.

Jamali Maddix: if you wanna know about the conflict. You're the lady. Yeah. Cool.

James Taylor: Jamal has joined our curator. Amanda Mason at Imperial War Museum, London to ask the questions we all want the answers to. And in this episode, it's all about Afghanistan, 9/11 Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, Helmand, IEDs, just some of the phrases associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected? And how much further back does the story go?

Ed Butler: They had the advantage of being disorganized, you know, they could go where they want. You know, ones and twoses while we had to go out in huge numbers and vehicles or helicopters, whereas these guys could jump on a bike with an AK 47, have a pop at you, you know, hit you with an IED. Then they'd drive off.

James Taylor: On our way, we'll meet someone with a unique insight into Western involvement in Afghanistan. We'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection so that we all leave with a greater understanding of the causes and course of this conflict and where we are now. All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor, and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin in the cafe at Imperial War Museum London, where the star of taskmaster is to be quizzed on what he already knows about a conflict that started when he was 10 years old.

Jamali Maddix: I think, if I'm being honest, I dunno how rude this is, but I think I mix it in my mind a lot with the Iraq war. I know it sort of started with the, uh, 9/11, the Taliban were harbouring and Bin Laden. The rise of Islamist sort of political ideas. There was always cartoons of Tony Blair and George Bush was sort of the satirisation of that relationship because I know Taliban had a stronghold in certain areas. Some people wanted democracy and some people wanted more of an Islamist state. And, um, that's part, that's, that's about it really.

Amanda Mason: Okay, well we did have a little, uh, trip to the museum now and fill in some of those gaps and find out a little bit more about the conflict.

Jamali Maddix: Great. So it's walking around museum, there's people looking at us like what they doing?

Amanda Mason: What do you know about the Taliban?

Jamali Maddix: The Taliban, um, from what I know of the Taliban, they were sort of like an extremist, um, sort of Islamist group and, and I don't know how true this is, but that a lot of them were sort of ex mujahideen from the, um, the Soviet Afghanistan war.So a lot of them were like ex warlords of that conflict. It was, you know, they wanted to make them communist and they got there and they realized they don't want communism.

James Taylor: It's a good grounding to what we'll discuss, but there's still much room for improvement. And so Amanda leaves Jamali to the first museum object of the day.

Amanda Mason: Okay, so this is the first object we're going to look at today in the museum's collection.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Amanda Mason: Um, so what we see in front of us is a very twisted of feud, piece of metal, rusted metal. I just wondered if you've got any ideas what this might be and how it relates to Afghanistan.

Jamali Maddix: if I'm gonna take a guess. I think it's some still beams from um, the twin Towers.

Amanda Mason: Yep. You're exactly right.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Amanda Mason: It's a part of the external steel work probably from around sort of the central portion, fairly near, we think were the impact zones. So I think it's such a incredibly evocative object. I think you can just sense the violence and the destructive power of what happens on that day.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Amanda Mason: Um, so 9/11, as you've already said, was a really critical stage. Well in, in history really, and was the defining moment for the conflict in Afghanistan was really the moment that really made that conflict happen.

Jamali Maddix: Uh, 9/11 is one of them things of you all, everyone kind of remembers where they were when they heard it. And I was only young. I must have been mom must have still been in primary school. Maybe just started secondary school, so maybe 12, 11 when that happened. 'cause I'm 29 now and I remember there was sort of like a, a real panic, you know, that from when I talked to my, you know, older people and they sort of, when they said the IRA were do sort of doing bombs, but it wasn't the same energy 'cause you know, they were sort of calling ahead and stuff, but this was kind of out of the blue and surprising and... so like how did we get from sort of 9/11 to the conflict.

James Taylor: It's an excellent question, which in turn needs an excellent guest to answer it.

Ed Butler: My name's Ed Butler. It's a pleasure to meet you. I, uh, was the overall commander of British forces, uh, in Afghanistan in 2006. So I was a senior army Officer

James Taylor: As you can imagine, Ed Butler's unique perspective encompasses a number of conflicts we explore in this series.

Ed Butler: I think I'm one of those old people. You referred to Jamal Min a minute ago. 'cause, uh, in 9\11, when 9\11 happened, I was, I. Uh, probably my early forties. And rather, like you, it is a very vivid memory. I was in, uh, Macedonia in the Balkans, uh, on an operation there trying to, um, sort out another, uh, Balkan conundrum, which is a different story and, uh, I suddenly got these reports from my headquarters that, uh, you know, a plane had crashed into, into an office block in, uh, in New York. It was all quite vague and they said, you better get yourself back here, boss. So I drove back to my headquarters in Skopje and um, in time to see the, the images of a second aircraft going in. And I think we, we figured pretty quickly that this wasn't an accident that had been intelligence warnings, uh, that, you know, Al-Qaeda, uh, was planning a, a mass, mass, uh, shock event, but nothing, no one dreamt that it could be on, on that scale.

James Taylor: Ed now had a new mission in Afghanistan, British troops entered the country in November, 2001.

Ed Butler: And the purpose of that mission was very much to, to bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: You know, people realize that this was a major strategic threat and we couldn't afford to have it happen again.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: The actual people who'd flown the planes had had obviously been killed.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah. Yeah.

Ed Butler: But what we knew is that the, they had been using Afghanistan, which was a failed state, you know, it wasn't functional. It had no government in as such, and Alida had been cooperating with the Taliban. The Taliban had accommodated them and allowed the, uh, Afghanistan to be used as a training base, a facility somewhere where they could gather and, and, uh, and put the plan together. So our task was to, to coalition tasks of Americans and ourselves to go in and collect the evidence uh, where we could make sure there were no more training camps, there were no more people there who could carry out a similar attack.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Ed Butler: And ideally, you know, Osama Bin Laden was still in Afghanistan, and in those days we had a pretty clear idea he was then that would've been, uh, would we'd been the ideal solution.

James Taylor: The British and American forces pointed to an international coalition of support for military intervention. The UN and NATO approved just two weeks into the conflict. Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance in December. The Taliban surrendered Kandahar. Tony Blair called it a total vindication of the strategy we have worked out from the beginning.

Ed Butler: So we'd been into Helmand Province. Uh, the Americans were in Kandahar. And up in the, in the north as well. And we routed all the training camps. A good number of Al-Qaeda and foreign fighters were killed and, and, and captured the Taliban quickly laid down their arms.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: And, you know, there was some semblance of law and order was being restored.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: Because we were a big force.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: And so at that point, we were very much on a. counter-terrorism mission.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm

Ed Butler: uh, which was all the same up till 2002.

Amanda Mason: So the mission to find the perpetrators of the terrible act on 9/11 was quite clear. But after that point, and once the Taliban had driven from power, then in some ways the mission in Afghanistan changed. So to find out a little bit more about what happened next and how that mission changed, we'll look at something else from museum's collection. Step this way.

James Taylor: By the start of 2002, the Taliban had been driven from power. Hamid. Karzai was sworn in as the head of an interim government, but the coalition of US and British forces was no closer to finding Bin Laden. So the mission began to change, bring security to the country, and remove the influence of Al-Qaeda globally. And that meant a new peacekeeping force was needed.

Amanda Mason: So an international force known as ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force was formed and the British were a major part of that. So the item we've got to look at here is, um, ISAF News. So this is an example of the type of material that's being developed by, uh, British forces. Uh, working for ISAF and this was produced in Pashto and Dari, so the major languages in, um, Afghanistan and these were circulated to Afghan civilians and were, sort of, messages about who the British were, what they were there to do, um, how it was very much a peacekeeping mission. So as well as news, they had sort of like, there was some puzzles and there was also information about what to do if you see a suicide bomber. So it's a sort of slightly strange mix of sort of quite, uh, lighthearted content, but also quite serious messaging.

James Taylor: But divisions were opening up in the coalition forces over what they were all in Afghanistan to do.

Ed Butler: You know, 2002 was a real turning point. The Americans were very clear that their mission in Afghanistan was purely counter-terrorism, but there was unfinished business in Iraq, and that was their focus.
George Bush Junior wanted to finish off the business, which his father had not finished, and that's where their focus went to. And that to me, from my experience, where we started, had this division or split of what we were trying to achieve there as a coalition. The Americans, absolutely. It was purely counter-terrorism.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: You know, killing Al-Qaeda and, and senior Taliban leadership.

Jamali Maddix: Is that a dangerous situation where you sort of, 'cause even though like the Taliban, you know, are, are totalitarian and sort of maybe not good for the people. But if you remove that, doesn't that create like a power vacuum?

Ed Butler: Yeah.

Jamali Maddix: If you don't, if you don't help rebuild it, it's like a bad situation. So is that why the British went to make it more peacekeeping at that point?

Amanda Mason: Americans were clear. They don't do police work, weren't they? They didn't, they were not interested in doing reconstruction at this stage, were they? That's my understanding.

Ed Butler: They didn't, they weren't interested, in your point, Jamali was not to rebuild, you know, effective government.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: Bringing in law and order, bringing in a proper justice system. And you know, reconstruction development of the average is what the British wanted to do and other coalition partners within it.

Amanda Mason: I think in some years for Afghanistan, this was probably quite a hopeful time. It seemed like there was a new interim government. It seemed quite positive. I think there was a lot of support, um, for what the international community were trying to do to support Afghanistan. Perhaps it's a lost opportunity that particularly the American's focus shifted to Iraq and the international focus then moved away from what was happening in Afghanistan.

Jamali Maddix: How come the British didn't have the same mentality of the Americans of just to encounter terrorism? Why did they wanna rebuild Afghanistan? Like, 'cause the Americans sort of just like, all right, we've done what we want to do. See you later. How come the British never sort of fell in line with that idea?

Ed Butler: I think the context is really important here because. You know, you mentioned the Taliban. Yes. There'd been a very authoritarian regime, very brutal in many cases. There was not much economic prosperity or anything else there. It's the sixth poorest country in the world. You know, its child mortality rates were, you know, rock bottom. Life expectancy was age 45. I mean, I could go on the list, but it was a horror story, and so there was a genuine, I think, ambition that we could make it a better place to live. Uh, for the ordinary Afghan and, uh, unfortunately, even as early as 2002, we hadn't really thought through the enormity of that task of rebuilding a country that's over sixth poorest in the world and, and making it the 10th or the 20th or the 50th poorest country in the world, and what the long-term investment that was gonna take decades, not, you know, years, billions of pounds. It's a huge, enormous country. Very little infrastructure. Kabul, you know, the main capital, uh, had some infrastructure and had where all the, the, uh, the wealth was and a lot of the corruption associated with it. But the rest of the country was in living in biblical times on a subsistence economy.So we just failed to recognize that the, as I say, the enormity of the task of what our aspiration was to turn it into a better place, which was commendable, but reality, I don't think we ever really recognized was gonna be achievable and against a very um, hostile Taliban, the government, which had been in place.

Amanda Mason: The other interesting thing about this period is the decision not to include the Taliban in the peace talks in Bonn in 2002, when the Taliban at that point were effectively defeated. And I think it's now been called the 'original sin' of not involving them at that point um, when the plans for redeveloping the new interim government were, were, were sort of put in place.
I wonder what you think about that, ed, whether you'd agree with that.

Ed Butler: Yeah. The similarities of when we, we with the, uh. Uh, dismantling of the whole Ba'ath party and the regime in, in Iraq, and we hadn't learned that lesson. And I'm absolutely, and I didn't recognize it at the time, and you say 2000 -2003, the significance of it. But later in 2006 when I was commanding the British forces there, I was saying that I said, we have to include the Taliban in the political process. We'd learned our experiences in however uncomfortable they might have been in other conflicts. Whether it was in with the IRA we always, we recognized after 20, 30 years the IRA had to be brought in through their political representatives into the political solution. Our American colleagues just could not understand this approach that we could be talking with the enemy.

Jamali Maddix: 'cause they've sort of been built up, and rightly or wrongly, I, I don't know the situation enough, but like the, that they were helping Al-Qaeda so they were kind of a terrorist organization and America are very hard line. We don't negotiate with terrorists. Do you think that kind of played into it a little bit?

Ed Butler: I think the negotiation terrorists was one thing, but I think it's, it was more simple than that.

Jamali Maddix: Oh.

Ed Butler: 9\11 you know, everything gets stood for hmm had been, you know, hit and dismantled three and a half thousand casualties, the strongest nation in the world had been taken down by half a dozen people flying to one of those.

Jamali Maddix: Iconic scenes in the world. Yeah. And that was iconic buildings.

Ed Butler: So for them it was such a strength of feeling. So anything to do with that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they thought were one and the same.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah. Yeah.

Ed Butler: And actually they mixed up a lot of the, the warlords and Narco criminals. They were all. Bad people in Afghanistan. That was their early stage thinking. Yeah. And the only thing was retribution.

Jamali Maddix: to find, find, to find, uh, some type of, um, resolution.

Ed Butler: Yeah.

Jamali Maddix: You might have to negotiate with the people that you Yeah. You know, 'cause it's, I I think as well is like, from just hearing what you are saying and hearing what you are saying, it seems like there's, there was a lot of confusion about Afghanistan anyway in terms of their culture and their, what they believe in and what they want and stuff. And so it's like, it's like you said, you know, it was like, it got really complicated 'cause you sort of went there with the peacekeeping mission with good intentions, but it's such a confusing region with tribalism and you know, like they got like all this different stuff going on. The same one, like the Soviets went there, they thought, oh we can convert these people to communism. And they were like, brother, we, if it ain't the Quran, we don't want it.

Ed Butler: Yeah, you are, you're absolutely right. And um. You know, we'd failed to read our, our history books.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: You know, the British track record was not good on three previous occasions. The Soviets had not succeeded there.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: And for some reason, too many people thought that actually this time we could make, do it differently. We could do it better. We could rebuild, you know, or build. It wasn't even rebuild. We could build a new nation there. Um, for all the right humanitarian reasons. But I'm afraid in my view, without the sort of practical approach of saying how much? How long?

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: What compromises should we take with those who don't know? Because there was, it wasn't just the Taliban who didn't want us there.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: But narco criminals didn't want us there.

Jamali Maddix: De definitely. They definitely did. What you there?

Ed Butler: 90% of UK's opium comes from Afghanistan.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: it's a huge trade.

Jamali Maddix: Mm.
Ed Butler: And a lot of people in Afghanistan made make a lot of money out of it.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: Um, and then the warlords themselves, 'cause it was all about power to them. So we were, we were actually up against three different, uh, organizations who did not want us there 'cause we were just gonna interfere with what they were trying to do.

Jamali Maddix: It's like the, the newsletter, and I dunno, like, it's gonna sound like I'm, I don't mean this word in a rude way. That group, were trying to send out this sort of propaganda of like, you know, hey, we're good people here. We're not here to did the did the people did the Afghanistani People Day-to-Day people want you there because like if you have to sort of send out newsletters to try and sort of, you know, to sort of say who you are and what your intentions are. What was the sort of general view?

Amanda Mason: Well, I would feel like maybe at this time there was perhaps more support for, I mean, Afghanis famously don't really like foreigners in their country at all, but maybe this was the time where there might have been more welcome.

Ed Butler: You know, they've lived under a pretty horrid repressive regime of the Taliban, and here we came in with this sort of propaganda as you referred to there, Jamal, but we were gonna make it all better, so.

Jamali Maddix: yeah. Yeah.

Ed Butler: There was a golden opportunity from 2002, but we didn't go back there in any force with all the sort of economic and reconstruction and the aid until 2006. So there was four years.

Jamali Maddix: A lot happens in four years, yeah.

Ed Butler: I think we missed the opportunity and by that stage, the Taliban was starting to regroup, regenerate, re-arm, re-equip and we had delivered nothing in those four years.

James Taylor: It is time for another museum object and Amanda has something symbolic to share with Jamali and Ed.

Amanda Mason: This is a Taliban flag, and this was actually captured by British troops in 2013, so it was one of the Royal Irish soldiers, um, captured this. There were a petroleum area and there was a particular area that you just couldn't get to because of, uh, fire coming from. They saw this flag and they knew that meant it was a Taliban stronghold, but eventually they were able to move into that area, um, and captured it. And...

Jamali Maddix: uh, what's it say? Do, do we know what it says?

Amanda Mason: I think it's the call to prayer.

Jamali Maddix: With a machine gun on it. Yeah. It's crazy.

Ed Butler: The, the white flag of a Taliban, they would, uh, fly in a lot of the villages. You know, even if you were occupying a particular village, you know, or you were trying to with, with coalition or British forces, you know, the white flag would still be there showing their power in the region. They could be stuck and run on the top of telegraph poles over the top of houses.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah. So you would see the strike.

Ed Butler: You would see it often. Yeah. So it was very provocative.

Jamali Maddix: If you saw that flag, would you know, oh, we're in, would that be like a, oh damn, we're in like a real stronghold here, or is that was, or was it so common that it's just like, ah, it's just another Taliban flag.
Ed Butler: They were pretty well everywhere. There was very few areas where they weren't the central, more of a central district is where there was more military presence, or Afghan police presence or Afghan Army presence then they wouldn't be there. But those were very pretty restricted areas in the main towns of

Jamali Maddix: mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: Of, uh, of Lashkar Gah and others within, uh, within Helmand province.

Jamali Maddix: You said before that you had the sort of the Taliban, the warlords and, and the drug dealers and, and they all didn't like you there. Did they work together? Like, do they work under the, the, the umbrella of the Taliban?

Ed Butler: Not so, I just more described they had this symbiotic relationship.

Jamali Maddix: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Ed Butler: So it suited all of them.

Jamali Maddix: My enemy of my enemy is my friends. Yeah,

Ed Butler: Exactly. You're a foreigner if you're another village or another district.

Jamali Maddix: Very tribalistic.

Ed Butler: or another part of it. So it's very tribal. So you know, as soon as you put, you know, your size 10 British boot or American boot into Helmand Province or Kandahar province. You knew, you knew you weren't gonna be welcome because, you know, for the Narcotic warlords, um, we were interfering with our profit margin. The warlords didn't want us there because we were interfering with their power base and all the criminality and corruption and everything else with it.And the Taliban didn't want us there because of it was about power. Mm-Hmm. And so they did come together. And, you know, the ordinary Taliban fighter could make, could be made up of all sorts of people.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: Young people who are ordinary farmers who are being paid by the Taliban $15 a day.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: To pick up a rifle machine gun that was

Jamali Maddix: good money?

Ed Butler: To attack the British, it was a lot of money.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: Especially as we were preventing the narcotics trade. So they would do, they would harvest the poppy and when the poppy season was over, then they could start fighting. So, you know, it was, it was driven by economics a lot of this. But they didn't want us there for all sorts of reasons. Um,

Amanda Mason: and the Taliban's popularity is also due very much to the presence of the warlords because in areas particularly, um, after sort of 2002, 3, 4 um, Helmand province, those provinces in the south, there's not a great deal of law and order. There's not much government control. So the warlords who'd been driven out previously by the Taliban, they come back into those areas. They start setting up roadblocks, extorting money from people. So law and order basically breaks down and that gives the Taliban an opportunity to come back into those areas to say, we are the people that can bring stability. We are gonna reimpose law.
So by the time that the British come into Helmand Province in 2006, the Taliban have been able to reestablish themselves and sort of give And

Jamali Maddix: become trusted yeah

Amanda Mason: and become trusted. And so that's how that relationship with the warlords works because people know that their warlords are there not gonna do good things and commit violence, extort money. So if the Taliban are there, then that gives them protection from the warlord.

James Taylor: 2006 was the year that Saddam Hussein was executed. It's the year that Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion that Italy won the World Cup, and it was to become a key year in the history of Britain and Afghanistan. In response to the Taliban resurgence. British troops were moved into Helmand Province.

Ed Butler: I was, uh, the overall commander of British forces. So all the British forces we sent to, uh, to Afghanistan in 2006, which was about 3,300, uh, Army, uh, air Force and one or two Marines,

Jamali Maddix: and you are responsible for it.

Ed Butler: So I was the, the big man in charge of all that.

Jamali Maddix: Wow.

Ed Butler: We deployed into Helmand Province in April, uh, 2006 and the previous nine months we'd spent planning and preparing and training and trying to work out what the hell we were gonna be doing there. And as I've mentioned before, I'd been there twice before. So I used just some of the challenges of, of operating there. The, the terrain, the heat, you know, this was, you know, in the summer months, it's 50 plus degrees centigrade. Uh, very hot, very rugged rain, very mountainous in places.

James Taylor: At this time, the Taliban had picked up tactics being used by insurgents in Iraq. IEDs, improvised, explosive devices began to be used alongside other tactics that frustrated the British Army.And Jamali has come across one as they move through the museum.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah. What is it like? Is this, what is this exactly?

Amanda Mason: Well, it's a Taliban motorbike and it was captured by, uh, British troops, uh, taken off, uh, ganger young guys who were driving around on it, and then they took it off them. Um, often they would, the Taliban, used to use these to sort of report back on British troop movements. So they'd sort of drive around on these and go on high ground.

Jamali Maddix: it says Helmand on it. So if Helmand is the brand of the bike.

Amanda Mason: Yeah. So probably made a copy of a bigger brand.

Jamali Maddix: I guess it's one of the things, it's harder to fight a sort of gorilla organization than it is an actual army, like a country's army. Do you know what I mean?

Ed Butler: They had the advantage of being disorganized, you know, they could go where they want, you know, ones and twoses. We had to go out in huge numbers and vehicles, or helicopters. Every operation was planned. A meticulous detail. Whereas these guys could jump on a bike with an AK 47, have a pop at you, you know, hit you with an IED. Then they drive off.

James Taylor: Faced with these tactics, the troops under Ed found their new mission wasn't quite as clear as it had been in 2001.

Ed Butler: You know what the purpose of us going in there in, in 2006 was on this, we had three sort of things we had to do. One was to improve the security of Helmand Province and that we were going to be to sort of keep the Taliban at bay, uh, help build up the experience and capacity of the Afghan Army. Uh, we were there to help support the government of Afghanistan to sort of restore its position. So there was a local governor, governor Daud, who'd been recently reappointed. So we were supporting him and then also to help the department of aid, DFID, to distribute aid and the humanitarian support to the ordinary Afghan and wedescribed the conditions they were, they were living in, but unsurprisingly to me because of my experiences, but surprise people back here in London, the politicians that as soon as we arrived, we had quite a big response from a Taliban. They were ready and waiting for us, and we very quickly got into some of the, the fiercest fighting, which some Detroit hadn't been so fierce since the hand to hand combat in Korea.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm. Wow.

Ed Butler: Many years before.

Jamali Maddix: So it was sort, it was really clear what the first mission was when you first gave it, but what was the mission now?

Ed Butler: Yeah, so 2001 very clear county terrorism. 2006, principally nation building, which is quite a broad term, but it included in that, you know, improving the, the, the governance, delivering aids and nation building development, um, reconstruction.There was this counter narcotics mission as well because of the amount of opium which come in and, and opium was, was funding a lot of the Taliban operations and Al-Qaeda before then. Uh, and also we were still, there were still Al-Qaeda and Senior Taliban leadership who were, that was part of a counter-terrorism mission. So military liked to be very clear, you know, single purpose. Our mission is to, you know, capture the hill and defeat the enemy. Here in Afghanistan, we had five or six different missions, which were drawing on different resources, needed different requirements, and actually was sending a pretty confusing message to the people we were trying to support.

James Taylor: To illustrate this, ed passes a photograph to Jamali taken by a fellow officer in Sangin back in 2006, around a third of all British casualties happened in and around Sangin.

Jamali Maddix: What I'm seeing right now is sort of a, looks like kind of a mountainous region, deserty mountainous region. Um, and there seems to be a, uh, like a army truck with like a big gun on top and it sort of seemed to have been blown up. And, um, there's some gear on the floor. That I'm guessing was retrieved from the truck. If I was to make a guess, knowing the war, probably an IED or something, or like a bomb had gone off in the truck or around the truck and yeah.

Ed Butler: Yeah, you're pretty accurate there. Uh, Jamali and that, uh, was a relatively early photograph, was a, was a, um, a Land Rover vehicle which was blown up either by a former Soviet mu uh, mine left from the Soviet occupation, uh, or it was deliberately planted by the Taliban. And clearly the guys had driven over that and you know, the wheels had been blown up. The truck hadn't been quite turnover from memory, those guys were quite, some of them were quite badly hurt. Um, but this was a, a problem we had that, you know, if you went anywhere by vehicle, there was legacy mines, was improvised, explosive devices or there'll be rocket propelled ambushes. So we, we, we tried where we could, but not to, to have vehicles in, in and amongst the towns and villages because they were very vulnerable to attack and we had to fly everywhere by, by helicopter. And part of the issue in the early days, 2006, we didn't have enough helicopters. We had six of those big Chinook double bladed helicopters you sometimes see flying around London and uh, and the rest of the country. We had six of those support, three and a half thousand people with, which actually was only 600 people. Who were actually doing the fighting. The rest were all support staff. You know, we didn't have enough helicopters to outmaneuver the enemy and avoid these sort of incidents.

Jamali Maddix: Did you know they were gonna use IEDs like that? That tactic of IED improvised bombs?

Ed Butler: Uh, I thought they deploy them as soon as we got there. 'cause that's was a, was a favor tactic in Iraq. Uh, and terrorist groups always swapping ideas. They see what works and they know where our vulnerabilities are, and they can kill six, eight people in a vehicle, as opposed to, uh, on their own, but that they didn't deploy in 2006. It was more in 2007 and oh eight, where they just went IED crazy.

Jamali Maddix: How come Sangin was the place where most soldiers lost their life? Was it, was it like tactical? Was it sort of just the number of the fires? Was it the region? Like why, why was it this particular place is why so many soldiers lost their life?

Ed Butler: In town was in the, the Sangin Valley, which was a major arterial route, where the Taliban and narcotics, the warlords and others went through, it became symbolic, where we lost the vast majority of our casualties. And we shouldn't forget, in only the years we were there, you know, we're 450 British service men and women lost their lives. Hundreds more were critically injured, you know, so amputees, double amputees, triple amputees, blinded individuals. And then, you know, thousands who I'd, uh, who who've been mentally uh scarred by their times on their, on Kipling's dusty planes as we go back to a previous campaign. There was a one in four chance you'd either be killed or injured.

Jamali Maddix: Wow.

Ed Butler: In a six month tour. Sangin became, I think, the, the lightning rod for British public opinion and they were just seeing just coffin after coffin, coming back through Wootton Bassett. And I think, you know, what's the, the right question which the families asking you saying, what the hell are they doing and what's the purpose? What are they achieving? Which goes back to all these half dozen missions I talked
about saying they can, can anyone tell me why my son or daughter died there? 'cause if you can, then I could put this in perspective and, and understand what, why he's given his life. And that message was very, very hard to get out of Afghanistan some 5,000 miles away, saying actually, we are making a difference.

James Taylor: Amanda escorts Jamali and Ed to the most unusual seat in the museum. A sofa that appears to be made of concrete.

Amanda Mason: So thinking about what conditions were like for British shoulders in Afghanistan, we've come to take a look at this object, which is a sofa, an improvised sofa made of a material called Hesco, which was sort of ubiquitous in Afghanistan.So it is basically like a metal framework, which could be filled with rubble and used for reinforcements, but in this case they've used it, um, to build themselves a comfy sofa, um, because often the British soldiers were in bases, which varied in what facilities they had. So sometimes they just had to improvise and use what they could have found around them to make conditions as comfortable as they could.

Jamali Maddix: When you're in war or when you are overseas for such a long period of time, I guess you sort of long for normalcy and to be able to sit on a sofa become a huge luxury Jo.

Ed Butler: You've got it in one. I mean, it's a, you know, those hu you know, those everyday things which we take for granted. You know, it's end of the day, we've had a hard day at work, you know, we want to collapse on our sofa and put our feet up. Well, actually it's the same if you are in, in a, in a harsh operating environment. So, you know, here the guys have, have used these big Hesco metal, uh, cages will be filled with rubble and nothing could drive through and there were stopping bombs and bullets coming in. But, you know, good old innovation to make a sofa. And Taliban coming right up to the edges of the, of the compounds, lobbing grenades over. It's a real, really close and personal fighting. Mm. So not at this sort of distance. Um, so any respite they could get, you know, and some sense of normality and, and home conditions and, uh, you know, people would send, um, you know, boxes of food and fruitcakes and things and those things when you got them, which I'm sure the families, these are really ordinary. But you know, your morale would be hugely improved if you just had something, which reminded me of...

Jamali Maddix: Well, you was there for long periods of time. What's like the stuff you missed?

Ed Butler: I used to take, I'm afraid I did borrow it from, um. A certain airline, or maybe it was a Virgin, little Virgin, um, business class, uh, uh, pillow.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ed Butler: Which is like, they, they, I used to take it on all operations because actually if you could, if you were sleeping out in the desert and the rocks and things, the one thing you wanted was a pillow.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: So I used to stuff it in my, in my, my Bergen.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah.

Ed Butler: And pull it out every night. Um. I think I've still got it, so I'll have to give it back to Mr. Branson one day. But things like that, little creature comforts, which just, uh, remind you of, um, what's going on back home, uh, certainly would keep your morale going a little bit.

Jamali Maddix: Yeah, yeah. So how was the sort of morale affected by the public opinion of what, what was going on back in England of people not sort of supporting the war.

Ed Butler: The, the biggest challenge, and I think it was when President Obama and Amanda will correct me, the, uh, the date, he declared that we were all going to leave in 2014.

Jamali Maddix: Mm.

Ed Butler: And the Taliban always knew that we'd, in my view, always knew we didn't have the appetite to stay there for the long term. And if we were get really, were going to rebuild the country that was gonna be, have to be there for decades. And we were there for, you know. A dozen years or so, less than that. Um, so I think that started to play on people's minds and saying, well, you know, why are we here if we're going to leave? And then the Taliban took huge support from that. And there's that great expression, which was, you know, the Taliban or the Afghan, they probably used it for... with the, uh, the Russians was that, you know, you may own the clocks, but we own the time.

Jamali Maddix: Mm.

Ed Butler: And as soon as he declared 2014, they knew that we were going so that actually they just had to play the long term game, realizing that the popular support the media, uh, had turned against the campaign and the politicians. Really, really difficult for them, I suspect, but couldn't really articulate what we were doing there. And you know, there were success stories and there have has been success there. We shouldn't take it away from it, but actually the downside was probably greater.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

James Taylor: Our time in the museum is almost at an end, but Amanda has one more item to share with Jamali.

Amanda Mason: So what we're looking at here is a photograph from the Afghan, uh, Army Training Academy near Kabul, which was visited by some of my colleagues back in 2014. Um, and I think this allows us to focus on what was happening, um, once it had been decided that international forces were going to pull out from Afghanistan or draw down, which I think was the term that was used. So really from around 2010, 2011, the Americans and the British were very clear that they were going to be, uh, not in Afghanistan for the long term and would be pulling their forces out. So really attention switch at this point to really boosting the efforts to train up the Afghan's own, um, security forces, their own Army and their own soldiers. So that was going to be really important for the long-term security of the country for their own armed forces to be able to take over, um, and support the country and support the government. So that's what this, uh, photograph shows.

Jamali Maddix: What, what, what I'm curious about when I look at this photo is the Afghan Army equipped to fight the Taliban in the early stages? 'cause it seems like the Taliban know how to fight well. Can you train the sort of local army to sort of get to the standard of the Taliban fighting?

Ed Butler: You know, we started um, coalition started to try and train the Afghan Army and Afghan police, you know, from 2006 and that was another mission, uh, which we had to, uh, to try and deliver. But there were a few remnants of the original, sort of Afghan Army there, but there was a big effort and Americans were behind this as well, that, you know, it was about producing numbers, so it was taking young men, in those days, picture just young men was picture women here, which was later. Um, men off the out of the sort of off the farms, giving them a uniform, giving them a weapon, giving them the basic training, and then sending them out to fight. And clearly there were no way they were gonna be a match for a a very organized, um, terrorist organization like the, the Taliban. And there was lots of problems with desertion. They weren't paid necessarily very much. The mistake which was made was that, and I always use the experience of, um what the British forces did in Oman after the, uh, replacement of the, the old Sultan with the current Sultan. Um, we committed to staying and we helped build their Army up over 30 years. So they took junior soldiers, they got promoted through the ranks and now, you know, there are full, there are generals who've been all the way through, but they've been helped for years facilitate by the, by the British. And we didn't, that approach wasn't taken in Afghanistan. We weren't committing for long term. You can't grow an Army overnight. It's a long-term commitment.

Jamali Maddix: Obviously at the beginning with 9\11 happening and sort of Bin Laden, um, being the focal point of what, who we needed to put on trial or take down. And that's one of the main reasons we were in Afghanistan at the first point. What, what, what happened to Al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan and Bin Laden?

Ed Butler: Bin Laden escaped across the Pakistan border in probably November 2001. There was still quite a lot of remnants of Al-Qaeda there in in late 2001, but they're either killed or they disappeared across the border. And then in the subsequent years, all the way up until 2014 and sort of continues to be from an American perspective, any of those senior Taliban leadership and or Al-Qaeda presence, which is still in Afghanistan, are subject to, to military operations, drone strikes and, and raids. But what's happened, unfortunately, since 2014, the reduction of the, the conventional forces and the sort of allowing the Taliban to regain control. 50, 60% of Afghanistan is now back in Taliban control. It's that sort of figure, I'm not sure about, it's a hundred percent because it was

Amanda Mason: 70 or worse.

Ed Butler: It could be 70 now so.

Amanda Mason: sort of areas that they influence, not necessarily that they're in full control, but where they can influence what goes on in that area.

Jamali Maddix: I guess it's like, I guess, is it like the country regions as opposed to like the main..

Ed Butler: yeah, it's principally out in the, in the provinces where there isn't the, the military more military strength, but also the concern, you know, more worry is that, you know, Al-Qaeda has come back and also Islamic state has taken, having been expelled outta the, the military, the so-called military Caliphate in Iraq and Syria has a lot of them have gone to,

Jamali Maddix: yeah,

Ed Butler: to the, and taking what we saw pre 9\11, the opportunity of this failed state to..

Jamali Maddix: Yeah and that's where they sort of thrive, isn't it?

Ed Butler: It's where they thrive yeah. Yeah.

Jamali Maddix: ISIS

Ed Butler: so you've got Taliban, you've got uh, um, Al-Qaeda, a component of Al-Qaeda, and you've got Islamic State.

Jamali Maddix: Mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: And that's a worry because then they're mixing within it as well. And not saying there's gonna be another 9\11 plan, but it's another failed state.

James Taylor: And so a new plan emerges, culminating in the US President, holding talks with the leader of the Taliban. This is President Trump speaking in March, 2020.

Donald Trump: I spoke to the leader of the Taliban today. We had a good conversation. Uh, we've agreed there's no violence. We don't want violence. We'll see what happens. They're dealing with Afghanistan, but we'll see what happens.

Jamali Maddix: I mean, just my opinion of seeing that and not knowing a lot. So this opinion's probably worth as much as a, a stack of shit, but it, it just, it feels like, um. Where there was sort of a lot of energy and sort of people not really seeing the point in the peacekeeping mission and seeing that point and sort of Donald Trump's platform is this sort of nationalism and let's sort, it's all about our country, not other countries. And you know, I guess it's sort of, you know, it sort of played into the part of him not wanting to put, you know, pull the troops back out of it and um, and probably open up negotiations with the Taliban where at one point it was never conceived.

Ed Butler: My view is, you know, we should have engaged the Taliban much earlier and as you know, if they'd been engaged in the Bonn's peace talks in 2002, 2003.

Jamali Maddix: mm-Hmm.

Ed Butler: Would we be where we are now? Um, who knows? But I think, you know, there has been, progress has been made on the sort of negotiations and Qatar has hosted, uh, a number of these talks over the years. Um, I understand. You know, if we looked at as at today, you know, they have agreed the Taliban and the Afghan government have agreed a framework of an approach to take forward. But this is as I think we've hopefully given a little bit of a picture, it's a really complicated region and there's a lot of internal actors who've all got a view, but whether it's a warlords, the Taliban, Narcos, uh, and then there's all the regional players who've got a view of what, um, whether you should have a strong Afghanistan or a weak Afghanistan. So you've got Pakistan. Uh, has always been a big player on the, uh, the politics and future of Afghanistan and they would like to have a weak Afghanistan because then that's opens up some people, another front of their defense against India who's their biggest concern. But having a a strong Afghanistan would not be in their favor. The.. what Iran and China. So these all these players who've always had influence on, uh, on Afghanistan.

Jamali Maddix: One last question and I'll be quiet. Did we win the war? I, I, I, because I don't know, it doesn't sound like we won or we lost either. It just kind of sounds like it was, it's, you know I'm saying.

Ed Butler: It's a really good question, and then, uh, and I always answer that question because it was, uh after the, um, Vietnam War, there was a American Lieutenant Colonel, uh, and they were going through the, the, uh, the peace talks and, uh, and what was gonna happen after the ceasefire. And he turns to the Viet Cong Colonel says, you know what, Colonel, you never defeated us in battle. Of which the Viet Cong Colonel turned and said, that may be true, but it's also irrelevant. So I think I would answer your question. So we never lost the war. We were never defeated on the battlefield. And that was all down to the heroism of the British service men and women. But have we won the war? Hmm. I think the jury would be out on that one. And you know, it's our fourth Afghan war and if we could say we came away with a score draw, uh, we've probably done well.

Jamali Maddix: Mm. Did the war in Afghanistan, do you think it helped the everyday Afghanistan citizen who isn't sort of, you know, an extremist Muslim or isn't, you know, a poppy farmer or, you know what I'm saying? It's just like a normal person in the street. Do you think that their lives have been improved by the war?

Ed Butler: We shouldn't discount that. You know, we, a lot of, you know, benefits have been, and successes have been delivered over the last, you know, 14, uh, more than that, 20 odd years we've brought elections. The education has been improved. Some of the medical outreach has been improved, so the, the quality of life for some has been improved, um, certainly a lot better than it was in 2001 and probably what it was in 2006. But all those gains, you know, I'd say how sustainable are they and are they gonna be built on and just when Afghanistan needed and still needs a huge economic investment, the world is going through a its own economic crisis. Of Covid, and we saw this in 2008 with a financial crash. Is this still a problem which, you know, host nations, domestic governments really thinks significant enough to put that sort of money into it? No, I think the outlook's gloomy. Are there any glimmers of hope? You know, let's wait and see.

Amanda Mason: what's your takeaway from today? What have you come away knowing now about Afghanistan?

Jamali Maddix: I didn't realize how, and, and I know no war is easy and I know nothing simple, and it is, and it's, everything's multi-layered. But I didn't realize it was such a complicated situation and you know, that there was so many layers in terms of the intentions that they had through each of the different years. Do you know what I mean? I, you know, I thought it was just like majority of it wasn't counter-terrorism. Mission and I didn't realize there was so much based on, you know, them saying it was peacekeeping or trying to bring democracy to the region. And I didn't realize it was such a sort of long spread out conflict and, and it's complicated to the point that it actually has no real definitive end to it. I think if you sort of, we look back at type stuff with, that was such a long time ago, you sort of, you go, okay, and this is how it ended, you know, World War Two, you know, Hitler's dead boom. But it actually bit history is more complicated than that.

James Taylor: And that's where we must leave this Conflict of Interest with a sort of slightly unsatisfying, complicated conclusion that will inspire more questions than answers.
Why not leave us a short voice message on your thoughts on this episode and we'll include some of the best in an update later in the year. What did you discover for the first time? How does it change what you knew about Afghanistan? Email your voice memos to [email protected]. Thanks again to our guest, Jamali Maddox and Ed Butler, as well as our guest curator this week Amanda Mason.

Next week on Conflict of Interest.
Suzzane Rain: He was tasked to assassinate the then Prime Minister. So from an early age, he was kind of getting all fighty about it.

Rick Edwards: Blimey, that's a, that's a big ask for your first thing, isn't it?

James Taylor: Rick Edwards discovers the origins and impact of the 2003 Iraq War.

My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums.
Thank you for listening and goodbye.

James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.

Clip: From CBS News headquarters in New York. Here is Dan Rather. It was just over 90 minutes beyond President Bush's deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq that US warships and planes, there were F1 17 stealth bombers involved, launched the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

James Taylor: Hello, I'm James. I head up the curatorial teams at the Imperial War Museum.

Rick Edwards: Hello, James. Uh, I'm Rick. Uh, I am a TV presenter. Trying to think what you might have seen. Yeah. Did you watch Tall Academy?

James Taylor: No.

Rick Edwards: Did you watch, uh, any of the Made in Chelsea end of season wrap parties?

James Taylor: I'm afraid I didn't Rick.

Rick Edwards: Very popular James.

James Taylor: Yeah.

Rick Edwards: Um, did you watch any of the Paralympics coverage in 2012?

James Taylor: Yes, I did.

Rick Edwards: Well, I did the Breakfast show, James.

James Taylor: Right.
Rick Edwards has joined me at Imperial War Museum London to ask the questions that many of us are too embarrassed to ask about the biggest conflict of our time. And this week Rick will be given a unique insight into the Iraq war.

Clip: Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil. This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this Prime Minister, but for this house to give a lead.

James Taylor: Oil, Chilcot, Bush and Blair, just some of the words and names associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected, and how much further back does this story go?

Suzanne Raine: They've just had the revolution, they're weak. If we go in now, we can cripple Iran. In fact, it was a complete disaster.

James Taylor: On our way. We'll meet someone who was on the ground in Basra during the Iraq invasion and explore iconic items for the museum's collection so that we all leave with a firmer grasp of the history of this troubled region.
All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor, and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin in the museum cafe with a simple question, what does Rick Edwards TV presenter, podcaster and writer already know about the Iraq war?

Rick Edwards: Uh, not masses. Got some sort of words and snippets of information sort of floating around in my head.

James Taylor: So I've got my watch here.

Rick Edwards: Yeah.

James Taylor: In one minute. Tell me all you know.

Rick Edwards: Right. Uh, so 2003, the US with the UK and maybe some other other people, a coalition, US, US lead coalition invaded Iraq because they thought, or certainly said that they thought there were weapons of mass destruction. It's all a bit vague. It's also somehow linked, or there was a link made between September 11th, so the World Trade Center attack, so Al-Qaeda and Iraq, which I think, but I dunno, this has been sort of debunked. Somehow it's all gonna be related back to the first Gulf War, but I can't really fill in many gaps there. What else? Uh, the US left Iraq quite a long time later, like 10 years later. No less than that. I dunno. Oh ha. There's well, Hans Blix, Hans, everyone knows Hans Blix. Hans Blix was, uh, like the guy who was going in looking for the, the weapons of mass destruction. What else have I got? Obviously Saddam, well, he got executed. I've seen this is gruesome. Well, so at some point, at some point ISIS come into this, but maybe that's later. There was a sense, I remember the, the statue coming down, everyone being like, well that feels great that the Saddam statue coming down, ideal. That's, that sort of feels like we're going over to try and do. The sort of wisdom now would be that it was not as successful. I mean, apart from anything else, the fact that the reasons that were given for going in. Don't appear to stack up now. So weapons of mass destruction: not there. Al-Qaeda links: not there. And I don't think I've got anything more. I think that's it.

James Taylor: Right.

Rick Edwards: Sorry.

James Taylor: I think what we'll do now is we'll go and have a look through the museum and we'll show you some objects and talk some more on the, and what I hope is that the objects will give you a bit more background, um, about the Iraq conflict.

Rick Edwards: And a bit of clarity, hopefully.

James Taylor: And some clarity, I would hope so. And so we put down our Imperial War Museum mugs of tea and make our way into the museum to discover the history of the Iraq War one object at a time.

Rick Edwards: So how did I do in my minute on the Iraq war?

James Taylor: Some of it was pretty good, I have to say. And you, you know, you clearly got quite a good memory. But, um, there were a few things that I thought, um, Chilcot.

Rick Edwards: Uh, yes, so I guess I sort of alluded to it, but I couldn't remember the, the name. But that was the inquiry that said no, no weapons of mass destruction.

James Taylor: Iran.

Rick Edwards: Yeah, I, I'd be very nervous about, um, sort of describing how Iran relates to all this. Oh, hang on. I've got one, I've got a good one, maybe. Yes, yes. Axis of evil.

James Taylor: Yes. Yes. That's a good one. And, um,

Rick Edwards: which, and I think that's, that's Iraq and Iran and then another... North Korea?

James Taylor: What about also, um, another good phrase, war on terror.

Rick Edwards: Yes. So, okay. So, you know, sketchy, but like bits of it. Okay.

James Taylor: So here we are. Um, tell us what you can see here.

Rick Edwards: Uh, it's a kind of tiled mural of Saddam looking,... I mean, sort of dressed like Al Capone, that he looks like a, a gangster. Actually, yeah, he's like a giant, like a giant Saddam standing next to a mosque and a tree.

James Taylor: This is one of hundreds, if not thousands of murals that could be found, um, across Iraq. During his rule, Saddam Hussein, like so many dictators, created a complete cult of personality around himself. You'll see he's got a rifle here, so he's standing above the mosque. The rifle's held out upwards. He's got a far away look in his eyes. I imagine he's pitching himself as defender of the faith here. What is he, he’s wearing here, as you picked up on it, this is a kind of, he's wearing a rather boxy, is it a suit? Is it a coat?

Rick Edwards: I mean, it's, it's a, it's a nutty look.

James Taylor: It's the fact that he's adopted a kind of Western form of.

Rick Edwards: Mm

James Taylor: dress here. Apparently he had his own tailor to do, um, to give this Western appearance

Rick Edwards: like the most, I dunno if this is sort of, uh, um, well known, but the, the image I immediately think of apart from the, the statue mm, is of a speedboat full of Saddams. Have you ever seen that, that photo? 'cause apparently he had loads of doubles and there's one photo, and I dunno if it's uh, if it's been verified, but there's like 15, uh, Saddams

James Taylor: Yes.
Rick Edwards: Like on one boat. And it's really, I mean, it's quite funny.

James Taylor: Yes. I mean, I suppose one of the other bizarre things I remember about him is, um, him sitting a little. Um, British boy on his lap when, um, they'd taken the British civilians caught in a way in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. And another bizarre fact that I learned about him, this could be apocryphal, I don't know, is that he had a, he rather liked Quality Street chocolates.

Rick Edwards: Did he now?

James Taylor: Which is just, yeah, which is just one of those bizarre things that you kinda remember. It's like in the same way that, you know, when Assad of Syria is a big internet shopper. Those little human things for people who we normally see as pretty frankly, pretty inhuman.

Rick Edwards: Yeah, I mean I, I'm now thinking to myself that I know that Saddam was around in, well, first Gulf War, sort of 1990, 1991, but I don't, I actually dunno how long he was in power for before then. I dunno how he came to power. How far back do I need to go to understand these conflicts?

James Taylor: It is at that moment that we meet our expert guest. Her name is Suzanne Raine, and she has been handpicked to take Rick through this particularly complex time in history.

Rick Edwards: Hello.

Suzanne Raine: I'm Suzanne. Nice to meet you.

Rick Edwards: Hello, Suzanne. Um, so, so what do you do, Suzanne?

Suzanne Raine: Oh, that's quite, sorry. That's a difficult question to answer.

Rick Edwards: I, I, I will ask difficult questions occasionally. Suzanne.

Suzanne Raine: Um, now I'm a trustee at the Imperial War Museum. I worked for the Foreign Office for 24 years, uh, including a spell in, um, Basra in 2003 as a civilian who was attached to the British military.

James Taylor: And to really understand life under Saddam. We need to get to know the man himself.

Suzanne Raine: Saddam was born in 1937 and he had an unhappy childhood. Uh, his father disappeared even before he was born, and his mother didn't want him. He was brought up by his uncle and they were essentially a landless peasant family from Tikrit. His uncle had fought in the Anglo Iraqi war of 1941, and then immediately after the second World War, you had this sort of rush of anti colonialist Arab nationalism and the founding of the Ba'ath party, which will, this was Saddam's party, but it was founded in Syria and moved to Iraq, and it was about pan-Arabism socialism. So it was a secular non-sectarian party, had Christians and Shia and Sunni altogether, and it was essentially about creating a new future for the Arabs. That's the world that Saddam was, was born into.

Rick Edwards: I thought that Iraq was. Almost entirely Muslim. Is that not right?

Suzanne Raine: There is a mix of Sunni and Shia Muslim. Yeah, it's actually a, a Shia majority. It's about 60 40. But you also have a lot of minorities, particularly Christian minority, the Yazidis and the Kurds up in the north.

Rick Edwards: Yes.

Suzanne Raine: So it's, it's a big mix and that is one of the things that's made it so difficult to govern over the years.

James Taylor: The Ba'ath party because it was Pan Arab was able to appeal to most of those groups, but there were a lot of underlying tensions, most notably sheer concern that the Sunni would start to dominate the government.
The split between Sunni and Shia Muslims goes back almost 1400 years and has been a source of religious tension in Iraq ever since.

Suzanne Raine: Saddam's first political act at the age of 22 in 1959 was he was tasked to assassinate the then prime minister. So from an early age he was kind of getting all fighty about it.

Rick Edwards: Blimey that's a, that's a big ask for your first thing, isn't it?

Suzanne Raine: Yeah. He didn't succeed and there's different reports about whether he failed 'cause he just bottled it or whether, anyway, he didn't succeed. Um, 10 years later, in 1968, the Ba'ath party came to power and within a year, Saddam was vice president of Iraq and then in 1979 he, he took power completely.

James Taylor: In a way, the Ba'ath party was the equivalent of Russian communism. It permeated every level of the state. If you wanted to be a doctor, a professor, someone in the military, you had to be a member of the party. If you weren't, you were an outcast.

Suzanne Raine: 1979 was a really big year.

Rick Edwards: I was born

Clip: you were born?

Rick Edwards: Yeah. Huge year.

Suzanne Raine: So you had the Iranian revolution.

Rick Edwards: Oh no.

Suzanne Raine: The Russian invasion of Afghanistan. And the siege at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which was when the Islamists took over and there was a very brutal battle. And those three things took place the same year that Saddam came to power and they shaped how the world responded because we, the Brits and the US were terrified by the Iranian revolution, and Saddam was next door. And so for us, he had to be our ally against the Iranians who were something worse.
James Taylor: The Iranian revolution was in part a reaction to the influence of America and the wider Western world exemplified by the hostage crisis.

Clip: The old chant of death to the Shah was replaced today by a new one death to Carter. There is still a strong sentiment against American interest in Iran and the widespread belief that the United States has taken the prophets from the Iranian oil.

Suzanne Raine: Saddam was really worried because he had, as we've said, this majority Shia population and the Iranians are Shia. So his concern was that the Iranian revolution would spread to Iraq.

Rick Edwards: Got it.

Suzanne Raine: So in 1980, a year after he took power, he launched the Iran Iraq War as a kind of attack is the best form of defense in a way, because he thought that they've just had the re revolution. They're weak if we go in now, we can, you know, cripple Iran, we can take the rich oil producing bits of the south. Um, that will be brilliant. In fact, it was a complete disaster. The war went on for eight years. About half a million people died, and at the end of it, Iraq was left with a, a debt of $130 billion and it ended in stalemate. It also led, I mean, it was a brutal war with kind of bayonet fighting, trench warfare and the use of chemical weapons and this is one of the things that then sets in train the understanding that Saddam Hussein was one of the people in the world who had chemical and biological weapons and was prepared to use them. So there's um, there's one final important bit of context, which I think. We should probably talk about, which is the 1990s. What do you know about the 1990s?

Rick Edwards: Well, I think, I mean, I've got the Gulf War ending, uh, quite, quite quickly, early nineties. And then I'm gonna say quite, uh, a quiet time for Saddam and just occasionally, um, him being mocked in, um like Hot Shots! Part Deux, uh great film and uh, and then, uh, South Park the movie, so.

Suzanne Raine: Okay. Well you've not given me a lot to work with there.

Rick Edwards: I haven't I'm afraid Suzanne I know.

Suzanne Raine: I'll try. Um,

Rick Edwards: go on.

Suzanne Raine: So you're right about this sort of the idea that the 1990s were, were a peaceful time. Mm. Um, and part of that is because obviously with the collapse of the Soviet Union, you had this sort of decade where it was a unipolar world. America was in charge. And a series of things happened, which gave America and its allies like the UK a chance to kind of work out how they were gonna govern the unipolar world that they now found themselves in. So you had the Bosnian conflict, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, which are all examples essentially of civil war, of some kind with some bad guys. And they, they devised over the course of that a technique, which is basically identify the bad guy, set an ultimatum. If he meets the ultimatum, that's great. You can work out peace. And if he doesn't, you hit him hard and you hit all the bad guys until they sue for peace and then, you know. Everything is better again. And that gave, I think it was, um, you are right, it was Clinton and Blair, um, particularly at the, in the later part of, of the nineties and then Bush, this idea that you could intervene to make the world a better place.

Rick Edwards: But so crucially, the nineties was a time when America and Britain kind of developed a template for how they would get involved in other areas of the world to kind of maintain, uh, a peace of their design.
Suzanne Raine: Yeah,

Rick Edwards: so there's a kind of a uneasy peace then in terms of Saddam's relationship with the the West. Everyone's kind of getting along. Okay. And then 2001.

James Taylor: It's in September, 2001, that an event takes place that, um, shakes not only the United States, but also the world.

Clip: Good evening. Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices, secretaries, businessmen, and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.

Rick Edwards: So I, I remember this, um, quite well, um, and always struck by how, um. I know it's obviously, it's incredibly somber, but he is a deeply uncharismatic man. It's always my, my thing with him, he just like, I dunno, there's just nothing, there's nothing going on behind his eyes. He is acting. Uh, but of course I remember September 11th, and I remember specifically where I was as it was, it was purely by chance I was at home. When the news was first breaking, so I watched it all unfold on, on, on the news. You couldn't quite believe what you were seeing unfold.

James Taylor: And I think what one has to remember here, the reason that the shock is amplified in the United States, and Suzanne's alluded to this earlier, they're not used to being attacked from the outside, as it were. And if you take for example, the Second World War, only six US civilians killed on the mainland by balloon bombs in Oregon, um, sent by the Japanese. Pearl Harbor, I suppose would be the one, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had a, had a really, a similar resonance, but again, I come back to it, this was against civilians right in the heart of New York City. And I, I don't think the impact of that can be understated.

Suzanne Raine: But you've got to, you've got to think how he felt. I imagine your president, and this enormous thing has just happened in the, in the heart of, of New York City, and I think that that sense of shock and, and what happened in the UK, we obviously the, the Prime Minister set up the, the Cobra Briefing room, which is the room in the bottom of the cabinet office where they run their crisis center. And that would've happened all around the world, essentially, that governments got together and said, what the hell is happening in the UK? We were thinking, is it gonna happen here? You know, we're concerned that there might be similar sorts of attacks in, in the city of London, and how can we support America? And everything that happened for the next kind of year and a half directly was impacted by, by that sensation of the collapse of those towers and, and what a, what a what a shocking thing that it was.

James Taylor: Let's spin the tape forward to March, 2003 and Prime Minister Tony Blair addressing the House of Commons on the eve of War.

Tony Blaire: The House wanted this discussion before conflict. That was a legitimate demand. It has it. And these are the choices. And in this dilemma, no choice is perfect. No choice is ideal. But on this decision, hangs the fate of many things, of whether we summon the strength to recognize the global challenge of the 21st century and meet it of the Iraqi people groaning under years of dictatorship of our armed forces, brave men and women of whom we can feel proud, whose morale is high and whose purpose is clear, of the institutions and alliances that will shape our world for years to come. To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest, turn the United Nations back into a talking shot. Stifle the first steps of progress in the Middle East, leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of events on which we would've relinquished all power to influence for the better. Tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination that Britain faltered. I will not be party to such a course.

Rick Edwards: So regardless of what you might think about the, the decision with hindsight, Blair is a good orator. He, he makes his case pretty forcibly. Uh, and, and talks about this kind of idea of, you know, influence for the better, which think is quite key and sort of refers to what we were talking about, this kind of template for intervention, doesn't it?

Suzanne Raine: Mm-Hmm.

Rick Edwards: Um, but how do we get from Bush was giving his address post 9/11 to that in 2003, where we're about to go to war with Iraq, with the Americans.

Suzanne Raine: I think you can say there are two things. One is the UK had to take a decision on whether it was with the Americans or it wasn't.

Rick Edwards: Mm-Hmm.

Suzanne Raine: And that was quite easy. We were with the Americans. We'd always been with the Americans. They were, you know, one of our closest allies. It would've been unimaginable not to be with the Americans. And then the question is, and this is always how we end up doing things, can we influence what the Americans are going to do? So if we make ourselves a full partner. We're able to shape what they do.

Rick Edwards: Yeah, we have a bit of leverage.

Suzanne Raine: We have a bit of leverage. And the second thing that comes really clearly out of, out of that speech and actually out of Blair's earlier speech about Bosnia and Kosovo is the danger of not acting.

Rick Edwards: Mm-Hmm

Suzanne Raine: of not intervening, of leaving things until they're too late. And the things that they were concerned about, Bush and Blair. They were concerned about weapons of mass destruction, and they were concerned about terrorism and the potential for the two to overlap. That's not to say that they thought Saddam Hussein was going to conduct a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction. But they were concerned that he he appeared to be bent on continuing to develop his weapons of mass destruction and that there might be a point in the future where, at which point it was too late to stop where the two overlapped, and the terrorists then got hold of these things and started to use them against it. So they were driven by fear of the terrorists. And of course, one of the things that happened between those two speeches was the invasion of Afghanistan. And, and this question about what to do about this dictator in the middle of the Middle East who had, who had continuously shown that he wasn't going to back down. And that's what he'd done all the way through the nineties. He hadn't backed down and they believed that he still was, was producing and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Rick Edwards: So when you say hand. Back down. In what sense? Hand back down from what?

Suzanne Raine: There were a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which put on him a requirement to, um, open the country up to weapons inspectors and this is where who comes in?

Rick Edwards: Hans Blix

Suzanne Raine: Hans Blix.

Rick Edwards: Ah, good

Suzanne Raine: and, and Hans Blix spent, um, quite a lot of time in the late nineties and early two thousands in Iraq on behalf, well when the Iraqis let him in, um in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. And essentially his job was to inspect the Iraqi dismantling of those systems. And the problem that everybody had is because Iraq was so closed and because Saddam had shown himself to be so brutal, it was very difficult to believe that he would dismantle these things on his own, not least because he, he kept sort of creating the image that he still had them because he wanted people to believe that he was still a big powerful dictator. So you had a closed country, you had his myth that he was pushing and, and we were looking to prove a negative. So Hans Blix was looking to prove that the weapons of mass destruction weren't there anymore. And. He was looking for them and he didn't find them. But did that mean that they weren't there anymore?

Rick Edwards: That's, that's not a proof is it?

Suzanne Raine: That's not proof. And that was the difficulty that, that we sort of ended up stuck in.

Rick Edwards: And, and so what about the odd conflation of, um, Alida? So the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks and Iraq, that I've never been able to get my head round.

Suzanne Raine: Yeah. And the, the, you are right. And you said earlier there is no direct link between Al-Qaeda 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.

Rick Edwards: Why then did it seem that, that Bush and people in Bush's administration were so set on this course of action?

Suzanne Raine: I think we need to come back to something you were talking about earlier, which is the, the concept of the axis of evil. And that was one of the speeches that, that Bush gave in 2002 and and you know, obviously for Bush there was a personal thing, which was, it was his father's unfinished war.

Rick Edwards: Mm-Hmm

Suzanne Raine: but that this concern that if they left Saddam, it was just going to spiral out of control. So, so there was a very strong pressure, and this was the thing that Tony Blair had to deal with in the American mentality, they were preparing to invade Iraq. And the question for the UK was, could we get them to do that with the United Nations mandate essentially, so that it was completely agreed as a coalition through the United Nations that Saddam had to go. And there was a very long, um, process in 2002 of toing and froing diplomatically to try and get a United Nations resolution that authorized use of force to remove Saddam Hussein.

Rick Edwards: Underlying all of this, how big a factor is oil. Because oil in, in my kind of, um, you know, layman's perception anyway, has always been quite important.

Suzanne Raine: I think oil is a part of this, but the answer probably is, it's much more complicated than that.

Rick Edwards: Mm-Hmm.

Suzanne Raine: This area of the world has always been strategically important because of the oil, but because it's the middle of the Middle East.

Rick Edwards: Mm-Hmm.

Suzanne Raine: It's right in the heart of everything. So oil is a factor, but if you're saying. Was, um, British or American desire to get Saddam's oil, the motivating factor for invading Iraq? The answer is no. It was about him as a dictator. It was about the WMD and the destabilizing force.

James Taylor: But what I would also say is I think there might be a couple of other underlying reasons for the invasion. One of which is that certainly for Britain, its history has for the past 80 years, 90 years or so, as was haunted by appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the need to be decisive.

Rick Edwards: So sort of on the front foot.

James Taylor: That's right. And I think, and you know, and, and Blair talks about they're about doing the right thing,

Rick Edwards: not faltering

James Taylor: yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think the other thing is the confidence that the Western allies had after the collapse of the big enemy inverted commons, which was the 'Soviet Union' and I just wonder, I dunno if Suzanne agrees with that, that that gave them a confidence, perhaps that was unwarranted.

Suzanne Raine: They thought they could do it because they'd done other stuff in the last 10 years. What they fundamentally misunderstood actually was Iran, which was the next door neighbor. And that's a local power in a way, rather than a supernational power, but also axis of evil. So they were putting themselves right in the heart of the axis of evil web.

James Taylor: The decision to go to war was of course not without controversy. In London, over a million people demonstrated against the war. The largest protest in UK history.
Anti-war activists argued that the Bush administration and its allies had insufficient evidence to justify an invasion that the war was illegal under the UN charter and that removing Saddam would destabilize Iraq and the wider region. But nevertheless, in 2003, coalition forces began the invasion of Iraq.
So the Iraq War began on what date, Rick?

Rick Edwards: Well, early 2003. I've gotta go March.

James Taylor: Yes,

Rick Edwards: yes,

James Taylor: yes,

Rick Edwards: yes.

James Taylor: And so we move on to the Iraq War proper, just as Rick, Suzanne and I carve away through the tourists and school groups, each on their own voyage of discovery.

Rick Edwards: So the Iraq war starts March 20th, 2003 and starts, starts pretty well, doesn't it?

Suzanne Raine: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that was really striking, and actually even at the time, I remember this is how little resistance there was, uh, in the, in the sort of early phases. And we had the British Army that went up to, up towards Basra. Um, and they made some rapid progress and then got stuck. And for two weeks they had the battle for Basra, which was essentially between, um, Saddam's most loyal militia, which was the Fedayeen, who were embedded in, in, in Basra. And, and they spent two weeks, there were actually, I think James, if I'm right about this, it was the largest tank battle that we'd been in since the Second World War.

James Taylor: I believe. That's correct, yes. Yeah.

Suzanne Raine: So, so the Iraqis had lots of tanks. Yeah, we didn't have a lot of tanks, but we had the air support, so we were blowing up their tanks. And then after a couple of weeks, the British Army was able to cross the main bridges, um, into Basra and that was essentially that. The Americans, um, their plan was to, to push straight up to Baghdad and to go around most of the towns. So they weren't fighting for the towns. They were gonna go straight to the capital and then take that, and that was what they did. The thing that made it really kind of weird is that the, the military plan involved taking the surrender of the Iraqi generals, which is what you kind of do in war. So, so you're
fighting an opposing Army, the general on the opposing Army, we'll come to you and say, I surrender and I, here are my troops. And essentially you bring them into the..

Rick Edwards: Yeah

Suzanne Raine: and I can remember sitting in, in Kuwait as the Americans were pushing up from Nasiriyah to Baghdad and we were expecting them to encounter the Iraqi army who would push them back. And nothing happened. And it was as though they had literally just disappeared into the desert. And that's one of the things that we can pick up on which, which is potentially the, the sort of set the scene for what's gonna happen next. Because if you can't take the surrender of the opposing Army, what happens to all the soldiers? Um, and then the Americans did obviously have, have to fight again for Baghdad, where again, it was, it was the Fedayeen who were the, who were the sort of, um, most dedicated fighters.

Rick Edwards: When, when did you arrive in, in Basra then Suzanne?

Suzanne Raine: I think I first got there in. June. So it was pretty soon after. It was as soon as it became safe, essentially. And the British set up two headquarters. One was called the Basra Palace, which was the brigade headquarters, and it was in one of Saddam's old palaces on the banks of the Shatt Al Arab, which is the waterway where the Euphrates goes out in, into the Gulf, uh, and the other, the bigger base, which was the, um, divisional headquarters where the general sat was at the airport out of town.

James Taylor: After several weeks of fighting, the Iraqi Army was defeated and Saddam Hussein went into hiding. He was captured in December, 2003 and was later tried and executed for Crimes against Humanity. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, his government was replaced with US-led military occupation and a transitional Iraqi government. Meanwhile, the weapons of mass destruction that have been used to justify the invasion were nowhere to be found. After searching nearly 1700 sites, UN inspectors could find nothing. The weapons had all been destroyed years before. And so what we've got in front of us is a Land Rover, uh, armored Land Rover in a kind of sand yellow color with camouflage netting down the side. If you have a look in the back of it, you can see how confined the space is for the soldiers that were in it. And this is the kind of thing British soldiers would've gone, gone out, um, on patrol with.

Suzanne Raine: It's the kind of thing I went out, um, driving around Basra in ex and I can remember sitting in the back of one of these things thinking, what is it like if you are a female soldier and you've got to be in here for eight hours? Where do you go to the loo was my first concern. But it's a very, you know, you're driving through thestreets and you can't really see where you are going and it's just hot and dusty and congested out there as well.

James Taylor: It must have been kinda fairly terrifying in some ways. Was it like being in one of these, I mean, because the, you can't see out.

Suzanne Raine: One of the things that's quite interesting is in those early days that Shia in Basra were still quite pleased to see us.

James Taylor: Yes.

Suzanne Raine: Because Saddam had been so awful that at the beginning it, it wasn't as bad as it as it later became. And that's one of the issues that essentially we'd say what I think none of us had realized was how broken and how divided the country was. And essentially, if you, if you invade a country that is, that is completely broken, where nothing works, you know, no postal service, no rubbish collection, no driving licenses, no. You know. You have to start from scratch and I remember talking to, to the generals there who then said, there is nobody with it is our grandfathers who were in Homburg in 1945 who had this experience of how you reconstruct a country from scratch. But, but if, if you take over a broken and divided country, every single decision that you take in the reconstruction is a political act. You are choosing to support one person over another to run the local council. You are choosing to invest in providing water or electricity in this district and not this district. So immediately you, you become a divisive, you become a part of the divisions. Because you are then trying to recreate the country.

Rick Edwards: What's the problem here that we didn't have that crucial last bit of the jigsaw, which is what's the end game? What do we think is gonna result from this conflict?

Suzanne Raine: Yes and that's the criticism that that comes out of, of all the subsequent inquiries, which was the actual invasion was the easy bit. As, as is always the case with the war. The, the fighting is the easy bit. It's putting the country back together again that's hard. And, and I think a, a very fair criticism of the, of the British and American um planning in advance was that we just, I think we hadn't anticipated, we hadn't anticipated the scale of the collapse. We hadn't understood what happens with the, we're talking about the deification, where we essentially expelled anybody who'd been in the top four layers of the Ba'ath party from any role in the future governance of Iraq. What then happens, we hadn't planned for that.

James Taylor: Again, I think this is a good example of that because, um, this vehicle actually, or this type of vehicle was first used in Northern Ireland, which is a very different kind of conflict from, uh, the one in Iraq.
And you know, as I say, it was used as a patrol vehicle, but suddenly the roadside bomb starts to make its appearance as one of the key insurgent weapons and these things are very vulnerable to them um, easily blown up. And we talked about. Political decisions and controversies. The snatch Land Rover itself in Britain becomes a source of some controversy because we've gone to war with these vehicles, and particularly obviously the families of soldiers who've killed in them are asking questions why on earth have we gone into a war with kit that frankly isn't fit for purpose. And there was the same kind of controversy over body armor.

Suzanne Raine: I was based in Basra Palace, which is in, um, in the city on the banks of the river and I had a little old Land Rover, not one like this, but a little old Land Rover that I used to drive around Basra Palace in. And, um, for some time it was stuck in reverse and would only go backwards. But one of the things that, that then happened, and, and Basra was a really really stark example of it, but actually it happened, it happened just as much in um, Baghdad, was that we lost confidence basically of both the Sunni and the Shia. So Iran, and we were talking, remember earlier I said that the thing that we hadn't really factored in was that although we had no global enemies, Iran was next door and this was Iran's backyard. So suddenly Iran sees America and the UK taking over Iraq. It has a very large number, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shia that it had given refuge to that it can then start to send back and it can start to mess with the stability that we are trying to to bring on. And similarly with, with the Sunni, you have, as you said, all the sort of disempowered Ba'athists, members of the Iraqi Army, members of the Fedayeen who go underground and that's when it starts to turn... they start to sort of mix up with the, with the, so Islamists. So you then have, you have, um rebellion from, from both sides. One lot driven by Iran and one lot driven essentially by the sort of core Al Qaeda anti-American message. And Osama Bin Laden gives a speech actually, which is inciting, people say, this is your jihad. Go go to Iraq and and fight the Americans.

James Taylor: Let's move on.

Rick Edwards: So I'm still slightly confused because I feel like the fighting tech, like the war sort of ended or we felt like it had ended and then it just carried on.

Suzanne Raine: You are right. And it just, it just kind of got worse and worse rather than better and better. Um, one of the problems was that we ended up in this terrible cycle where the sort of aspiration was reconstruction, making Iraq a lovely place. Yeah. But that depends on the security to enable the civilians who are gonna do the reconstruction to do it. And the security in it, in turn depended on the reconstruction because if you can't connect the water and electricity, people are gonna be cross. There's gonna be sort of, um, demonstrations in the street. So you had this cycle of reconstruction, stability, reconstruction, stability, and, and you never got out of that.
And actually the less, the longer it took to do the reconstruction, the more problems you had. With the stability and that was made worse. And this is where Al-Qaeda come in with the arrival of people like a man called Zarqawi who was a Jordanian Al-Qaeda Afghan veteran who turned up and he he led a very, very brutal terrorist campaign against the Shia and against the Western occupiers and including, you know, there were both, both Shia and Sunni terrorists were kidnapping and, and killing Westerners. Um, and Zarqawi was sort of one of the leaders of the forerunners of Al-Qaeda in Iraq which was at that time very much supported by the Sunni tribes in Saddam's Heartlands, um, round you've heard of places like Fallujah and Tikrit and Ramadi and, and Anbar province. So, so they, they supported essentially, because it was the only option left to them, the sort of Sunnni Al-Qaeda terrorist thing. And that got so bad that the Americans had to intervene again. In 2007, George Bush did a surge to sort of sort of trying to suppress all of that. General Petraeus, I dunno if you've heard of him, but he, he was, um, an American general who managed to persuade the Iraqi Sunni tribes to, to push back on Al-Qaeda largely through employing 90,000 of them. And that was called the Sahwa, the Awakening when um, when they did manage to then get some sort of control and you had basically law and order, you had by that stage an Iraqi government, but it didn't really pan out as everybody hoped, largely because of this sectarian problem.

Rick Edwards: Why did we not anticipate the problems that ensued, uh, to successful shock and awe phase? Why did we not anticipate that there would be a kind of vacuum and lots of factions, none of whom were happy?

Suzanne Raine: The cop out answer is that in the UK we deferred the sort of running of the civilian administration part of this to the Americans who set up the coalition provisional authority CPA, immediately after the invasion, and they took one critical decision that has subsequently turned out to be a disaster, which was de-Ba'athification. So removing anybody who'd been part of the Ba'ath party. From any role in the future of Iraq and that fundamentally had we better understood collectively how the structure of the state works, we would've known that you can't, you can't take away everything that makes a state work. And, and that's, I mean, there, there are parallels with what happened in East Germany, actually,

James Taylor: And indeed Nazi Germany as well, that, you know, however unsavory it was that after the victory in 1945 against, uh, Nazi Germany, that, um, the allies both in East and West just needed people who've been trained in, uh, who are trained civil servants, lawyers, et cetera, et cetera, deeply unpalatable as I say, but they, they needed them to rebuild the country.

Rick Edwards: Because effectively if you remove everyone who operates everything in the country, then you are fighting a, a losing battle trying to fill those places and desperately trying to grab, grab anyone and people who don't have the experience and dunno how it works and then it's all a mess. Yeah.

Suzanne Raine: Yeah. And there's corruption and banditry, and that's exploited by the Iranians on one side and the Islamists on the other. So, so Al-Qaeda, Al Qaeda in Iraq then became obviously the Islamic state of Iraq and they, they were essentially extortionists, they ran protection rackets in, in Mosul for years. The other bit that we've not mentioned that we should is the anti insurgency produced a lot of prisoners, which the Americans locked up famously. And that's famously in

Rick Edwards: Abu Ghraib

Suzanne Raine: in Abu Ghraib,

Rick Edwards: yes

Suzanne Raine: Abu Graibe was already well known as one of Saddam's awful, awful prisoners. He'd had thousands and thousands of Iraqis, um, imprisoned and tortured. So the real tragedy of what happened in Abu Ghraib when the Americans put people that, you know, insurgents for want better word, when they, um, locked them up there and, and essentially mistreated them, the real tragedy is that it enabled everybody to make a direct link between Saddam and and, you know, the, the Western Coalition, which is that we, we weren't better, and I don't think there's no excuse for that. The only explanation is just, it was a war. People hadn't had the right sort of training. They didn't know how to behave but, but it set, it, it, it's set everything back. The other thing that happened as, as that fight with Al-Qaeda with Zarqawi progressed through 2005, 2006, the Americans arrested a lot of Islamists and they were put in a place called Camp Bucca, which was a prison camp on the border with Q eight, and that has been then linked immediately to the sort of rebirth of the Islamic state because I think nine of the leadership of the Islamic State as it became the Caliphate had been in Camp Bucca at the same time, so they had essentially been part of that resistance to the occupation. Then they had befriended each other. They'd learned more about their cause, and they learned about leadership and resistance in the prison.

Rick Edwards: So it's like an incubator.

Suzanne Raine: Exactly. And then when they get out of prison, then you know they, there, there is sort of secret underground cell and then they masterminded a number of other prison breaks through 2012 to 2013, which enabled them to sort of regroup.

James Taylor: One of the key fallouts, certainly in the UK was the level of protest, um, against the Iraq War and we're standing now in front of one of the, quite a famous poster that was also used on placards, uh, make Tea Not War and it's got Tony Blair carrying an AK 47 with a teacup, uh, reversed on it over his head. Um, and this was actually one of the commissions done by the Stop the War Coalition. And so this poster. It was produced in 2004, and if you look at kind of subsequent stop the war marches, you'll see this used on placards as well.

Rick Edwards: Because I guess what was happening from 2003 onwards is that the trust that the British people had in Blair was kind of eroded as people started to think, hang on, maybe we shouldn't have gone with the Americans.

James Taylor: That's right. I mean, you know, I can't think of any conflict uh, certainly in my lifetime, that's created quite as much opposition as this one did. You know, rightly or wrongly, it has completely stained Tony Blair's reputation. Um, we've just got one more object to show you. So do come this way.

Rick Edwards: Now, what am I, I, I don't really know what I'm looking at here, James.

James Taylor: What you can see in front of you is a kind of cabinet that a stamp collector might have wooden and raised on legs but if we start to open out and look at the stamps there you have a face of a soldier who was killed in the Iraq conflict.

Rick Edwards: Oh God.

James Taylor: And so, um, this is actually an artwork by, um, Steve McQueen, the famous artist and director. And he was commissioned by the museum in 2003 to respond to the conflict in Iraq. And I mean, he actually went out to Basra. Um, and he was really struck by the professionalism and the resilience of British soldiers given all the chaos that was around him. He actually wanted Royal Mail to issue these stamps, but they did not do so.

Rick Edwards: Well it's really, uh, it's very powerful, isn't it? And particularly in light of what we've been talking about, the fact that there was ultimately a sort of failure.

James Taylor: Yes.

Rick Edwards: And these people have lost their lives for..

James Taylor: That's right. Here is a great example of a story about human beings, um, who lost their lives in what was actually a very recent conflict.

Rick Edwards: It's also, it's so, it's so easy. I, I've realized, and this immediately brings it home, and I'm glad we've finished on this actually because we've been talking in quite sort of broad, sort of almost like academic terms about a war, and you forget about the, the realities of it, which is um, thousands, potentially. I dunno how many people died over the course of those years, but yeah and somehow, somehow that can get lost.

James Taylor: 179 British service personnel were killed during the Iraq war, 160 of those are represented here.

Rick Edwards: And what about Iraqi citizens?

Suzanne Raine: So, um, they're still dying. The sort of conservative estimate is, is about a hundred thousand people have been killed in violent actions, mostly subsequent to the war, mostly through a sort of what's become a, a difficult to end civil war actually and that includes the, the, the sort of Caliphate phase.

Rick Edwards: So even now, sort of nearly 17 years on the effects of that first decision to go to war in Iraq are still being felt, aren't they? Massively.

Suzanne Raine: And the central question at the heart of it, which is who is going to govern Iraq, has not been resolved at all.

James Taylor: And that's where we must leave this Conflict of Interest with a sort of slightly unsatisfying, complicated conclusion that will inspire more questions than answers. Why not leave us a short voice message on your thoughts on this episode, and we'll include some of the best in an update later in the year. How does it compare with your understanding of the second Iraq war? What memories do you have of British involvement? Email your voice memos to [email protected]. Thanks again to our guests, Rick Edwards and Suzanne Raine.

Next week on Conflict of Interest.

Inua Ellams: Um, much like the death of Osama Bin Lain, there was the orchestra and a fanfare around his death. Played out across screens here in the UK, here and right across the West.

James Taylor: The writer and poet Inua Ellams discovers the history of the Libyan Conflict.

My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums. Thank you for listening and goodbye.

James Taylor: This is conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.

Clip: Uh, right. It's just that this is just a, a short statement now, and I'll be answering, uh, your questions later, but I just wanted to give you, first of all, um, I'd just like to say how positive and constructive the meeting um, with, uh, Leader Gaddafi has been, um, the relationship between Britain and Libya has been completely transformed in these last few years. We now have very strong cooperation on counter-terrorism on defense, um, a commercial relationship that, as you can see by this, this, this huge, uh, investment deal today is, is one that's, that's simply. You know, going on now from strength to strength, and I think it's, it, it is something of an indication of how relations between two countries can change. A few years back, um, Britain and Libya were never had this relationship. I could never have had this relationship with Leader Gaddafi. Now all of that has changed.

Iris Veysey: Hello, I am Iris Veysey and I'm a curator in the contemporary conflict team here at Imperial War Museum and in particular I lead our collecting activity related to the conflict in Libya.

Inua Ellams: My name is Inua Ellams. I'm a writer and a poet, and I went to Libya, um, the year after Gaddafi had been killed and I worked there with the British Council for about three or four days.

James Taylor: Inua has joined our curator, Iris Veysey in the Imperial War Museum in London to try to understand one of the major conflicts of our times, and in this episode, we tackle Libya.

Clip: If this was the fog of war...

James Taylor: Gaddafi, Lockerbie, oil, Benghazi, just some of the words associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected and how much further back does the story go. On our way, we'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection and meet someone with an in-depth knowledge of the conflict so that we can all, for at least one moment in time, understand what happened when, and crucially why. All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor, and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin as ever in the Imperial War Museums cafe where Inua and Iris sip coffees and size each other up.

Iris Veysey: Okay so you've been to Libya, so I think that probably gives you an insight more than, than lots of people have.

Inua Ellams: Yeah.

Iris Veysey: What comes to mind when you think of Libya, whether that's from your experience or from other things you've, you've heard about Libya.

Inua Ellams: I think of a part of the African continent, which is mainly notorious in British collective memory as, um, as a land of conflict, of suspicion of Islamic terrorism, which sort of was, was somehow enmeshed in in the urban myth that exists about the World Trade Center bombings. Um, I think about the golden age of Libya and what Gaddafi stood for at a point in, in his life where he was the Prince of Africa. Lots of world leaders looked towards him as, as a, as a leader who had somehow galvanized Sub-Saharan African leaders into a collective voice, which he spearheaded the vacuum that his rulership left in the country when he died. The chaos that ensued because of that.

Iris Veysey: Yeah. I think Gaddafi looms large in, in most people's conceptions of the country.

Inua Ellams: Mm.

Iris Veysey: And did you feel, when you were there, did it feel optimistic or did it feel uneasy?

Inua Ellams: Both.

Iris Veysey: Both.

Inua Ellams: I had breakfast with the director of the National Theater of Libya, and I was, I think he expected me having come, you know, coming from the UK to have only bad things to say about Gaddafi. But I had the complete opposite. I was questioning what I knew of his legacy, what I heard about other Libya that are Libyans that I read at the internet and he began to mock me and called me, um, a Gaddafi supporter.

Iris Veysey: Well, it's very polarizing.

Inua Ellams: Yeah.

Iris Veysey: So what would you like to learn or get out of this discussion?

Inua Ellams: The truth, and I know that that is at best a gaseous cloud of information because there is no single truth, but something closer to what actually happened and what led up to the conflict and, and the powers that be that was surrounding the conflict and how it, how it unfolded.

Iris Veysey: Uh, well, I think it would be great to discuss some of the things we have in our collection and think about what they tell us about what happened in 2011 and how they can help us understand better. What's happening in Libya.
So we're gonna grab our waters and we're gonna make our way through the museum and have a look at our first object.

Inua Ellams: Cool.

James Taylor: Of course, Iris is speaking figuratively as no drinks are allowed while walking through the museum. Iris and Inwar travel past abandoned Jeeps and a mosaic of sad Hussein to one of the least remarkable looking exhibits in the museum. And yet it represents one of the most well-known moments in UK Libyan history.

Inua Ellams: Um, this looks like a sort of communications desk with a, um, silver box, silverish box I think. It looks like there is a, a microfilm poking out of the right hand side of it, and it's varnished wood. It looks like somewhere where a politician or a leader might sit and dictate to those who are listening to him like something you'd find at the United Nations headquarters or so.

Iris Veysey: Yeah. So what it is, is a witness box, um, from the Lockerbie bombing trial in 2000.

Inua Ellams: Oh wow. I was way off.

Iris Veysey: No, I mean I think you were pretty close. Um, and that was held in the Netherlands, um, in a special, a special court. And I think what's interesting about this object is it tells us something about the sort of longer history of Britain's relationship with Libya, which perhaps some people aren't aware of. So Gaddafi was at times he was closer to Europe and at other times, relations were more hostile. And in the early eighties, Yvonne Fletcher, who's a police officer, was killed outside the Libyan Embassy. So at that point, Britain cutoff diplomatic relations with Libya. And then in 1988, a plane was brought down on route from Heathrow to New York.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm.

Iris Veysey: Over the Scottish town of Lockerbie and 270 people were killed. They linked the attack to two Libyans, but, uh, Libya refused to hand over the suspects, and so that really brought the whole relationship to an impasse and the un imposed sanctions on Libya. And it's only really after the trial in 2000 that eventually happened and Gaddafi uh, admitted responsibility. He always said, oh, I didn't order the attack, but he admitted responsibility, agreed to pay compensation. That kind of began his rehabilitation in the West.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm

Iris Veysey: so I think it's an interesting object because it marks a moment in our history with Libya in the UK. He also agrees to destroy Libya's weapons of mass destruction. And then not long after that, Tony Blair goes and visits Gaddafi in Libya and shakes his hand. There's that famous photo of him shaking hands.

Inua Ellams: Yeah

Iris Veysey: you know in the deal in the desert.

Inua Ellams: So after his rehabilitation with the west, um, what happened?

James Taylor: It's an excellent question, which can impart begin to be answered by this new voice.

Tim Eaton: Hi, I'm Tim Eaton. I'm a research fellow at Chatham House where I focus on the Libyan conflict.

James Taylor: Tim turns our attention to what was happening in Libya at the start of 2000 under Gaddafi's Rule.

Tim Eaton: Well, I think you can see several different phases in Gaddafi's relationships, uh, internationally of course, when he's coming back into, uh, recognition in the two thousands, you see quite a strong, powerful Libyan economies emerging, big oil reserves, the markets opening up a willingness for the West to engage, to invest in Libya, to build relationships. And at the same time, within Libya, you have an aging Gaddafi, you have increasing competition among his sons for what happens next effectively, who gets to control what you have competing visions his sons Saif al-Islam, his moving around with a largely technocratic group of people, uh, who have a different vision, a kind of neoliberal vision for Libya whilst others are trying to retain kind of old socialists anti-imperialist, um, ideas. So from that period, you really have a kind of tussle internally within Libya. And at that point, as that tussle is unresolved, that's when you start to see the popular uprisings emerge in across the region first from Tunisia and then from Egypt at which point Libya gets swept up.

James Taylor: The popular uprisings Tim has mentioned were part of one of the most significant moments in 21st century conflict history. The Arab Spring beginning in Egypt with a toppling of President Mubarak. The movement saw fierce challenges to authoritarian governments by local civilians across the Middle East. It arrived in Libya in 2011 when protest against Gaddafi and his government began, but back to Iris.

Iris Veysey: Okay so we've made our way through the museum and we're now behind the scenes, uh, in the museum's boardroom. And we have someone here with an object for us to have a look at.

Inua Ellams: Um, there's a large brown box containing, um, some badges, I think wrapped in tissue. Um, there is a face on it. I'm not sure who that is. Um, but there is a star and a moon, and I think that's the Libyan flag and something written in Arabic. The colors are black, red, and green.

Iris Veysey: This is a badge which was made in Libya probably between about February and April, 2011. And you're right, it has the, the colors of the, the Libya flag on it, and the writing in Arabic says A free Libya. And the image of the man is actually of Omar al-Mukhtar, who was a Libyan freedom fighter. Um, so Mukhtar is, is actually a historical figure. So in the early 20th century, Libya was colonized by Italy and Mukhtar was the leader of the resistance against the Italians, and they eventually executed him. So he's something of a national hero in Libya and what's interesting is in the uprising in 2011, you see his image come up in the sort of material that people were making to wear at protests and the things that rebels were wearing, particularly in the east of Libya. So he's always been a sort of important figure in Libya. But it's interesting to see the sort of uprising invoking his image in 2011.
Inua Ellams: Oh wow. It's, it's, it's, it's quite striking and I can see how that would stare at nationalist, um, sentiment and group people together.

James Taylor: Inua, Tim, and Iris continue to move through the museum.

Tim Eaton: If we look at the, the rise of protests in February, 2011, we see in a very short space of time within a month, in fact, them go from largely peaceful demonstrations against, um, the government to full scale civil war in several parts of the country. In particular the events of Benghazi where the security forces violently sought to suppress protest. We see in different parts of the country, similar events start to take place. But it's worth noting that what happened in different parts of the country is quite different in some places. You see, um, so-called regime forces just leave.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm.

Tim Eaton: Whilst in other parts you see quite violent. Um, clashes and in other parts you see very little happen at all. So it's notable that it's not just one story of one spontaneous big eruption. It's many little sparks in different parts of the country that slowly gather pace. But predominantly you see the biggest sparks at first in the east of the country, in the city of Benghazi, which is seen as the crucible, if you like, of the of the Civil War and the subsequent revolution

James Taylor: returning to the museum proper, Irish shows Inua a flag, usually housed in IWM North in Manchester. It's a Libyan flag, but not the one you may be familiar with.

Iris Veysey: This was the flag of Libya when Libya was a kingdom before, before Gaddafi stage his coup in 1969. And then he, he removed this. But in 2011, during the uprising, the flag was adopted again by the rebels and then eventually became reinstated as the official flag. But what's really interesting is on this one, you can see when you look at the image that it's handmade. So the, um, there are, they're stitching along the seams, the crescent and the star are actually screen printed on, and they're slightly more truncated than you would see in an official flag. Because of course, before it was officially reinstated, the flags were necessarily being handmade. But like the badges that you see, a sort of a, looking back to pre Gaddafi time in the way that people are conceptualizing a post Gaddafi future.

Inua Ellams: There are clear parallels between the Libya as you've just described it and the Nigeria that I was born into in 1984. Nigeria is also a young country. We gained independence in 1960. During the Nigerian Civil War, the Biafran War, there were lots of, um, international powers involved. Both the Russians, the French, the Swedes. There were lots of Egyptians, um, fighter pilots flying Nigerian and airships, um, to bomb the Biafrans, the Igbo people.

James Taylor: As the conflict gained momentum in Libya and Gaddafi's government looked increasingly unstable. The question loomed about whether the West should intervene.

Inua Ellams: And I wondered who the international powers were, um, involved in the conflict.

Tim Eaton: I think it's fair to say that at the time of international intervention in Libya, which was framed around a so-called responsibility to protect by meaning a responsibility to protect civilians in the face of threats by, um, Gaddafi, uh, to kill civilians in the city of Benghazi. From that point onwards, really what we see is, uh, a series of airstrikes and naval blockade, asset freezes, concerted action by the internationals to limit Gaddafi's ability to prosecute a war. But then also, of course, to then really expand that, um, campaign to the point where it made it much more likely that the rebels would win.

James Taylor: The trio are on the move again through the corridors of the museum towards the next object. As they go, Tim gives his take on why the West and in particular NATO and the UK intervened in Libya in 2011.

Tim Eaton: I think that certainly there are major interests at play for Western powers in Libya, of course a big oil sector, engagements of international oil companies and also these billions that Libya was holding and starting to invest. You have major investments with the big financial giants in the West, and that's definitely a prize.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: My view is that, um, that wasn't the principle motivation behind intervention. I think that being at the time, looking at what happened as it unfolded, I think we've got to contextualize it with the other things that were going on.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: For Western policy makers, I think in particular, they were getting hammered really for not responding fast enough to what happened in Tunisia not supporting what happened in Egypt.

Inua Ellams: Mm

Tim Eaton: And I think very quickly you see more decisive, um, action in Libya, but is often the case. It feels like policy makers learn the lessons from the previous war

Inua Ellams: mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: so they were reacting with the close memories of what happened in Iraq

Inua Ellams: mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: the close memories of failures recently and public pressure and I think that's where you see quite a chaotic policy emerge quite fast

Inua Ellams: mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: and sometimes I think it's easy to see that. As some kind of strategic move, no doubt their strategic interests at play

Inua Ellams: yeah

Tim Eaton: but it feels more like this was a series of reactions rather than any coherent strategy to capture what was in Libya or take Gaddafi out in that way.

Inua Ellams: Okay

James Taylor: The list of countries that became involved in the conflict grew and grew. Britain and France committed to action of varying sorts. And there were also countries from the Middle East, neighbors who wish to have some influence.

Tim Eaton: So you see the United Arab Emirates being, um, very closely involved. It houses the so-called National Transitional Council that would be recognized by the internationals as the new executive of Libya. You have, um, Qatar, which is at this time, is really trying to flex its muscles. And so all of these actors are kind of supporting, um, the rebels and some of the other actors, like Russia feels actually hoodwinked at this point because it feels like it, it allowed a no-fly zone for reasons of responsibility to protect, but then it's very angry that that responsibility to protect is developed into a full blown NATO led intervention.

James Taylor: This moment where the no-fly zone turned into a wider mission for NATO had huge implications for the way Russia worked with the West over other conflicts such as Syria. But that's a story for another episode.

Iris Veysey: So as Tim mentioned, the reason lots of internationals became involved were these threats that Gaddafi was making against people. Um, and on the 22nd of February in 2011, he gave this infamous speech in which he promised that he was gonna hunt down the rebels, and he was promising that he was going to cleanse Libya of them and, um, he was going to find them. The phrase was house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway, person by person. And this phrase, alleyway by alleyway, which in Arabic is Zenga Zenga. Um, was actually sort of co-opted by protestors and rebels, and became sort of a, a joke. And then what happened is this Israeli rapper, um, called Noy Alooshe, created this mashup, which he posted on YouTube where he mixed together the Zenga Zenga speech, which was the thing that was causing one of the things that was causing lots of consternation about what Gaddafi was gonna do to his people.

And Alooshe mixed it up with, Hey baby, by Pitbull, not somebody I ever thought I'd be talking about in a war context?
Inua Ellams: Why not?

Iris Veysey: It was a real hit um, so millions of people watched it and it was so popular that he even, um, released. Um, on request a modest versions so that people could show it to their, their relatives. It's still on YouTube and it's the upload that Noy made in, in February, 2011. So you can see people's comments from the time and it's quite an interesting time capsule. But I think what's also interesting about this is, this was obviously a joke. It was ridiculing Gaddafi, but actually not long afterwards, the Guardian reported that at a rally held by Aisha Gaddafi, it was Gaddafi's daughter. Um, this was played at the end of her speech, which this rousing speech defending Gaddafi. So they sort of tried to co-opt it back again. I think that's a really interesting example of how something like this takes on a life of its own.

James Taylor: And this leads Tim onto the broader question of the role of social media in the Libyan conflict.

Tim Eaton: The infrastructure for the internet in Libya is much worse than, say, Tunisia or um, Egypt actually. So I think particularly in Egypt, you see this really rousing online mobilization and quite a lot of, you know, a large number of people able to access that platform. Much more limited number of people able to do that, um, in Libya. But certainly since 2011, you see that that has increasingly become the platform, uh, another sort of venue for contesting, you know the narrative to the extent today that. Facebook, I think would be the primary source of news for, for me, for a large number of,

Inua Ellams: a lot of people

Tim Eaton: large number of Libyans. And also, you know, I think the argument about it supporting silos. I mean, there are a lot of news organizations in Libya that are easily identifiable with one political, um, cause or one set of actors often funded by one person, almost always a guy who has aspirations for power. That's still many people's mindset at this time. So this, the social media took I think, a little while to take hold, um, a bit longer than say it had in neighbouring states. Yeah.

Iris Veysey: The Zenga Zenga speech was, was one of several instances in which Gaddafi was seen to be threatening his own people and that became a real talking point, you know, would he actually go through this and, and would people be hurt In Libya?

Tim Eaton: There are those that contend that. Gaddafi whilst being a dictator and trying to rule through force and coercion, uh, actually was relatively sparing in the violence that he meted out to his people and that, you know, this was more of a rhetorical ploy to get people back into the confines of the regime and stop acting out and from a position of trying to, you know, reassert control. On the other hand though, you do have things like the Abu Salim prison massacre of hundreds of prisoners, um, in cold blood. There are also things we have to contend with in these types of regimes where if the leader gives that type of directive, then will the commanders operate on it and, you know, interpret that as well.

James Taylor: By October, 2011, the rebels had started to edge ahead in the race for power and territory. And after the fall of Tripoli, Gaddafi fled to the east. On the 20th of October, he was captured and murdered by rebel forces and his body put on display for the public to see.

Iris Veysey: So it was a militarily speaking, a relatively short conflict for the international players and of course, eventually, Gaddafi was killed. Do you remember that happening? Do you remember that being in the news at the time?

Inua Ellams: Yes. Um, much like the death of Osama Bin Laden, there was the orchestra and a fanfare around his death played out across screens here in the UK, here in America, right across the West, and I remember footage of him being chased and he seemed to be in a large drainage pipe or something like that. He was cornered and there was a bloodied um, body on screen and, um, I think a few gunshots. I heard there was lots of da dust, and then just the headlines about Gaddafi, um, being killed and, and just this, yeah, this, this king of a man was just reduced to, um, a scrawny thing in the desert. I remember that.

Tim Eaton: It was so striking, the image, and I think for, for many Libyans difficult to actually, you know, just conceive of what had happened because I think what we've seen since that point is that for all of his idiosyncrasies, the system of government that Gaddafi built was formed around him as an individual, as a person and that's what kind of held much of it together. And you see that once he goes, it literally just crumble.

Inua Ellams: So after the government disintegrated and those familial players kind of dissipated, what happened next?

Tim Eaton: We start to see whilst the war's still ongoing and even before Tripoli is captured, there's a rush for Tripoli really, among different rebel groupings, there are many different groups to see who can control. Whilst this is ongoing, the internationals are starting to recognize one by one, the National Transitional Council based outside of the country and the disconnect between the National Transitional Council and, and those fighting is quite broad in some cases. Over 40 years of a dictatorship, a lot of fear, a lot of distrust. Distrust being a major problem throughout the piece, but Libya is able to hold elections in 2012. I think the analysts always see the problems, but. Yeah, considering where it would come from, I think you can actually say that there were quite a few positive things going on here.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: But really, from the election of that legislative, you start to see the fault lines among different communities, different political constituencies widen, and by the time we get to 2014 when there's a contested set of circumstances around parliamentary elections, you see that some groups accept the, the results and some groups do not.

Iris Veysey: And the next clip I wanted to share is it's from 2012, but I think it, it goes somewhere to sort of illustrating some of the cracks that were beginning to appear, certainly from an international perspective.
Um, so in. 2012, on September the 11th, there was an attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, the US mission there, and several Americans were killed, including, uh, the US Ambassador Chris Stevens. So, see, this was a, a huge story and it was the first time an ambassador, I think, had been killed in service since the seventies and there had also been an attack, um, on the UK Ambassador Dominic Asquith in that year, um, which he'd survived. Um, so you could start, see some tensions rising. And this clip is from, um, Hillary Clinton's testimony, um, before the House Select Committee investigating the attack and this became a very important event in her tenure.

Hilary Clinton: One of the horrors of the hours after the attack was our failure to be able to find where the ambassador was. We hoped against hope that he had somehow gotten himself out of the compound and that was, he was alive somewhere, maybe in the back. Additional efforts by the diplomatic security officers and then eventually by the CIA reinforcements that arrived to find his body or to find him. Hopefully were unsuccessful. We were desperate and we were trying to call everybody we knew in Benghazi, in Libya get additional help. What appears to have happened at some point later is that Libyans found Ambassador Stevens and they carried him to the hospital in Benghazi and Libyan doctors labored nearly two hours to try to resuscitate him. And I, I mention all of this because I want not just the committee members, but the public to understand that this was the fog of war.

Inua Ellams: I've never seen that clip before.

Iris Veysey: No,

Inua Ellams: No

Iris Veysey: Do you have any memories of this being in the news, this event?

Inua Ellams: Um, I know that Hillary gained the nickname, the Butcher of Benghazi, but that's pales in contrast what I've just seen. What I've, what I, what I saw as a broken leader trying to compose herself by talking, I was talking about a colleague who died in a fog of war and, and I can't reconcile that nickname with that woman.

Tim Eaton: And I think this speaks to the bigger, one of the bigger debates that's still raging within Libya and beyond is who are the revolutionaries? Are they Islamist extremists? I think, you know, at the beginning you mentioned terrorism is one of the things that is connoted by kind of, uh, Libya and certainly for those, many of the groups that were engaged in the revolution in the east are, are terrorists effectively and have shown their stripes. The example of Chris Stevens would be held up as saying, look, we told you so. What more evidence do you need? Interestingly, the word Islamist doesn't exist in Arabic. It's, it's a Western term that's pushed onto

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: Arabic.

Inua Ellams: mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: So it doesn't really accurately describe any Libyan. In fact, almost all Libyan actors that I've spoken to believe that Islam should have some role in the governing of the state.

Inua Ellams: Mm-Hmm

Tim Eaton: So you've got a continuum, but you have some quite, you know, conservative and some extreme groups certainly emerge. And really in the chaos of 2014, as things are, are really going south. Um, you do see ISIS, um, start to become, uh, more prominent and start to control territory.

James Taylor: And whilst ISIS was slowly gaining power in the East, it became clear to countries like the UK that one strong figure was emerging in the fight for Power General Khalifa Haftar.

Iris Veysey: So the last clip I want to share is, um, Boris Johnson in 2017 when he was still foreign secretary and he's describing a meeting he's just had with Khalifa Haftar, who had emerged by that point as a key figure.

Boris Johnson: Well, it's very important in this, uh, Libyan crisis to reach out to all sides and, uh, there's no question that, uh, Marshall Hafta has a very important role to play. And what, uh, I've said to him is what I've said to everybody. This is a time for compromise. It's a time to work with the new un uh, the new UN special representative, uh, Ghassan Salamé, who I think has got, uh, a real chance of making a difference here now. And it's of course vital that, uh, he, the general, the Marshall has gotta respect, uh, human rights. And, uh, we made that point, uh, very loud and clear as well.

Tim Eaton: Once we got to 2014, all of a sudden you have two parliaments per se and two governments because one of them saying the elections didn't count and the other ones saying that they did. Khalifa Haftar famously turns up in Libya, um, in early 2014 and announces a coup by YouTube

Inua Ellams: okay

Tim Eaton: and I remember being there and laughing along with everybody else, but from that point, he really, uh, starts to build a block, but it gets forced out of Tripoli. He's much better able to constitute that block in the east of the country. So you've got this power block emerging in the east. You've got another constellation of military actors, largely from local communities in the west of the country, and two separate governments.

Inua Ellams: Yes

Tim Eaton: So by December, 2015, the United Nations tries to solve this problem by creating a Unity government,

Inua Ellams: okay

Tim Eaton: and they call that Unity government, the government of National Accord and the government of National Accord still exists today. But the problem is, sorry, bear with me. I know this is complicated. Um, that it's a Unity government that was soon rejected by many in the, in the east, particularly Haftar. So when Johnson's talking in this clip, he's recognizing that effectively there needs to be a deal, and that Haftar is a power on the ground. Who has to be involved in that deal. But in reality, from the international perspective, Haftar doesn't have a legitimate claim to being able to negotiate.

Inua Ellams: Yeah

Tim Eaton: so you see from 2016 onwards that the French effectively recognized this. Um, claim of Haftar and actually a lot of the international community have supported him despite, ostensibly supporting the recognized government, on the other hand, so it's duplicitous, particularly France, United Arab Emirates, providing significant military support over the years. And, and so in this sense. The external powers have been fueling libya's Civil War.

James Taylor: Tim is right. It is complicated. There were two competing administrations in Libya, the official government of National Accord, and the unofficial man in charge, general Haftar and international government supported one or the other, or both, which just seemed to perpetuate the conflict in Libya.

Inua Ellams: What were the repercussions of this? Did it, did it play out? Was it positive?

Tim Eaton: No,

Inua Ellams: no,

Tim Eaton: unfortunately not. It's been a big mess. Um, really, uh, the aspirations of an actor like Haftar who has a military background and has sought to militarily control the whole of Libya, um, has effectively been, you know, catastrophic. And we've seen repeated efforts by the international, uh, players to try and get, have to agree to a deal to be part of a unitary government.

Inua Ellams: So those who might listen might raise the question, why don't we just let them get on with it and all the foreign powers and all the international powers, just let them sort it out. What, what answer can you muster to that?

Tim Eaton: God, you ask a lot of difficult  questions. It's a very, it's a very good one. So, I mean, I asked that because I also consider that with regards to the Nigerians Civil War.

Tim Eaton: Yeah, yeah. So I think that if Libyan problems were left to Libyans, then they'd be much more easily solvable. Put simply. Um..

Iris Veysey: I suppose what perhaps gets lost in the media coverage and in the talk about all the different state actors that are involved in this very complicated situation is what is happening on the ground and what does that mean to everyday Libyans.

Tim Eaton: The net result of not having a, a unified government, of having dysfunctional institutions are things like 18 hour to 22 hour power cuts in Tripoli or in other cities in the summer. They are a depreciating currency, dysfunctional banking sector being paid, but being unable to get your money out of the bank, goods costing you five times what they cost before having to travel a hundred kilometers in some extreme cases to fill up your car with petrol when you are one of the world's main oil producers. Um, so I think the United Nations calculates that something like 25% of Libyans are now in need of international assistance, which considering the the, the scale of resources at Libyan policymakers disposal and the relatively limited population, it's only six and a half or so million people, Libya and a massive area. Um, that's a huge failure.

James Taylor: Inua also has his own reflections on Libya and Gaddafi from the time he spent in the region.

Inua Ellams: I wrote this poem which tries to balance the various myths. And it's just called Poem for Gaddafi, and he took power in a bloodless coup and brought his people democratic rule and championed free speech, building new schools and hunger students who critiqued his views and all his speeches were received lukewarm, and he kept promises he'd made to charm and gave free equipment to start up farms and gone down protestors, marching, unarmed. And to each Libyan. He pledged the home and channeled the river through desert stone and fought imperialism from his bones and never found peace, and he died alone. Here's how we should rate him. When we look back, sometimes he did this sometimes. He did that.

Iris Veysey: I think that it's really interesting in that it taps into the idiosyncratic nature of Gaddafi, like you say. And I mean, his image in the West was so polarizing and sort of dominated by his eccentricities. But even politically, like you say, he's always drifting between different things and taking bits of one ideology and bits of another ideology, it's very hard to pin him down. So I was interested to know whether you shared the poem with any Libyans and what their response was.

Inua Ellams: I did, I shared with the director of the National Theater of Libya and he appreciated it even though, um, he thought I was too kind on Gaddafi, he thought I could have held him to task more when I posted it and my social media accounts, some Libyans got in contact with me and appreciated that the poem tried to paint a man who was, um, complicated. I, I think given all we've, we've, we've discussed about Gaddafi, it's still a fair portrayal of who he is and what he tried to do. I think.

James Taylor: And with that, our time at the museum must come to an end. They say that in Libya, the position changes every five minutes, which makes for a complicated but fascinating history. With that in mind, why not leave us a short voice message? John, your thoughts on this episode, and we'll include some of the best in an update later in the year. What did you discover for the first time about Libya? Has it changed your understanding of any of the actors involved in the conflict? Email your voice memos to [email protected]. Thanks again to our guests, Inua Ellams and Tim Eaton, as well as our curator this week, Iris Veysey.

Next week on Conflict of Interest.
Carey Mulligan: Wow. That's just a ridiculous amount of..

Lina Khatib: Yeah

Carey Mulligan: having learned just a little bit just makes you want to learn more.

James Taylor: The actor, Carey Mulligan travels through the recent history of Syria, help other, like-minded souls.

Discover the series by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. My name is James Taylor. The producer is Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums. Thank you for listening and goodbye

James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.

Louise Skidmore: Hello, my name is Louise Skidmore. I'm the head of Contemporary Conflict here at the Imperial War Museum.

Munya Chawawa: Hi, my name is Munya Chawawa. I've been called Chunia, Mania, William Mumby in the last week but anyway, um, I like to make sort of online satire content ranging from like political sketches and dialogue, uh, to sort of musical parodies as well.

James Taylor: Munya has joined curator Louise Skidmore at the Imperial War Museum London to try to understand one of the major conflicts of our times. And in this episode, we tackle Yemen.

Joe Biden: The Yemeni people who are suffering unendurable devastation. This war has to end.

Boris Johnson: This is for us and for many people around the world now, the number one, uh, impending humanitarian catastrophe.

James Taylor: Houthis Saleh, Saudi Arabia, proxy wars, just some of the names and terms associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected and how much further back does the story go?

Iona Craig: As they sat in that palace waiting for the Houthis to show up, they were taking the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior, and the Parliament.

James Taylor: On our way, we'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection and meet someone with an in-depth knowledge of the conflict so that we can all, for at least one moment in time understand what happened when, and crucially why. All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor and this is Conflict of Interest.

We begin in the Imperial War Museum's Cafe where Louise is about to find out what Munya already knows about the conflict in Yemen.

Louise Skidmore: So I was wondering to play a bit of a word association game, what words come to mind when I say to you, Houthis?

Munya Chawawa: I know that there are kind of a set number of bad guys when you talk about the Yemen conflict, and I have a feeling that they were like the second bad guy after the main one.

Louise Skidmore: Really good.

Munya Chawawa: I'm describing it like a Marvel film. Sorry.

Louise Skidmore: Hey, uh, what about Saleh?

Munya Chawawa: I think he was the OG of bad guys in Yemen. The Yemen equivalent of the Big Bad Wolf I think.

Louise Skidmore: What comes to your mind when I say the word Yemen?

Munya Chawawa: I think it is deemed as being very poor. It's suffered a bombardment in multiple senses of the word. I think it's had, you know, military air strikes and it's very, there's been famines there and I think it's, I know it's the poorest of x category of countries. I think it might be Arab countries, I'm not sure. Oh yeah. There's one was in Turkey one time with, uh, my ex-girlfriend. I remember her reading this book and just constantly telling me about salmon.

Louise Skidmore: Absolutely. That's, uh, one of the few things that people seem to know about Yemen, uh, salmon fishing in Yemen and also a friend's episode. Mm-Hmm. Where Chandler is going to Yemen.

James Taylor: We are getting slightly off track and here to bring us back to the task at hand is a new voice.

Iona Craig: Uh, my name's Iona Craig. I am a freelance journalist. I was living in Yemen from 2010 until 2015, and I have pretty much done purely Yemen for the last 10 years now. Uh, I was last there in 2020 for three months, and I'll be going back again in a few weeks.

Munya Chawawa: Okay, so Iona, I know that 2011 is pretty significant as a year. I'm not entirely sure why. I feel like there was something to do with, uh, changing of leadership. I also know that in my mind, Yemen is, is synonymous with there being a conflict, but you know, in terms of basic, you know, you know, basic start starting points. Where is Yemen? You know, what was it like before the conflict? You know, what's the beginner's guide to Yemen?

Iona Craig: Well, a lot of people call me a war correspondent. There wasn't a war when I went to Yemen, the war came to me rather than the other way around. And when I moved there in 2010, yes, you know, politics was complex and difficult. Um, the Parliament was suspended, but I was working for a local English language newspaper. And I mean, it almost seems idyllic now. I lived in the old city of sonar in a beautiful several hundred years old tower house. My neighbors used to bake bread for me. I used to commute into work on the mini debabs.

Munya Chawawa: I can't believe we're being heckled by a ch... A toddler. I think those are, those are the views on Yemen. We really need to hear from a 2-year-old.

Iona Craig: Yeah. Well, living in the old city was a little bit like that actually. It was pretty noisy a lot of the time. But yeah, I mean, Yemenis, uh, incredibly, um open and hospitable and extremely friendly. I've traveled all over the country and complete strangers will let you into their house and tell you their life story.

James Taylor: In answer to Munya's question, Yemen is situated at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, stretching out towards the Red Sea and shares borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman. Until 1990, it was two separate countries, North and South Yemen, and its current capital is Sanaa. And while Munya ponders his introduction to Yemen, Iona has come dressed for the occasion.

Iona Craig: Today I am wearing actually a dress that's made out of the Yemeni Sitara, which is a cloth normally a one big piece of cloth that the older women, should I say probably a little bit older than me, um, would wear to cover themselves in northern Yemen, particularly where I was living in the old city. And then the scarf around my neck is actually what the men would wear. It's a Yemeni shawl, and I suppose it, it's the equivalent to the Palestinian kufiyyeh, and they're warm particularly on, on wedding occasions or to mosque on a Friday. But otherwise they're sort of bound around men sort of wind them around their heads to keep the sun off or to keep the wind off. Um, and so yes, I'm wearing a, a, a man's shawl and a and a lady's, uh, Sitara dress.

Munya Chawawa: I'm kind of gutted. I didn't get the memo because I am wearing a top from Primark, which sounds less impressive.

James Taylor: Time for our first object, which I iona places on the table for everyone to see. It's a single bullet.

Iona Craig: Yeah. So this looks a bit, a little bit sinister, doesn't it? Sitting on the table here.

Munya Chawawa: Yeah, I was gonna say it's very much the el well, the bullet in the room. Uh, just a bullet lying in the middle of the table. So what, what is the story behind that?

Iona Craig: Uh, that actually landed in my sort of office space in my house in the old city, right next to my desk one day. Uh, it's not the closest encounter I've had with a bullet in Yemen that would've actually come from celebratory gunfire.

Munya Chawawa: Wow.

Iona Craig: Um, and so in Yemen is one of the most heavily armed countries in the world. Second only to America, um, per head of population. That was before the war, so it probably overtaken America at this stage. Um, but that would be from an AK 47. And every man, you know, all of my neighbors would've had an at least one AK 47 in the house. And so for weddings or special occasions, everybody would come out shoot in the air, and of course what goes up must come down. And they do cause a lot of injuries and even deaths, um, because inevitably people will get hit when these drops. So yeah, that somehow landed, probably was coming in at an angle. It went through the window and landed in my, in my office. So I sort of kept as a little bit of a, a memento.

Munya Chawawa: I mean, it's terrifying, but also a great excuse for getting out of zoom meetings, isn't it? Sort of just the screen shattering from a celebrate tree AK 47 bullet. But that is surreal.

Iona Craig: Well, you have to remember that Yemen is a, a, particularly in the north, is a very tribal society. Uh, there never really has been a strong state. Yemen, uh, as we know it now, while certainly Northern Yemen really only came into existence after the last Civil War in the 1960s. And so you've got a very armed society because it's still run most in most parts by tribal law. And so it's a status symbol you know, you'll see 12, 13-year-old tribal kids walking around the AK 47 on, on their shoulder when you're in the supermarket. So it's a very normal thing for young men in particular to be, to be carrying around. And if anything, it's almost part of tradition. And of course that also means when you do have, um, you know, an instance of war like you have now, that means everybody is very well prepared to, to take up arms. Having said that, there are also strict protocols within tribal sort of law, if you like, that have always kind of prevented, you know, a mass sort of escalation in fighting because everybody knows the consequences and it's very much about tit for tat. So if somebody is injured or killed in one tribe, they've got then, then set off a sequence of events, which means the, the, the other tribe will then take revenge. So, um, in that sense, tribal law has ruled. You know, forever really in, in Yemen,

James Taylor: although Iona's close shave with the bullet speaks to the fairly widespread violence and tribalism in Yemen, things really started to escalate in the lead up to 2011 with the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring was one of the most significant moments in 21st century conflict history, beginning in Egypt with the toppling of President Mubarak citizens across the Arab world rose up and challenged at their authoritarian governments. In each country, there were different motives for the uprisings and as we'll see different results.

Iona Craig: So in Yemen, really it was a battle between those who still supported the, the President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, he'd been in power for 33 years and those that didn't. And amongst those that didn't was also the Houthis who became more famous later on, but that meant protests on the street and people camped out on the street for nine months, and it did result in President Saleh eventually stepping down at the end of 2011. I have to say, the international community initially supported him and didn't want him to step down for their own reasons, but when he did, he passed on power to his deputy, his vice president Hadi, but it was on the condition that he would get immunity from prosecution and that Hadi had to be voted in. And so there was this slightly farcical one man election in February, 2012, set up and instigated by the international community where there was only one name on the ballot paper. He weren't allowed to vote for anybody else but. This was democracy. The battle at that time, of course, for everybody during the Arab Spring was really to, to get rid of dictators across the region and a push for democracy. Uh, unfortunately, Yemen hasn't really achieved either of those things.

Munya Chawawa: So, were you there in 2011?

Iona Craig: Yes, I was. Yeah.

Munya Chawawa: What's kind of like your overarching memories of that of that year like?

Iona Craig: I have to really struggle with myself about this because I have very even romanticized rose tinted memories about it because when you witness a revolution, it's extraordinary. It, it really is. And when it goes on for that long, I, I suppose the feeling of hope, um, that you have and it was boundless and the enthusiasm of people and activists and young people and all the different groups in Yemen that otherwise would not be be united, were united in this kind of one cause. And you know, I talked to activists friends now who I met during 2011, and they said it was the worst thing they ever did because of the war that we now have.

James Taylor: Time for another object and Iona unfolds in Old Times newspaper and passes it to Munya.

Iona Craig: This is one of the pieces that I wrote when I was writing them for the Times here in London, um, whilst I was in Yemen during 2011. And this was a less rose tinted version of, of what was going on at the time and this describes one night, it was the first night when, um, uniformed Soldiers opened fire on the protesters, and I was with them. And several hundred were injured. A again, one of several occasions when I was witnessing the peaceful, unarmed protestors being shot at and shot dead in many cases, um, by the military, more than a dozen people were shot dead. And as I think I said here, I can't, I mean, it was several hundred who were injured by gunfire as well. And you know, the, the estimates are that were 2000 people or activists killed across the country during that time period.

Munya Chawawa: Wow. It says here that there was sniper fire.

Iona Craig: Yeah.

Munya Chawawa: Where? Who's that coming from?

Iona Craig: The armed forces. Sometimes it was plain closed gunman and they had no uniform on, but they would lay, lie and wait in on the first or second floor of, of buildings. Some of them were residential buildings, some of them were above shops, and you wouldn't see that they were there and the protests would be drawn down the street because the riot police would be at the end of the road and they'd be confronting the right police. The right police would then open fire with tear gas or water cannon. They would then run away from the tear gas and the water cannon and a hundred meters back or so they'd be lying in, wait the snipers up in the, on the first and second floor, and then they'd open fire. So they had tactics that they used like that throughout that period. I mean,

Munya Chawawa: that, that feels particularly uh, sinister because, you know, snipers like one shot reload. So it's almost less even crowd control. It's more kind of just pick and choose.

Iona Craig: Yeah.

Munya Chawawa: So when we talk about the Civil War, a lot of, uh, parallels that I draw in my own mind are to do Zimbabwe because that's where I grew up. Now, I wouldn't say we had a civil war there, per se, but we certainly had a long ruling dictator, as many would call him Mugabe. And it felt like this, you know, cathartic buildup towards getting this guy out once and for all. So I guess my question is, what were the underpinnings in the beginnings of the Civil War? And also, you know, how how much of a parallel can be drawn to other dictators sort of being toppled eventually?

Iona Craig: Yeah, I think with Yemen it's as with a lot of things about Yemen, it's more complex than that because Hadi had been in power than since 2012 so he was already gone over by 2014, his two year term that he was supposed to be in for, um, they'd had this period of political transition that was sort of stalling and faltering, and one of the issues with the political transition was that it didn't address some of the underlying problems. The main problems that had, that all the grievances were about in the first place, which was the Southern movement that wanted auto autonomy or even secession from the North and the Houthis who'd been in existence since the late nineties and they also wanted autonomy and that was never addressed, between in the transition period really

James Taylor: Saleh, the dictator had been toppled, but his successor, Hadi's government was seen as being as corrupt, if not more corrupt than Saleh's. The post Saleh political transition, which was meant to bring together Yemen's many political factions to draft a new constitution, had stalled. Adding to that, there was the cutting of an important fuel subsidy, which meant it became expensive to buy anything even to pump water. Amidst all of these worsening conditions, the Houthis backed by Saleh took advantage and an all out civil war began.

Iona Craig: The first bits of the conflict really started up right up in, what was the Houthis sort of stronghold inside or up near the border with Saudi Arabia and so nobody really paid much attention because it was like, oh, there's fighting up there again. It'll, it'll either die down or it won't. And then they began to come further and further south and take territory. And until eventually in August, 2014, they basically circled Sanaa, but they claimed all the guy, which I went and saw them, they were, were unarmed, they were intenses around the city and they said, unless the government steps down, they're corrupt and everything else, we're not going to, you know, come charging in city with guns but we demand that they do, otherwise we will protest. That's when everybody realized as they'd started taking the territory further north, they had been using violence of course they'd been blowing up houses of, of tribal leaders and they'd done so quite easily taken that territory and as I say, within a few days, they just took the capital and the day that they actually seize Sanaa in September, 2014 when I was there, the UN special envoy to Yemen was sitting in the presidential palace with Hadi, all of the international ambassadors waiting for the Houthis to sign a deal to say they would withdraw and give up their arms and go back to Sa'dah, where they came from, and that they would have a new government. What they didn't know because they were all cut off for security reasons from effectively from the outside world because they'd all had to give up their phones or whatever else and weren't communicating with people. As they sat in that palace waiting for the Houthis to show up, they were taking the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior, and the Parliament. And so by the time the deal was signed, which the Houthis never kept to, they'd already taken the city. It then became much more complicated in March, 2015 when Saudi Arabia and the coalition that they created became involved. And that's why a lot of people argue now that it's not a civil war, but at its heart it still is and you still got Yemenis fighting Yemenis.

Munya Chawawa: Okay. So I need a bit of help with this kind of like, um, a timeline and the main characters a little bit. So we started off with Saleh who was sort of like, you know, the bad guy, the, the, the kind of the reigning bad guy. He was then ousted for a while at which point power was predominantly with his vice, is that correct?

Iona Craig: Yep. Hadi.

Munya Chawawa: Okay with Hadi and then, uh, the Hethies, is it?

Iona Craig: Houthis

Munya Chawawa: Houthis, sorry. They wanted a bit of the pie. Is that, did they then solicit, uh, Saleh for that?

Iona Craig: Yes, correct.

Munya Chawawa: Right. Okay. And then they seize it back. They seize it back the power

Iona Craig: Gradually.

Munya Chawawa: Gradually,

Iona Craig: yeah.

Munya Chawawa: Okay.

Iona Craig: You have to remember, Yemen was two separate countries, as I mentioned, north and south until 1990. Now, at the moment it's multiple statelets. As a result of the war, you've got sort of regions that are effectively independent from each other. The, the takeover of, of the capital Sanaa in 2014 was a, was a kind of major date, if you like. Then in January, 2015 things escalated because they put Hadi under house arrest in his own house in Snar. And then when he escaped, he got to Aiden. The Houthis SA forces then used the Air Force to try and bomb him out of Aiden and he escaped and went to Saudi Arabia and within 72 hours of doing that, that was when the Saudis got involved.

Munya Chawawa: So, yeah, I, I guess my question would be. Who are the biggest players in the plot? I also did at one point hear that even Al-Qaeda was getting involved in some way as like a, you know, even they were becoming entangled in it. So who are the main people and kind of what were, what were their ideologies or the things that they were kind of backing?

Iona Craig: Okay. From the beginning really, you had the Houthis. Who are not a tribe, as many people think they are. And they were established in the early two thousands and they came from Sa'dah, which is the most northern part of Yemen. Um, and fought six wars with the then President Ali Abdullah Saleh and he's number two character on the list really. So that's the Pro Houthis side, if you like, is is Saleh and the Houthis domestically, at least in Yemen. On the other side you have President Hadi. You have his Deputy Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, and you have a variety of groups that are now fighting on the same side, but don't all necessarily like each other, but are still anti Houthi.

Munya Chawawa: Mm-Hmm.

Iona Craig: So those variety of groups include now the Southern Transitional Council, who are the separatists that I mentioned before, um, who want at, at, at least autonomy, if not full independence from Northern Yemen again. So they want to go back to the pre 1990 unification of the two countries. And then of course within that in, in Yemen as well, you've got Islah, which always was the political opposition to Saleh before the Arab Spring. They also encompass elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is no more broadly in the region. Uh, they're on the anti Houthis side, but they are also at odds with the Southern Transitional Council. So there's a lot of conflict internally within the anti Houthis side. That's just the Yemeni bit. There are a lot more smaller groups, but I, we won't go too deep into the weeds on that. And then at a regional level, supporting President Hadi and the anti-this side is the Saudi United Arab Emirates LED coalition, and that's. Includes countries that you'd expect like Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, but it also includes Sudan, Senegal, and that was a very quickly established coalition in March, 2015 to support the, the anti Houthis side and the airstrikes and then what became a ground offensive. It gets a lot more complicated then because you have the United Arab Emirates, the UAE supporting and creating their own militias on the ground. So they're funding and paying for, particularly the Southern movement and the STC, the anti Houthis side, but also those that want independence from the north and are in many ways opposed to President Hadi. You still with me? It's getting complicated.

Munya Chawawa: I'm No, I'm kind of with you.

Iona Craig: Just about

James Taylor: To recap of the various players involved, there are the domestic Yemenis who are fighting over who's in power. They are the Houthis with President Saleh versus Vice President Hardie and his supporters. They are also fighting over returning to a North South Yemeni divide. And if that isn't complicated enough, there are also international forces on the ground from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Iran. Who have their own vested interests in these different outcomes, it has created something of a mess. With the arrival of these external forces, there has been a tendency to think of the conflict in Yemen as a proxy war. It's a term that curator Louise finds problematic.

Louise Skidmore: In the media now, we often hear it's about Iran versus Saudi Arabia, and you will hear Yemen referred to as sort of a, as a toy tossed between the two mega powers. And we really try not to think of it that way because a proxy war sort of implies a distance from the conflict and for the people that Iona has been talking about this is war every day. This is a major civil war, as Iona has explained, and to take it back and just call it a proxy war, in a way seems to take away agency and real daily experience and suffering that is happening on the ground.

Munya Chawawa: What so is proxy war saying, oh we, that, we dunno where the fighting's coming from. We just know that there's a squabble and hopefully it will resolve itself.

Louise Skidmore: It's saying that these international powers are using this internal conflict to fight a bigger war, if you will. So you know that the age old one would be that Vietnam was a, was a proxy war somewhat between the Americans and, and the, and communism. So that's sort of where this comes from. But sometimes when we look at things that way, we forget to experience it from the different points of view of the people who actually this war is happening to.

Munya Chawawa: So if, if it's being seen as a proxy war, which is kind of like, oh, well, there's no real responsibility, does that make people take it less seriously in terms of the people in the heart of the war who actually need real help?

Louise Skidmore: In a way it drastically makes it more complicated.

Munya Chawawa: Mm-Hmm.

Louise Skidmore: So you've already heard that within Yemen you have a civil war, which is becoming increasingly fractured and increasingly complicated. And then you add on that resources and additional interests of the Nations that sit outside of that conflict putting in their own demands

Munya Chawawa: mm-Hmm

Louise Skidmore: and their own concerns and so you've got an already complicated situation becoming even more complicated.

James Taylor: At this point in the conversation. Iona pulls from her bag, a special gift for Munya, brought all the way from Yemen, a traditional Yemeni scarf.

Iona Craig: Um, Muya in keeping with Yemeni sort of tradition of generosity and it would be kind of remiss for you to come and do a Yemen thing without. Uh, sort of going away with something from Yemen, so

Munya Chawawa: Oh, wow.

Iona Craig: I bought you your own shawl.

Munya Chawawa: Oh, amazing.

Iona Craig: Sorry. It's a bit, this is as it came from Yemen when I bought it back last year.

Munya Chawawa: Oh, that is brilliant. I didn't think I was getting any goodies.

James Taylor: Neither did the staff of the Imperial War museums who all look on enviously.

Munya Chawawa: So does the UK fall into anything we've been talking about today? What was that role and what is it now?

James Taylor: It's an excellent question and one which has an answer dating back to times of Empire.

Iona Craig: You'll see aspects of the infrastructure, particularly that were built by the British, that uh, some of which still exist. I think Saleh always held it against the Brit. Certainly when I met him and interviewed him, he said, Britain needs to remember we are not part of their colony anymore. And so there is that historic tie. The British were involved in the previous Civil War in the 1960s, which was effectively put them on the, on the, the same side as what is the Houthis now, ironically, with Saudi Arabia. There's a big expat community as well in Sheffield, um, and in northern England of, uh, Liverpool of Southern Yemenis in particular, who because it was a trading route. That's why the British took hold of Aiden in the first place. It's a strategic port. It was mainly the East India company that were doing that trade back in the day and they used Aiden as a stopping off point to refuel on their way to Liverpool. And actually the first mosque in the UK was built by Yemenis as a result.

James Taylor: Southern Yemen only achieved independence from British Rule in 1967. Fast forward 50 years and Louise plays munya a clip from a speech by Boris Johnson in 2017 when he was foreign secretary.

Boris Johnson: This is for us and for many people around the world now, the number one, uh, impending humanitarian catastrophe. And we really have to work together as an international community to avert it. Obviously people sympathize with, uh, the Saudi, uh, Arabians, who. Uh, had a missile attack against their cities from the Houthis, and, uh, they feel very angry about that, understandably. But on the other hand, there are huge numbers of people who are now facing, uh, starvation, uh, shortage of medical supplies. Uh, we have to get, uh, goods into that port at Hudaydah, get the supplies flowing, uh, to the Yemeni people, and also get the political process started again so that we get a solution to this problem.

Munya Chawawa: It sounds like Boris is trying to mobilize people to help and you know, from what I know of Boris, there's gotta be a reason for that. I feel like that might be somewhat guilt driven.

Iona Craig: We are on the outer layer of, uh, of countries involved in this conflict, but not that far out actually. Um, we know from UK licensing that the UK has licensed 6.8 billion pounds worth of arms to Saudi Arabia just since their intervention started in 2015. There are additional licenses called open licenses, which are open and unending, and there were 112 of those on top of that. So we can safely say at the bare minimum, the UK has made 1.2 billion pounds per year out of this conflict just in arm sales since 2015.
[CLIP]

Iona Craig: You have to understand where those arms have ended up when they're being sold to Saudi Arabia, and that has been in over 18,000 civilian casualties in the air war alone. So that's just by bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and, and their coalition. And there have been over 23,000 air raids, that's not individual air strikes, and that's data from, from the EMiN Data Project, which, which I'm actually involved with. So we support Saudi. Arabia and the United Arab Emirates diplomatically, we maintain the Royal Saudi Air Force. We train their fighter pilots. We maintain their planes. Pretty much the only thing we do not do is drop the bombs and choose the targets. Otherwise, we are very much involved in this conflict. I suppose on a, on a more positive note, you could say that you know the UN special envoy to Yemen, who's just about to give up his post was a British National Martin Griffiths who'd been doing the job since 2018. But you also have to remember now that the, the British government is also reducing its foreign aid, and that has meant in Yemen, whilst we've been making all this money, uh, foreign aid, Yemen has reduced by 60%

James Taylor: Time for another object. Louise hands Munya, a framed print.

Munya Chawawa: So in front of me, I can see what looks like a satirical cartoon, almost pretty scathing of the British government. So you've got a missile filled with food supplies, which sort of smashes into your house, and then releases an abundance of fruit and veg, uh, also destroying the house in the process. And then a first aid bomb, which again, detonates in your house with an array of bandages, hypodermic needles and scalpels. So it's, it's, um, it's a really interesting juxtaposition of being helpful in the least helpful way, which I think is, uh, if, if Britain had a, a Tinder bio, that would be it.

Louise Skidmore: Yeah, you're absolutely right. So this is a poster by an artist called Darren Cullen, and it is exactly a satirical poster commenting on the paradoxical role of the UK and the conflict in Yemen.

Munya Chawawa: What's in it, what's in it for the UK, what, you know, what was the drive for them to. Uh, supply arms?

Iona Craig: Um, well this is about our relationship with both Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, so United Arab Emirates. And that isn't just, you know, the physical aspect of oil or fuel or petrol or whatever. It's what that buys you so it's investment. And when you are in a post Brexit world, you are looking for as much investment as possible. Now you're looking in a covid kind of economy, and you are looking for as much foreign investment as possible. And that part of the world has a lot of money to spend. So yeah, it's, and for Saudi Arabia, it buys them a assurance so, you know, they'd never fought a modern war before until they, they got involved in this conflict in Yemen. And for them, they still then know that they've got the backup of the UK and the United States in particular uh, should things get dramatically worse, let's say with Iran or even with the Houthis, that they have always got cover from them as well. So it, it's, it, it works both ways.

James Taylor: Louise is now placed in front of Munya, two very curious instruments, soft plastic measuring tapes. With areas that are green, amber, and red.

Louise Skidmore: So these are what we call muac or middle upper arm circumference measuring tapes. And they're used to identify adults and children suffering from malnutrition. So the way it works is that you would wrap the tape around your upper arm and depending on the circumference of the arm, you'll get a reading of green, amber or red. And the red reading illustrates that the arm is too small for the adult or child and is malnourished. So for me, these objects are so evocative because we've all come to see these photographs. And I'll pull one down for you here so we can have a look at this photograph here shows a mother holding a very small child, um, while what looks like a doctor or an aid worker is wrapping one of these child, child-sized, uh, MUACs around the arm and you can see that in the photograph. It's on a dark, dark red.

Munya Chawawa: Mm-Hmm

Louise Skidmore: And what that means is that child is suffering from malnutrition. When you look at the object in front of you, it would, it would be about, it's the circumference that it's showing there it is tiny and for me, that just physically shows the extent of the malnutrition and the hunger that is taking place in Yemen right now. So Yemen, as a result of the conflict, is suffering from the majority of the population being unable to afford food. This is what we call a entirely manmade food crisis. And this has occurred because before the conflict, Yemen imported almost 90% of its food from outside of the country. So the conflict then happened. It already, it completely destroyed an already fragile economy, which meant that the currency, the local currency, became completely devalued. So therefore, in real terms, purchasing the food from outside of the country, the costs skyrocketed. On top of that, you add that the conflict also made lots of people unemployed and displaced millions more so that people lost their jobs. They no longer have the salary, even a small salary to buy that increasingly expensive food. Finally, on top of that, if that wasn't enough, you have both sides or all sides of the conflict as we now know, using food as a weapon of war. So depriving other sides, access to humanitarian aid food, and it has been an absolutely devastating result in that the majority of people in Yemen now cannot afford enough food to survive.

Munya Chawawa: Mm-Hmm and that 90% import figure is quite striking as well because that seems that's gotta be, you know, much higher than average. So is that to say that, you know, Yemen as it is without the conflict would, would sort of struggle to sustain itself based on what it can its own agriculture.

Iona Craig: Uh, yes, absolutely um, and there's a couple of reasons for that really. I mean, the 90% figure generally tends to be food and goods, but still it's incredibly high. And one of the main reasons for that is water scarcity. Yemen is one of the most water scarce places in the world. Most of the water is trucked around the country. There is one other domestic issue that makes it, um, even worse, and that's because they use and grow a local plant called Qat, which mostly the men chew on a daily basis and the way they irrigate it, it uses a huge amount of water and it's the one thing that everybody's able to make money out of in the war. It's now become an illegal drug in this country or has been made so in, in more recent years, but but wasn't previously. You've got Qat farmers making loads of money during the war because it's the one thing that people are still spending money on, and it makes it sometimes easier for people to fight late into the night as well because it makes you, it gives you a bit of a buzz, but it is very water hungry.

James Taylor: And speaking of water, Louise brings in what could be the world's most expensive bottle.

Munya Chawawa: Seems to be some sort of carrying vessel. And I've seen similar from when I used to live in Zimbabwe. because you know, we too used to have water, uh, shortages and so this looks very familiar. It says on the front, um, some sort of brand vegetable cooking oil. So I guess it's been repurposed to carry water, right?

Louise Skidmore: Yeah, so this is exactly as you said. This is a large plastic yellow container, and the label is almost worn off, but it was at one point containing vegetable cooking oil. So this object in front of us, believe it or not, can actually tell us the story of how the conflict in Yemen led to one of the world's, uh, largest outbreaks of cholera in modern history.

Munya Chawawa: Hmm.

Louise Skidmore: So before this lovely Jerry can came to join the museum in 2019, the container was used by Khalid Abdullah and his family as a jerry can or a water carrying can to collect water for cooking and cleaning. To meet their basic needs, the family would need to fill at least three of these a day and they do that by going down to the neighborhood tank. However, um, the neighborhood tank was often empty and you'd often have to wait hours to get to it. The cost of fuel needed for pumping and transporting the water has dramatically increased while at the same time fighting has damaged both reservoirs and water treatment plants, so resulting in access to clean water becoming increasingly difficult and almost unaffordable. Um, the lack of clean water has led to outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera.

Munya Chawawa: Mm-Hmm.

Louise Skidmore: So, yes, this humble object looking object can actually tell quite an incredible story.

Munya Chawawa: Mm-Hmm. It's a story that you seem to see on a lot of these adverts where they kind of, uh, you know, the adverts where they try to drum up sympathy amongst the people watching the idea of water.I really don't think people will ever understand that, what that's like in a country like England especially, or you know, even in Britain where you turn on the tap and uh, you know, even, even my partner, like sometimes she will do this thing where she says, oh, I like the water to be cold before I drink it from the the tap. So she'll run the tap uh, for several seconds before she fills a bottle. And I just think you have never lived in one of these countries because every drop is, is priceless, you know? So seeing that reminds me even of when I was back home, we'd have to do similar things as well.

Louise Skidmore: Yeah. And actually in Yemen right now, every drop of water is literally

Munya Chawawa: Mm-hmm.

Louise Skidmore: Priceless

Munya Chawawa: mm-hmm.

Louise Skidmore: Or unaffordable

Munya Chawawa: Seems quite surreal that you not only have lived there very recently but are going back to live there. In addition to water, what are some of the, sort of the luxuries, the simple luxuries here that you, when you arrive in Yemen, you think, wow, I never, I've never considered this until now, where there's

Iona Craig: electricity,

Munya Chawawa: complete lack of it.

Iona Craig: Electricity without a shadow of a doubt because when you are, it's not so bad when you're in the Highlands because it's not quite so hot. But anywhere around in southern Yemen, along the coastal area, in Hudaydah, in Aiden, in Mukalla, the heat is unbelievable. And unless you've got, I mean, air conditioning is a luxury, but a fan going in the ceiling, it, it's just unbearable. And I, you know, many a night I've slept out on the roof as people do when there's no electricity, then you get eaten by the mosquitoes and it's just. It literally can send you kind of mad, that sort of heat, you're talking over 40 degrees, you can live in the dark or lighter a candle or whatever else. But as far as keeping yourself cool and then also being able to pump water because that's how the water is pumped is with electricity. So yeah, definitely electricity and tarmac. My goodness.

Munya Chawawa: Yeah.

Iona Craig: Nobody ever forgets about tarmac traveling around the country like that, and somebody says, oh yeah, it'll take you two hours off road down there to, to get to whatever village you're trying to get to. Seven hours, you're still bouncing around in the back of a pickup truck thinking you'd be better on a donkey because it would be quicker and more comfortable. So yeah. Um, access, I mean, that's really about access, but yeah, it's um, it's proper, decent infrastructure that basically comes down to.

James Taylor: We are approaching the end of our tour around the museum. But before we end this Conflict of Interest, Louise reveals a final video clip. This is Joe Biden speaking in April, 2021.

Joe Biden: This morning, secretary Blinken appointed Tim Linder King, a career foreign policy officer, as are special envoy to the Yemen conflict, and I appreciate him doing this. Tim's diplomacy will be bolstered by US.. USAID working to ensure that humanitarian aid is reaching the Yemeni people who are suffering un un undoable unendurable devastation. This war has to end and to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.

Munya Chawawa: Well, you know, from, from the sentences he could string together, it sounds very much like he is suggesting some sort of kind of, well, I can imagine America being a big player and it sounds like they're kind of leaving the battle scene in some ways. But yeah, I guess that leads me to ask how, how big a role they played, and this is a positive move on behalf of the, uh, American government.

Iona Craig: Um, so very similar to Britain really. They have also played this kind of double role in, uh, massive amounts of arm sales, even more so than Britain whilst also giving aid. Saudi Arabia has been an important strategic partner for them. Uh, but things of course, have changed significantly in the US uh, with Trump leaving office and Biden now coming in. There was an important word in the, in that video there where he says, uh, relevant arm sales. And we, you know, since he made that speech, it's seems to indicate that some arm sales have continued and therefore what does relevant mean? And nobody seems to have been able to define that as yet. So again, you know, a, a lot of this might be a, a little bit of, uh, flowery political speech, but what's important for the Biden administration now is, going back to this regional aspect of the Yemen conflict, is the renewal of the Iran nuclear deal.
And this is why I think the Biden administration is wanting to put a huge amount of effort into finding some form of, uh, political root and resolution to the conflict in Yemen, even if it's just between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Even if that might mean there's a, there's sort of, uh, there's still fighting on the ground amongst groups in Yemen, but at least to remove Saudi Arabia and the Iranian influence over the Houthis to some extent, or as much as they can, because Yemen becomes a little bit of a tool in that negotiation otherwise. And it is really, uh, it, it kind of is for the US and so it's part of a more, uh, a bigger regional play really, if you'd like, for the Biden administration is prioritizing the Yemen conflict. I also suspect, although, you know, obviously Biden's got a huge amount of experience in in office on under Obama is perhaps not having a complete grasp of the complexities of the political process and where it's faulted so far. I mean the US long-term interest in Yemen has really always been about counter-terrorism. That's what it was under Obama administration when Biden was, was there, even under the Trump administration, you saw a massive surge in drone strikes in the first year of Trump being in office. Um, that exceeded number of drone strikes that Obama had carried out in the, in four years prior to that. That's not to say, you know, drone strikes had even under the Obama administration, had been causing mass civilian casualties as well. But for them, counter-terrorism was all about Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

James Taylor: before the Islamic State, there was Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or AQAP. It was widely considered the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world. It was responsible for a number of deadly attacks in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and in the West, which the Obama administration reacted to with a controversial and secretive campaign of drone strikes across Yemen in the early 2010s.

Iona Craig: I suppose the concern for the Americans was that the, the sort of the nearest to repeater 9/11 happening came from AQAP in Yemen when they, when I first, literally two, three weeks after I turned up in Yemen, in, in 2010, they managed to get, uh, bombs in printer cartridges and on airplanes, and they were picked up. One was picked up here in the uk, um, and they were all US bound. One was picked up in Dubai and it was very nearly a, a successful plus, if you like. You know, they saw it as the biggest threat after Osama Bin Laden and what may come from Afghanistan and the most dangerous Al-Qaeda franchise in the world. Uh, and so, you know, that was all of their thinking going through the Arab Spring 2011 was backing sole to start with because he was their counter-terrorism partner. Um, their counter-terrorism partner in Yemen now as a United Arab Emirates. So for them, really it's, it's about the potential, you know, threat to the homeland if you like than it really ever has been about the Yemenis. Now it's probably more about the Iran nuclear deal than it necessarily is, uh, about the Yemen and, and the Yemen humanitarian crisis without being too cynical about it. Uh, and also their strategic partnership ship with Saudi Arabia.

Munya Chawawa: And how does the, that, that counter-terrorism drive slot within the Civil War?

Iona Craig: Well, Al-Qaeda has taken up arms against the Houthis, and that's for them, obviously is a religious aspect. The Houthis are Azadi, which is a, a minority group within the Shia Islam branch and Al-Qaeda as a Sunni Islam and of course have always seen Shia Muslims as as sort of heretics. So it was natural for them to take up arms against the Houthis when the war first started. And so effectively that puts 'em on the anti Houthis side. Who else is on the anti Houthis side? Saudi Arabia, Britain, America. So you have. As has happened in other parts of the region, is where you find Britain America on the same side as Al-Qaeda effectively, and that has meant that you've had the US carrying out operations that have impacted some of the fighters who are fighting alongside Al-Qaeda as of no choice when there is no military presence and you've got tribesmen fighting alongside Al-Qaeda fighters, they'll live in the same house and then they will unfortunately, often die in the same house when their American operations carried out against them. So you have therefore got America sometimes carrying out they Special forces operations against people who are fighting against the Houthis who they are also fighting.

Munya Chawawa: What are the prospects for any sort of kind of, uh, you know, peaceful resolution or, or move towards that?

Iona Craig: There have been ongoing and ongoing and ongoing efforts by the UN special envoy to Yemen, and there is about to be a new one. We dunno who the new one will be yet, and there have been indirect talks over the years. There have been very few direct talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, and that's what's important to remember, the main focus of any political discussions has been between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia when we now know at the end of this conversation that there are many more parties involved in this conflict. So that's where the international focus has, has remained, is on a solution between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia even leaving the Yemini government to the side in, in some respects, and on some occasions now where that has all come to a grinding halt has been over, of course, the detail and sequencing of events. So what, who gives up arms? Who stops blockades or carrying out airstrikes? And who does what first? So the Houthis want the airstrikes and the defacto blockade to be lifted before they will either withdraw or give up arms or, or whatever, and this has not been able to be resolved in any shape or form.
The most recent sort of confidence building measures, if you like to call it, which is the kind of steps towards perhaps having a political settlement or at least talking about a political settlement, settlement has been prisoner swaps, which have happened and most recently, uh, the prospect of Sanaa airport opening. So that has been closed to civilian traffic since August, 2016. So no civilians have been able to get in and out of Northern Yemen out of the capital city by plane since 2016, and there has been now huge efforts by the outgoing UN special envoy, Martin Griffiths, to get that airport reopened by negotiation with the Saudis. And there's hope that that may happen in, literally in the coming days, if not weeks, which would be, which have a huge impact for, for the civilian population, certainly in Northern Yemen. And that could hopefully be a step towards then having political discussions. There's no doubt that Saudi, that Saudi Arabia wants to extract itself from this conflict Now. It's just how do they do it, um, without losing faith, without looking like they've lost, uh, or are giving up. Or equally, they don't want to hand over all the power to the Houthis who are now heavily supported by Iran. So it's, it's not an easy deal. And even if that deal is done, even if Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and its allies withdraw, that won't mean an end to conflict in Yemen because of all these different factions you've now got fighting in the conflict. And if they're not included in a political settlement, then they've no motivation to give up fighting.

Munya Chawawa: Wow. I mean, there's so much stuff that I, well, in fact, I came with a very basic knowledge, but I've learned so much. So thank you to both of you for giving me the whistle stop tour of Yemen and the Yemen conflict, and thank you for my gifts. It's quite nice that, uh, you know, there's such a thing as Yemeni generosity. I feel like the UK it's uh, a little bit different because with the UK our trademark thing is going into foreign countries messing everything up and then going, oh, sorry about that and sort of sneaking out the back door.

James Taylor: And with that ad time at the museum must come to an end. Why not leave us a short voice message on your thoughts on this episode and we'll include some of the best in an update later in the year. What did you discover for the first time about Yemen? Has it changed your understanding of any of the actors involved in the conflict? Email your voice memo to [email protected].
Thanks again to our guests, Munya Chawawa and Iona Craig, as well as our curator this week. Louise Skidmore.

Next week On Conflict of Interest.

James Graham: I used to listen to the stories of my neighbors and things talking about that police present, but it's nothing compared to essentially a standing army in, in British suburban streets and what that feels like to see that go by your childhood bedroom window. I can't imagine it.

James Taylor: Playwright James Graham travels through the recent history of Northern Ireland. My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums. Thank you for listening and goodbye.

James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from Imperial War Museums.

Clip: Thank you very much indeed Lillian. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a very great pleasure to be, uh, with you here again.

James Graham: Uh, hi. I am James Graham and I am a playwright and screenwriter, and I mainly write dramas, plays and films about politics and history.

Craig Murray: My name's Craig. I'm a curator in the Cold War in late 20th century team, so I tend to specialize in Northern Ireland in the Troubles there.

James Graham: I live in Kennington. I was late, so I got the bus. I got the bus for three minutes. It's absolutely disgraceful.

James Taylor: James has joined our curator, Craig Murray in the Imperial War Museum in London to try to understand one of the major conflicts of our times. And in this episode we explore a conflict closer to home Northern Ireland. The IRA, Bloody Sunday, the Good Friday agreement, the DUP, just some of the words associated with this conflict, but how are they all connected and how much further back does the story go?

Joe: Um, it's things like hearing the helicopters over the house at night. People say it's a war and that sounds dramatic, but it, but it was a very unpleasant kind of atmosphere.

James Taylor: On our way, we'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection and meet someone who has lived through a significant part of the conflict so that we can all, for at least this moment in time, understand how we got to where we are now. All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin as ever in the Imperial War Museum's Cafe.

James Graham: Alright, what do I know? Um, I know the parties, which all sound the same. The UUP and the DUP and the CDLP. Uh, I know about the mix of religious tensions, Catholics versus Protestants and North versus South. I know about the Battle of the Boyne and William of Orange for some reason, and obviously the sixties and the seventies and the violence and the tensions and the bombs. And when I think of the bombs, I think of Manchester and I think of Warrington, and I think of the city. I think of Stormont and I think of the Good Friday agreement, and I think of Tony Blair, but actually sometimes I think I should think about John Major and I think about Bill Clinton and Mo Mowlam and I think of Joey Adams and Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness, and I think about films because I'm a playwright. I think about Paul Greengrass's, British Sunday and 1971. And then I think about all the things that I dunno all the time and feel very ashamed.

Craig Murray: Okay, well, we'll see if we can fill in some of the gaps here. We'll take a wee walk around the museum and, uh, have a look at some things around here and discuss the history of it.

James Taylor: Craig and James begin their ascent of the museum up the winding staircase, past armored cars and tanks on their way to the first object that we'll discuss.

Craig Murray: I mean, you said that you got a fairly good overview of some parts of Irish history from that sort of period. I mean, what do you know about sort of the early periods of the Troubles, things like how it broke out I suppose?

James Graham: I don't know the specifics of what, why in that particular period tensions, which obviously have been around for decades and centuries. I don't know what or who triggered those at that time. I think I know once we get to the seventies, a lot of the figures involved and yeah, that was quite, unfortunately, quite iconic moments that I think most people remember.

James Taylor: One more thing has occurred to James, and that's the meaning behind the name given to this conflict.

James Graham: I'm too obsessed with language as a, as a playwright, but I think words, um, matter. I just wondered if you know, even just the name, The Troubles. It feels like a, a classic bit of offensively British understatement like, oh, it's just a bit of bother this trouble that's happened, like what, where does that name come from?

Craig Murray: Yeah, it's up there with emergency in that, isn't it? No. Just don't call it a war whatever you do.

James Graham: Yes.

Craig Murray: Um, it's a term that's used in Ireland, it's also used in Scotland. I think it was used to refer to the Scottish civil wars in the 1300s. There's troubles as well, but it's, it's, it's comes from a sort of term as like, I'm sorry for your troubles, um, when somebody's died.

James Graham: So it's just a colloquial phrase about sympathy for someone's

Carey Mulligan: Yeah.

James Graham: Grief and death.

Craig Murray: Yeah. But it's, again, it's, it's, rather than call it like a civil war in the doorstep, you give it another name, an emergency, an incident, you know, you don't call it what it is really, you know.

James Graham: Was it unhelpful to call it not what it is to, not to, to undermine or underestimate the scale of it.

Craig Murray: I mean, I think because people know what it is. The term has come to mean what it is, which is essentially a war on our doorstep, which involved the army, which has involved paramilitary groups, both Loyalist and Republican People when they hear the troubles they think killing in Northern Ireland, bombings, et cetera. The IRA bombing here, that's what they think of. So I don't think it's unhelpful, but. I think it's, it's very symptomatic of a British use of terminology to try and underplay what is going on.

James Taylor: And while we are on the subject of terminology, James is also feeling guilty about his confusion around some more troubles related names.

James Graham: I had a massive fraud because I, because it's, it's, I know these terms sort of exist somewhere in the back of our head. Loyalist, Paramilitaries, Nationalists. But maybe, maybe it's okay to sort of delve into those a little bit. In terms of their actual, their actual terms.

Craig Murray: But your understanding, James what is a loyalist?

James Graham: I assume a loyalist is simply being loyal to the United Kingdom. Oh God. So being a unionist who believes in the, in the United Kingdom or to the King.

James Taylor: Unionists were those who supported Northern Ireland's membership of the United Kingdom. Their support was largely concentrated amongst Northern Ireland's Protestant community. Nationalists, on the other hand, supported Northern Ireland unifying with the Republic of Ireland to create a united Ireland and support for nationalism was largely found within the Catholic community. And then there's Loyalism and Republicanism two terms which were commonly associated with armed struggle and Northern Ireland's paramilitary groups. Loyalists were fiercely loyal to their British Protestant identity and to the UK monarchy, and they militantly opposed any potential united Ireland.

Clip: We are opposed to United Ireland. We will not have a United Ireland. We'll have no council of Ireland.

James Taylor: During the troubles, Loyalist Paramilitaries like the UDA and the UVF were key players in the conflict. Republicans in contrast, believed in armed struggle to force British troops out of Northern Ireland and achieve a United Ireland.

Clip: The responsibility for the problems in Ireland is a British responsibility. Those people who resist that have my support. I will defend their right to resist it. I'll defend it with anyone. I'll debate it with anyone.

James Taylor: The best known Republican group in modern times was the provisional IRA, the Irish Republican Army, but back to the matter in hand. To tell the story of the troubles as they are now, we need to go back 800 years to the Norman Invasion of Ireland, which established Anglo Norman control there. Skip forward into the 1500s and the Tudor reign comes to an end when Queen Elizabeth dies without an hier introducing to the scene James Stewart, son of Elizabeth's cousin.

Craig Murray: And one of the things he does in the early 1600 is to maintain that control, is what they call the plantation, where mainly lowland, Scots and some from the North England are planted in this area. They take over the land, essentially, they become the landowners. These are the people that many people on the Loyalist side today look back to as being where their culture lies, where their ancestry lies to an extent.

James Taylor: As we move through the 17th and 18th centuries, we see important events in Irish history like the potato famine of 1845 to 1852, in which about 1 million people died and more than a million fled the country. We also see the rise of the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish Republican organization originating in the United States, which fought for an end to British rule in Ireland. These two examples became part of the story of the struggle for Irish independence.

Craig Murray: But we moved to this end of the, in the 19th century, there's an organization comes out of them called Irish Republican Brotherhood and they will be the main planning group behind the 1916 Easter Rising.

James Graham: Okay, so what you're saying is this went on for a very long time, and it goes back almost the formation of England. It goes, it goes back to the Normans and it goes back to Mary Queen of Scotts, Elizabeth, uh, James I, and attempts to build and unify an entire kingdom. Um, I didn't know most of those groups that you mentioned, what the Brothers remind me of...

Craig Murray: the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

James Graham: Right. Okay. I mean, I just, I just sit here thinking, gosh, is, is there an equivalent anywhere elses in the world where a conflict between neighboring people has gone on for as many centuries as this?

Craig Murray: Palestine.

James Graham: Yeah, that's a,

Craig Murray: middle East is all,

James Graham: that's a pretty long one. Yeah.

Craig Murray: Um,

James Graham: I dunno why this particular event feels so prevalent in my subconscious, but the Battle of the Boyne and why that in particular has such a, either a mythology around it or why it seems more familiar than some of the other events.

Craig Murray: It comes out of, basically James II has been removed under what is known as a glorious revolution by William of Orange, who's invited in to become with his wife Mary, to become joint rulers.

James Graham: And that was because he was Catholic?

Craig Murray: Yeah, he was, yeah. The date, it's the 12th of July, but that was under, under the old calendar. I think it was the 1st of July and the new calendar made it the 10th of July. But the 12th is the date that is now celebrated during the marching season by Loyalists of the Orange order here, been around since 1795.

James Taylor: The Battle of the Boyne was a sectarian battle, fought along religious lines. The forces of William of Orange sought to maintain Protestant rule in Ireland, while the supporters of James II were mainly Catholic. It's a battle which still has huge resonance in Northern Ireland today, especially among its Loyalist community but more on that later. Now it's time for our first object handed to James by an unheard member of the IWM team relating to an event in 1916 called the Easter Rising.

James Graham: Um, so we have an object and it is a black and white photo, uh, of what looks like some kind of protest or action or insurrection in a city street. I don't actually know what it looks like. A, a fire or explosions or, but something, something bad is happening.

Craig Murray: Yeah. I mean this has basically taken in May 1916, what the Irish Republican Brotherhood who were the behind this, and particularly Patrick Pearse, who was their leader, was a more violent form of expression of politics in the way they saw it, which is probably atypical of the type of politics. It was prevalent at the time in Ireland. I mean, the Irish Republican Brotherhood are the planners, but there were other groups at the Irish volunteers who are like a militia who will become, by and large the IRA in 1919. There's the Irish citizens Army as well. They're all taking part, there's roughly a thousand rebels and what is really a Dublin based revolution.

James Graham: And who are they fighting against in the streets? The British Army?

Craig Murray: They, they, yeah. They basically take over the post office building and hold it for a while, but they're largely picked down by the British Army quite quickly within the week. But it's, it's the British reaction to it that causes a problem. It might. I say might have gone away if they hadn't dealt with it in the way they did, but they got their ringleaders, uh, and shot them. They basically were firing squads and this radicalized a lot of people.
James Graham: And this is right smack bang in the middle of the First World War.

Craig Murray: It is, yeah.

James Graham: Was that deliberate? Is that because they..

Craig Murray: It's, yeah, it's is to an extent because they, the British eye is away on the western front and this is a chance to do something. I mean, they've been plotting this, planning it now since about 1914, since the war started so they've taken their time with it. There's been a lot of planning going into it and um, although militarily they can't win, they have made a point.

James Graham: So I guess, I mean, as a playwright, I frame things in structure and acts and it feels like, dramatically, that feels like the opening act of a fire act play that gets very dark and very tragic. What, I suppose at the end of that, this opening salvo, what were the political, um, consequences and, and what, how did it lead to the rest of the 20th century playing out as it did?

Craig Murray: Well see, Irish politics starts to radicalize. You see Sinn Féin 1918, in the general election, they won control and they, they, they organized what was the, the first Dáil, the first Parliament, and they declare an Irish Republic, which obviously doesn't go down too well with the British. And on the same day, there's an ambush, a place called Soloheadbeg in Tipperary by the local IRA, and they killed two Royal Irish Constabulary officers. That sort of starts what becomes the Irish War of Independence or the Anglo Irish wars, it's also called here. It eventually ends in a stalemate, and the British offer a truce in December of 1921. Michael Collins and, uh, Arthur Griffith go across the Westminster and they meet with David Lloyd George, who's Prime Minister and others. And, um, eventually the British turn around to them and sort of exert pressure on them to just sign what they want to end it, what Collins and Griffith have been told by Éamon de Valera, who's president at the time, is that before you sign anything. You come back to us, we'll, we'll look at it and then we'll kick it back and forward and see what we get. But under pressure, Collins fears that the British have basically told them, we're gonna put the army back in again and it's gonna kick. We're gonna go for it again if you don't sign it. So he signs it. So De Valera and the rest are presented with a deal already done. Which then splits the IRA and Republicans, if not down the middle, certainly a large part of the IRA go down the anti-treaty route. Collins and others go down the treaty route, haven't given oath to the king and remain part of the commonwealth. That was a main sticking issue, they did not want to do that. So was less about partitioning more about that, there was a problem.

James Graham: I mean, obviously it sounds like there was a, uh, a movement in the 1920s towards finding a political solution to it and I guess sympathy from the Liberal Party towards, towards Irish independence or a free state. But I suppose my question would be where did the idea of partition in particular come from, I know throughout history the British have liked to partition things and it's not always gone well. Where did that come from?

James Taylor: Why Ireland was split into North and south is an excellent question. And one that means we can introduce a new voice to the episode.

Joe: Um, I'm, I'm Joe and I've been living in England for a long time, but I grew up in Belfast. I was what you would term a child of the Troubles. Um, I'm a teacher and I was, I was asked if I'd be interested in, in being part of today, um, as, as a resident past resident of, of Northern Ireland, which obviously it's really exciting to be here. In, in terms of why partition happened, I think it was probably an, an unholy compromise. Um, one of these things which people agreed to because it's the only way they can get the thing to go away. And I think the, the boundary commission that was set up to, um, decide what Northern Ireland was going to look like, was really looking at creating something I think, which was not designed to last. Um, it was due to these six little counties, which would probably struggle to, to keep going um, and obviously that was the, the sop to the Northern Ireland, um, Protestants, whereas the Republic as what became Republic was to satisfy the demands of the, of the Nationalists. So unfortunately, like so many of these things, what's created, um, is a boundary which no one is really happy with.
James Taylor: While the Catholic majority, southern part of Ireland largely wanted independence from the United Kingdom. The Protestant majority in the northern part of the Ireland wanted to maintain their ties to Britain, and so Ireland was split in two, but problems still lurked below the surface. Northern Ireland still had a very large Catholic minority. Which have been much more sympathetic to the idea of a United Ireland. Meanwhile, the Unionist
government of Northern Ireland was accused of severely discriminating against the Catholic population. These resentments built up over decades culminating in a major protest movement emerging in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, a new civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland in the 1960s shared many attributes with those in other countries. It challenged the Protestant dominated establishment in Northern Ireland, and its demands included an end to discrimination in housing and gerrymandering, the manipulation of electoral boundaries to privilege Protestants at the expense of Catholics.

Joe: I think there was, there was a lot of parity with and similarity with those that were going on in places like Paris in, in, in America. Um, and I think the makeup was, was very similar. I think their methods were very similar.
Uh, when you look back, the, the impression was, was one of real peacefulness for people who were campaigning for things, which they were rightfully deserving. There was inequality. You look back and you feel that perhaps what transpires after that is, is, is things were mishandled, that these were people who were asking peacefully for things which were just fully theirs. I think in the manner in which things are handled means that the, these peaceful marches begin bit by bit to be dominated by the minority and turn into something which loses sight of almost what was being campaigned for in the first place.

Craig Murray: The start point for the Troubles are seen as the August Apprentice Boys, they kinda spring from the Siege of Derry we mentioned earlier.

James Graham: Yeah

Craig Murray: because at the beginning of when the Jacobite Army marched up these I think it was seven apprentice boys slammed the gates of Derry shop and this is where they sprang from.

James Graham: And so that was two, three hundred years before this.

Craig Murray: This is where the organization comes from. Yeah.

James Graham: That though is so fascinating to me, especially as a pretentious playwright that how, how much those, those images or those symbols,

Craig Murray: yeah

James Graham: just permeate through the centuries and people grab onto them as icons.

James Taylor: The Apprentice Boys of Derry was a Protestant fraternal order based in the Northern Irish city of Derry or London Derry, depending on who you ask. In 1969, when they paraded around the walls of Derry, it sparked three days of intensive rioting in the city. It was known as the Battle of the Bogside, an incident regarded by some as the start of the Troubles. But now it's time for another object. A photo or rather two photos, both documenting some of the infamous war murals displayed on the streets of Northern Ireland.

James Graham: So there's two images. One, one, the armed insurrectionist, they could be... they could be Nationalists or Loyalists, I don't know. But, um, one of the images there is, uh, a slogan on the wall, a bit of graffiti that says this is Loyalist West Belfast so that answers my question. Uh. The word Shankhill, which is the Shankhill Road, I think. And then the terms, 'no surrender'. So it looks like, um, some Loyalist graffiti, uh, supporting armed defense of, um, Ireland, uh, uh, Northern Ireland staying a part of the UK.

James Taylor: These images prompt a bigger discussion about the politics of the different groups, which existed during the troubles and what that means today.

Joe: I believe in the United Kingdom. Um, I, I wouldn't necessarily say I was a strong Unionist at all, but I'm fundamentally not a Loyalist, and I think therefore, Loyalism is a associated more with a more extreme version, whether that's to do with your political affiliation with something like the DUP or maybe whether it's to do with a more ready acceptance of the use of violence.

James Graham: Okay.

Joe: Um, I think that that would be my understanding of Loyalism growing up in Northern Ireland.

Craig Murray: Loyalism in its blunt to sense, wants to stay part of the United Kingdom and will use armed force to do it. But Loyalism is much more of a broad church. Because you're a loyalist, doesn't mean you necessarily will use force of arms. In many senses, it could be seen to be a class thing in some sense is Unionism can be seen to be more middle class, where Loyalism is more working class. And you could argue as well that Unionism has been happy to use Loyalists when they've needed to and discard them when they don't. So I mean there's a different ways to argue it. The none of them are easy terms and I think Loyalism is a very broad church of opinion, but unfortunately a lot of time we only ever hear the more aggressive extreme elements sometimes.

James Graham: I often shamefully when I hear the word Loyalist, I think it's because it's normally preceded in my head by paramilitary and those terms seem quite synonymous to me. But that's probably offensive.

Craig Murray: I think that's probably where most people when they hear loyalists, they, they hear men in balaclavas. They, they think UVF or what have you. I think the problem is loyalism doesn't have a good spokesperson.

Joe: I think that's a really interesting point because I, I think it's maybe evolved, um, o over the past 30 or 40 years. It, it wasn't a term as far as I'm aware, that was really widely used prior to the Troubles. Um, so I think in the early days of the Troubles, it, it, it was associated very much with the, you know, the UDA and then obviously moving to UVF, UVF and all, all, all manner of UF whatever they are. Um but, but I think it has since then, since those have kind of sidelined more, um, it has become, I think, a much, much subtle, more subtle, broad movement um, which is maybe I'd be the same myself, look at in too simplistic terms.

James Taylor: And there are still some more terms to unpick.

Craig Murray: What's your understanding, James, of Republican and Nationalist, or do you see any difference between those?

James Graham: Oh, I would confess, I thought, I assumed they were the same. So obviously Republicans believe in, uh, an Irish Republic. Uh, do they, oh God, did they believe in a, a completely unified Ireland or were Nationalist actually are happy just to be...

Craig Murray: Well, they both do, but it's the way, the method of getting it or getting there.

James Graham: Okay.

Craig Murray: I mean, Republicans have about armed struggle. Essentially it's what the provisional IRA are, uh, were, it's the armed struggle to, to have a United Ireland. Although we've seen there is a more pragmatic element, which led to the Good Friday agreement in the IRA, not necessarily wanting that anymore. They, they knew what they could get. Whereas Nationalism is much more like the SDLP, the Social Democrat Labor Party, uh, which was also fond of the people like John Hume, um, which was a nationalist party who were about, you know, a United Ireland. But it was a political thing. It was about political means, persuading people that it was a better method, not, not by use of the gun or the bomb.

Joe: And what's interesting with both I think James as well is, is that there is a socialist element. The, the original IRA was socialist. Um, SDLP is socialist, but the provisional IRA is, is a purely military organ... was a purely military organization. Um, I'm not sure other than the, the violent achieving of, of United Ireland, they, they were that bothered about what the end result would actually look like.

James Taylor: It's time to move on to something altogether larger.

James Graham: Okay, well that is big. That is an armored vehicle that's green. Um, it's, you know, it, it reminds me of those images of these tank-like vehicles, uh, going down suburban streets in Northern Ireland throughout the, the history of the, the Troubles. And it's a very, uh, actually seeing them up front, it's a very aggressive bit of military kit.

Craig Murray: Yeah, this is the Humber Pig. This is one of two types of armored car the British Army used. The other one was a Saracen, which is slightly bigger than this, at three axles rather than two. But the Pig is quite synonymous with army patrols, um, breaking up demonstrations, it appears in some murals occasionally. Um, it kind of synonymous with the British Army in Northern Ireland, how they got around. They used it for a whole number of things. It was like batter through barricades and to no go areas that happened in 1972, and the presence of them turning up was never a good thing for a lot of people, I don't think. This particular one was on strength with one para, it's First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment at Bloody Sunday on 30th of January, 1972. We don't know if it was actually there on the day, but it was on their strength as they call it at that time.

James Graham: Bloody Sunday, I know was I think one of the, the worst moments of violence in the Troubles in terms of, um, casualties and, uh, I, I, all I know is that, uh, there, it was a planned march that, um, the British Army were policing and I've got images in my head of the violence breaking out and of that particularly iconic image of the priest and the handkerchief as they try and carry to safety, some of the people who've been injured. And the Saville Inquiry, it's in my head as well as the, as the way to make sense of that horrible thing and bring people to account.

James Taylor: On Sunday, 30th of January, 1972, 26 civilians were shot by British soldiers during a protest march in Derry, 14 people died. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing the soldiers, while some were shot trying to help the wounded, the massacre became known as Bloody Sunday.

Joe: 72 was, um, a horrible year. I, I think you much, I don't remember about the Troubles and you, you, you grew up in a very odd time where a lot of life was normal, but 72 and, and maybe if, if I come back to it later on, but it, it's a year where, um, even as a child, it, it impacted on, on me. I, I was not immune from knowing what was going on.

James Graham: Well, actually, if you don't mind me saying, I remember you had quite just a visceral reaction just then when you saw the, the vehicle and it felt like it brought back...

Joe: it, it, it, it, it, it's that sense of you grow up at the time. Um. And you think it's normal. And it was only when things stopped and when, when I came over to England and went back again, that you realize that what you grew up with wasn't normal. So you are a normal child in a very, very abnormal circumstance, and I was very lucky I didn't live in an area that was really, really, really, really tough and hard and horrible. Um, but these were on the streets all the time. You couldn't go anywhere in, in Northern without seeing them. You, you, you would be stopped at roadblocks and you'd be searched and these things were standing there. Um, and it's things like hearing the helicopters over, over the house at night, you know, because they were searching and keeping an eye and whatever. And there are certain sounds which I, and looks, which remind me, and people say it's a war and that sounds dramatic, but it, but it was a very, um, unpleasant kind of atmosphere. And I think for those who were living in that atmosphere every day, um, that must have been really tough. I was kind of watching it from a, a much happier distance. Um, but you're absolutely right. I think these things leave a legacy that you, you don't forget.

James Taylor: This was one of the most striking features of the Troubles, its devastating impact on civilians. At its peak, the city of Belfast became a war zone. Its residents were on the front lines for some outside Ireland, all that remains of the conflict is the song Sunday, Bloody Sunday, released in 1983 by the Irish Rock Band U2. Joe has her own memory of that particular piece of pop culture.

Joe: We were at 18 at that point. You travel down to Dublin, you go through across a border, you have to show your passports. It, it just kind of exemplifies all, all that strangeness of being in Northern Ireland. And then you see this band and it was the U2, the last band to play. Um, and you have have Bono running across the stage in the dark outdoor concert in Phoenix Park. I mean, all these places, which are politically really powerful, and he's running across the stage singing this song with his trickler. And you know, arguably, I'm a Northern Ireland Protestant and, and what should I feel? I just felt euphoria, you know, it was a phenomenal experience and I think it's an important, again, I think to, to, to, to make, make people understand, you know, awful circumstances, horrible things, but people in Northern Ireland can live together and, and can appreciate how other people feel and see things from all angles. And I think that's really important. So that's what that song does for me and I think many of my generation.

James Taylor: With Sunday, Bloody Sunday in his head, James, is directed to the other side of the gallery to see a military device about the size of a wheelie bin.

James Graham: Okay I am looking at what is it, some remote control device to, to. Ooh, I don't have the word. It's a, it looks like it's some kind of device. It looks like a robot or something that Disney, Pixar would invent, but obviously much, much more violent than that to, uh, dispose of bombs bomb disposal unit.

Craig Murray: Yeah, it's, it's a bomb disposal robot. I mean, obviously. It's a dangerous job being a, an ammunition technical officer, as they call 'em. So these would often be remotely linked in to check suspect devices, often in car bombs or things left by to save them having to crawl up and attempt to disarm the thing. I mean, obviously they still had to do those things and many of them did lose their life. But these things are sort of an attempt to, um in certain circumstances, to lessen the risk to the, the army bomb disposal people.

Joe: Thankfully, I didn't see one in, in, in operation. Um, but in terms of bombs, yes. Um, direct experience of bombs, I would say direct experience of, of repeated bomb scares because my, my, my school was just up, up the road from the center of town, so it's about a mile and a half from the Europa, the most bombed hotel in, in, in the world. And, um we used to have Stella tape on the windows. It was like the Second World War, constant, constant bomb scares. So you'd be, be put out into the playground. This was from very much you know primary school age. So again, you're, you're aware, you sometimes could hear the bombs going off somewhere else in, in, in Belfast, and, and again, you get... I'm not saying it happened all the time, they didn't. It was a certain time in 72, 71 that it was bad and, and you could hear quite a few of them. But I, I think one, one of the things that seared in my mind, and it was actually my dad, um, because my dad worked in the health authority at the time, um, and then became the Deputy Chief Medical Officer in Northern Ireland. And he was responsible for looking after, um, people who are obviously were, were, were affected and, and, and caught in, in, in bombs. I'll never forget, I think it was one night and I was trying to work hard and I, this is where my memory isn't good enough, and it was either the, um, Abercorn bomb, or I think it was actually the La Mon bombing in, in 1978, which had an enormous number of casualties, and dad was rung in the middle of the night. And, and this kind of constant conversation through, through the night about what do we do? Have we got enough beds for people and things like that again, just really brought it home that, that there were a lot of people who were actually dying in, in, in the midst of this. And my, my dad was part of that and he also had to look after the, um, the terrorists and make sure that anybody who came in was looked after and had to ensure the security for, for those men and, and women, but mostly men in hospitals. So people who might have been, um, shot again, people who might have been caught up in, in bombs or bombs that went off prematurely and they did damage to themselves, and he was very much part of all of that. And he, he, he had to sign the secrets agreement and I, I didn't know all of this as a child. It only came out when he was a lot older, so he clearly was much more involved in, in some of the impacts of, um, of the bomb damage than, than I was. But things like that, again, it's amazing what comes back when you're asked about it and you realize that that was very, very odd.

James Taylor: James and Joe are escorted by Craig to the final object. Featuring a voice familiar to listeners of this podcast.

Tony Blaire: I honestly believe that to say yes is to say yes to a future of hope, peace, stability, prosperity, and that to say no is to turn one's back on a better future for Northern Ireland.

James Graham: I remember him. It doesn't feel that long ago. Looking back, I know it must technically be what? 20 years now. I remember that feeling as though I, I was a, a teenager at the time, but I remember feeling like finally the grownups were in the room and they were talking, and that this was the end of something. How do we get to the possibility of peace?

Craig Murray: So it starts in the eighties and there's a number of instances that took place in the late eighties that sort of kickstart things, but it's really, I suppose, into the nineties when we, 94 period, when we finally get an IRA ceasefire and followed a few months later by a Loyalist ceasefire, that things start to move into right now we're gonna talk. Now I think as we discussed downstairs, it's not a plain seal and the IRA break their ceasefire in February 9th, 1996 over the fact of decommission of arms. Sinn Féin aren't allowed in because they won't decommission for the British government at the time. Once prior decommissioning the nationalists, the Republicans turn and say, well, are you putting the same leverage onto Loyalist paramilitaries to decommission George Mitchell, the American senator who's a big player in the peace process. He organizes this whole inquiry into decommissioning and he believes at the time there's not a lot of chance of prior decommissioning. We, it's something we have to work out on the way. The major government at the time doesn't want this really. So this is why you have a loss of the ceasefire. It's really with the election of fair Labor in 1997 that things really go and start to move quickly. Blair has a large majority, and so he instantly moves to talks with Sinn Féin and others and eventually get them around the table and say, right, once we get an IRA ceasefire in place again, six weeks after that, you can come at the table. Decommissioning isn't a factor to you joining the talks, so it's from this kind of point on and into 98, eventually when we get to Good Friday, it's still not a done deal. Um, not necessarily the fact that everything in the room's gonna agree by getting Sinn Féin, and at this point, Blair has taken a bit of a gamble and Mo Mowlam has Northern Ireland secretary, the first woman ever to be Northern Ireland secretary. She's bumping heads and winding a lot of people up in the right and wrong way. She's loved by the people, but a lot of Unionist politicians don't like her very much, but the gamble is if you get Sinn Féin, uh, the unionists such as Ulster Unionist party under David Trimble will walk away. Trimble doesn't walk away though, he wants something from this. The DUP and their Paisley do that. They walk away, they don't agree to it.
James Taylor: The Good Friday agreement was negotiated and signed in 1998. It was made between the British and Irish governments, as well as most of Northern Ireland's Unionist and Nationalist parties. The agreement was a compromise. It acknowledged that the majority of people of Northern Ireland wished to remain a part of the United Kingdom, but that a substantial minority wanted to bring about a United Ireland. Northern Ireland would therefore remain a part of the United Kingdom, and things would stay that way until the majority of the population supported Irish Unification. The agreement also created a system of cross community power sharing where the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, one Nationalist and one Unionist sit in government together.

James Graham: And did it need a new Labor? Did it need a cha or just frankly a change of government to provide that, um, impetus after 18 years of conservative role?

Craig Murray: I think it did. Um, certainly what knocked in the right direction was, uh, Margaret Thatcher going and John Major taking over that moved, that took away major impediment to peace talks. But further still, with Blair coming in, he really wants this to be done and he will take risks to get it done. And I think, yeah, that change of government did make the, make the difference. I mean, George Mitchell, who's a real heavyweight of politics, American senator, he did so much to get this done. I think he set the deadline for, um, Good Friday basically because by the end of, uh, 1997, things weren't going anywhere. So I think he just, he was right. We're gonna bang heads together, it's gonna be done in the next four months and it pretty much was. And eventually we just nodded in agreement and I think if somebody who was there that time when a civil servant says there wasn't a dry eye in the house, basically.

Joe: It's indescribable, really. I, I, I, I think what was achieved in 1998 was remarkable. I think it took a huge amount by key politicians, um, on all sides to maybe recognize that that violence from, from neither side was actually going to achieve anything in the long term. The norm's gonna win and I, and I think they, they all actually managed to recognize that. Um, and I think the difference that it has made in Northern Ireland, um, anybody who's lived through the Troubles will, I think, will, will, will say the same thing. Now no one wants to go back.

James Graham: It, it sounds like, based on my own knowledge of parliamentary democracy and how the parties are split and the balance between First Minister and Deputy Minister feels quite complicated for the humdrum average person like me to understand. But can, is there a way to sum up in essence the spirit of what that agreement was in terms of power sharing and why it was such a step forward?

Craig Murray: Yeah, the whole thing storm was predicated on you had to have this power sharing your First Minister and your Deputy First Minister of the two leading parties, which is currently the DUP and Sinn Féin. Um, but the thing is that hasn't held. Um, after Good Friday, it gets suspended twice more before we get to the St. Andrew's agreement, which is about Sinn Féin accepting the police service in Northern Ireland. The new police force that replaces RUC has been legitimate, and this is a point where the DUP come back in and you see that famous of film with, uh, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, you know, slapping hands and being the best of mates, which nobody could have imagined probably way back then.

Joe: I don't think any, anybody, again, growing up in Northern Ireland in the seventies could have imagined those two people achieving what they, what they did. Um, and I don't think it was put on, I, I don't think Northern Ireland people are very good at putting things on. They're a bit, kind of very obvious, and I think they did manage to, in spite of everything, because they wanted to see something good come out for, for Northern Ireland, at least in the short term, um, they were able to overcome their, their significant differences to make that that happen. And I think that was, they were two towering figures, and I think what we're missing now in Northern Ireland are politicians of their caliber.

Craig Murray: I think the interesting thing, Martin McGuinness, as opposed to say Jerry Adams. Martin McGuinness, I think was pretty, he says yes, he was de brigade commander and he was the laterally northern command command, which basically he was in charge of running the war in the way that Jerry Adams has never admitted to being in the IRA.

James Graham: So all of that just makes me think, um, with a deep sense of anxiety and foreboding about where we are at the moment, the past few years post Brexit. And possibly that we're all slightly complicit, uh, in not being vigilant enough about what it takes to sustain peace and just assuming that it's a given. Once you put ink on a piece of paper, I, I wrote a television drama about that referendum campaign and tried to cover all aspects. I never really came across any substantial conversations about the impact of leaving the European Union on the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland in particular. And I think to most people, understanding the difference between hard and soft, a border down the Irish sea or a border on, on the mainland, these are quite hard things to understand. But essentially they all tap into this the same old stuff again about having a hard border.

Craig Murray: And it's partly Brexit. But it's not all entirely Brexit. There's things such as last June, Bobby Storey, he was a senior IRA man was buried and um on the Falls Road, there was several thousand people there. This was during the lockdown, and Michelle O'Neill, who is the Deputy First Minister, Sinn Féin was there, and days prior to that, she'd been telling people no more than 30 people at a funeral and now there's 2000 people. Now, the police did nothing at the time, probably because wisely they didn't want to start a riot, but the Crown Authority in Northern Ireland is not gonna prosecute anybody. And it's this point, this sort of rioting starts now. It originally starts in Derry,
but nobody's really pays much attention and it starts to get a little bit more violent and it leap frogs to, to Belfast. And this is sort of ostensibly what it's about, but there's other things such as the, the Irish sea border. It seems to be that Northern Ireland has been separated in some way from the UK. I mean this and the backstop and the possibility, there could be a hard border and then you get the difficulties of getting stuff coming through, food coming in from the mainland. So that's part of it.

James Graham: But is it, is it a much, obviously there are practical consequences to a change in the contract between Britain and and Ireland and the EU, but is it also, is it just symbolically, what any change to the constitution, such as it is, exposed in the vulnerability of this relationship, this historic relationship?

Joe: I, I think that's right back to what Craig says, that, um, the good fight agreement and, and things since have, have left things, um, unresolved.

James Graham: Mm-Hmm.

Joe: But, but one also feels, how far can they actually be resolved? I think things might have to just take a, a very long period of time, um, for the, the, the potency of the history to, to die down.

James Taylor: It's almost time to leave this Conflict of Interest and Craig is forced to confront whether any of what they have discussed has sunk in.

Craig Murray: So James, after all that, do you feel you've got a better understanding in Northern Ireland, the Troubles and everything before and since?

James Graham: I actually, not just to flatter you, I actually do, and I think that's not because I was, I suppose I was worried that the more you delve into the detail and the history and the tensions and how complicated this is, and it is furiously complicated, that actually it would mystify it for me even more. But it hasn't actually, these things are sort of knowable. You can, you can trace this story back. And, you know, as a playwright, I, I, I think my most powerful weapon is empathy. Um, in, in trying to get people to see other people's points of view and walk in the footsteps of characters who are different from you. And you know, I think that's what's so inspiring to hear a lot of what you're talking about is it does seem, albeit this is a often tragic story, it is possible to, to find solutions and give a bit and take a bit. And so, no, thank you for taking the time. It's been fascinating.

James Taylor: And with that, our time at the museum must come to an end. Why not leave us a short voice message on your thoughts on this episode and we'll include some of the best in an update later in the year. What did you already know about the troubles going into this episode, and how has that understanding changed? Email your voice memos to [email protected]. Alternatively, help other like-minded souls discover the series by leaving us a review on Apple podcasts. Thanks again to our guests, James Graham and Joe, as well as our curator this week, Craig Murray. My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums. Thank you for listening and goodbye.

James Taylor: This is Conflict of Interest from imperial War museums.

Clip: The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning. Huge, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our Nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed.

Suruthi Bala: Hello, uh, I'm Suruthi Bala, one half of True Crime Podcast. Red handed, uh, here with my cohost.

Hannah Maguire: I'm Hannah Maguire. I'm the other one.

Amanda Mason: I'm Amanda. I'm a senior curator here at the museum in the contemporary conflict team, and I specialize in Afghanistan.

James Taylor: Hannah and Suruthi have joined Curator Amanda Mason at the Imperial War Museum, London for this special episode of Conflict of Interest, to try to understand one of the most significant events of the 21st century.
In this episode, 20 years on from the date of the attacks we tackle September the 11th. Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, the Twin Towers, the war on terror. Just some of the words associated with this moment in conflict history, but how are they all connected and how much further back does the story go?

Clip: Not see a plane go in that that just exploded. I just saw another plane coming in from the side. And I give you, on behalf of our country, our solidarity, our sympathy, and our support.
And a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

James Taylor: On our way, we'll go behind the scenes to explore iconic items through the museum's archives and meet someone with an in-depth knowledge of this significant event so that we can all for at least one moment in time understand what happened when, and crucially, why all this in one episode. I'm James Taylor, chief curator at IWM, and this is Conflict of Interest. We begin in the Imperial War Museum's Cafe, where Amanda is about to find out what Suruthi and Hannah already know about that fateful day 20 years ago. Most people have a memory about where they were at the time of the attacks, including Suruthi and Hannah.

Hannah Maguire: I must have definitely been at school and probably in year six

Suruthi Bala: mm-Hmm.

Hannah Maguire: So you were probably at secondary school?

Suruthi Bala: Yeah, I was 11 when it happened. So I think year seven. Um, I think they let us go home early that day as if that was like a treat. God that sound awful. They, they were like, go home early.

Hannah Maguire: I don't think I remotely comprehended what happened. I remember going home. My dad, uh, worked very, he worked for an American company, so he was on the phone all the time past midday and he rang one of his colleagues being like, we had a call at two. Where were you? And his colleague just said, turn on the TV.

Suruthi Bala: Yeah. My dad actually used to work for Lehman Brothers and he was in the London office and he was on the phone to the New York office the time that the planes actually hit and there was just a bang and the phones went dead and they turned on the news. They realized why. It was just unbelievable. And I think the reason they sent us home was because they thought maybe something would happen in London. So everyone was just go home.

James Taylor: Amanda escorts her guests through the museum in search of the first object as they begin their journey of discovery.

Amanda Mason: You know, people talk about 9/11, what does it mean to you? You know, what, what does it make you think about it?

Hannah Maguire: I, I always just think about phones and like, how many, how many phone calls would've been made in the two minutes. Um, and then obviously the really famous voicemails from, from the planes in the buildings.

Suruthi Bala: I guess the word that jumps to mind is, is a strange one, but dust. I just remember watching the pictures and the news coverage of when the attack happened and just how much dust and smoke was pouring out of these buildings and just the people covered in blood and covered in dust and I think that was like such a, a strange word that did come to mind actually when we were started talking about this.

Hannah Maguire: I also think about shoes. I think about the people jumping from the buildings who were recognized by their shoes and that thing, like the falling man, you've seen that.

Suruthi Bala: Mm-Hmm.

Hannah Maguire: And people trying to identify him by his trainers. I think about that a lot.

Suruthi Bala: So we're at our first exhibit here. It looks to me like, well, it's twisted metal.

Hannah Maguire: I think it's something. I think it's a part of a plane. That's what it looks like to me.

Amanda Mason: So this is actually a fragment of what remains of the World Trade Center.

Hannah Maguire: Oh wow.

Amanda Mason: It's a section of the external walls. Uh, we think possibly from near one of the impact zones. So one of the, sort of the external sections, one of those beams. So, I mean, the fact it's so twisted

Suruthi Bala: Wow

Amanda Mason: and rusted and just like, I think just looking at it gives a sense of sort of the enormous violence and destruction

Hannah Maguire: of what goes back. Oh my God. God.

James Taylor: As Suruthi and Hannah survey the scene, our expert on the events of 9/11 and its aftermath appears before them.

Dr Shiraz Maher: Hi, I'm, uh, Dr. Shiraz Maher. I'm a lecturer at King's College London in the Department of War Studies where I study jihadist movements.

Suruthi Bala: So Shiraz, we obviously talked to you a little bit about where we were on 9/11 and what we remember of it. How about you?

Mohsin Hamid: I'm a bit older than you both. So I, I had just finished, uh, my first year at uni. I was back home. I remember I'd gone to see a mate in Birmingham City Center and we were having coffee and he got a text message saying from like his sister or someone saying, uh, a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Really didn't think any more of it either of us. And I was on the bus on the way home, my mom phoned saying, pick up some milk and stuff. I said to her, just flick on the news, um, has a plane hit the World Trade Center? And she said, no, it's nothing about that, but there's a fire at the Pentagon. I was like, oh. And again, not connecting any of those dots. Obviously by the time I got home it was pretty clear what had happened and that this was part of a coordinated attack. And uh, and I think just like everyone else has just sort of sat on the edge of the sofa glued to the TV for the rest of the day.
Hannah Maguire: Do you think it sort of formed your academic career? Did it sort of shoot you in that direction, having such a seminal experience when the towers fell?

Dr Shiraz Maher: Absolutely there, there's no question. I, uh, grew up as a child in Saudi Arabia and obviously once 15 of the 19 hijackers emerged, you know, to, to be from Saudi, you have to remember that's a country a lot of people have a lot of opinions about now, and people know a lot about it. But in 2001, people really didn't know much about this place. I remember people asking me really weird questions when I moved here to go to school, like, you know, did you go to school by camel? And that kind of thing. You know, it was like,

Hannah Maguire: like the Aladdin...

Dr Shiraz Maher: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, my flying carpet instead. So, um, you know, so yeah, I was really interested after that in, in, in all of these events and, and you know, that became, uh, that part of the world and that region and, you know, it just became center of the universe really for someone who was young and interested in politics.

James Taylor: To understand the events of 9/11, we should first look at the origins of the group that planned and executed the attack Al-Qaeda which stretches back as far as the Cold War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Dr Shiraz Maher: Al-Qaeda is really a, a, a movement that emerges off the back of the war in Afghanistan in, in the 1980s. You have to bear in mind that these were, uh, the, the sort of Arab contingent, that sort of first foreign fighter as it were. We've, you know, seen that really in, in lots of depth in the Syrian context. But this was the first kind of irregular mobilization of people going to another country to fight in a, in a cause like this, uh, in, in the modern age,

Clip: despite supporting fire from the main base on the valley floor. The outpost was finally overrun late that night with the loss of to Mujahideen killed as they advanced through the...

Dr Shiraz Maher: Afterwards, they're kind of intoxicated by this unlikely victory, right? You've defeated the Soviet Union, and these guys are going home to Egypt or Libya, and they're not being treated as heroes. They're being treated as national security threats being thrown into jail, but also the world around them is changing, right? Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, which is, uh, a hugely important moment in the development of radicalism. These guys say, look, we just defeat Soviet Union. We can do this too. And so there's a sense of how do you keep the project going?

James Taylor: In Arabic, the name Al-Qaeda means the base, according to Osama Bin Laden, the name referred to the bases in Afghanistan that the mujahideen used to fight off the Soviets. But for Shiraz, what's more interesting than Al-Qaeda's name is the idea underpinning it, a leftover collection of fighters thinking. How do we change the world?

Dr Shiraz Maher: What they really, ultimately wanted, and I think where all of this begins, is a sense of they want the west to not be present or what they would call interfere in the Arab and Muslim world. So there's a sense that after 1990, the Saudi royal family invites the United States to come and to push Saddam out, to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy. And that creates a sort of intellectual moment of discussion. That discussion is, is it allowed for Saudi Arabia to have a military relationship with a Western non-Muslim power? And overwhelmingly, these guys conclude, no. Right? That's the, that's the decision that it's not allowed. Therefore, the Saudi government in their eyes, has committed a gross mistake. And they start to say, right, actually, it's not just Saudi. They're supporting regimes in Egypt, hang on, they're supporting regime.... and so they're saying, right, all these governments are corrupt. And the only way they're able to maintain and sustain their grip on power is because the West underwrites them. And that starts the process of them. So, so, you know, in terms of what do they want, that's the sort of baseline what they want, they wanted the west to get out of the region. For a lot of people, terrorism became an issue with 9/11. Right? That's when it pops up onto most people's radar. But there was a sort of buildup to this moment, Al-Qaeda itself, Osama Bin Laden, they'd all been talking about this sense of hostility to America, pushing the Americans out, declaring war in the United States. They issued two declarations of war in 1996 and then again in 1998.
So there was a sense that they were, were beating a drum and a campaign had started already, which was, uh, attacking us targets and interest in the Middle East. So American military base had been attacked in Saudi Arabia and in the US Embassy in both Ken, Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in, uh, 1998 in a twin attack, that first center of the spectacular of doing a coordinated, uh, terrorist attack across multiple sites at the same time. And then of course, uh, in the year 2000 as well, the USS Cole a US naval ship was, uh, attacked in Yemen. So. What 9/11 does is it doesn't represent the start of this attack on American interests or American targets or assets. What it does is represent a shift in the center of gravity.

James Taylor: Amanda leads Hannah and Suruthi through the gallery, past some of the objects from our Afghanistan and Iraq episodes to a door mart, museum staff only. Once through the group weaved their way along the back corridors of IWM before arriving at a room full of paintings by war artist William Orpen. On a table in the corner are some objects carefully wrapped up, which have been brought in from our archives for Hannah and Suruthi. Amanda starts to unwrap the first object.

Hannah Maguire: Oh my God. Okay. It's absolutely not what I was expecting to see.

Suruthi Bala: It's like a, a young terrifying Santa Claus mask.

Hannah Maguire: Yeah. I expect it's probably not for the Christmas. Is it a Osama Bin Laden Halloween costume? Uh,

Amanda Mason: yeah, pretty much. It's a mask of Osama bin Laden. Yes, you're right. And it was, uh, used, worn at the Rio Carnival in 2002.

Suruthi Bala: Wow.

Amanda Mason: So apparently, um, Osama masks were very popular that year, as were George Bush masks. I think it probably gives an impression that maybe around the world he was sort of seen, recognized at this point as a, you know big sort of public enemy number one, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's a really grotesque looking mask, you know. It is sort of molded plastic and there's this horrible, fake beard. It is, it is really quite horrible.

Hannah Maguire: I don't want to look at it, but I can't stop.

Suruthi Bala: Yeah. The, the bit that's particularly troubling, I think is the eyes.

Hannah Maguire: Oh, I'm having a hard time with the two, like gray wisps in the beard.

Suruthi Bala: Yeah. There's also that,

Hannah Maguire: that makes it look like a bit like a almost too human, a bit uncanny valley. I don't like it sweating.

Suruthi Bala: Yeah. But it's the, uh, it's the cutout little circles for the eyes in the, in the plastic mask.

Hannah Maguire: I can't imagine it's particularly comfortable to wear.

Suruthi Bala: No, but you've gotta be, you know, committed. If you're gonna wear this costume

Hannah Maguire: if you're gonna show up to Rio Carnival dresses on Bin Laden, then yeah. I would not imagine. commitment is something you need.

Suruthi Bala: Yes. So Shiraz, we've obviously talked about, um, 9/11 briefly, but I think probably time to introduce the key, can we call him the protagonist, the bad actor in this? Uh, could you tell us a little bit about Osama Bin Laden?

Dr Shiraz Maher: Osama Bin Laden comes from a, a very wealthy Saudi family, which originally has its roots in, uh, in Yemen. It's in the construction business. So it made its, uh, millions through, uh, contracts in the Saudi state, developed a lot of the infrastructure of the country. And so he's got this amazing access to not just to to wealth, but to equipment as well, which makes him very important when he goes to Afghanistan. But what's really interesting about him is that firstly, when he goes to Afghanistan, he's still very much playing by the rules. He sought the permission of the Saudi King prior to traveling to become a fighter. Then refers to the Saudi King, uh, in Arabic as Wali al-Amar and that's really, um. Um, kind of like recognition of, of like a guardian of a sort of authority kind of father figure. It shows you that he was going to do something quite unique, right, to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but it was still sort of seeking to play within the rules of his country and his society. And he'd, he'd been deeply influenced by a man called, uh, Abdullah Azzam, who was leading the Arab fighters in Afghanistan at the time. And so, Bin Laden is a follower. He's not a leader. And when Abdullah Azzam is killed at the end, uh, of that conflict, and, and Bin Laden goes to Sudan, he's part of that group who doesn't return home because he's already a little worried that he might get detained. He's part of the group that sits in Sudan. He's lost his mentor. He's looking for new mentors. He doesn't emerge as as one himself. And the guys who he looks up to are clerics, who are still in Saudi Arabia, who are leading this campaign against the government to say the government has made, uh, a huge religious error in entering into a military alliance with the United States. He writes a letter to King Fahad in 1994, and the letter is addressing the king with all the sort of royal honorifics and Islamic greetings and. Within 15 months, he declares the Saudi government apostates. So that movement, that intellectual shift of this guy going from being a follower to a leader happens fairly quickly once he decides to get involved in, in challenging the government and thereafter, you know, he becomes the central figure.

Suruthi Bala: Wow. I think that's actually one of the misunderstandings I think people often have of Bin Laden, that he came from a wealthy family and also that he was very educated. So, Shiraz, we've talked, um, briefly so far about the, the ideology and what these groups are trying to achieve. But could you talk to us a little bit about the key ideological beliefs or the tenants at the heart of Al-Qaeda? What do they, what do they actually believe? What do they want?

James Taylor: It's a really interesting question. And a complex area. Luckily, Shiraz is perfectly placed to answer.

Dr Shiraz Maher: I took the view in my research that there's probably two things to, to acknowledge. First is that this is a wartime theology. It's driven by events on the battlefield, so it's not completely coherently thought out and mapped out in advance, right? These guys pull off 9/11 and suddenly they are fighting in Afghanistan, they're fighting in Iraq, and they're needing to justify and understand and explain all kinds of things, right? If you are launching and initiating a sectarian war against the Shia in southern Iraq, you need to communicate why you're doing that and what you understand your religious, uh, uh, justifications to be for that. If you are bombing a marketplace in the middle of downtown Baghdad where you're killing lots of ordinary, innocent civilians. You need to start to find a way to rationalize that to people and to say, there is a reason behind this. It's not nihilism for its own sake.
George Bush: Americans are asking who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime, but its goal is not making money. Its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

Dr Shiraz Maher: So my, my argument is really, it's not a cohesive thing that's crystallized even on 9/11, but I, I can identify five things I talk about um, in my research, which is to, I say that these are the five things you have to believe in in order to be, uh, a salafi jihadi who sort of subscribes to this. And it's important to say that these five things all exist within normative Islam and so ordinary Muslims believe these things. What's interesting about this movement is that it constructs each one of those ideas in a unique way, right? It's a construction, it's a political ideology. They're taking these ideas and doing something distinct with them. So obviously the first principle is that they believe in jihad. They believe in jihad, is armed struggles, military conflict, and they believe it as an act of worship, right? Which is akin to, you know, other ritualistic acts, praying, going on, pilgrimage. And so there's a sense of, you know, you must normalize your hand as a violent struggle and that's, and, and, and an act of worship to God. The second point that they believe in is stuck fear is the process of excommunication, excommunicating, other Muslims, uh, say, right, you're not Muslim enough because maybe you're a Shia, you are not Muslim because you don't pray and to use that as a tool to fight other Muslims. The third principle is, is a principle called Al-Wala' wal-Bara', which is, it doesn't translate neatly into English, but essentially means loyalty and disavow or love and hate essentially for the sake of God. This gets used, uh, and politicized as a tool of international relations. Should the Saudi government enter into a military alliance with, uh, a non-Muslim, Western power, i.e. The United States? Well, the principle of love and hate loyalty in this of our says no. Our loyalty must be with other Muslims and against, uh, non-Muslims. Therefore, you know, you, it's, it's forbidden to enter into a military alliance in this way. And then there's a principle of monotheism. Muslims believe that the, you know, the time you are set to die is the time circumstances can shift. So Abdullah Azzam, who I mentioned was, was Bin Laden's mentor said, look, some parts of faith just require an intellectual affirmation, right? Death is fixed by God. How can you demonstrate You really believe it? The only way you can demonstrate you believe it is to put your life in God's hands. The only way to do that is to come and fight Jihad. If you really believe that your death is written, then you're just as likely to die on the streets of Bradford as you are on the streets of Baghdad so come here and join us. And then the final point is about hacking me. It's about Islamic governance, right? You have to believe in an Islamic state and a, and a political authority for, for that state. Interestingly, Al-Qaeda talks about that the least. Of all of those four concepts, it talks about that one the least. And I think it's because for them, that's the abstract end goal, which they haven't in their minds really got to yet. As I say, 2003 becomes the moment. I think this five point sort of ideology becomes crystallizes and emerges as a, as an identifiable thing.

Suruthi Bala: So you talked her, um, Shiraz, obviously about 2003, really becoming this cauldron of everything happening in Iraq, and that was obviously after 9/11 had happened. What do you think were some of the warning signs that 9/11 was going to happen? Because obviously there were attacks on foreign bases, US bases, but were there warning signs that a home attack was going to happen like it did?

Dr Shiraz Maher: These guys did do a press conference, like I said, in 96 and 98, declaring war in the United States. Now how seriously are you supposed to take that in 1996 or in 1998? It's, you know, a bunch of guys in a cave, the other side of the world, in a country most Americans probably couldn't identify on the map then or now. So I often think, what if the United States had broken that plot? They'd captured these guys and you know, you imagine the director of the FBI coming out and saying there was a plot by 19 Arab men to fly four planes into, you know, to targets all around the United States, people wouldn't have believed it. They'd have said, this is Hollywood, right? Like, I don't imagine public reaction would've been like, oh my God, people would've just said, well, firstly, it would've been a lot of disbelief. And secondly, the, the gravity of what actually transpired, you know, wouldn't have registered. So I think, you know, we have to be very careful when we say. Did, was this foresee, could it have been stopped or any of that? I think it's, it's very, very, uh, hard to, to make that case.

James Taylor: The events of September the 11th are etched into many people's memories. Shiraz recalls how it all started to unfold.

Dr Shiraz Maher: So the events of 9/11, the day itself is that you have four separate planes that, that are hijacked simultaneously, uh, in the air. These are domestic flights, so it's all flights within, uh, the United States.

James Taylor: At 8:46 AM on September the 11th, 2001, hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash a plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing everyone on board, and several hundred inside the building.
Minutes later, a second. United Airlines flight 175 crashes into the South Tower, leaving onlooker stunned and terrified. ABC news captured the moment the second plane hit.

Clip: It does not appear that there's any kind of a, an effort up there yet.

Now remember, oh my God, my god, that looks like a second plane. I did not see a plane go in that, that just exploded. I, we just saw another plane coming in from the side.

Suruthi Bala: Wow. I mean, obviously that footage is 20 years old, but still watching it, knowing what was about to happen, that the second plane was gonna hit while they were filming live, my hand still went to my mouth.

Hannah Maguire: Yeah, me too. I saw that. I've seen it from so many different angles, and I think what I had never considered before until just now hearing that commentary was that until the second plane flies, everyone thinks it's an accident, and then that is the moment where, where it's like, oh no, it's, it's two. It has to be a concerted attack on the World Trade Center. My hands already swaying.

James Taylor: But these weren't the only two planes deployed by Al-Qaeda. As millions watched events unfolding in New York, American Airlines, flight 77, crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, military headquarters in Washington DC killing 125 star and everyone on board.

Dr Shiraz Maher: There's this fourth plane that's in the sky. It's over at Pennsylvania, and it's headed, looping back towards DC And people know by this point what is happening. There is obviously, uh, a sense of mass panic, the unprecedented step of grounding all aircraft over American airspace takes place. So all these planes are, are, are brought down, but there is this one plane and what has happened is that people have seen it on the news what is happening, but the guys on the plane have phoned in to family members, loved ones to say our plane has been hijacked and they've been informed of what has happening of course, um, uh. Uh, on the ground. And so they take this decision to try and, uh, overpower the, the cockpit and to, to reclaim the plane basically. And, uh, that flight crashes into the ground. So of course, everyone aboard is killed, but it never reaches its intended target. It crashes in the fields, uh, of Pennsylvania.

James Taylor: At this point, Amanda hands two large photographs to Hannah and Suruthi.

Amanda Mason: So what you're looking at are two panorama photographs, uh, taken by the German filmmaker and photographer, Wim Wenders. Um, he was given access to Ground Zero, the site of Ground zero on the 8th of November, 2001. He went along, along with the official photographer, Joel Meyerowitz. Um, and he, he was given special access to the site to, to sort of photograph what's basically the recovery work at this stage. He talks about it being very, a very sort of quiet, uh, site. Obviously they're still recovering human remains at this point. When he was there, um, he talks about how it was, uh, all of a sudden there was this light that was, you can just see on this particular photograph, you can see it shining off that building. So the site was very dark and somber, but all of a sudden a light from the sun reflected off one of the nearby skyscrapers and sort of bathed the whole site in this sort of very eerie and very bright light. Um, and he sort of, obviously. Talks about being really struck by this and it made the site feel very much different. Um, he's written a really moving essay, and there's an article, I think it's just appeared in The Guardian one where he's talking, he talks a lot about, um, what, what it was like to be there and how he had sort of hopes that it might actually become a sort of a site of, of peace and reconciliation.

Suruthi Bala: The thing that really stands out is, as we were talking about earlier, is that dust and that destruction. I think we're so used to even at that point, especially now looking at images like this in Syria or overseas, somewhere else that's far away. And of course New York was, but it feels more like it could have happened anywhere if it happened there.

Hannah Maguire: I mean, certainly I think I lose a lot of comparison of like just how big the towers were because we're just looking at

Suruthi Bala: Mm-Hmm.

Hannah Maguire: a building site with teeny tiny people.

Suruthi Bala: And it's that destruction in the foreground of everything is just. Uh, brown and gray and destroyed, completely juxtaposed with the background of still a modern city with high rise and skyscrapers.

Hannah Maguire: Yeah. Shiny New York.

Suruthi Bala: Yeah. Standing right behind it.

James Taylor: For any of you who would like to see these and more photographs of the aftermath of the September the 11th attacks taken by Oscar nominee Wim Wenders.There is a new exhibition, Wim Wenders photographing Ground zero is at IWM London from September the 10th. During the September the 11th attacks, 2,977 people were killed by the 19 hijackers, and more than 6,000 were injured. Immediate deaths included 265 on the four planes, including the terrorists, 2,606 in the World Trade Center and in the surrounding area. And 125 at the Pentagon. Over 401st responders were killed. And that number has increased over the years due to 9/11 related illnesses caused by the inhalation of toxic dust and other debris.

Dr Shiraz Maher: Really, the, the attack on the US homeland, if you look at it in a chain of continuity from the attacks on US assets and targets in the Middle East beforehand, was really, it's not a step change, it's just a shift in the center of gravity, I should say, in terms of how you're going to fight the United States and, um, you're essentially delivering it to, uh, the homeland because, you know, terrorism is theater to, to an extent. It's about peacocking, a political demand or grievance to send a message. And so in 1998, because Al-Qaeda and this sort of band of people, again depends, if you call it Al-Qaeda or Nazi, depending on which, which view you take about when this movement starts. But let's say the jihadi movement attacks, uh, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and it showed them that you get the attention of the President of the United States. That's a difficult thing to do. How do you attract this person's, uh, time, uh, and attention, uh, because you're so important. So the way you do it is by, by hitting the US hard. So 9/11 is part of that. Ultimately, these are two very tall buildings. The tallest in Manhattan at the time. They are this icon, right? This emblem of, uh, the city, uh, and, and of a distinct part, right? Manhattan, the same thing with the Pentagon, right? It's, it's the heart of US military planning. And then of course, if you'd got to the White House again, the seat of US power. So these are deliberately picked as, as symbols and symbolism is very, very important, uh, in terrorism generally. But of course, the jihadi movement has demonstrated a great capacity for theater and for uh, at the moment.

James Taylor: With Hannah and Suruthi, deep in thought, we welcome a new voice to the discussion. Who is dialing in from Pakistan and who has his own perspective on September the 11th?

Mohsin Hamid: I'm Mohsin Hamed, I'm a novelist. I live in Lahore, uh, formerly in London. And before that New York, I've written four novels, one of which The Reluctant Fundamentalist deals with, uh, a young man who's living in New York around the time of the September 11 attacks and its aftermath. I moved to London from New York shortly after my 30th birthday at the end of July. I was really just settling in and still very much thought of myself as a New Yorker when in the gym of the office building where I worked, there were people standing and staring at something on a television screen. So I stepped in and, and looked at what they were looking at, and, and that's where I saw the iconic images of one of The World Trade Centers already on fire and then I watched the second, uh, aircraft hit. First of all, I tried to call my former roommate who worked in the World Financial Center next door, uh, and couldn't get through to New York to speak to her because, uh, the phone circuits were overloaded. Then, uh, in New York City, people were, you know, walking away from the attacks. The, the subway was shut and, uh, there was just clouds of smoke.
And in the days that followed, there was a complete ban on, on any flights. So there was, uh, no air traffic. And when I eventually did make it back to New York, I think about a month after the attacks, my first visit in my experience of traveling was, was radically different. First of all, the kind of security you went through at the airport, at this end, at the UK end, and secondly, you know, the kind of questioning and the interrogation that one went through at the US end. And I think that feeling for the first time of, of really being a, a kind of suspect, uh, on that first trip.

Dr Shiraz Maher: You know, there was a lot of bewilderment about what had happened. It was, it was a very confusing moment because you could see the United States wa was, was angry. It was this kind of wounded bear moment, right? And, and you know that there's gonna be this reaction. I think that was my overwhelming for what happens next, what will happen to the world. Bush coming out and starting this dichotomous process, you are with us or against us. Just the formulation of that maxim, I think was hugely negative and, uh, very, very problematic. And it crystallized this us versus them, you know, mentality. And, and, and you see that language mimicked everywhere. I mean, bin Laden himself says, right, the world is in two camps, right? Truth versus falsehood. You know, you decide, and, and, and everyone's doing the same thing, right? This is saying that same binary choice.

Suruthi Bala: Absolutely. And I think we've, we've spoken then a little bit about our personal experiences, how we felt watching it in the media aftermath, and you were sort of hypothesizing particularly what was going to happen next. So could we hear from, uh, from both of you actually, about what were the global consequences of the 9/11 attacks

Mohsin Hamid: looking back now, 20 years later, it's, it's hard to, uh, explain or communicate just how enormous, uh, this event was. This occurred at the moment where America was really in a sense at its apex of, um, global supremacy. You know, I, when I moved from New York City to London, um, you know, in many ways it felt like leaving the center of things for a place that was less central. There was this real sense of America's centrality at the nineties with the internet, with this booming stock market, with this, you know, huge economy and, and this enormous military and cultural dominance. And these attacks really were an enormous challenge, uh, to that way of looking at the world. Uh, and the response, uh, from the United States where suddenly flags appeared everywhere. Massive military force was mobilized, a rhetoric of of war, and, you know, people on, in uniform appearing on television the period after the Cold War, the 10 years before September 11th uh, 2001 felt like, uh, sort of this interregnum, this time of relative peace. Although of course there were many wars being fought in the world, and that seemed to end on September 11th. And, and as this enormous armada of ships and of, of military equipment headed towards Afghanistan, my parents were in Islamabad and, uh, you know, they were at a hotel and they saw, uh, I think it was Christiane Amanpour had arrived to, to broadcast from Islamabad. And my parents, you know, said, oh no, you know, when she arrives, um, some big war's about to start and is, you know, is it going to affect us? Is it going to happen here? It was an incredibly unsettling time.
Hannah Maguire: And you spoke about sort of leaving Manhattan the month before the attack and then moving here to the uk. Did you notice any difference in reaction?

Mohsin Hamid: Yeah, it, it was interesting. I, I had come to the UK on a, on a one year, uh, transfer with my job. I thought I would go back to New York after that one year. Um, I never did go back actually, or, or haven't yet, uh, full time gone back to the states. The UK felt a little bit less caught up in all of this. So, uh, it was possible to write for papers in the United Kingdom, um, and to express some degree of, of skepticism about the idea that the coming wars were a good idea or that, um, that in the necessary, uh, responses to terrorism, that, that we should at the same time be careful of, um, uh, people's civil liberties and, and making sure that we don't catch up all communities in this, in this drag net. In the US there was much more of a, of a kind of nationalistic fervor. And those years, immediately after September 11th, it did feel very much that London was a place where there was more skepticism, but was was about to be called the war on terror, and that there was a, a, even though of course the UK went to participate in the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war. There was a great deal, more internal doubt, and I think self-criticism about some of those moves in the UK, whereas the US felt very much overtaken by a kind of nationalistic fervor.

Hannah Maguire: And you've just said the absolute buzz phrase, the war on tar. Can I pass that over to you, Shiraz? When did that moment happen on the global stage?

Dr Shiraz Maher: The war on terror starts, I think as this, you know, again, as with all of this is very iterative thing, right? It's, it's very clear as, as Mohsin saying that, that, you know, the United States is gonna react. It's calling on countries to pivot. Of course, Pakistan becomes hugely important in that, right? If you're gonna prosecute this war in Afghanistan, you need, uh, Pakistan to, to come to heal. But there, there was a British moment to this in that Blair seized the moment to ride in right behind the United States. A lot of world leaders sought to obviously, you know, use this moment to, to either repair a relationship with the US or to, uh, win favor with the us. But Blair capitalized on Britain's historic relationship with the US to row in pretty unconditionally behind the US administration.

Tony Blaire: And I know that America, Britain, and all our allies will stand united together in that task. And I give you on behalf of our country, our solidarity, our sympathy, and our support. Thank you, sir.

Dr Shiraz Maher: It's amazing how much we forget, but, you know, researching my, my next, uh, book at the moment, I'm sort of going through those early parts of what was happening and, and, and you forget, like Blair turned up at the state of the union, uh, address in, in the us It's a significant thing for a, a world leader, uh, uh, to be there. So it, it was clear that whatever was gonna happen and there's this great moment of uncertainty in the world that Britain's going to be a part of it. And because of the role Britain was taken, that was always gonna have a very acute effect here, because British Islam fundamentally is Pakistani Islam, one in two British Muslims is ethnically from Pakistan. So this debate that happens in Pakistan, what do we do? We ally with the US and go in against the Taliban. What about the historic relations with Taliban? What do we do here? All of that turbulence of the national debate in Pakistan feeds immediately, indirectly into British Muslim communities because ethnically they're length. So, so the, the, the sense of the acute feel of the war on terror, I think hit British mosques pretty quickly.

James Taylor: At this moment, Amanda starts to unwrap one of the larger items on the table. An object that looks deceptively mundane.

Suruthi Bala: It looks like a very ordinary black duffle bag.

Hannah Maguire: with a luggage label on it. That's red. Can you read it? My, it's terrible.

Suruthi Bala: I don't know if that's like a museum one rather than a

Hannah Maguire: Whoops.

Suruthi Bala: An actual luggage label

Hannah Maguire: well done Hannah.

Suruthi Bala: Um,

Hannah Maguire: oh, it's an exhibit number.

Suruthi Bala: I think it might just be an exhibit number.

Hannah Maguire: Okay. Stand down everyone.

Suruthi Bala: I can't read what the little label says, but Yeah like a canvas black duffle bag.

Hannah Maguire: Yeah. As you say, very ordinary.

Suruthi Bala: Mm-Hmm.

Amanda Mason: So you are right. It's a very ordinary looking holdall. Um, it belonged to a guy called Jamie Weaver, and he was one of the first British troops, um, out when sent out to Afghanistan. He was sent out in April, 2002 on, um, Opticana which is with the Marines. And so they were sent out to Bagram Airfield and to sort of carry on any operations to sort of, um, see if there was any Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters still out there um, following on for a big American operation that had just taken place. They were trying to sort of drive out or get rid of any remaining Al-Qaeda that was still in the country. Actually, by the time British troops got out there in, in the spring, there wasn't really a great deal, uh, going on at this point. And, uh, they blew up a huge, uh, cache of weapons and carried out and few other operations, but there wasn't a huge amount of, of fighting at this point. But I just think it's, it is quite significant, these are a very, uh, small number of British soldiers that are out to the ground at this point but obviously for the British, Afghanistan becomes a much bigger deal. And from 2006 onwards, there's a huge, um, contingent out in Helmand and they became, become drawn into what's becomes quite a, you know, a very active and kinetic and, uh, costly war.

Suruthi Bala: Why did the, in, um, invasion of Afghanistan happen? How did it happen? Could you talk to us a little bit about that Mohsin?

Mohsin Hamid: So there was an incredible, overwhelming emotional desire to respond to September 11th, given the scale of the atrocity and just, and just how visible and damaging it was. And Afghanistan was where Osama Bin Laden was based. Osama was the, um, uh, belief perpetrator or, or mastermind of the attacks. Uh, the United States asked, uh, the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan to give Osama up. Uh, the Taliban refused and war commenced. But when you think about, you know, why did it happen? Why did it need to happen like that? I think it probably is worth asking that question because, um, if the objective was simply to get or kill Osama or to eradicate Al Qaeda. It wasn't necessarily the case that a full blown war in Afghanistan was, it was called for. I remember writing an essay, you know, 20 years ago asking exactly this question, which is, you know, is, is a full war in Afghanistan, really what's needed to root out what probably is a small number of, of terrorists. But I think there was this enormous desire for a massive response. And in fact that desire catalyzed not only, uh, the war in Afghanistan, but, but subsequent, uh, military action in other places as well. And there's an account of a conversation between Richard Armitage who I think was a deputy secretary of State of the United States with, um, some Pakistani generals who were trying to explain the background of the Civil War in Afghanistan and where Taliban came from and what the situation was, and said, look, this is the history. And Armitage is, is quoted as saying, no, the history starts today. And I think in that moment, the idea that the United States could rewrite, uh, anything it chose, it could start from a blank slate of history and impose its will on the world was, was not really questioned. Everybody knew that Afghanistan was this place where disastrous British and Soviet military interventions had failed in the past, but somehow there was the feeling that America was different, that America, you know, could successfully do what needed to be done in Afghanistan. And, and the results were a year war that dragged on for 20 years.

Dr Shiraz Maher: But it's also that that Armitage, uh, moment, right? If you think about the 20 years that that has proceeded. In, in recent years would say, you know, since, particularly since about 2016, we've seen more and more governments departing from what's been called the International Rules Based Order, right? And, uh, this sort of greater sense of disorder in the world. Well, that moment of kind of blithe departure from acceptable norms in the modern era, it starts with America in this post 9/11 environment. The United States tortures people. It starts rendering people, it throws out concepts of habeas corpus, detention without trial, and all these kinds of things, sets up Guantanamo Bay, and it caresses it in this nomenclature of sort of legalese enemy competent, enhanced interrogation. On the one hand, when you're talking about projecting your values, you actually engaged in not just undermining them, but signaling to the rest of the world that if you can dress something up as a national security concern, the national security trumps all else. Then you can depart from these norms and standards and, and it's set a very bad precedent.

James Taylor: Some of the practices carried out by the USA and its allies were highly controversial. The practice of extraordinary rendition involved the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of suspected terrorists. It effectively allowed a detainee to be moved from one country to another so that they could be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques akin to torture and perhaps most notoriously, the Bush administration set up Guantanamo Bay. A detention facility where suspected Alqaeda members were held without trial and subjected to harsh interrogation methods including water boarding, beatings, stress positions, and sexual humiliation.

George Bush: Well, the tribunals are just an option for us, and we'll be using the tribunals. Uh, if, uh, in the course of, um, bringing somebody to justice, it would jeopardize or compromise national security interests.

James Taylor: Back at the museum, Hannah and Suruthi are struggling with an important and commonly asked question, how did the Iraq war follow from September the 11th and the invasion of Afghanistan?

Mohsin Hamid: So, um, the reason why it's difficult to understand the connection is because there isn't really a connection.

Hannah Maguire: I'm glad it's not just me being stupid.

Mohsin Hamid: I think what happened was, and this is why understanding the impulse for vengeance is for me, a very important part of understanding this narrative. It's up until Afghanistan, you can disagree about whether a full scale invasion was called for whether the Taliban peace software should have been engaged with whether a different, uh, solution should have been found after that initial burst of fighting, but certainly there's a, there's a very straightforward argument for why a military intervention in Afghanistan, you know, was called for. There was no equivalent reason to invade Iraq. Uh, Saddam Hussien, the, you know, quite horrific dictator of Iraq, uh, was not, uh, engaged in supporting the terrorist attacks of September 11th. And then it was said that, well, you know, uh, he poses a threat because of his weapons of mass destruction. Um, but of the many countries that have weapons of mass destruction in the world or that had them at that time, Saddam appeared to be one of the very few leaders who had actually dismantled his weapons of mass destruction and done so under a, a quite rigorously enforced UN inspections regime.
And I think at this point we're, we're, we're delving into an emotional state. This idea that a horrified Western populace needed to be secured from all kinds of, uh, horrific, uh, uh, fates that might befall it and the attempt to make, uh, western people secure against a non-existent threat of Iraqi weapons and mass destruction led to this war that wasn't sanctioned by the United Nations. That totally ran rough shot over this idea of this post-second world war legal framework that you can't invade other countries unless the UN says that this war is justified. That was sort of tossed out. And then, uh, a disastrous intervention gets underway and, and I think it's difficult for us to understand, but it was the combination of this unipolar moment of sort of unchecked Western and particularly American supremacy coupled by a real anger and, and almost personalized desire for vengeance, where Saddam presented himself to, uh, George Bush Junior as, uh, a nemesis who needed to be finished.

James Taylor: If you'd like to learn more about what really happened in the Iraq War, it's there waiting for you in episode three of this series, we return to the topic at hand.

Suruthi Bala: We've talked about the immediate response or the reaction, the reason we went into Afghanistan could be for revenge, but then it turned into this, um, maybe nation building. It turned into we're gonna have to change the way of life fundamentally there to make the west safe. Mohsin could you tell us, do you think the invasion of Afghanistan, then everything that's happened since, has that made us quote unquote safer or less safe? If that was the aim.
Mohsin Hamid: I mean, I think that, um, what happened was an enormous, um, project of state destabilization. So in Afghanistan, Taliban were toppled. Of course, now they're back. But in Iraq, Sadam Hussien was toppled, thereby reordering the balance of power. In the Middle East, you had in Libya, um, the NATO intervened, Libya des descends into Civil war. There's strikes happening, uh, in Somalia, in Yemen, in Pakistan. Thousands of people are killed in the borderlands of Pakistan by US drone strikes. So what's what's beginning to happen is a very large sort of offscreen war where in the West people aren't really following anymore. I was picked up once, uh, at the airport by an old friend of my father's from his graduate student days at Stanford in the seventies and, and Blake, who was at my dad's best friend from those days, was driving me onto campus for a lecture I was going to give. And he had volunteered, uh, to serve in the US Army in the 1960s when the Vietnam conflict was underway and he had been posted to Germany, so he never got a sea service in Vietnam. But as he was driving me to campus, he said, you know, it's kind of shocking because when I got to campus after finishing my army service, everybody was talking about the war. You had a point of view and he said, I disagreed at the time with the protestors. Later I realized that they were right in their opposition. But at the time, I, Blake said, I disagreed with this anti-war position, but at least we were all out there shouting each other, arguing. He says, if you look around you now, there's two wars being fought, uh, by America, and there's no sign of it anywhere. No one's protesting, nothing's happening. And I think this is, is going to be hard to, can debate to people later on, I suppose, uh, that this historical reality that there were these enormous wars being fought and yet in the West with professionalized militaries, with, uh, high amounts of sort of, uh, technological capacity, drones, other things. It was possible to have the population, um, almost entirely sheltered from the experience of waging war. And so countries were at war without almost recognizing that they were at war. And that had two, I think, very pernicious consequences, uh, which have made us less safe. Uh, one of those consequences was that all over the world where these wars were being fought, countries were being destabilized, violence was being perpetuated, all kinds of stuff was going on. And you saw state after state begin to shake and tremble, and, uh, governments get weaker. And in these increasingly ungoverned spaces of these weakened states, more and more actors capable of terrorism were, were spouting up. You know, it wasn't an exaggeration to say that for every one person killed two more would come forward. Uh, this idea of this endless series of attacks somehow making the world safer, I think was, was fundamentally misguided. It, it, it's a task that correctly belongs to the police force of a state, not to the drones and special forces of a country halfway around the world. But the other part of it was that, uh, to my dad's friend's, Blake's comment, it began to create a deep polarization inside Western communities, particularly the United States, because although the wars were happening off camera, so to speak, 800,000 Americans would serve in Afghanistan, you know, hundreds of thousands of more would serve in Iraq. They would be traumatized by those experiences, and they belong to families and communities. And what began to occur, I think, in, in many Western countries, was the, was the creation of a parallel reality. A bunch of people watching the booming stock market in New York or the IPO of latest tech company in, in Silicon Valley saying things are fantastic. And a bunch of communities seeing people come back and take their own lives or having lost a limb or being emotionally completely scarred by their experience saying this is a very different reality.
And in this environment of of, of, I think, polarization, that the war fighting brought, particularly to the United States, there would be huge consequences in, in the ability of society to function as a cohesive whole for people to believe in democracy, to believe in truth, to believe in what the newspapers were reporting. And so I think that the damage to Western societies that occurred by fighting these extended wars is much more than the loss of 2000, 3000 lives of, of British and American soldiers in Afghanistan. It was actually the polarization and the destruction of, of a kind of democratic consensus that agreed in many countries setting the stage for a very, very radically polarized domestic politics that would follow in the decade, immediately after. So in the 2010s, uh, you would see this come home to roost.

James Taylor: Back on the ground in Afghanistan and later Pakistan, the hunt continued for the perpetrator of the September the 11th attacks, Osama Bin Laden, who had seemingly disappeared into thin air.

Dr Shiraz Maher: We've talked about terrorism being theater and about there being a symbolic importance to, to certain things, targets or, or, or individuals who are, who are targeted as a result of it. And so for the United States, obviously the capture of,uh, or, or the killing of Bin Laden is an important target and obviously a huge effort goes into, uh, trying to, to find him. And through the interrogations that the United States is conducting both in places like Bagram and Guantanamo Bay, they begin to identify the courier network around Bin Laden. And what actually begins to tip them off about, uh, the significance of these couriers is just the, the extent to which their importance is being downplayed by people in the interrogations. So you realize that there's an attempt to cover these guys. And through a process then of tracking those individuals, obviously this compound just outside of s Islamabad becomes identified, it's surveilled, obviously very, very heavily and then an ultimate decision is taken to go there and to, to see who's there.

Obama: Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

James Taylor: Osama bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces on May the second, 2011. Nearly 10 years after the date of the attacks in the United States, his body was thrown into the sea.

Dr Shiraz Maher: The decision to invade Iraq as the single most consequential decision of, of the War on Terror. And of course you have Al-Qaeda in in Iraq, but Al-Qaeda is not the only group fighting in Iraq. That's really important to, to understand. There are various other Sunni groups, and we're concerned about Sunni groups because of course there are Shia groups fighting as well, but they're not part of the Salafi Jihadi movement. And so. It's important because what happens is once the US begins to try a counter surgency strategy on the ground in Iraq, working with so tribes to say, look, you know, Al-Qaeda and these groups are not your friends, those groups start to try and work together a bit more broadly to say, let's all, uh, uh, unite because, uh, the counterinsurgency tactic is working. During that time, however, the United States ends up capturing a lot of these individuals and bringing them all together in a place called Camp Bucca, which is a detention center near the Kuwaiti border. And these guys, uh, spent several years there and they said, look, it was the best thing in the world because we could never get together like that on the outside for fear of a drone strike, wiping out the leadership. But now they had an ability to come together and to to unite, but in essence, it grows out of Al-Qaeda as a sort of, you could say a, a more determined, more, uh, petulant and defiant movement, which doesn't have, uh, strong connections back to Al-Qaeda. It's sort of branched out on its own and it just waits for its opportunity. So it calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq, but really it's a letterhead. It has nothing more than that, right? It, it may control a few little towns here and there, unofficially no one's taking it too seriously. But how do you movements need disorder, they need a power vacuum. They need that sense of chaos, and that's the environment in which they can thrive. And one of the ways it grows. It's power based so quickly is that it fights the other rebel groups and takes their, uh, territory. Uh, and it's very good absorbing others into, uh, uh, its movement. So it grows like a hydra. And once it builds momentum, it's able to sustain that momentum because it's seen as the winning team, uh, uh, on the ground. So it has both history on its side. It has ideology on its side, it has the independence on its side, but ultimately what it really has is that ability to manifest something practically on the ground that the other groups didn't. I mentioned before. ISIS said we are a state. The other group said, we're fighting vanguards and that difference in approach and mindset gave ISIS this ability to, to attract more people to its course.

James Taylor: ISIS was previously known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. They were originally led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist feared for his particularly extreme tactics who was later assassinated by the USA. They cut ties with Al-Qaeda in 2014 under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after which they famously declared the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate. It's a topic Hannah and Suruthi have dealt with on their own show, Red-handed. We would encourage you to listen to their three part series on Shamima Begum and the Bethnal Green 3. We are coming to the end of our time in the museum, but before Suruthi and Hannah make their way home, Amanda reveals the final two objects, a pair of photos, which hint at how day-to-day life has changed as a result of September the 11th.

Suruthi Bala: Okay. It looks like,

Hannah Maguire: it looks like Heathrow wrote to me.

Suruthi Bala: It looks like Heathrow Airport,

Hannah Maguire: wherever Qantas flies from. Yeah.

Suruthi Bala: With some pretty serious tanks rolling down.

Hannah Maguire: Yeah. Something on Red-handed we talk a lot, talk about a lot is the difference in in gun laws between the UK and the US. And I always say on the show that to see anyone in uniform carrying an assault weapon like the one we're looking at, and we're looking at a British soldier carrying a really, really, really large gun and we don't see that. And when you do see it in a train station, usually. It kind of makes you catch your breath because it is so out of the ordinary of what we are used to.

Amanda Mason: Okay, so you're right, it is Heathrow report. These are photographs from February, 2003. So, um, they're showing British Armed Forces providing additional security to Met police, um, because there's been a, a terrorist alert. I think there was some intelligence that there might be an anti-aircraft. Um, weapons had been smuggled into the UK so I think this is probably relevant of this period where there was so much concern about terrorism and the threats of terrorism. Airport security was stepped up and I think everybody was just to so that much more aware of the risks of terrorism and threat of terrorism, whether, what extent that was com overstated, I think, you know, is certainly a matter of a debate and discussion.

Suruthi Bala: Mohsin, it feels like everything we've talked about, a lot of the actions that were taken by the West, um, over the past 20 years, immediately after 9/11, feels like they've created the opposite effect to what the West claimed were the reasons that they were doing well-intentioned or not uh, it seems to have created the opposite reaction. So I guess we could say, um, that we, that the West failed in what they were attempting to do. Do you think that Al-Qaeda, although we can argue and debate over their motivations for why they did what they did, do you think that they succeeded?

Mohsin Hamid: I, I think it's, it's, it's hard to imagine how they could have succeeded more. I mean, you know, the, the, there's, so there were so few of them and, uh, it, it seems they got, you know, uh, in, in a horrific way, incredibly lucky. I. Um, you know, they'd been trying to hijack plays and do these things for a very long time, and somehow, and they had this spectacular in their, in their, you know, uh, way of looking at it, success, uh, uh, I, I would imagine they, they were, they were quite shocked by, you know, by, by all these successful hijackings and all this stuff, and the destruction that took place on 9/11. And while I doubt, you know, as they were individually hunted down and killed, many of them, they would've, you know, relished the personal outcome. I think the idea of setting in motion a conflict of cultures and civilizations and, and world views, um, uh, was very much achieved. Uh, and, and I think we, we have to, uh, consider that in this endeavor you know, their allies were very often precise people who claim to be their enemies. In other words, those who were most nationalistic and militaristic in their response to terrorism were precisely the right opponent, you know, for Al-Qaeda to have, because they wound up creating exactly the kind of backlash that in countries like Pakistan, for example, have, have utterly marginalized liberal, progressive voices, right. It wasn't that, you know, the world was divided between Al-Qaeda type people and sort of Western people. The, the real, the real threat, of course was, you know, the rise of, um, civil society, democratic culture, civil liberties in places like Pakistan. And now in the new security paradigm that we find ourselves in, all of that has been set back enormously. You know, it's very hard to now advocate for, um, you know, democracy and liberal democracy and these sorts of things in a society which has become deeply suspicious of, of the weaponization of these concepts in the service of, of Western military objectives. So in, in that sense, I think that, uh, you know, Al-Qaeda was, was phenomenally successful, you know, tragically, uh, successful. The idea that a terrorist is seeking to win a military victory, I think is completely misguided. What, what the terrorist is seeking to do is, is, is a provocation. Um, and the greater the overreaction to that provocation, the more successful the terrorist is. But I also don't think that that, um, that the story is over. I, I think from the beginning, the story has been one of competing narratives and the narratives that we had of the clash of two, you know, supremely aggressive forces, the terrorists on one hand, and the utterly militarized indiscriminate response that they, that they engendered from the West. Um, those are not the only two stories to tell. And in the present moment, 20 years later, when we find ourselves confronting a, a global pandemic that doesn't care what religion we are, what country we come from. And we find ourself confronted with global warming, which is this, you know, the great challenge of our, of our, of our century and the centuries to come probably, um, the idea that we can craft new narratives that are not about this group versus group security, terror, uh, conflict. Um, but a sort of shared human narrative does present itself because there was a kind of shared narrative that America was putting out into the world in the late 1990s of economic success and shared prosperity. And it may, it may not have been true, but it was certainly very appealing. Um, and in some senses it was true for many people. So I think, I think now, uh, rather than in a way asking ourselves who won, can we try to remove this sense of conflict itself and reorient ourselves in a human dimension towards conflicts that actually unite us, which are conflicts against the virus and conflicts against um, our own, uh, emissions that are destroying the climate that we all, uh, need to survive.

James Taylor: Sadly, it's time to leave this Conflict of Interest, but before they go, Amanda asks Hannah and Suruthi to consider what they have learned today.

Hannah Maguire: I feel like my brain is so heavy, I might not be able to ever use it again.

Suruthi Bala: It's been, uh, like drinking from the fire hose, you know, to reflect on something that happened 20 years ago, but that has so eloquently been put to us by, um, Mohsin and Shiraz over the past, however many hours we've been talking. It's hard to see what's happening in Afghanistan right now and not feel like what was the point of everything that happened? And it just, it feels like such a, a, a sad thing. And it's also this interesting idea of when 9/11 happened, was it, it was an attempt by, you know, the Taliban by Osama Bin Laden to directly attack our, the West's way of life. And then what we did is we tried to take those values and impose 'em on that part of the world and the, the toxicity that was born out of that everywhere, I think is, it's something that if it happened today, 9/11, we would do exactly the same thing. And that's quite sad. But yeah, I didn't end very optimistically.

Hannah Maguire: I don't think I can say it better than that.

James Taylor: And with that rather gloomy but thoughtful insight from Suruthi. Our time at the museum must come to an end. It has been said that 9/11 was the defining moment of our time with current history divided into two periods before 9/11 and after 9/11. And with that in mind, we would love to hear your own story. IWM is inviting listeners to share their experiences of how 9/11 and the events that followed have impacted your life. More information can be found in our show notes. Thanks again to our guests. Hannah Maguire, Suruthi Bala, Shiraz Maher, and Mohsin Hamid, as well as our curator for this episode. Amanda Mason. My name is James Taylor. The producer was Matt Hill at Rethink Audio with support from Martin Swick, Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums. Thank you for listening and goodbye.