26/03/2016 Dateline London

Hello and welcome to Dateline London.

The Brussels murders - the consequences for all

And, as a DJ on a British radio station put it this week,

"chocolate - that's what Easter is all about."

My guests this week are Catherine Pepinster

of The Tablet, Agnes Poirier, UK editor of Marianne,

Mina I'll Oraibi, who is an Iraqi journalist and political

analyst, and Henry Chu, who is an American journalist.

Within minutes - literally - of news of the Brussels atrocities,

politicians and commentators were alive with blame.

It was all the fault of western policy in the Middle East,

of the Belgian authorities, the failing European Union,

immigration and migrants who fail to integrate and so on.

We will touch on some of these points in a moment,

but can we begin by laying the blame where it belongs -

with the band of losers who actually carried out the attacks?

What lessons can we now learn from the bombings

They were people on the fringes of society with very little stake in

society which they hate. Where to start? Let's start with

intelligence. We are discovering now from Friday, we know that it is the

same cell that carried out the Paris and Brussels attack. We hope that

Francois Hollande who said it is in the process of being wiped coat is

partly true but it is extraordinary when you think about it. They were

all based in Molenbeek, Brussels. They carried deadly attacks in Paris

then Brussels. Brussels was supposed to take place at Easter weekend

apparently and be like Paris so even worse in terms of casualties and

shoot outs in the streets that didn't happen on Tuesday. The

massive failures of intelligence, when you think about it. It is mind

blowing. It is a political failure in Belgium. I remember well. There

is no political Central power. You only have to work on the streets of

Brussels to know that. It has been decades. The central power in

Brussels, who runs Belgium? They have been without government for two

years. When you think about intelligence, few think what we need

is more cooperation, more intelligence gathering and sharing

and it has. The head of Europe said it is happening. It is taking far

too long. It is far too slow, but it is happening and when you're here,

breaks -- Brexit is the cue for us to leave Europe because we will be

safer somehow but we forget ten years ago the first home-grown

jihadists were UK passport holders in London. At the time, I can't

remember any politicians are commentators in Europe saying we

should reject Britain goes we're going to be invaded by UK jihadists.

All the French politicians are cocky about solidarity. You think there is

resentment about Brussels? -- talking about solidarity. Belgium

has failed to live up to the kind of responsibility but expect. Yes, but

there is no state in Belgium so of course there is resentment and

frustration. We love the Belgians but naivete can kill. When the

French by Minister went to Brussels. It was fighting to stop being

angelic and naive. I remember when Brussels was in lockdown after the

Paris attack in November. They said, don't worry, they will give

themselves up and I was looking at them thinking, you mean a white flag

and they are going to leave their home like this? Surely you can't

believe this. Someone recently said Judge is a failed state. It has the

world record in not having government. In a place that we now

realise that per capita it has more people who have gone to Syria and

come back and forth than any other European country so unfortunately

for those who were opting for Brexit, it is inescapable that when

you have intelligence sharing, it's your only as strong as your weakest

link and Belgium has a very weak link here. It is ideas that showed

up these links, you don't detach yourself. It is perhaps a little too

easy to entirely blame Belgium and I suppose I'm a bit sentimental about

it given my father came from there, but we're supposed to have the EU

counterterrorism organisation and that has failed, too. It is

ineffective and surely has to be looked at. The former head of MI5

gave a public lecture recently and he said countries which go on and on

about intelligence sharing usually have little intelligence to share

and he meant countries like Belgium frankly and not France and Britain

and the United States. We are also part of another intelligence sharing

group, which is America, us, Canada, New Zealand and I think Australia.

That is reasonably effective but I suppose one of the problems with

intelligence is that people who worked in intelligence are always

suspicious of everybody else, even as theirs allies so that has got to

be gotten over. I agree with Catherine, there is a lot being set

to blame the Belgians but let's not forget, this can happen in different

part of the world. There are failures and the need to be

addressed. The problem is if you have people who have had their hands

on explosives and guns and have been able to make a rank of actual

criminals coming together and then want to carry out an attack, they

are going to carry out that attack so it is about the intelligence and

before they get to that step, but it almost feels inevitable that some

ten attack will happen, how it is and how many people they can kill,

those are the details change things. The issue with intelligence to make

it actionable. You had taught saying they had given information from July

about one of these chemicals and suicide bombers and no action was

taken. They were on a watchlist. We have heard an American watchlist of

two people. What does it mean when you're on the watch list? And many

can you watch? Another thing internationally is there has been no

real agreement about what you do about the people who go to Iraq,

Syria, the beer, other places to fight and then come back. -- Libya.

Some are not getting training. They are using arms and it would want to

leave the country to go and fight. Then come back to these countries.

What are they going to do with these skills? There is no real answer to

that. Whatever criticism we make make of the Belgians, there have

been terror attacks in Britain, America, Turkey. Even places but

really strong functioning intelligence services can't watch

everybody and all of their citizens. Margaret Thatcher said the only have

to be lucky once, where she has to be lucky of the time. Society as to

be lucky all the time in terms of making sure these plots don't happen

but also just in terms of you are talking about here, how reaction, it

was not so long ago, in living memory, that London and other parts

of the UK were used to the threat of terrorism, it hung over this country

from another source, from the IRA and people went about their daily

lives. They didn't give in to it, whatever that should mean, and they

did not react with the hysteria we are seeing happen in ways to Islamic

terrorism. That didn't happen with the higher rate and so I think we

also have to be careful about to which extremes we go in. The IRA,

the purpose and history was very different from the caliphates. It

was situated, located somewhere, not everywhere in the world. It was a

different threat. But it was terror. You just come back from Iraq and we

also know that the United States, the Pentagon, spoke of American

success taking out Islamic State. Do you by the end of analysis which

goes? They are being contained in Serbia therefore there will be more

trouble elsewhere in places like Brussels -- Syria? First of all,

Iraq, Syria, Turkey, different, Muslim and Middle eastern countries

have to deal with this daily. We just had a suicide bombing in Iraq,

45 people killed, and that is a continued threat. Also the problem

with it is not so much about religion, it is people who are

rightly tried to get political ends. They want to have their own

territory which they have been able to carve out in Iraq. In June it

will be two years since he took over the city. There will be training we

can get money and start sending out people so the longer they hold

territory, they are taking a foothold in Libya which is a direct

threat to Europe. The longer they hold their territory, the stronger

they will be. In terms of taking out numbers of Isis -- the number two of

Isis, it doesn't really change the fact there are no strong sales and

they have been able to function because they have territories so

that is the number one priority for many Iraqis and people in the

region, to feel that they can't be working out of territory. One of the

things that has always puzzled me of the idea of a so-called caliphate,

if this is so popular in such a great idea, why are there so few

people? It seems people have been running in the millions to get away

from this great idea. Literally in the millions and the idea of a

caliphate is not popular. Nobody has been calling for a caliphate in

terms of regular social circles are in schools or so forth, this is

again to manipulate political failure is all political parties in

the Arab world, and there have been many, and also in different parts of

Middle eastern countries. We have had different ideas of theocracy

working so people look at Iran and think you have theocracy, that

works, and it doesn't for many of its people. When you live in a

country that is dictated by theocracy is horrific to live in.

What has happened is a failure in Iraq and Syria of governance so you

had people who were fleeing and groups being formed to fight but we

don't have enough time here to go into the failure of how Syria was

dealt with which led to where we are on the scene with Iraq, there was a

huge security vacuum and 33% of the country was left without any sort of

law-enforcement. Imagine what any criminal group underground that also

uses religion would do in any part of the world? And people carrying

out the world are not the number twos that the US and other allies

are targeting and we were joking about how the US would say, or

satirical publication visit, 80% of our number twos have been killed and

another one takes place. The people carrying out attacks are not people

in leadership positions and that the treatment is going to continue

whether the finance is in place or not. Did you see anything changing

as a result of this? It is not drawn, Glasgow or London next week,

fingers crossed, but in terms of what you can actually do more

confidently, is there anything people should think about? I think

what we can do in terms of hearing people's solutions deeply confusing

because we have this issue becoming part of the EU referendum debate in

this country so people like Richard Dearlove pop-up and say, what we

need to do is leave Europe in terms of how we deal with this crisis in

this country and then along comes the Home Secretary and head of the

Metropolitan police saying, what we need to do to deal with this is to

stay in Europe so we have this really worrying way in which both

sides of the EU debate has become triceps fear -- project there. It is

the hardest one to tackle with the crisis we are facing. People's fear

has become the driving force in the argument. It is also a question of

the weakness of democracy and we have to be quite careful because in

the 1930s, democracy was quite weak and totalitarian regimes took the

helm of the affairs in Europe. There is dissatisfaction about Europe

because governments are being seen as weak on security and terrorism

and migration. Two distinctive issues, but they have been at the

same time. There was a lot of criticism about Turkey and it is not

a big deal but we have the rise of the far right and I think it is

necessary and urgent that governments, all governments of the

European Union and European institutions, look strong and a

strong means muscular, then fine, and to act, to be seen as acting and

also acting obviously against terrorism, so security. Also in

terms of migrants because the floor must be stemmed somehow. That would

restore some hope in Europeans and it is extremely important that the

far right doesn't continue going the way it does because in the end it is

the self-destruction of Europe, I think. He said that heavily, what

Reagan to go on to next. The Pope was voted the world's most

popular leader this week. I don't remember actually

being asked to vote, but is this a vote of confidence

in the Pontiff, or a lack of enthusiasm for Obama,

Cameron, Xi Jinping, And it comes at Eastertime when -

as one British radio DJ put How important is Christianity now in

developed and developing countries? How important is the Pope's

leadership? It was interesting when people chose the Pope but if you

look at the others you can see why! In thinking about this and why he is

so popular, I took a look at the ideas about charismatic leadership

from a political scientist and she says that charismatic leadership

works because of image, because the leaders come from a lower economic

background and not the established ruling elite, that the leader has

vitality, great composure under stress and determination and

stubbornness commode with the revolutionary agenda and actually

that's Pope Francis in many ways and I think not many others around that

you've mentioned have those characteristics. He is a bit of an

outsider, he is not the people expected, he is from South America

and has determination. He is also any privileged desertion in a way

that other readers to enjoy in that he gets to be moral and spiritual,

we need those kind of leaders. Doesn't have too sully his hands in

political whiz, he doesn't have to solve migration or be re-elected. He

does have two deal with other people and the Vatican saw that as some

policy. It is great, but he has been at loggerheads with Donald Trump and

they have gone at each other but I want a bracket them together in

terms of this phenomenon on people who are attracting followers and

attention because they are now pointing out the failures of

traditional feel yours of leadership -- failures of traditional

leadership. Pope Francis is it additional leader within the church

because it depends on the authority people vested in him and legal

authorities. People can point to the failures of the status quo in ways

the leaders representing the status quo. I did my research by looking at

Reader's Digest at who is the most trusted American. It was thanks! --

Tom Hanks, followed by Sandra Bullock. The top former actress. You

have all been making points about leaders and our disquiet about

failures. Leaders have always made mistakes but it seems like if you

look around the world it is not a good time for leadership. I think we

are stuck in terms of short-term. People look at how much attention

leaders are getting. Donald Trump, reality TV, how reality TV has

actually enclosed itself on people's psyches which looks real but most of

the time it is being made up. One of the issues in the US and Europe is,

what people expecting from their leaders? It should be about taking

people for, following what is popular, but having a vision and so

often we find people lack of vision. That's why we think Pope Francis is

popular amongst people who don't follow him. Pope Francis does give,

this is my framework, this is what I say, which actually is what some of

the militant Islamist movement have answers. You may take the answers

but people are desperately trying to find it. And so is, they say we do

horrible things but it's OK because we're going to something longer term

which is not necessarily right but I think people are believing you can

trust someone who rightly has a vision and eagle to go forward with

and we don't get that our leaders. There is talk Kim Kardashian is good

to be the first president of the United States. Her husband is

seeking election so she could be first Lady. The Pope cast a

different figure from his predecessor, he couldn't be worse

than his predecessor. I have very little patience with popes and

legislators. I remember Pope Francis was supposed to be this wonderful

man who said after the Charlie Heddle attack, I would understand,

someone insulted my mother, I would punch them in the face. -- Charlie

Hebdo. But I think Obama was so charismatic because of the person

who came after -- he came after. They can be worse after eight years

of George Bush. The BBC is running a series on Obama and Obama's

leadership and what was interesting was looking at how short memories

are, looking at what happened in 2009 and the challenges he faced

which were the worst for any American president for a long time.

We have different challenges now, in other words, to go back to mean a's

point, everything is not what you have done in the past. People are

talking about popular leaders. Pope Francis, and Obama was generally

liked, being late was part of what was going on for him. When Margaret

Thatcher was the Prime Minister there, I think there were many

people who disliked intensely but even some of those who disliked

intensely still voted for her because they respected her and felt

she stood for something. I'm not sure if there is a significant

leader today is like that, whose disliked but also still voted for.

Ronald Reagan was just as divisive in the United States as Margaret

Thatcher was here but there was a similar phenomenon. He was about

politics in a way. Maybe it was the actor in him. Banner came riding in

on a crest of enthusiasm, won a Nobel Prize since if not being

George Bush -- Obama came in. He also made specific promises that

have not been fulfilled and so there are ways to measure and hold him

accountable in ways, I don't want to see the Pope is unaccountable, but

he is not being cast by solving the migrant Isis or hasn't been making a

promise about shutting down Guantanamo Bay. I know you're not

here to defend the entire United States Constitution, but American

politics is in a position of great failure at the moment, isn't it? Not

being able to get anything done the matter what party you are in.

Absolutely. People like to say the constitution has checked and

balances to make sure there was no excess power in any one branch of

Government but it can also create a deadlock when nothing advances and

has created now I think a very polarised system where it is not

even about disagreeing on principle, it is simply wanting to blog the

other party with no other agenda. It is the same with Lebanon which has

not has a president since 2014 because it won't let them choose the

next president and the fact you can have institutions on paper like

power-sharing, it is about system failure more than political

individuals and Spain has, too. It is the institutions that are

failing. Even if we look at the US are UN agencies, 70 years on, people

are asking what is the role of the UN? If the Security Council is

failing to solve problems like Ukraine, Syria, where world leaders?

That is a lack of a failing system. Chocolate, Easter. It is a

marvellous aspect of Easter, chocolate. It is not the whole

story. Do you find it depressing it has become just another marketing?

For many people, it is just buy this stuff, send this card, it is a

consumer consumption Festival. Yes. You can get an Easter tree now. I've

managed to avoid that. The Pope's message this weekend, what resonance

does that have two Catholics around the world? I drew distinction at the

start of this. Is there a distinction? There is a clear

distinction between western Europe and the rest of the world,

particularly countries like France and Britain which are increasingly

circular. The problem with that is that a lot of British people assume

everyone else is rather like Britain and everywhere else isn't like

Britain. For more of the world have very strong religious members of

different faiths and we are seeing huge growth in certain religions in

parts of the world. That is something people here really need to

pay attention to. That's it for Dateline

London for this week. We're back next week

at the same time. You can, of course,

comment on the programme Hello. I hope you make the most of

yesterday's sunshine because the rest of Easter is looking rather

different. Pretty strong winds out there