Talking to Terrorists: A Personal Journey from the IRA to Al Qaeda

PETER TAYLOR

Talking to Terrorists

A Personal Journey

from the IRA to Al Qaeda

To my family, friends and colleagues

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit ‘One day it will be good to remember these things’

VIRGIL, AENEID, BOOK ONE, LINES 203–4

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

Preface

Introduction - Recognising Reality

Chapter One - Talking to the IRA

Chapter Two - From the IRA to Al Qaeda

Chapter Three - Talking to Hijack Victims

Chapter Four - Talking to the Interrogators

Chapter Five - Talking to a Convicted Terrorist

Chapter Six - Anatomy of a Sleeper Cell

Photographic Insert 1

Chapter Seven - One Morning in September

Chapter Eight - A Warning Not Heeded

Chapter Nine - Bombs on Bali

Chapter Ten - Understanding the ‘New’ Al Qaeda

Chapter Eleven - Terror on the Ground

Chapter Twelve - Clean Skins

Chapter Thirteen - Terror in the Skies

Photographic Insert 2

Chapter Fourteen - Jihad.com

Chapter Fifteen - Talking to the Victims of Torture

Chapter Sixteen - Journey to the Dark Side

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Preface

The title of this book, Talking to Terrorists, is intended to suggest a broad compass. I’ve talked to many terrorists in nearly forty years of covering the phenomenon that has scarred the lives of so many during the latter years of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. I’ve talked to terrorists not because I sympathise with them – I believe that conflicts should be resolved through dialogue, not destruction – but in order to try to understand their motivation, and to explore why individuals are prepared to kill for a cause, be it secular or religious, in which they believe. In the case of suicide bombers, they’re prepared to kill themselves too. I’ve always hoped that the programmes I’ve made and the books I’ve written may also help others to understand and perhaps reconsider the stereotype of the ‘terrorist’ – the deranged, fanatical gunman, or the bloodthirsty bomber who kills for the sake of killing. The reality is far more complex. I hope that this book may contribute to the continuing debate about how liberal democracies should respond to threats of terrorism and, where appropriate, engage in the process of conflict resolution.

This book isn’t just about me talking to terrorists. It’s also about the security and intelligence agencies – the ‘spooks’ – talking to terrorists, both to obtain evidence to bring them to justice and to elicit information: a process that in some cases has involved torture and serious abuses of human rights.

It’s also about governments talking to terrorists as part of the process of resolving conflict. The British government talked to the IRA (as detailed in the first chapter of the book); the South African Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk talked to Nelson Mandela; the Americans talked to the insurgents in Iraq; and British diplomats – and no doubt American ones too – are talking to the Taliban, although at this stage perhaps only through intermediaries. Which raises the question, will we at some time in the future talk to Al Qaeda? In my view, talking to terrorists may sometimes be a necessary prerequisite of conflict resolution.

I have not set out to write a global study of terrorism, which has been done by many others, but to focus on the IRA and Al Qaeda as they are fundamentally different ‘terrorist’ organisations which I have covered in my work over many years. The book is not intended to be an academic or sociological analysis of terrorism and terrorists but, I hope, a readable and accessible narrative that may illuminate some of the complexities and contradictions of the phenomenon and bring a degree of clarity to the confusion and incomprehension that often surround it. I’ve also endeavoured to provide the all-important historical context to the origins and evolution of these contrasting movements. The conflict with the IRA has, at least for the moment, been resolved, and in the first chapter I concentrate on the mechanisms by which this was achieved, and suggest that they may act as a template for the resolution of other conflicts. The conflict with Al Qaeda is of a different order and remains ongoing.

Finally, the subtitle of the book, A Personal Journey from the IRA to Al Qaeda, describes what this book is. It is not an autobiography but the story of a journey, illustrated with personal anecdotes and observations, of almost forty years. That journey has led me from ignorance in 1972, when as a green young journalist I covered ‘Bloody Sunday’, to, I hope, a greater understanding on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in 2011. I make no apology for making Al Qaeda and the emergence of Islamist extremism the main focus of the book, since that is the direction from which the current threat comes, and it is likely to do so for the foreseeable future. I hope that readers may share my journey and emerge at the end, like me, with a better understanding of these vital issues that have unfortunately become part of the fabric of all our lives.

Introduction

Recognising Reality

The popular perception of terrorists and terrorism is often at variance with the reality. In combating the threat, be it from the IRA, Al Qaeda or other insurgent groups, the keystone of any government’s strategy is to demonise and marginalise the enemy, in the hope of denying it moral and political legitimacy and eroding support for its cause. Over the years I’ve seen governments’ attitudes change following their recognition that the ‘terrorists’ had a cause whose roots had to be addressed, and that a compromise had to be reached if there was to be a stop to the unending shedding of blood and haemorrhaging of human and financial resources. Recognising reality is a prerequisite of ending conflict. As I’ve found on my journey, it’s also a prerequisite of reporting and analysing terrorism. The recognition of these facts did not come early for me, but gradually emerged as the result of a long process in which I engaged with some of those who were regarded as terrorists at the time. Occasionally I was caught up in their attacks. Yes, the journey was long, difficult and at times dangerous. But whatever the setbacks and frustrations along the way, it was always revela-tory, not just in my understanding of the terrorists themselves but in my acquaintance with governments’ efforts to combat them.

At the outset, I recognise the need to define my terms – most importantly of all, what is a terrorist? The legal definition of terrorism is the use of violence for political ends. But what colours the perception of the word depends on two primary considerations. First, what were the circumstances out of which that violence grew? These can range from the denial of civil rights to Catholics in Northern Ireland, the inequities of Apartheid in South Africa or the uprooting of Palestinians from their homeland, to the plight of Muslims living under occupation following the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by America and other Western nations. The IRA never regarded themselves as terrorists, and took exception to those who described them as such. They argued that their ‘armed struggle’ was a legitimate strategy to achieve a political end that was, they maintained, unattainable by peaceful constitutional means.

Another consideration that makes the word difficult to define is that some ‘terrorists’ go on to become Presidents and Prime Ministers. There’s a long history of the transformation of ‘terrorists’ into ‘statesmen’. In 1963 in Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, believed to be one of the leaders of the Mau Mau insurgents who fought British colonial rule, became the country’s first Prime Minister after independence. In 1977 in Israel, Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun, who resisted the British presence in Palestine, became Prime Minister. In 1994 in the Middle East Yasser Arafat, the leader of Fatah, became President of the Palestinian National Authority covering the West Bank and Gaza. In the same year in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the former leader of the African National Congress, became the nation’s first black President. And in 2007 in Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness, formerly the IRA’s most prominent leader, became Deputy First Minister in the province’s power-sharing government.

All judgements about the word ‘terrorist’ are subjective. It’s a word I try to avoid using in my work – and it’s one that is effectively banned on the BBC’s World Service and by Reuters, since many listeners, viewers and readers around the globe may not agree with the definition as applied to certain conflicts, not least that in the Middle East. But it can’t be avoided in writing a book with the title Talking to Terrorists. A terrorist is, literally, a person who uses the weapon of terror to target a state’s political, social and economic institutions. Invariably terrorists are driven by a mixture of political, social or religious grievances that they seek to rectify by the use of violence either to overthrow the state or to force it to address the issues that lie at the root of the recourse to violence. The IRA finally recognised that its atavistic aim of driving the British out of Northern Ireland was not going to be achieved by violent means, and in the end settled for compromise. But the politically uncomfortable reality remains that it was the IRA’s military campaign that finally forced the British government to negotiate. Although the IRA would split hairs to deny it, the fact is that the IRA waged a terrorist campaign to try to achieve its end. So were the IRA terrorists? In the strict sense of the word, the answer has to be yes, however vehemently they and their political wing, Sinn Féin, would deny it.

However, cause and motivation apart, there is a fundamental difference between the terrorist violence used by the IRA and that perpetrated by Al Qaeda, its affiliates and those who support its ideology. There are degrees of terrorism, although that may be of scant comfort to its victims. With notable exceptions, the IRA did not deliberately set out to kill innocent civilians, although when tactically convenient it would, for example, brand workmen employed to repair security-force installations that the IRA had bombed as ‘legitimate’ targets. In stark contrast, Al Qaeda deliberately sets out indiscriminately to murder as many civilians as possible, to create maximum outrage and maximum publicity. The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, and the suicide bombings on London Transport on 7 July 2005, are but two of the most glaring examples. Bali, Madrid, Casablanca and Mumbai have also been the sites of terrorist violence carried out by Islamist groups that, if not directly affiliated to Al Qaeda, are supportive of its ideology. Al Qaeda is, as the IRA was, a terrorist organisation, although of an entirely different order. After 9/11 I asked Gerry Adams if he would describe Al Qaeda as terrorists. He said without hesitation that he would. He would never describe the IRA in the same terms.

However, in writing this book I sometimes put the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ in inverted commas – to indicate a degree of equivocation over the definitions at particular points in the narrative. Again, this indicates the subjectivity of the definition. This may not be an ideal solution, but at least it illustrates that ‘terrorism’ is not always black and white.

* * *

Nelson Mandela is the most famous personification of the cliché ‘from terrorist to statesman’. In 1981 I made a Panorama programme about Mandela and the ANC when he was still a prisoner on Robben Island. I remember looking out to sea from a clifftop in Cape Town at the tiny speck on the horizon seven miles away that had been Mandela’s prison for fifteen years. I asked the then South African Prime Minister, P.W. Botha, about the possibility of releasing his most famous prisoner. ‘We don’t talk to terrorists,’ he replied. In the end, his successor F.W. de Klerk did.

The reason for making the film was to mark the fifth anniversary of the massacre in the Soweto township outside Johannesburg in June 1976, when South African police opened fire on students who were protesting against the Apartheid government’s insistence that the Afrikaans language be taught in Soweto’s schools. I’d heard that many students had subsequently fled South Africa to join the insurgents of the ANC, Africa’s oldest liberation movement, and I wanted to track down and talk to some of them. Were they ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’?

My contact in the ANC, based in the Zambian capital Lusaka at the time, was Tabo Mbeki, then its press officer. I met him in London with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Oliver Tambo, then ANC President, and I remember bringing Mbeki a paper cup of BBC coffee in the Panorama office, never imagining that one day he would become President of South Africa. I remember too being surprised that an Archbishop seemed to be so closely associated with an organisation committed to the use of violence to overthrow the Apartheid regime.

After months of protracted negotiations, I finally got the ANC’s agreement to let me film some former Soweto students training in the bush in Angola, on condition that I never disclosed where they were. Other conditions were that I was to go alone, and to do the filming and sound recording myself. I got my visa from the Angolan authorities in Paris, booked a flight and was ready to go. Then, the day before my planned departure, I received a phone call from Tabo Mbeki, who told me that the trip was off. No reason was given. I rang my ANC contact in Paris and arranged to meet him at Charles de Gaulle airport the following day, in the hope of getting the decision reversed or at the very least receiving an explanation. He said he was unable to enlighten me. The ANC, like Sinn Féin, was centrally controlled and highly disciplined. Orders were given and obeyed. My flight to Luanda was leaving in an hour. I had a ticket and a visa, so I decided to take my chances.

On the long journey south to Angola, I had plenty of time to work out my plan of action when I arrived in Luanda. I would not be met, and I would have no Angolan government minder, so I would be on my own, and would have to play things by ear. I didn’t need a cover story, as I had an official invitation from the ANC, rubber-stamped by the Angolan government. I just needed a convenient lapse of memory that I’d received the phone call cancelling the whole thing. I managed to talk my way through immigration and security by waving the original piece of paper from the ANC, but once I was through passport control I discovered that I couldn’t book into a hotel without the authorisation of the Angolan authorities. Again, I managed to talk my way around this, ending up in a hotel that had seen better days and more guests, ironically named the Hotel Panorama. My room had a commanding view and aroma of the harbour’s less than fragrant mudflats.

The following morning I made my way to the ANC office just outside Luanda, where I found a very surprised-looking ANC Commissar. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you get the message?’ ‘Message? What message?’ I replied disingenuously. There followed a knife-edge discussion over two hours in which I tried to persuade him to let me do what I’d come to do, and he tried to convince me that orders were orders. It was one of those times when you do everything you can to avoid returning to base empty-handed. I was thinking too of the financial cost of the trip. In the end, to my amazement and relief, the Commissar seemed to relent, and told me to come back the following morning, without intimating what might or might not be in store. He said a driver would pick me up at the hotel at the crack of dawn.

A grey, humid morning broke over the mudflats. It didn’t seem like a good omen. I checked my 8mm Bolex camera, cassette recorder, batteries and spare film and sound cassettes. Those were pre-video days, when film and sound had to be synchronised back in London. I dreaded the thought of achieving my goal, but returning to London with blank tapes because I hadn’t checked the equipment thoroughly, or had pressed the wrong button.

My driver arrived as arranged, and beckoned me into a battered vehicle which, like the hotel, had seen better days. We then drove for what seemed forever, out of Luanda and into the bush. The car finally stopped at a clearing in the middle of nowhere, where my friend the Commissar was waiting. ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Please wait here.’ I still had no idea what was going to happen, but did as directed with fingers crossed, camera and tape recorder at the ready. Then suddenly I heard singing, and a column of around a dozen young men and women emerged from the bush about two hundred metres away. They were dressed in green and khaki combat fatigues, wearing camouflage caps and carrying AK-47s, the signature weapon of insurgents the world over. I nervously started to film, hoping I’d got the focus and aperture right. ‘Mandela, Mandela, Mandela. Freedom is our song,’ they sang as they marched to a spreading baobab tree right in front of me.

There, shaded from the early-morning sun, another Commissar proceeded to give them a lesson in Marxist economics, outlining how, when the revolution came, South Africa’s banks and mines would all be nationalised so the wealth would be in the hands of the people. There was then a question-and-answer session on the ‘struggle’. ‘We shall not submit,’ one of the student guerrillas told the teacher. ‘We will fight back with every means in our power in defence of our freedom, our country and our future.’ ‘Precisely! Great, comrade!’ exclaimed the teacher, waving his arms in enthusiastic appreciation.

The lecture over, it was time to do what I had come for, to talk to the young ANC recruits about the Soweto massacre and their intentions. They sat in a semi-circle and first sang a song about 1976. I talked to one young woman in combat fatigues with three of her top teeth missing. ‘In 1976 we were schoolchildren fighting with stones against guns,’ she said. ‘I saw the necessity to go out and take guns and face a gun with a gun.’ One of her comrades echoed the sentiment. ‘Our people, the African majority, have become convinced out of their own bitter experience they will have to reply to the gun by the gun, and that the thousands of young peoplea who were murdered in 1976 shall surely be avenged.’ But what made them think they could defeat the most powerful army in Africa? ‘There’s not even a single enemy who can defeat a people who are fighting a just cause, no matter how powerful it may be,’ the young woman replied. ‘It was proved in Vietnam.’ She and her comrades had obviously been well schooled in what to say. I pointed out that in Vietnam the Americans weren’t defending their own country, as white South Africa was. ‘Even the Boers themselves, we’re going to defeat them,’ she said. ‘We are determined to fight and kill them.’ I then asked if she thought that one day Nelson Mandela would be released. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The government will not release Nelson Mandela, but we will release him.’

I had what I came for, but there was no guarantee that film and sound would come out. Had I pressed the right buttons? Had I got the focus right? Had I remembered to turn the tape recorder on? All those things went through my mind as I was driven back to my hotel by an ANC driver. When he dropped me off, I asked him to wait while I went to get a bottle of Scotch I’d bought in case I was in a position to say thank you to someone. I handed it to him and asked him to give it to the Commissar with my thanks. He promised he would, and said he would pick me up in the morning and take me to the airport.

The following morning he arrived late, and almost paralytic. I suspected he’d drained the bottle himself. What should I do? Risk going with him, or try to find a taxi at the risk of missing the plane? I wanted to get out of Angola as quickly as possible with my valuable material, so I decided to take the risk, and jumped into his car. It was the hairiest ride I’ve ever taken, but we made it, and I caught the flight. Touching down at Heathrow never felt so good. Then there was an agonising wait of a week while the film was being processed. Would it come out? To my enormous relief it did. It’s the only footage in existence of ANC guerrillas training. But I wouldn’t like to go through the experience again.

The reality of reporting terrorism is that it occasionally involves facing danger. I’m sometimes asked if I’ve ever felt my life was at risk. The answer is yes.

My producer David Wickham and I had been making a Panorama programme on Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 1985, following the incursion three years earlier, codenamed Operation Peace for the Galilee. We were filming with an Israeli convoy in South Lebanon that was going to resupply a forward base. I was in a car with an Israeli army minder at the front of the convoy, and David and the film crew were in an armoured personnel carrier (APC) at the back. In the middle was a large tanker bringing precious fresh water to the troops at their forward base. We were driving through a beautiful orange grove, heavy with sweet scent, when suddenly there was an explosion, and a shower of dust and rocks. The tanker had been hit by a land-mine. The explosion was immediately followed by the rattle of gunfire from the orange groves. We had been ambushed by Shiite ‘terrorists’ who were resisting the Israeli occupation of their land. My Israeli minder instinctively threw open the door of the car and pushed me out into a shallow ditch, telling me to keep my head down. He then opened up with a burst of defensive fire from his automatic rifle.

The ditch afforded only a minimum of cover, and I remember lying there and looking up into the orange groves from where the bullets were flying, and being aware that I was probably right in the line of fire. I had been under fire before, in Northern Ireland, but never quite like this. My most immediate concern was for David and the film crew in the APC. Had they been hit? Was it their vehicle that had been blown up? I couldn’t see because of the dust and general chaos. Were they dead or alive? If they were dead, I felt an odd onrush of incipient guilt that it was them and not me. In almost the same flash I thought of my wife, Sue, and my children, Ben and Sam. Would I ever see them again? All these thoughts rushed through my head in the noise and confusion of the gun battle. I had often wondered how I would react in such a situation, and in a strange kind of way it was almost a relief that at last it had happened. I found, to my surprise, that although I was shaken, I didn’t panic. In fact I felt strangely calm and clear-headed. I accepted that there was nothing that I could do except keep my fingers crossed and my head down, and lie there until the shooting stopped.

After a while an Israeli officer gave the all-clear. The gun battle must have lasted for ten or fifteen minutes. All I know is that it felt much longer. For the soldiers in South Lebanon such an ambush was almost routine. They knew they were sitting ducks as they drove through the territory of the enemy, whom they invariably referred to as ‘terrorists’. The ‘terrorists’ used the same term to describe the Israelis. To my relief, as I climbed out of the ditch I saw David’s head popping out of the turret of the APC. Each of us shouted to check that the other was all right. We both were. The driver of the water tanker was only slightly injured, as the armour protecting the vehicle had served its purpose. The orange groves suddenly seemed to smell even sweeter.