:00:28. > :00:30.Hello, and welcome to Dateline London's Review of the Year
:00:31. > :00:32.2015 - a year dominated by fears and failures over terror
:00:33. > :00:34.and immigration, moves to end the conflict in Syria,
:00:35. > :00:37.and Russia and the United States making common cause
:00:38. > :00:39.against so-called Islamic State - well, sort of.
:00:40. > :00:42.It's been a year of economic troubles in China and the Eurozone,
:00:43. > :00:44.and in Britain, a year in which David Cameron won
:00:45. > :00:47.the British general election and Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership
:00:48. > :00:54.Our top team of reviewers are: Ned Temko, who is a writer
:00:55. > :01:26.Let's begin who writes on Middle East affairs,
:01:27. > :01:31.started very good for them. They managed to expand, capturing Palmyra
:01:32. > :01:35.in Syria. But I believe the end of the year is completely different.
:01:36. > :01:38.They are abusing a lot of territories now. I believe the
:01:39. > :01:48.Maddie could fall to the hands of Iraqi forces any day now. -- Ramadi.
:01:49. > :01:54.The area is congested with drones, everything. It seems they are having
:01:55. > :01:58.a very tough time nowadays in particular. I don't believe the next
:01:59. > :02:02.year will be a rosy one for them. It will be a struggle. I think the
:02:03. > :02:10.start to lose start to lose some of their
:02:11. > :02:17.sharpness or their image as a victorious state, as they call it.
:02:18. > :02:20.But the problem is, we do not have an alternative for it. We know, we
:02:21. > :02:25.have war planes, drones, troops on the ground, the Kurdish
:02:26. > :02:35.countries fighting the Islamic State. But the problem is, suppose
:02:36. > :02:47.we actually get rid of it tomorrow, which I doubt- what will
:02:48. > :02:58.the problem. We can say, yeah, from what we are breeding,
:02:59. > :03:03.reasons, people are getting disgruntled with them -- from what
:03:04. > :03:06.we are reading. But say we do manage to get rid of them in Ramadi or
:03:07. > :03:13.Raqqa. How then are you going to prise away the people for whom their
:03:14. > :03:18.support or capacity with Islamic State is not ideological, it is
:03:19. > :03:23.practical, financial? So then what do you do? How do you make sure that
:03:24. > :03:28.Islamic State or more stew not have the capacity to come back, because
:03:29. > :03:42.there is still a vacuum? -- or works. I don't want to make it to a
:03:43. > :03:51.intellectual, because they are awful. The lesson from Kobani is a
:03:52. > :03:59.few push back from Islamic State... Every time you push back, they
:04:00. > :04:04.cannot fight back, because they are weaker than we are. The problem is
:04:05. > :04:09.the shape shifting. Before there was Islamic State, there was Al-Qaeda in
:04:10. > :04:13.Iraq. You can destroy Islamic State, but you will not destroy the
:04:14. > :04:24.ideology that draws people in. And the traditions that give it rich.
:04:25. > :04:31.That might give it route. Somewhere in Britain a kid is sitting at his
:04:32. > :04:35.desk saying, look, 100 nations to take on 30,000 fighters for the
:04:36. > :04:40.caliphate. I want to join the caliphate. It is not as though we
:04:41. > :04:43.have really been fighting them. The only reason the western states are
:04:44. > :04:47.taking them seriously know is because they have become a terrorist
:04:48. > :04:53.threat to Europe. The problem has been for the past year if not longer
:04:54. > :04:59.that the proxies, the agents who are concerned with Islamic State, they
:05:00. > :05:02.are more interested in serving their own interests in the region than
:05:03. > :05:09.they are in getting rid of Islamic State. If I can make a broader
:05:10. > :05:13.point, because I think we will come back to it when we discuss British
:05:14. > :05:18.politics in the political year that has just passed, there is a
:05:19. > :05:22.dichotomy between the ability to diagnose what is wrong, which we all
:05:23. > :05:26.understand, which usually do long-term strategy, and the
:05:27. > :05:32.interrogation for some simple panacea. I think one thing
:05:33. > :05:36.policymakers often forget about the Middle East is a really congregated
:05:37. > :05:44.place, and this stuff is difficult, and it takes time. -- a complicated
:05:45. > :05:48.place. It requires good governance, and one thing that is not popular
:05:49. > :05:55.that it requires is positive engagement and not isolationism from
:05:56. > :05:58.the rest of the world. I want to come back to you because you have
:05:59. > :06:04.written books about this and so on. I wonder if in the West in
:06:05. > :06:09.particular we get hung up on names, Al-Qaeda or in this case Islamic
:06:10. > :06:15.State, Daesh. We'll is actually the phenomenon and the ideas behind it,
:06:16. > :06:20.the problems behind it, economic problems, are not being addressed.
:06:21. > :06:29.So all you were going to change if the names of the people. -- all you
:06:30. > :06:37.are going to change is the names. If you want to understand the
:06:38. > :06:49.phenomena, this man is the most popular man in the Middle East. Time
:06:50. > :07:04.magazine chose him. There are seven words. First, humiliation. Then
:07:05. > :07:09.frustration. Underestimation. We underestimate the strength of the
:07:10. > :07:13.Islamic State. Then marginalisation. There was a marginalisation of the
:07:14. > :07:31.Sony in Iraq because of the American occupation at that time. -- Sunni.
:07:32. > :07:41.Then we have social media which is playing a big part in the fever of
:07:42. > :07:48.Aslan act states. We must understand this phenomena. -- Islamic State.
:07:49. > :07:52.There is an economic side, but the political side, the religious side,
:07:53. > :08:00.the marginalisation - we have to look at the whole region. We can't
:08:01. > :08:10.save the region. We are already meddling. Even if everybody withdrew
:08:11. > :08:21.and wasn't meddling, there would be meddling from Turkey and Saudi
:08:22. > :08:25.Arabia into Syria. And Iran. We are talking now about the ideology and
:08:26. > :08:29.can it be defeated, but there is also this listing, which is an
:08:30. > :08:36.unprecedented disintegration of the state, a nation state, that is
:08:37. > :08:40.comparatively young. All Western policy seems to be based on, we will
:08:41. > :08:44.get everyone round the table in Vienna, Geneva, wherever with nice
:08:45. > :08:51.hotels, and should we invite the adult competence on the ground? No,
:08:52. > :08:59.we will invite the de facto Syrian Government. -- the combatants on the
:09:00. > :09:04.ground. Does the map of the Middle East even make sense any more? How
:09:05. > :09:12.can you begin to address all of the chaos in which Daesh, Al-Qaeda in
:09:13. > :09:16.Iraq prior to it, are able to flourish, until you get a better
:09:17. > :09:21.handle on, just what is the nation state any more in the Middle East?
:09:22. > :09:27.Syria is disintegrating at such a pace, how can be reconstructed? The
:09:28. > :09:31.other big practical thing on the ground is the agreement saying, this
:09:32. > :09:32.is Iraq, this is Syria, this is Lebanon. This is nonsense now. It
:09:33. > :09:47.just doesn't exist. Rachel, we previewed this. You can
:09:48. > :09:58.shake your head... We disagree on everything. If you, as I did, lived
:09:59. > :10:02.in Beirut during the civil war in the late 1970s, you realised then
:10:03. > :10:11.that is one of the great challenges and one of the temptations to stick
:10:12. > :10:18.with people like a brutal dictator with a stable Government was that
:10:19. > :10:26.this drawing of Allianz -- lines on a map by British and French imperial
:10:27. > :10:31.powers ignored what where real divisions of tripe, ethnicity,
:10:32. > :10:40.religion, and those are important. # Tribe. I just want to say I
:10:41. > :10:51.disagree with anything Rachel says. LAUGHTER
:10:52. > :10:55.You can counter. The problem is you following to this assumption of the
:10:56. > :11:00.Middle East is just there is a weirdo bundle of sectarian ethnicity
:11:01. > :11:06.is like obligations, let's just let them be sectarian. Maybe there was a
:11:07. > :11:11.colonial line in the sand, but since then both nations and peoples have
:11:12. > :11:18.existed as nations. -- those nations. The Iraqis wouldn't say
:11:19. > :11:24.they are Sunni or sheer, they would say, we are Iraqi. To say to them
:11:25. > :11:29.know you have no national identity, I find that really patronising and
:11:30. > :11:37.unhelpful. It would be, but no one has said it. That is kind of what
:11:38. > :11:43.you just said. I am surprised we do use the terminology, Daesh. Why
:11:44. > :12:00.can't we say Islamic State? Island of France says Daesh -- Francois
:12:01. > :12:03.Hollande. David Cameron says this. We get hang-up on these baddies,
:12:04. > :12:08.that is the point. The British should know about anybody else, in
:12:09. > :12:16.Northern Ireland, you banned one organisation, it changed its name to
:12:17. > :12:27.something else. Exactly. It shows how they do not understand the
:12:28. > :12:31.region. By seeing Daesh, you are not belittling it, you are pushing
:12:32. > :12:38.people to it. -- by saying Daesh. Can I move on to a slightly
:12:39. > :12:43.different area, which is... We will get to Britain in the end. So-called
:12:44. > :12:53.Britain. LAUGHTER
:12:54. > :13:01.Or the United Kingdom, as some say. Russia. Good year for Putin or
:13:02. > :13:03.badger? -- bad your? Probably a better year for him than for people
:13:04. > :13:08.who colluded in making it easier for
:13:09. > :13:17.him. I would say the prognosis is not good. For one thing, the
:13:18. > :13:28.economic situation year, is at least uncertain. And
:13:29. > :13:34.second of all, his predators is probably should have discovered in
:13:35. > :13:39.Afghanistan, there is no such thing as a cost free military
:13:40. > :13:45.intervention. -- his predecessors. I'm not sure he really understands
:13:46. > :13:59.what he is getting into. Rachel will disagree. The law of averages. One
:14:00. > :14:03.year ago, everybody hated him because of the Ukraine. Now he has
:14:04. > :14:10.pulled away from the Ukraine, and there is a lot of people having
:14:11. > :14:21.grudging respect for Vladimir Putin. If Balmer says A, everybody else
:14:22. > :14:49.says Z. -- Barack Obama says. Putin has come in and forced
:14:50. > :14:50.from America, but didn't happen at all Russia went all in. Russia isn't
:14:51. > :15:00.all in fighting Islamic states, Oracle in supporting Assad and
:15:01. > :15:05.killing other rebels. -- VR all in supporting Assad. Every time Russia
:15:06. > :15:10.gets involved in some kind of conflict in the Muslim world, one
:15:11. > :15:16.daily wake up and we have got blood up to their ankles and it is Russian
:15:17. > :15:22.blood. Do you think it has been a good year, if you can say this, for
:15:23. > :15:26.Assad? Because he will at least be there for a while. In the sense that
:15:27. > :15:31.what he was seeing in the beginning, that he is fighting a violent
:15:32. > :15:38.extremist terror movement, has now become true and has become what we
:15:39. > :15:43.are all seeing, then yes, he has one, if we can use that term for
:15:44. > :15:48.somebody who has been so murderous and caused his people to leave the
:15:49. > :15:55.country. He has won the narrative. I do agree that in some says Russia
:15:56. > :15:58.has forced the issue. I am surprised it took them that long to engage and
:15:59. > :16:03.protect their interests. We always knew they were going to and that the
:16:04. > :16:10.logic of the Syria war was a proxy war on top of the Civil War. That it
:16:11. > :16:17.would just keep escalating. The fact that Russia did not get involved as
:16:18. > :16:25.Galvan used -- galvanised the West into taking it more seriously. Why
:16:26. > :16:28.is America retreating -- while America is retreating from the
:16:29. > :16:33.Middle East, Putin is consolidating his presence in the middle east. He
:16:34. > :16:42.has three pieces in Syria. Now he managed to impose his well in
:16:43. > :16:53.Vienna, later in New York. The last resolution of the security council,
:16:54. > :16:59.to 254 - he did not mention any words about the future of Bashar
:17:00. > :17:06.al-Assad. You manage to assassinate one of the strongest militia in
:17:07. > :17:11.Syria -- he managed. It was very obvious, he said, I did it. A very
:17:12. > :17:18.well-known fact there. So he is imposing his will. Yes, he will face
:17:19. > :17:25.problems, because the price of oil is dropping from $120 per barrel, to
:17:26. > :17:38.less than $22 per barrel. But his enemies in the Middle East will also
:17:39. > :17:44.suffer. Also, they aren't 90% dependent on oil revenues. -- they
:17:45. > :17:49.are 90% dependent. He is they are now, and has imposed his will. He
:17:50. > :17:55.emerged as a strongman and is very popular in certain parts of the
:17:56. > :18:02.East. Definitely he has a huge majority there. -- the Middle East.
:18:03. > :18:07.Let's have a look at Britain, because if one year ago someone had
:18:08. > :18:12.offered me reasonable odds as to whether David Cameron would win
:18:13. > :18:17.outright in the general election and Jeremy Corbyn would lead the Labour
:18:18. > :18:23.Party, would I have taken it? And none of us really thought that would
:18:24. > :18:27.have predicted it. David Cameron was one of the few things I have ever
:18:28. > :18:36.gotten almost right on this very programme. I was on right after the
:18:37. > :18:40.Israeli election, and remember we laughed, saying camera would be the
:18:41. > :18:49.same thing, but it would be Scots instead. -- Cameron. I think that
:18:50. > :18:53.was partly a surprise. It was a conventional election, however.
:18:54. > :18:57.Because I think fundamentally, not enough voters trusted Labour on the
:18:58. > :19:03.economy and not enough voters could envisage seriously Ed Miliband in
:19:04. > :19:08.number ten Downing St. And the Scottish national party factor. I
:19:09. > :19:16.think what has changed profoundly is that all over the world, from Donald
:19:17. > :19:20.Trump to hear Jeremy Corbyn, to a certain extent in Spain, the
:19:21. > :19:26.remaking of the political landscape there, in Portugal it is happening
:19:27. > :19:31.now, Marie Le Pen in France, there is this sense we hate all
:19:32. > :19:35.politicians and the political establishment, which may have been
:19:36. > :19:38.true in the past. But the combination of this perfectly
:19:39. > :19:42.short-term medium where you can call yourself into thinking this is the
:19:43. > :19:48.real world, this is how you govern states and how it politics is done,
:19:49. > :19:53.is potentially hugely destabilising. I think what we are seeing, and it
:19:54. > :19:57.feeds into what is happening in the Middle East, the migration crisis,
:19:58. > :20:02.is a sort of Castle and it is Europe wide, and it is over what kind of
:20:03. > :20:06.Europe we wanted be. I think the rise of the far right and the rise
:20:07. > :20:10.of the left is anti-of territory. You do not get a rise of the far
:20:11. > :20:16.right just because of an economic crisis. You get it because of cuts.
:20:17. > :20:22.-- it is anti-austerity. It creates the momentum where people feel they
:20:23. > :20:28.have to battle over resources that are structuring king. We have to
:20:29. > :20:33.accept it is cuts that have caused the rise of the far right. --
:20:34. > :20:41.resources that are shrinking. I think what we are seeing across
:20:42. > :20:50.Europe, including in the UK was Corbyn, is an anti-austerities
:20:51. > :20:55.narrative taking hold, a rupture, linking up and trying to find an
:20:56. > :21:00.alternative to what are necessary, ideological cuts. This is really not
:21:01. > :21:06.profoundly about policy. It is about something else. We are almost there.
:21:07. > :21:10.We have to step back and mention refugees. The response of Europe to
:21:11. > :21:21.the refugee crisis has been pretty abysmal. It has been a terrible year
:21:22. > :21:26.for the European Union in general. It is not good at making decisions
:21:27. > :21:29.because it is set up to have some respect for national sovereignty.
:21:30. > :21:34.The thing is, they can barely get it together to deal with them economic
:21:35. > :21:40.crisis, and they haven't done that. When you have a geopolitical crisis,
:21:41. > :21:44.as used with the Bosnia conflict, no with refugees coming in from Syria,
:21:45. > :21:49.Iraq and Afghanistan, there is never going to be a consensus. Is
:21:50. > :21:56.happening against this background of the world economy that no matter...
:21:57. > :21:59.You can put certain numbers out that say, we are in recovery. But if
:22:00. > :22:05.you're just an ordinary person who works for a wage and know that any
:22:06. > :22:10.week you could you lose your job and could be months, years until you
:22:11. > :22:15.find another one, the fear in society allows space for ideological
:22:16. > :22:20.parties of the right and left to make space. This new thing, you
:22:21. > :22:22.don't have to read the newspaper any more but just sent a tweak to
:22:23. > :22:32.someone who agrees and reinforces your role through. -- a tweet. There
:22:33. > :22:48.is an exaggeration about the refugee problems. In Lebanon, 10,000 square
:22:49. > :22:59.metres. Lebanon has have a million three alone. Jordan has 2 million, a
:23:00. > :23:04.small country. The West sent warplanes, drones to Syria, and then
:23:05. > :23:11.went 100,000 of them coming for shelter, for protection, even for
:23:12. > :23:16.jobs, they say, no, do not come to us. This is unbelievable, to be
:23:17. > :23:23.honest. We have to be ashamed of ourselves, because we are not taking
:23:24. > :23:32.them. 2 million in Jordan, 1.5 million in Syria. The politicians
:23:33. > :23:36.have been horrendous across Europe. Their response has been, we will
:23:37. > :23:42.just fortify our borders and harden our hearts. But the popular response
:23:43. > :23:50.has been completely different. The grassroots response. Not everywhere.
:23:51. > :23:54.No, not everywhere, but if you look at people who have chosen to spend
:23:55. > :24:02.their Christmas holidays in the jungle in Calais. That has been...
:24:03. > :24:06.We have two minutes left, and I cannot let it pass without asking
:24:07. > :24:10.you to explain the Donald Trump phenomenon. That fits into this. It
:24:11. > :24:13.is somebody who says, until we figure out what is going on, we
:24:14. > :24:18.needed to ban Muslims from the United States. Donald Trump is not a
:24:19. > :24:23.Pied Piper putting thoughts into people's heads. He just knows, he
:24:24. > :24:29.has a feral sense of what people's fears are, a certain large
:24:30. > :24:35.minorities's fears are in America. And people agree with that. I just
:24:36. > :24:40.don't know what to say any more. Seriously. The Republican party is
:24:41. > :24:46.one of the two parties in America's 2-party system. The idea that this
:24:47. > :24:54.person can in some way be leading the field, it should tell everyone
:24:55. > :25:00.about the state of American society. It is a media society. He is a game
:25:01. > :25:10.show host, essentially, and because he is making every issue as a
:25:11. > :25:14.demagogue,... The problem is, the politics of fear is spreading in the
:25:15. > :25:19.United States and Europe. The year of Muslims. To ban a family of
:25:20. > :25:24.Muslims with kids from visiting the United States. This is not Trump, it
:25:25. > :25:27.is the American Government. I am banned from the United States.
:25:28. > :25:34.Imagine that, simply because they do not like my politics. I'm not sure
:25:35. > :25:42.this programme is going to help with that. The politics of fear are
:25:43. > :25:46.spreading now, and they are using immigration, Muslims, anything to
:25:47. > :25:53.attract voters. This is the problem. We will lead 2015 there.
:25:54. > :25:55.That's it for Dateline London for this week -
:25:56. > :25:59.You can comment on the programme on Twitter - @gavinesler.