:00:00. > :00:00.Rico and I will be back in half an hour but now on BBC News, it is time
:00:07. > :00:09.for HARDtalk. There is a grim familiarity
:00:10. > :00:15.to the fallout from the Manchester Mourning for the innocent
:00:16. > :00:19.lives lost and an intense focus on the identity and motivation
:00:20. > :00:22.of the alleged jihadist In this case Salman Abedi,
:00:23. > :00:29.22 years old, born in The list of Europe's so called
:00:30. > :00:37.home-grown jihadists is now My guest is Gilles Kepel,
:00:38. > :00:41.a French expert on Islamist terrorism, whose work has
:00:42. > :00:45.attracted worldwide attention. Is the West any closer
:00:46. > :00:47.to an effective Gilles Kepel, welcome to HARDtalk.
:00:48. > :01:22.Thank you. We are getting more
:01:23. > :01:24.information by the hour Much of the focus on Salman Abedi,
:01:25. > :01:37.this young man who appears to have The more we learn, the more
:01:38. > :01:42.you learn, does it seem to you this fits a familiar template or does
:01:43. > :01:45.this in any way seem different from Europe's other mass
:01:46. > :01:48.murders of recent times? I think it fits a familiar
:01:49. > :01:54.template but it is changing. You know, terrorism
:01:55. > :01:56.is not always the same. And within that sort of third
:01:57. > :02:02.generation jihadism that we have Of course as a Frenchman,
:02:03. > :02:11.what happened in Manchester reminds us of the Bataclan music hall attack
:02:12. > :02:14.on 13th November 2015. But there it was a whole group
:02:15. > :02:17.of people who were largely organised, who had come back
:02:18. > :02:20.from Syria through Belgium, and you know, there were a number
:02:21. > :02:23.of people, the attacks took place in many places, they were
:02:24. > :02:26.coordinated, the Stadium of France, in the sidewalk cafes,
:02:27. > :02:28.this is a loner. Maybe there are people
:02:29. > :02:38.who helped him but he acted alone. And this reminds us more
:02:39. > :02:42.of what happened in Nice with the guy who drove his truck
:02:43. > :02:45.in the crowds, celebrating Bastille Day, or in Berlin
:02:46. > :02:47.at the Breitscheidplatz. It might lead one to assume
:02:48. > :02:55.that in recent times, you referred to the Bataclan
:02:56. > :02:58.which was of course in November 2015, of course in recent times
:02:59. > :03:02.there has been more focused on this Do you think we are,
:03:03. > :03:07.in broad terms seeing a trend from highly organised cross-border
:03:08. > :03:09.operations to more of this Well, I would not call it lone
:03:10. > :03:20.wolf because you know, lone wolf is something that comes
:03:21. > :03:23.from the American sort of Columbine thing, and those guys
:03:24. > :03:25.are sort of brainwashed. They live in the universe
:03:26. > :03:28.which is full of jihadi worldviews, they spend their time
:03:29. > :03:31.on social networks and so on. So they are not lonely,
:03:32. > :03:34.they are cyber wolves, But what has become difficult now
:03:35. > :03:42.is to coordinate out of the so-called caliphate
:03:43. > :03:45.territory, because there is military The borders with Turkey sealed Masoe
:03:46. > :03:53.it's almost impossible to go into the Isis or so-called
:03:54. > :03:55.caliphate territory, And people there are more busy
:03:56. > :04:04.saving their neck or fighting on the battle ground than plotting
:04:05. > :04:11.to coordinate attacks in Europe. If I may interrupt,
:04:12. > :04:13.what about Libya? Because clearly here
:04:14. > :04:15.with Salman Abedi, his origins, and the fact that we understand
:04:16. > :04:25.he had been in Libya very recently, there is this question
:04:26. > :04:28.about whether Libya must be seen, alongside Iraq and Syria,
:04:29. > :04:30.as a breeding ground, potentially, for jihadists to come
:04:31. > :04:32.back to Europe with know-how, with networks, and with
:04:33. > :04:36.the ability to murder. Well definitely Libya
:04:37. > :04:38.was perceived as a sort For some time, they had tried
:04:39. > :04:47.to send people there because it's There is all this illegal
:04:48. > :04:58.immigration on boats that leave the Libyan coast
:04:59. > :05:01.and get into Sicily or Lampedusa. And there is an enormous
:05:02. > :05:03.amount of weaponry there, the old arsenal of Colonel Gaddafi
:05:04. > :05:06.which was stolen and so So if the Libyan breeding ground had
:05:07. > :05:16.given to Mr Abedi the possibility to sort of train, that
:05:17. > :05:19.would be definitely new. Because this, to my knowledge,
:05:20. > :05:22.has not yet happened. but until recently they remained in
:05:23. > :05:25.Libya. Libya was not in the capacity
:05:26. > :05:30.to export jihadists as such. But it does seem in the UK,
:05:31. > :05:35.maybe in France, these networks The problem is to what extent
:05:36. > :05:46.these networks function, together with a centre, whatever,
:05:47. > :05:49.that would be in the caliphate. This is in the book,
:05:50. > :05:52.I tried to show that there are three The focus against what they called
:05:53. > :06:06.the nearby enemy, the so-called It did not work out
:06:07. > :06:14.because they could not mobilise And this is what Osama
:06:15. > :06:18.bin Laden and the like, these are lessons that they learned
:06:19. > :06:22.and they sort of designed a new second-generation jihad that
:06:23. > :06:24.focused against what they call So they thought that, you know,
:06:25. > :06:30.if they struck at America than they would expose the West
:06:31. > :06:33.as a colossus with feet of clay. And they had hoped that the masses,
:06:34. > :06:37.the Muslim masses, would mobilise In Iraq for instance,
:06:38. > :06:43.the Americans and the West were not defeated, maybe thanks to Iran
:06:44. > :06:46.which was another ironical story. There is someone, an engineer,
:06:47. > :06:54.a Syrian engineer by the nom de Trained partially in France,
:06:55. > :07:03.married in Spain and a resident in London, what we at the time
:07:04. > :07:06.called Londonistan, when they had all the jihadists here,
:07:07. > :07:09.about the late 1990s. Who posts a text, 1600 pages
:07:10. > :07:19.long on the Internet. The Global Islamic Resistance
:07:20. > :07:21.Call. He says that Europe is the soft
:07:22. > :07:26.underbelly of the West. Neither America, too far away,
:07:27. > :07:29.neither Libya or Syria per se because when Muslims fight Muslims
:07:30. > :07:32.the rest of the world And then as opposed to the sort
:07:33. > :07:37.of top-down model of Osama bin Laden, which is pyramidal,
:07:38. > :07:39.it has to be a bottom-up And this is exactly
:07:40. > :07:48.what we have now. Those networks that were thought,
:07:49. > :07:51.designed so they would go I remember at the time
:07:52. > :07:57.I discussed those things here at the Foreign Office
:07:58. > :07:59.and someone told me, "No, this will will never work
:08:00. > :08:03.because there can be no terrorism But they just missed
:08:04. > :08:08.the cultural Revolution of 2005, because on February 14 2005,
:08:09. > :08:10.on Valentine's Day, YouTube Ie you had this network thing
:08:11. > :08:23.that could function. And if I may, you placed these
:08:24. > :08:26.networks very firmly within Muslim communities, whether it be
:08:27. > :08:28.in the banlieue of Paris or whether it be in the suburbs
:08:29. > :08:34.of English cities. But the point that some people
:08:35. > :08:46.looking at your academic research make is that you don't allow
:08:47. > :08:49.for the importance of individuals. If we are to think of Salman Abedi,
:08:50. > :08:53.he's a 22-year-old man who did something remarkable,
:08:54. > :08:55.he was prepared to go out and kill, Now many, including your ferocious
:08:56. > :09:03.academic critic Olivier Roy, would say that simply using the sort
:09:04. > :09:07.of mechanistic device of analysing the alienation of Muslim communities
:09:08. > :09:10.does not get to the heart of why an individual like that would be
:09:11. > :09:18.prepared to do what he did. Oh, there is definitely
:09:19. > :09:21.an individual dimension. Which we do not know very well,
:09:22. > :09:25.like for instance the guy in Nice was diagnosed as a psycho
:09:26. > :09:31.before he left Tunisia. Maybe that was more
:09:32. > :09:34.important than the fact that he was a fundamentalist
:09:35. > :09:36.believer of some sort He probably had some
:09:37. > :09:39.sort of life crisis. He had some crisis of which we
:09:40. > :09:51.are not knowledgeable really. But then he sort of cured his crisis
:09:52. > :09:54.by getting immersed into this
:09:55. > :09:55.jihadi literature, we know that from his Facebook
:09:56. > :10:05.accounts and so on and so forth. And what is important
:10:06. > :10:10.is to understand to what extent someone who has a sort of psychotic
:10:11. > :10:13.structure or many of them have an absentee father,
:10:14. > :10:15.and the father is replaced by the peers, who sort
:10:16. > :10:18.of produce another law. You know, there is no law
:10:19. > :10:21.which is edicted by the father because the father disappeared,
:10:22. > :10:26.and then that peers give a much more cogent legal system, sharia,
:10:27. > :10:29.which fights against the enemy This is the kind of blend
:10:30. > :10:35.which is the problem Because on the one hand
:10:36. > :10:39.you have the social dimension, you know, deprivation,
:10:40. > :10:40.disenfranchisement, On the other hand you have
:10:41. > :10:48.the ideological pattern, but what makes the chemistry
:10:49. > :10:51.between the deprivation and the ideological
:10:52. > :10:52.pattern is definitely And this is something
:10:53. > :10:56.that we are unable to understand. So we have to walk, if I may say so,
:10:57. > :11:00.on two feet with our head You advise governments,
:11:01. > :11:06.you talked about advising the Foreign Office here
:11:07. > :11:10.in Britain at one point. recently to now-President Emmanuel
:11:11. > :11:16.Macron. What do state security
:11:17. > :11:18.services in western Europe, because that is where
:11:19. > :11:22.we are focusing this conversation, what do they need to do
:11:23. > :11:25.to develop a really Well, I'm not really an adviser
:11:26. > :11:29.to them because you know, I talk, but usually academics
:11:30. > :11:34.are not listened to by governments. So whatever I say is not always
:11:35. > :11:40.taken into consideration. But I engage in conversation,
:11:41. > :11:43.which I think is my job. I think what they need
:11:44. > :11:46.to do first and foremost And there's a sort of battle
:11:47. > :11:58.between what they call CVE and CT. Ie, those who consider that
:11:59. > :12:00.countering violent extremism, So this is what you have to do,
:12:01. > :12:08.you have to do social deprivation, you have to check that pupils
:12:09. > :12:13.and children have jobs. And others who consider
:12:14. > :12:16.that the issue is security, that you should only deal
:12:17. > :12:18.with getting into the internet, eavesdropping, arresting
:12:19. > :12:19.people pre-emptively, putting them in jail
:12:20. > :12:22.and so on and so forth. Both have to be taken
:12:23. > :12:26.into consideration simultaneously. And this is a big difficulty
:12:27. > :12:31.for our state agencies because they are not used to gather
:12:32. > :12:34.those different approaches and whoever is more powerful,
:12:35. > :12:37.for instance under President Obama, CT was not important,
:12:38. > :12:43.this CVE thing was primordial, because they thought
:12:44. > :12:46.the issue was mainly social, economic, and they did not
:12:47. > :12:49.want to talk about ideology. I remember President Obama
:12:50. > :12:52.never mentioned that, for instance, in Orlando
:12:53. > :12:54.it was a jihadist guy. This new America,
:12:55. > :13:00.on the contrary,... So argues saying that
:13:01. > :13:03.you like the fact that Donald Trump repeatedly refers to,
:13:04. > :13:05.quote, Islamic terrorism? No, because when he says
:13:06. > :13:12.Islamic terrorism, he lumps The issue is to understand
:13:13. > :13:19.because most Muslims just hate the guts of those jihadists,
:13:20. > :13:21.because they give them And they allow other people to lump
:13:22. > :13:27.everybody together and this issue. The real problem is to understand
:13:28. > :13:35.what is at stake in the producing How do you get hegemony
:13:36. > :13:46.over the discourse? What is the difference
:13:47. > :13:51.between the Salafis, the jihadists, the Muslim Brethren,
:13:52. > :13:54.and so on and so forth? This is absolutely crucial
:13:55. > :13:57.because it's not only an issue of speaking for the sake
:13:58. > :14:00.of academics, it's an issue that... This isn't about academics
:14:01. > :14:03.in the end, it's about public And survival.
:14:04. > :14:08.And so here's the question for you. I believe in France there are deemed
:14:09. > :14:21.to be more than 10,000, some say 15,000 "people
:14:22. > :14:23.of interest" in terms of this jihadists extremism...
:14:24. > :14:26.On a watchlist, yes. Is it realistic for the security
:14:27. > :14:28.services to monitor, And those people on the watchlist
:14:29. > :14:33.are not surveilled, So if they happen for instance
:14:34. > :14:37.to be spotted somewhere, and their name is checked
:14:38. > :14:43.against a list, this list, so therefore the police usually
:14:44. > :14:48.makes the connection, but it's impossible of course
:14:49. > :14:51.to monitor on a daily basis. You would need, if you need
:14:52. > :14:54.something like ten cops to monitor one person 24 hours
:14:55. > :14:56.a day, it's impossible. But if politicians are honest
:14:57. > :15:03.about that, the public, both in France, in the UK too,
:15:04. > :15:06.where it is deemed that hundreds of fighters have returned from Syria
:15:07. > :15:09.and Iraq and we don't know where half of them are, the public
:15:10. > :15:13.is going to be deeply alarmed. Yes, and is going to be interested
:15:14. > :15:17.in voting for the extreme right, who lump together, that lumps
:15:18. > :15:19.together all Muslims. This is one of the major
:15:20. > :15:26.challenges that we are facing. You know, jihadists want to take
:15:27. > :15:28.the electoral process These provocations, and this is very
:15:29. > :15:41.clear in Abu Musab al-Suri's global resistance call, what he wants
:15:42. > :15:53.is that people retaliate, then they separate mosques
:15:54. > :15:56.and there are pograms for the extreme right raises
:15:57. > :16:00.tremendously. So that they can tell
:16:01. > :16:02.their coreligionists, look, the Europeans are racist,
:16:03. > :16:04.they are xenophobes, There is no future
:16:05. > :16:07.for you in melting in, in being integrated
:16:08. > :16:09.in European societies. You have to cling to your atavistic,
:16:10. > :16:12.your ascribed identity Because to some extent the French
:16:13. > :16:20.intelligence agencies were able to foil most of the attacks that
:16:21. > :16:23.took place, that were planned Surely that is to the credit
:16:24. > :16:35.of Francois Hollande, who declared a state of emergency,
:16:36. > :16:40.said France is now at war put thousands of security
:16:41. > :16:45.forces on the streets. But surely it's
:16:46. > :16:49.what the public wants and as you've just said it
:16:50. > :16:52.it's been effective. No.
:16:53. > :17:00.Two things. The first thing I wanted to say is,
:17:01. > :17:05.that, we will say whether it is war so the French presidential election
:17:06. > :17:08.was not taken hostage of that. Had it been the case, Marine Le Pen
:17:09. > :17:13.would have made a landslide. The national state of emergency,
:17:14. > :17:17.this concept of war that the French state must fight appears
:17:18. > :17:19.to have been effective. Indeed Emmanuel Macron,
:17:20. > :17:23.whom you have praised, has just said in the last
:17:24. > :17:27.few days that he wants to see the state of emergency extended
:17:28. > :17:29.through to November. But no, the war issue
:17:30. > :17:33.was that there is war The French and others
:17:34. > :17:40.have sent planes, But then I believe that if you say
:17:41. > :17:50.that you make war in France then you get into a very
:17:51. > :17:54.dangerous issue, like the war on terror
:17:55. > :17:57.by George W Bush. Because then if you have a war it
:17:58. > :18:04.means that you have an enemy, which has a territory,
:18:05. > :18:07.which has a country, you know. And, you know, then,
:18:08. > :18:09.there again there is this danger of lumping
:18:10. > :18:12.everybody together. I believe that in Britain,
:18:13. > :18:15.in France, wherever, in Germany, on our territory it is
:18:16. > :18:17.an issue of police. Against Isis, on the caliphate,
:18:18. > :18:22.or in Libya or in Mali, where the French are there
:18:23. > :18:25.to sort of man the borders against the jihadists,
:18:26. > :18:28.then it is war. Because you are using
:18:29. > :18:30.military means. But in Britain,
:18:31. > :18:32.you don't have to use You have just presented
:18:33. > :18:39.it as an either or between the military
:18:40. > :18:41.approach and a policing approach, maybe there
:18:42. > :18:54.is another approach which is a community
:18:55. > :18:56.outreach approach which actually says to Muslim communities,
:18:57. > :18:59.you know, we, the state, are not able to deliver security to this
:19:00. > :19:02.country without your help, and you must find ways to step
:19:03. > :19:05.up and work with us, whether it be through
:19:06. > :19:07.the mosques, community groups, the monitoring of children and their
:19:08. > :19:09.attitudes at school. But the Muslim communities
:19:10. > :19:11.themselves surely need to be integrated as part
:19:12. > :19:14.of the approach and the solution? And this is why you should not
:19:15. > :19:18.tell that you are at war You should not make them believe
:19:19. > :19:22.or make them fear that when you say war, they are targeted
:19:23. > :19:25.as a potential enemy. And this is why
:19:26. > :19:27.language so important. But don't you often
:19:28. > :19:28.appear to characterise Muslim communities as hotbeds
:19:29. > :19:32.of radicalism, where the enemy is in No, the enemy is trying
:19:33. > :19:35.to hijack them. But they don't let themselves be
:19:36. > :19:38.hijacked, definitely. This is why this issue
:19:39. > :19:42.of so important. This is why it is
:19:43. > :19:44.important to know what is are concerned, for
:19:45. > :19:52.instance, to know Arabic. To understand is the background
:19:53. > :19:55.of this, or to know Urdu, To have access to the culture and to
:19:56. > :20:00.understand which are the strategies of the jihadists, so as to control
:20:01. > :20:04.the hearts and minds of the people Because this issue of
:20:05. > :20:08.recruitment, this issue of If we don't understand
:20:09. > :20:12.that then we have If you want Muslim
:20:13. > :20:20.communities to understand that they are part of
:20:21. > :20:26.the solution and there is it really helpful for people
:20:27. > :20:34.like you to support the ban on the in public places and in
:20:35. > :20:37.schools in France? Is it helpful for someone
:20:38. > :20:40.like you to support the politicians who spoke out
:20:41. > :20:42.against the "burkini"? Even though that has now been
:20:43. > :20:44.dropped but for while it You appear to be a supporter
:20:45. > :20:49.of an approach which to many Muslims smacks
:20:50. > :20:50.of Islamophobia. This issue of headscarves
:20:51. > :20:53.in public places, headscarves are not banned
:20:54. > :20:55.in public places in France. If you go to Paris you will see
:20:56. > :20:58.thousands and thousands What is forbidden is that
:20:59. > :21:11.you conceal your face. Because it is an issue
:21:12. > :21:13.of public security. Then headscarves in
:21:14. > :21:21.schools were banned because the French
:21:22. > :21:22.state being secular... And you are an arch
:21:23. > :21:25.advocate of that. And I'm just asking
:21:26. > :21:27.you whether that sort of approach fits with your belief that
:21:28. > :21:30.one has to work with Muslim Of course, this was not something
:21:31. > :21:37.that was against Muslims in general. And you know, this measure has been
:21:38. > :21:40.in place since 2004 and Muslim pupils would come to
:21:41. > :21:43.school, wear a headscarf in the street, take
:21:44. > :21:50.the headscarf off when they get in school and put
:21:51. > :21:52.it back when they go So this has not raised
:21:53. > :21:56.any significant attack. It did put you on
:21:57. > :21:59.the same side of the argument as Marine Le Pen,
:22:00. > :22:02.a woman who you have accused many times of fostering division
:22:03. > :22:04.and making the It did put you on her
:22:05. > :22:12.side of the argument, It's not because, you know,
:22:13. > :22:19.someone breathes air and you breathe air in the same
:22:20. > :22:22.place that you must decide And Marine Le Pen is hostile
:22:23. > :22:27.to Muslims in general. And this is not at all the case
:22:28. > :22:31.as far as I'm concerned. No, I believe that our Muslim
:22:32. > :22:34.compatriots are part and parcel of And you know, I've been living
:22:35. > :22:39.with Muslims for all my life, so how would I have survived
:22:40. > :22:44.if I was so hostile? I'm not at all hostile
:22:45. > :22:46.to Muslims, neither to Islam I just wonder, let me
:22:47. > :22:50.end on a personal note. I am aware that you have
:22:51. > :22:53.faced death threats from some French exiles, Muslim
:22:54. > :22:59.exiles have gone to vote in Syria, and I know one in particular who is
:23:00. > :23:03.now dead but he has declared that you should be killed
:23:04. > :23:06.because of your views on jihadi It's not really
:23:07. > :23:14.for my views, I think. It's just because, you know,
:23:15. > :23:17.I'm trying to expose what The guys who wanted to kill me,
:23:18. > :23:22.as far as I see, I don't think that they speak
:23:23. > :23:24.in the name of Islam. They just speak in the name
:23:25. > :23:28.of their own objectives, which is to see terror in France and everywhere,
:23:29. > :23:31.and to kill me, among other things. In your view, of where
:23:32. > :23:35.we are in the West, in the battle against jihadist
:23:36. > :23:37.terror, where are we? Well, we understand how
:23:38. > :23:43.they function better and better, we accumulate a lot
:23:44. > :23:46.of material, and I'm quite This thing is not
:23:47. > :23:49.going to lead anywhere. Because they are going to be,
:23:50. > :23:52.the jihadists are going to be unable to mobilise
:23:53. > :23:55.their fellow Muslims. And I believe that, there is a sort
:23:56. > :24:04.of, if I may say so, jihadi fatigue. Gilles Kepel, we have
:24:05. > :24:07.to end there but thank