Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Hello? ‘Members’ – the video is not working [mother tongue].
Dr Patricia Lewis
At the same time, probably also feeling like it was 100 years ago…
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Yeah.
Dr Patricia Lewis
…at – you know, in the way that time has, in the way that we often think about time. And, of course, in the big scheme of things, it really is a blink of an eye, the whole way in which everything has happened since then. So much is happening today and the way in which that war shaped and influenced all of our politics, certainly in Europe, certainly in the Middle East, certainly in the United States and in many other parts of the world, including Russia. And this war also was fought on the basis of there being, supposedly, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the term ‘WMD’ became a household name. I mean, everybody talked about WMD in Iraq
And we’re very fortunate to have with us Mohamed ElBaradei, who I’m going to kick off our discussion with. Mohamed, as you all will know, is the Emeritus Director General for the International Atomic Energy Agency. He was Director General of the IAEA from December 97 until November 2009. He was right in the eye of the storm. We saw him regularly, Mohamed, I’m watching on the screen now and I’m taken right back – you don’t look a day older, by the way, Mohamed – to that time when you were on our screens every day, along with Hans, speaking before the Security Council, trying to explain to people what was happening. And for those efforts, in part, you won, with the IAEA, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and you were given the accolade as the unafraid advocate for nuclear non-proliferation from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. And, indeed, you’ve won so many prizes over the years. I can’t list them ‘cause we would completely spend the whole time hearing those.
But you originally trained in law, and you have a PhD from the International Law Department at New York University School of Law, and you were also Professor in International Law before you went into the diplomatic service and then into the IAEA. A very illustrious career, indeed, and you’re known as one of the, you know, the great intellects of the non-proliferation world.
So, Mohamed, I welcome you, I thank you very much for joining us here today. I know you’re going to reflect a little bit on what Hans might’ve said, as well. So, you know, try to distinguish, if you can, between what you would perhaps says and what Hans might say, because those are not always the same thing. So, Mohamed, over to you. If you could start with your reflections on the last 20 years and the way in which we should be thinking now, perhaps, of what happened 20 years ago and the way it relates to what’s going on today.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Ma’am? Yeah. It’s a pleasure to be with you and with Lindsey today. I wish, of course, Hans Blix was with us today, but I will try to do my best to reflect his views. We hail from the same perspective, so that makes it not difficult.
Dr Patricia Lewis
No.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Then what I want to do, Patricia, is more – after 20 years, more than pin down who is accountable, who is to blame. I mean, that is part, but more importantly, how we can have an international system that works, how this disastrous war could teach us a few lessons and particularly, as I am sure we will jump into at that stage, later on, is what’s happening in Ukraine. So, we need to see, you know, have we learned anything, and b) what can we do?
The War in Iraq was a brainchild of a group of ideologues, they called themselves the ‘neocons’, a chimera, basically, to shape the world in the US image, particularly after the US are – fall down of the Soviet Union. It is scary, frankly, that after 20 years, as we are sitting here today, no-one can pin down exactly the reason why this war took place. Was it a regime change, democracy spreading, WMDs, Iraq oil, extremism, Al-Qaeda?
It’s interesting ‘cause that –Richard Haass, my friend Richard Haass, you know, who is – he was the Director of Policy Planning at that time at the State Department and is the President of the Council for Affairs right now. He said – and that was – struck me to read, that “I would probably go to my grain” – you know, or “to my grave, before knowing why this war took place.” That is very scary and very uninstructive at the same time. He added that it seems “No decision actually was made, it just happened.” It reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld when he said, “Things does happen, but it shouldn’t be war that – that we’ve just go sleepwalking into war. War is [inaudible – 10:58] for destruction.” Hans Blix, I should add here, he, again he asked me to say that in his view, the WMD was just a pretext, was “a sales affair,” as he put it. The real reason, in his view, was “crushing the axis of evil” and that was the main incentive, that Iraq, that Iran and North Korea.
This was clearly a predetermined war, based as now as we see very much on lies and deceptions regarding WMDs. Again, it was striking to me later, as I read, that Paul Wolfowitz said that the WMD is what they could agreed on, you know, as a common denominator. There were both a group of people coming with all their different biases, but at least what they agreed on is to say weapon of mass destruction is threat, and let us go with it. So, it was not really that – if you look at it, it was not that a serious pretext, if you like, but it was a rallying point for all these people who thought that after the end of the Soviet Union, you know, this is – has to be, sort of, a Pax Americana, if you like, hmmm.
It is very sad, speaking also here in England, that the UK was a major accomplice and enabler in all the planning, preparation and execution of this horrendous war. This is a different issue we can talk about later on. The bad news, however, that they hoped to use the Inspectors, us, UNMOVIC, the UN, IAEA, to legitimise that plan. That was bad for them and was bad for us. From an international order perspective, and that’s really what is more important to me, it was like a bull in a China shop, a rogue behaviour, completely rogue behaviour. They violated every aspect of international order, they violated international law, they disregarded the Security Council, they disregarded international inspections. And, again, I should add here what Hans Blix told me to say, that “The US and the UK, including Blair and Rice, were on notice that their WMD case was weak and turning weaker with more UN inspection.” That’s exactly Hans Blix’s input yesterday.
What is really concerning is that there has been zero accountability. The Chilcot Report, proper and eloquent, but no-one was really held accountable, no criminal charges were made. In the US, there was a Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an investigation, which, again, pointed to measure failures in intelligence gathering and the way it was handled. But this was the end of the story, as far as I know. It, basically – both, from both sides, saying, “Oops, we made a mistake.”
But aside from the technical individual accountability and – or absence of it, we haven’t seen any effort to learn from the mistakes, to avoid incident repeat, and again, we are in the middle of another war right now. Maybe not on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, the pretext is different, but we’re still in the middle of another war in Europe. And it is disconcerting when I see that some members of the intelligence community, Sir Dearlove, for example, basically saying that it was the incompetence of the inspectors, or another point that it was some of the weapons were – went to Syria. I mean, that is really disconcerting to me, with all due respect to Sir Dearlove, who is – I know. Then we haven’t learned anything. Unless we own up to the horror, to the mistakes we made, then we are – we are going nowhere.
He also said that the Iraqi knew, in defence of his idea that the inspection were incompetent, he also said that the Iraqi knew before the inspection, you know, where is the target. And, again, Hans Blix was very surprised yesterday to hear that, and he said that “The target for an inspection, particularly chemical, biological and missile, were given very, very late notice and it was not electronically”. So, the Iraqis could not have known, and even if they would have known there was no weapons, at the end of the day, there was no weapons at the end of the day.
I should, you know – when I talk about accountability, I – again, it’s very sad that we don’t talk about the human cost. To me, the human cost, it just – it does really – well, I don’t know how to describe it. When I – we haven’t even made an accounting of how many people died. You – I saw 150,000, 200,000, 300,000, a million. I saw, and I know, lots of kids who died because they didn’t have access to medication, but this is another issue, not only that accounting. It was the horrible sanctions and that was the Security Council that done whatever you call it, a dumb sanction, a horrible sanction. But it was sanction that was targeting the civilians much more than targeting the regime, who actually made some money out of it. Has we done any reparation to the Iraqis? Have we told them we regret, we apologise, we are ready to deal with you as human beings? We haven’t done that.
Dr Patricia Lewis
If I may interrupt you at this stage and turn to Lindsey Hilsum. So, Lindsey, I mean, you – you’re the Channel 4 News International Editor and you cover so many conflicts, Syria, Ukraine and, of course, not a conflict, but rising of the Arab Spring and so on. But you were in Bagdad for the 2003 invasion, and you were also in Belgrade for the 99 NATO bombing. You were also the only English-speaking correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide began, and people might associate you with quite a lot of the starts of…
Lindsey Hilsum
It’s not my fault.
Dr Patricia Lewis
…some. Not your fault.
Lindsey Hilsum
It doesn’t happen because I’m there.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And, you know, so you’ve got this extraordinary perspective of, you know – and how these things begin. When you were there in Baghdad in 2003, listening to Mohamed now, you were, you know, also following what was happening with Hans, and I think Mohamed has rightly talked about the differences between what the IAEA was able to do in terms of nuclear and the continuity of inspections compared with the chemical, biological, missiles that Hans was dealing with. Now, the Inspectors found missiles when nobody else knew they were there, right?
Lindsey Hilsum
Hmmm.
Dr Patricia Lewis
That gave me a lot of confidence in the inspection process, and I know that Hans was very concerned about where was the missing bioweapons capability? Which I think we now have a better understanding of how that was got rid of. But at the time, Lindsey, how did you deal with all of this information that was coming out to you as a Journalist? How did you sort it out and have things changed over the last 20 years?
Lindsey Hilsum
So, thank you, Patricia and thank you, Mohamed. So, I was thinking this morning, as many of us were, that, you know, that this day exactly 20 years ago was the day it started. And so, I was on the eleventh floor balcony of the Palestine Hotel, watching the shock and awe bombing, and the secret – Saddam’s secret police coming in and having to hide our camera under the bed and all of this stuff. And then, I was also, one year ago, in Kramatorsk when the Russian invasion started. So, we’re talking about what governments have learned. I’ve clearly learned nothing since. I still seem to be going to these places.
But before that moment, I spent a lot of time chasing Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei around Iraq, because this is how it worked, that the – and Mohamed, you can correct me if I’m wrong. So, through 2002 – I was there in 2002, as well as in 2003. So, they would decide where they were going to go to inspect a facility and we, the Journalists, were in our vehicles outside the UN office and then, the convoy would come up, and we would chase after them, like the, sort of, Keystone Cops, like this, to see where they were going, until we got to an Iraqi roadblock where the Iraqis wouldn’t let us go any further. And then, we would pepper them with questions afterwards and they wouldn’t tell us anything.
So, it was quite frustrating as a Journalist, it was really hard to find out what was going on and in fact, I was looking at my notes and that in just – on the 7th of March 2003, Weapons Inspectors went to Al-Aziziyah firing range where the Iraqis say that in 1991 they buried the entire arsenal of biological weapons, anthrax, botulinum and aflatoxin. We were stopped with Soldiers on the way. The 12th, remotely – ah, the remotely pil0ted vehicle at the Al Taji military facility.
And, you know, these were the kind of things that – so that Rumsfeld had been talking about this remotely piloted vehicle which could spray chemical and biological weapons and how dangerous it was, and the Iraqis actually took us there. These were – they were basically made of balsa wood. They were these little planes, which were like the forerunners of drones. The Iraqis had advertised them, they’d tried to sell them at an arms fair sometime earlier and they had little engine – the fuselage, they had this, sort of, small fuselage and they had engines which were – well, the American Journalists called, “From a weed whacker,” which means like a lawnmower, and that’s all they were. And I can remember one of the Iraqi Journalists I worked with, came up to me and said, “Lindsey, this aeroplane very big problem for Americans?” And I said, “Seems so,” and yet it was clearly nothing. But for us, as Journalists, it was extremely difficult to sort this out, because the Inspectors, because they were sworn to secrecy, could not tell us what they found.
And I can remember another occasion in 2002 when one of the dossiers came out, and the Iraqis had said to us, “You can go to – you can choose two places to go to,” which is mentioned in the British dossier, and we chose two places. One was biological weapons, that turned out to be a – it was a vaccine manufacture place which had WHO and UNICEF stickers on it, and the other one was a phosgene plant.nd so we were allowed to go to this phosgene plant, but I’m not a Scientist, I’m not a Chemist, I’m a Journalist. So, it’s very hard for me. I can film, I can talk to people, but it’s hard for me to know and I can remember calling on the satellite phone the late David Kelly that evening and describing what I had seen and saying, “What do you think? Do you think this is real?”
But I think that may give you some idea of how difficult it was for us, as Journalists, to understand what we were seeing, because our intelligence agencies had told us that these were chemical and biological weapons. So, I’m going there, you know, and I have – at the beginning, I have no reason to disbelieve them and by the end, of course it, was – it, you know, it was impossible to, even. But I suppose one question I would have for Mohamed is, I am so frustrated that they did not talk to us, and I would like to know from Mohamed whether you think that you should have talked to us and told us what you weren’t finding?
Dr Patricia Lewis
So, Mohamed, perhaps you can respond to Lindsey, because my memory at the time was how politicised things were in the UN and how difficult it was for you and for Hans and how careful you had to be in the UN. So, perhaps you could respond to Lindsey’s question about why you were – you felt unable to talk to Journalists and do you feel now that perhaps it would be different today, that perhaps you would be able to in today’s world?
Member
Why didn’t you talk to Journalists?
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Patricia and Lindsey, we were just two individuals, Hans Blix and I. We had to handle just about the whole world. We had to handle the entire UN, we had to handle the Security Council, we had to handle NGOs, we had to handle Journalists, we had to handle everybody. We tried our best, don’t think – we wanted to get our story out, in fact. You know, we were also frustrated, because as you are saying, Lindsey, at the beginning, you know, it was – we were just a couple of months in Iraq, after 40 years of hiatus, and we wanted – and we were very cautious. Hans and I were very cautious. We could not just say everything is clear, until we know that everything is clear, and Hans even had much more difficult task because he was trying to prove the absence, while in the – in case of nuclear, there was environmental sampling and we had signatures, you know.
But a couple of things when you talk about speaking – about the media. One of the major issues was a Niger uranium, as you remember, hmmm, and it took us, like, two or three months to get the papers, you know. After Bush said in State of the Union that, you know, that “Iraq is importing uranium from Niger,” it took my – you know, our people, my colleagues, at least a couple of months. You know, we were given the run-around, frankly. We don’t have the paper, another intelligence might have it, you know, what have you. Then finally, Jacques Baute, my brilliant, you know, French Inspector, got it. It took him less than an hour to discover how crude that was. So, we just discovered from our side, at least, that deception, that this could not have gone through different filters to go all the way to President Bush State of the Union, yeah?
Another issue I can tell you about the – about how we started to feel the deception. We went, Hans and I, to see President Chirac and that was in January, Jacques Chirac. And we were complaining, you know, “Where is the beef?” basically, you know. “We can’t find anything.” And I still very much remember Jacques Chirac words. He said, “You know why you don’t have any information? Because they don’t have them.” And that was the President of France, you know, an NATO ally, a Western major country, telling us at the same time, that there is no weapon of mass destruction.
So, we started – so it was – if we didn’t talk enough, Lindsey, we are sorry, but I can also tell you, you know, when we finally got the Niger story correct, I reported that in March, I remember, 7th of March, just a couple of weeks before the war, and I said to the Security Council, “This is not authentic.” I remember I tried on the plane to find a decent word, a euphemism. I could have said this is horrible, this is absolute junk, but we agreed with my colleague on the plane flying to New York to say not authentic, very bureaucratic word but just not to embarrassed those who provided this. You know what happened after that? There was a Wash – I mean, Washington Post report saying, “This is irrelevant, this is not really an issue,” and one of my favourite newspaper, the New York Times, bury it in page 13, bury it next day in page 13.
So, I saw a lot of cheerleader Journalists, I saw a lot of cheerleader journalism and that’s an issue, also, we need to keep in mind now as we talk about Ukraine and we do the arma – you know, you want to suck up to the authority, so you continue to get information. And – but as a result, you continue to play a cheerleader role and it doe – it is disservice to everybody, to transparency, to the international community, to people, to people.
And so, our experience with the media was not great, particularly, I should say, not on people on the ground, but particularly the major newspapers who are shaping public opinion. They were – in addition, of course, as you remember, Hans and I, I mean we were mocked around in many, many articles, Hans as a blue eyes Swede, Mohamed ElBaradei as an – originally Arab and bias. I mean, we got lots of – lots and lots of junk, basically, trying to do our job, basically, trying to avoid a war, basically, trying to assess the risk. So, there’s lots lesson one can talk about there.
Lindsey Hilsum
All good points.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Yes, I’d like to bring that, now, to today, because I think, you know, Lindsey, you’re now covering a very different war. And Mohamed asked the question, you know – I mean, I – we all know that, you know, there were several resignations of people in journalism because of the lines that they were being told to take.
Lindsey Hilsum
Hmmm. Sure.
Dr Patricia Lewis
You know, very upstanding, thorough, careful Journalists were put under a lot of pressure, as well. I think we know, as well, within governments and intelligence services, a lot – there was a lot of strong feeling and a lot of distress. Today, Lindsey, is it very different today covering the War…
Lindsey Hilsum
Well…
Dr Patricia Lewis
…in Ukraine?
Lindsey Hilsum
Yeah, look, I mean, I’ve never been put under any pressure to say anything ever, I should say that, at Channel 4 News. I think that what I reflect on most is, I mean – the, sort of, headline of this panel is “What Have Governments Learnt?” And to me the most important thing is what the Russian Government learned, because the Russian Government echoes the language which was used by the Americans and the British in Iraq and that, to me, is the critical thing. So, in – they even talk sometimes about the Ukrainians possibly having biological weapons, chemical weapons, I’ve heard that…
Dr Patricia Lewis
Radiological weapons.
Lindsey Hilsum
…they – radiological weapons. This is all, kind of, raised and floated, you know, as a reason to justify the invasion. In 2014, when I was in Crimea and Donetsk, the – it was a humanitarian intervention, because the Russian-speaking people are being persecuted by the Ukrainians. That was how it was justified. That absolutely echoes the whole language of humanitarian intervention, which was there in the background and there as part of the Iraqi invasion, as well as the weapons of mass destruction. So, this whole idea that you are invading a country in order to do the people of that country a favour is something that the – that you’re there to liberate them.
I mean, the Russians talk about the liberation of Ukraine from its, you know, Nazi Government. Now, all of this is taken straight out of the American and British playbook from the Iraqi invasion. So, to me, this is one of the most important things to understand is that ‘we’ and by we, I mean Western governments, Western countries, invented this language or used this language which can now be employed by almost anybody to justify any kind of intervention. And it seems to me that that is one of the greatest damages, apart from the damage done to the Iraqi people.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And what about information itself, Lindsey? You know, you now have access, much greater access than you had 20 years ago, for example, to satellite imagery.
Lindsey Hilsum
So, I mean, obviously, if we had satellite im – I mean there was satellite imagery from Iraq, but obviously, you go back to what Mohamed was saying, that Hans Blix was trying to prove a negative and satellite imagery wouldn’t have shown whether this was or wasn’t an active biological weapons centre or not. But clearly, the intelligence that we – that, you know, we were looking at in the run up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was, I mean, it was available to everybody on Maxar satellite technology, as in was the Russian military massing on the border to the North and to the East.
And interestingly, I mean, intelligence agencies, Western intelligence agencies, know how suspicious we are of them because of what happened in Iraq, and they’ve been much more open on this than they have been in the intervening years, and I think that’s for a number of reasons. First, they decided that to publicise intelligence was a policy decision, it was a policy decision that they hoped that they would deter Vladimir Putin by saying, “We all know what you’re doing, we can all see it, it’s obvious, don’t do it.” So, that was obviously a policy decision on their part. And in the initial stages, I have to say that the intelligence that people like me got was incredibly useful, because I can look at a Maxar satellite map of a Russian military on the Northern border of Ukraine, but I don’t know which brigades it is, or, you know, which battalions and what kind of weaponry they’ve got and all that kind of thing.
So, it was very useful, and I think we have come to trust them a little bit more, but we’re also careful, because now what we’re seeing in Ukraine is much more complex and I think now, we’ve had to become much more aware of the spin, again. So, for example, obviously, the Western intelligence agencies and the Western governments want to big up how well the Ukrainians are doing and how badly the Russians are doing. Well, I’ve just come back, I was in Vuhledar, I was not in Bakhmut, but I was on the frontline and I’ve spent a lot of time there in the last year. It’s a very complex picture, not a lot of – you know, there’s – the frontline is not moving very much, and the big issue is casualties. And the Western intelligence agencies will not tell us how many Ukrainian casualties they think there are, whereas they are telling us how many Russian casualties they think there are. And so, in – and I am sure that they have an estimate for how many Ukrainian casualties they think there are, but they’re not telling us. So, once again, we’re – you know, I – we worry, or I worry, about how much to believe the intelligence agencies. It’s a very complicated dance that we play with them.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Hmmm, that’s a very good point. What I’m going to do, Mohamed, before I come back to you, I’m going to go to our audience and get some questions. I have some questions online, too, because I have a feeling that the questions that are going to be asked…
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Patricia.
Dr Patricia Lewis
…you’re going to be – you’re going to be – you’re going to speak to. Or do you want to quickly come back to Lindsey, is that what you want to do?
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
I just want to quickly – I just want to very much emphasise what Lindsey is saying. You cannot have an international system for us and another was – and another one for the others. You know, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, we do not remember that. You know, when I see what’s happening with Ukraine, is an invasion, in Iraq there was an invasion. Again, it’s international law. There was no right of self-defence in either cases. The security council was marginalised and paralyzed, you know. The media is, again, split and you cannot separate the wheat from the chaff and it’s us versus them. The – and the facts, as Hans Blix, again, emphasized to me yesterday, we need the facts. People need facts and intelligence, again, should not be politicised. Intelligence was very much politicised. Intelligence should be an objective assessment, you know, but it was tailored to a political objective. But I stop here, Patricia, because you want to go first.
Lindsey Hilsum
So, I agree with that, but I want to come back on one thing which is one critical difference. So, the Iraqis I knew, many of them wanted the invasion because they wanted the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And obviously, Iraqis I knew who – some who worked in the governments and some who didn’t work in the governments, and we’re talking mainly about middle class Iraqis in Baghdad, and several of them said to me very quietly, and including people I met at the universities, “We want this invasion because nothing could be worse than Saddam Hussein.” And many of them had – they were wrong about that, but that is what they felt and what they thought and many of them had spent time in prison and been tortured. So, we shouldn’t forget that and I never met a single Ukrainian who wanted to be invaded by Russia. So, I do think that that is a critical difference.
Mohamed ElBaradei
No, there is very much a critical difference, Lindsey, but it raises a fundamental question. If you have a dictator and we have so many around the world, what price are we ready to pay in terms of human suffering, human casualties, to get rid of a dictator, you know? That’s the question we need to ask ourselves, because the – Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator, he’s not the only one and there’s still around so many. Are we ready to sacrifice a million/two million, to get rid of the dictator? I mean, it’s a question.
Dr Patricia Lewis
That is true. I mean, Putin is not invading to get rid of a dictator, right? So that’s a very, very different situation. I would also say that the governments, the Western governments have learned a lot in terms of information and intelligence since 2003 because of the way in which they used intelligence to demonstrate what Russia was doing and the build-up for the invasion. It was absolutely fascinating. We did see some of that in Iraq with the build-up of troops, by the way. That was seen by satellites and also by – you know, then we had very lower – much lower resolution, SPOT Image, for example, the French system, that we were able to see some of the build-up that was amassing, and we also saw that in 91 as well. So, it’s just got better now. But I am going to go out to our audience, first of all, if I could. If I could go perhaps to the back over there, please, thank you, and I’m going to then go online. I have a couple of people I’m going to call on.
Rick Buller
Rick Buller, just a member of Chatham House. My question relates to this different set of rules for certain countries versus other ones and how much you think that’s to do with recent fluidity of borders. So, what I mean is, the US has probably had well-defined borders for over 100 years, the UK, as well, and what have you, whereas if you go to somewhere like Lviv, it’s probably been a part of four different countries in the last 100 years, same with Jerusalem, so this idea of protecting the people. So, if you go back to Czechoslovakia in 38, Hitler was protecting the Germans in Czechoslovakia, Putin is protecting the Russians in the Ukraine, the Palestinians being protected in Israeli land, Kurds in Iraq, etc., etc. If Indians or Somalians were being mistreated in the UK, you would never imagine India invading the UK to protect them or Somalia invading the UK, or Mexico invading the States. If the Mexicans weren’t being treated well, you wouldn’t suddenly have a Mexican invasion.
And how much of that is related to the fact that those borders have been stiffer during the lifetimes of the people that are still alive now? And it’s probably the same in 38, I would imagine, because I imagine people who were in the fluidity of the German empire were still alive in the late 30s. And so this idea of protecting people, you know, the people of Russia that in Ukrainian land, the people of – I don’t know if I’ve phrased my question well, but…
Lindsey Hilsum
It’s a good question.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And we also – well – so, part of that, then, was the Responsibility to Protect agenda that came out and…
Lindsey Hilsum
Yeah.
Dr Patricia Lewis
…you were in Rwanda and…
Lindsey Hilsum
Yeah.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Also…
Lindsey Hilsum
I mean, and also in Syria…
Dr Patricia Lewis
Syria, yeah.
Lindsey Hilsum
…where they didn’t protect anybody. So, there is a damned if you do and damned if you don’t thing, as well, but I think that what we learnt from Iraq was that, you know, the perils of intervention and what we learned from Syria and Rwanda were the perils of non-intervention. So, I’m glad I’m a Journalist, not a policymaker. This is not the answer to the question, but I think in addition to what you’re saying, I think those are very good points, but the other issue is colonialism. And so there is an issue about whether you – countries which invade other countries and whether there’s a colonial mentality there and I think you can certainly argue there was a colonial mentality when it came to Iraq and you definitely can when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. So, I think that goes along with it.
Dr Patricia Lewis
David?
The Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Thank you very much. David Hannay, House of Lords.
Lindsey Hilsum
Ah, oh, you know everything.
The Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Mohamed, what a pleasure it is to see you looking so well and firing on all cylinders. One – two questions. First question, do you, the panel, both parts of the panel, think that Saddam, in fact, contributed to his own downfall by playing for 10 years cat and mouse with the Inspectors, preventing them visiting so-called palaces and so on, and creating the impression that he was hiding something? Which I think he probably did want to create that impression because that strengthened his hand in dealing with his neighbours, the belief that he could – he had some very nasty things he could do to them, still. So, the question is, do you think he contributed to his own downfall? And, secondly, with the benefit of hindsight, and we now know that there were no weapons, when do you think he destroyed them? What is the best guess for when they were all destroyed?
Dr Patricia Lewis
I wonder if I might just respond quickly, David, ‘cause – so, one of the things that Saddam Hussein did is he taped almost all of his discussions in his cabinet. So, there is, in fact, a body of tapes that are at the, I think the National Defense University in Washington D.C. that you can go and listen to and read the transcripts of all of these. And one of the things that really worried him was the likelihood of a reprise attack from the Gulf States, led by, you know, Kuwait, but also the supporters of Kuwait. He didn’t fear the Americans in the way that he should have done. It’s a really fascinat – there’s a lot of scholarship on this, which, you know, which rarely makes it these days into the media, but it’s a fascinating history.
But perhaps, Han – Mohamed, you could reflect a bit on your work with Hans and trying to understand what Saddam Hussain was doing, because from 1998 to 2002, there were no UN inspections, still IAEA inspections. So, perhaps you could talk a bit about that and the way that was handled.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Yeah, I think, Patricia, between 98 and 2002 we had very, very limited inspections, sure. You know, we just go to declared sites, so we could not really do very much. But on the question, did he really help himself? It’s a very complicated issue. I – it’s clear that he knew that he didn’t have anything, but he wanted to create the impression that they still have some weapons. So, it’s a question to – maybe it was as a self-defence, you know, and – but that raises another issue I don’t want to talk about, which is, if you have nuclear weapons, does that work as your ultimate deterrence? That is a different issue. Why – and this is a question I hear all the time, why is – North Korea is not being attacked, you know? Why Iraq was pulverised? But that’s, you know, that’s a different one.
Now, the other issue, obviously, that, yes, it – you know, they – he thought that we eventually – since they don’t have anything, they can’t relax. But the issue of dignity for the Iraqis was very important, you know. Sometimes – you know, and this is something I can talk about, not us, but UNSCOM at the beginning of the inspection, they went to the churches and mosques on the day – on Friday or on Sunday, for no reason, you know. So, there was, I mean, there was mistakes from both sides. This is not – you know, we – [inaudible – 47:23] die and that’s as a result of that. The Security Council completely changed UNSCOM and created Hans Blix UNMOVIC, because we wanted an impartial – a very sensitive, you know, but in – professional inspection unit.
Insofar as the IAEA, I think we have been there doing this sort of thing for years, so we know we have to be professional, but we have to understand also not to be aggressive and not to humiliate people. But yes, the short answer that he didn’t help himself, it was not really a functioning system. You know, as you said there was no council of Ministers, there was nothing. It’s a – it just was a – but at the end, the question remains do we – did we have any risk that required that we go in? That is – and, yeah, a lot of mistakes everywhere, but did we see that 48-hours chemical weapon, you know, threat that required that we go in? You know, this is the basic question, I think, you know.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Thank you, Mohamed. So, I’m going to go to a lady at the back and then a gentleman at the front and then, to Austin online, please, as well.
Member
Thank you very much. I don’t know whether chemical weapons was the justification which would unable international intervention in a country or not, that is not my point. What I can say, however, is that this is not a discussion which is either/or. I was there and, yes, Saddam had chemical weapons, in terms of mustard gas, and he was using it in the marshlands. I was carrying out medical sup – humanitarian work with properly qualified Doctors. We actually brought three victims over here to St Thomas’ and managed to save two, but it’s awfully difficult with mustard gas because the breathing almost disappears immediately. So, it’s terribly hard to save people.
But yes, he had mustard gas, he had been using it intermittently for a number of years. He didn’t have the same supervision on flying that he had – that we had in the North, in Kurdistan, and that enabled him to send out small planes and drop the mustard gas on Marsh Arabs. And, of course, the first time I reported it to Geneva, Geneva took six weeks to get permission to come in and do anything, by which time the bulldozers had already been and turned the whole place upside down. So…
Lindsey Hilsum
When are you talking – and when are you talking about, what year?
Member
Pardon?
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
What year?
Member
What year? The first, I reported every time to the House of Commons, so I can give you the debates. The first year would have been about 1998, I think, and the last time I reported it was 2000, just before the invasion, as a matter of fact, but I was on the ground, on the border, in the marshlands. And I reported that straight back to the House of Commons, as well. So, every time I found stuff, I did my very best to find a slot in the Commons debate and pushed something in. At that time the speaker was very kind and very helpful and Commons colleagues minded very much, too.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And ten years before that, of course, almost exactly we’d just marked the anniversary of Halabja, with the attacks.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
I didn’t quote the anniversary of Halabja.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Yes, yes.
Member
I was not in the North for Halabja, so…
Dr Patricia Lewis
No, we’ve just marked the…
Member
…so, I can’t tell you about that. I’m only talking about the Deep South. Can’t talk about…
Dr Patricia Lewis
Yes, but the – we – the thing is that Saddam had used chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war, had used – in Halabja, they continued using against pockets.
Member
I was unable to – well, I wasn’t unable to ask Saddam. I passed up the opportunity to visit him in his cell by the time he was captured, and I thought that was he’s clearly gone mad and it wasn’t fair to grill somebody who was on their way to execution, anyway. So, I did not ask Saddam what I could have asked, but I did that because I thought it was improper with someone already under death sentence to go and grill them about their past activities.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Yeah.
Member
So I can’t answer that, I apologise.
Dr Patricia Lewis
I’m going to go to – before going back to our panellists, I’m going to go to the gentleman in the front row and then to Austin Short online.
Sean Curtin
Sean Curtin, ordinary member of Chatham House. I would say that governments outside of the Western envelope have learnt to treat any war that the West wages with great scepticism and this has severely damaged our soft power, especially when it comes to the way that many countries outside the Western envelope view the Ukraine War. Last year I spent a lot of time in six different Southern African states and I was very surprised that a lot of the people I spoke were spouting Russian propaganda, talking about the need to protect Russians and that NATO was a threat. And they use language similar to what was used to justify the Iraq War. And because we haven’t invested and Russia Today, you can get it in any South African or Zambian TV and the Chinese channels, that people actually have a view which is completely opposite to our one. So, I’d say that’s what a lot of governments of the world have taken away from this. Thank you.
Dr Patricia Lewis
That’s an important point.
Lindsey Hilsum
Yeah.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Austin, can I go to you, please, for your question? If you could just restrict yourself to one question, please. I know you’ve put two on.
Austin Short
Hello, Marhaba. I think my – I’ll go with my first question, which I think is similar to what’s just been asked. Saddam Hussain was clearly a villain, he’d used chemical weapons against his own people, as we’ve been hearing, he invaded a neighbouring country and refused to cooperate with UN sanctions, with your mandate for inspections. Yet the popular narrative paints Bush and Blair as the villains. Has this narrative helped win support or ambivalence from Russia today?
Dr Patricia Lewis
Hmmm. So, a lot of questions. Mohamed, if I could turn to you, please, to – you don’t have to address every single one, but, you know, if you could give us your reactions to those questions, it would be very helpful. I can’t see you, Mohamed.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
What is the question, Pat, Patricia?
Dr Patricia Lewis
So, there were a number of questions. We had the questions about the use of chemical weapons.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Yeah.
Dr Patricia Lewis
There were two questions about that, where essentially, no – Saddam was no angel, right? And he was using chemical weapons.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Sure.
Dr Patricia Lewis
He had used them before and so on, and yet, we keep painting Blair and Bush as the villains rather than Saddam Hussain as the villain.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Sure.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And then, the other point was about the framing of the way in which this language is used and how, now, this is often used around the world. So, we’ve – what I would call an own goal, where the West has created a framing for others to be able to use this language and act in a way that is detrimental to people. Thanks.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Sure. On the – on the first question, Patricia, of course, you know, Saddam Hussein had a long record of deceit. I mean, since 1991 he invaded Kuwait, so we should put things in context, you know. The trust was not there, obviously, and that’s what I said, we had to do – whether he was also using chemical weapon in Halabja and other places. But the answer to that is a question of proportionality. You know, there is a – as I mentioned there’s a lot of horrible governments around the world, still around. Are we going to go to war every time they misbehave or should we try, you know, to tailor a response that is proportionate, that we might not end up destroying the whole country, you know, because somebody used chemical weapon in the field, for example, in the field?
The other question, of course, use a rule – I mean, we talk a lot about rule-based system, the rules-based system has to – it – you cannot just go on your own and say, as I saw Mr Bremmer yesterday saying in an interview, for example, “When it comes to the US interest, we do not need UN authorisation.” Well, then you can forget about the UN system, then you can forget about international law, you know. We need to have a collective security. We need to have a rule-based system, as we have – go back to the charter, if it need to be adjusted, we need to adjust it. But the chaos we have right now that everyone can get away with murder because they have decided they are on the right side, well, we will end up self-destroying us.
And I should, again – being somebody who has spent years with nuclear weapon, the language we – the loose language we see now about the use of nuclear weapons, you know, it just horrifying, it just – it makes it more imperative that we have a functioning collective security system that is contained, constrained, controlled and does not have us to go into the final solution, which is use of nuclear weapon or chemical – or other weapons of mass destruction.
Dr Patricia Lewis
So, Mohamed…
Lindsey Hilsum
May I abuse my…?
Dr Patricia Lewis
Yeah, please.
Lindsey Hilsum
May I abuse my position?
Dr Patricia Lewis
Please.
Lindsey Hilsum
May I ask Mohamed a question?
Dr Patricia Lewis
We’re not – Lindsey, I was just about to go to you.
Lindsey Hilsum
Can I ask Mohamed a question? What did you think – so, when Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian people in [Al Ghouta – 57:23] and Obama had set a red line, which was crossed and then did nothing, what should have been done? Or was it correct to basic – to have that negotiation which they had, but which did nothing? ‘Cause the negotiation, it was supposed to be about Bashar al-Assad giving up his chemical weapons, but he didn’t, and he used them again and again.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
It’s not an easy question, at all, you know, and…
Lindsey Hilsum
That’s why I asked…
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
…as I said, what is really important is to get a collective – I mean, the major powers right now, they have to work together, you know. I mean, you have – whatever you – Russia, China, EU and the US, they have to find a way to function together, you know. There is no – after – forget after the Ukraine War, before the Ukraine War. You cannot just continue on that policy of confrontation, you know, we all would lose, I mean, irrespective of who’s right, who’s wrong. You know, what – you are right, you know, something should have been done, for example, in Syria, but it hasn’t been done, you know, and the messages are contradictory, that in one case we forget about it, on the other, we go in. I mean, you look at Libya, you go at Iraq, you go at North Korea, you go at – in different places, you know, but you have to have rule-based and that, again, I should hope that Hans Blix, again, continued to emphasise to me, this is the best we have, a rule-based system, and we should use it, you know.
Dr Patricia Lewis
In the case of Syria, the chemical weapons were removed by the OPCW, they were brought to different places around the world and dismantled. The problem was he still had the capability to manufacture new.
Lindsey Hilsum
Hmmm.
Dr Patricia Lewis
But the capacity is lessened, it is lessened.
Lindsey Hilsum
Yes, can I just say, after Ghouta and the negotiation.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Nothing was done since and he had by that time – Syria had by that time ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, so they should be held accountable, and indeed, are in The Hague regularly, but then nothing happens. So, our bigger problem is as I think – which Dina Mufti has asked is, you know, “Has the war in Iraq led to a breakdown in the international world order?”
Lindsey Hilsum
Yes.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And I think that’s one of the very big questions. But I’m going to turn to Henry Dodd, please, and to Anne Dayton, to ask questions, as well, online. We’re going to go a little bit late, people, just so you’re aware, because I think people really want to hear this. So, Henry?
Henry Dodd
Hi, I’m Henry Dodd, I work for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. My question is, how much do you think the framing of the conflict as being around WMD influenced the failure by the US and the UK to plan for a long-term commitment to rebuilding Iraq?
Dr Patricia Lewis
And then Anne?
Anne Dayton
Thank you very much. Can you – thank you for these very powerful speeches from both the speakers, but we should, I think, move our conversation as it is going, towards the difference between the content of very different wars in Iraq and Ukraine and the processes. And my question for the two speakers is what advice would they give to governments to behave in ways that also have learnt from the past? Thank you.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Hmmm, and then a third question, I think, that will be the last question, please, here.
Ian Martin
Ian Martin, I’m a member of Chatham House. I’ve worked latterly for the United Nations, but I’m remembering now that I was working for Amnesty International at the time of Halabja and we made strenuous efforts to get the US and Western governments that had been supporting Saddam in war against Iran to care about that, with almost no success. But Mr ElBaradei made a strong point about accountability and the lack of accountability in the context of Iraq and someone in the UK Government with a wicked sense of humour has decided that the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is the right time to hold a major international meeting on accountability in the context of Ukraine. And we all know that one of the major problems in the Global South regarding Ukraine is the perception of double standards. Lindsey, I’m sure you are yearning to see accountability for some of the things you’ve seen on the ground, but how do we handle that particular obvious case of double standards?
Dr Patricia Lewis
Great. Lindsey, do you want to begin with that?
Lindsey Hilsum
No, because those questions are all too difficult for me. I don’t give – on the first one, obviously, you know, in terms of rebuilding of Iraq, one of the unintended consequences if how powerful Iran became in Iraq and therefore, Western involvement has become very complex and obviously, then you’ve had ISIS and all the things that have flown – flowed from the war. So, I’m not completely sure how much Western governments having invaded could do on rebuilding, ‘cause it’s been such a disaster. So, that’s the first one.
The second one was advice to governments. I never give advice to governments. And the third one, Ian, on accountability. Look, we have a very patchwork system on accountability, don’t we? And the best we have at the moment is the ICC and one of the – if there is anything good which has come out of it, I’m glad to see the ICC is no longer only indicting Africans. That now, other people are also noted as having done things which are indictable, which is – you know, which I think is an improvement. But I think that one of the interesting things which we will see about Syria is that there’s a wealth of evidence and there’s been so much collection of evidence on Syria, and there are cases which are being taken in different countries, particularly in Germany, against some of Bashar al-Assad’s torturers and, you know, I – at the moment, it is that, kind of, patchwork. But until, as Mohamed says, you’ve got a better international system, which involves the Europeans, America, Russia and China, basically, the great powers working together, I can see no way that you can create a coherent system. I think you can only have a patchwork and it’s very unsatisfactory.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Hmmm. Mohamed, we were asked about, you know, the – whether or not the weapons of mass destruction had an impact on the preparations for post-war Iraq, and I’m reminded, of course, of the Chilcot Inquiry and the way in which that inquiry demonstrated the lack of preparedness for what would come after the war. And I wondered at the time in the UN, my memory is that senior people were not allowed to talk about – UN officials were not allowed to talk about the post-war environment because that would assume that the war would take place, and there was no mandate for war. So, they were in this – the UN was in this terrible bind. Were you part of those conversations, at all? Can you shed any light on them?
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
No, Patricia, that – you are right. I mean, we were – I mean the UN posture – official position that we didn’t see a raison d’etre whatsoever for any war, so we were not talking about post-war. But aside from the mess that happened at – in the post-war and the division along ethnic groupings and all that, all the junk that took place, you know, I think the question was asked about accountability on double standard and that’s what I want to focus. I mean, everybody now is saying hooray for ICC, but this ICC, the International Criminal Court – Criminal Court, the US is not party to it, Russia is not party to it, China is not party to it, India is not party to it. So, it has become, again, a forum for the weak and defeated, but the powerful should not be accountable.
And, again, as Lindsey is saying, unless we have a system where all the major powers do as they say and work together and cooperate, particularly at the time when the nuclear threat – nuclear weapons threat is horrifying, unless we do that, we haven’t learned anything. A question was asked about content, have we learned anything? I haven’t really seen that we have learned anything. I think we’re getting into a more chaotic world order right now, where the feeling that everybody can get away with whatever they want.
When you talk about double standard, again, I look at different issues. I look at vaccine, for example, I look at vaccine. Here we are in the EU, 86% are fully vaccinated, we are, hmmm. I don’t know about you in the UK and the mess you created, but we are in the EU, 86% vaccinated. In Africa it’s 15%, you know. What message are we sending, you know. Look at the refugees coming from Ukraine. I mean, they are one of us and they are welcome, but look at refugees coming from the Middle East, they are left intentionally to drown. So, double standard is the mother of all problems, I think, as we have, and unless we have a system that is fair, that is equitable, I think we are not learning anything, Patricia.
Dr Patricia Lewis
True. In the absence of that, though, what do you do? You know, do you not set up the ICC? Do you not set up international treaties that nor – I mean countries negotiate international treaties, sign them and then don’t ratify them, or they negotiate them and don’t sign them. You know, what do you do? Do you just say, oh, it’s impossible, or do you try to find a way forward? I think this is – as you said, Lindsey, you know, you can – you’re an observer, you’re a Journalist, making the decisions is just so, so much harder, and we do make mistakes. And what I see in the West is that there have been many inquiries into the mistakes that have been made, which I think is a really important part of democracy.
I want to end, though, because unfortunately, we have to end with a consideration of what happened afterwards in terms of the Iraq Survey Group. So, we had David Kay and then Charlie Duelfer and his book “Hide and Seek” is one of the best-written books on all of this, I think, who then went into Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction that, you know, the UN Inspectors apparently couldn’t find and, of course, they couldn’t find them either. Which I think is one of the strongest supportive pieces of evidence for how good the UN Inspectors, the IA Inspectors were.
When that happened, you know, many of them in the Iraq Survey Group had been in the IAEA, David Kay, for example, and – or UNMOVIC and UNSCOM prior. So, you know, is there a – should there be, if there isn’t already, a, sort of, international club of Inspectors who are still around who can get together and perhaps advise future governments on how to do things this – really well, and shouldn’t you be leading this, Mohamed, you and Hans?
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Well, we try, but we are a cog in a big machine and, you know, we can succeed as much as the machine is functioning and you – we need to reform the UN, we need to reform the Security Council, we need to respect international law. We need the major powers to talk to each other, including now, in the case of the Ukraine War, we need to do all that and then, it would be much easier for us, but – you know, as the little cog in this big machine to function properly.
So, we will do our best, but we have to continue as Hans and I are Lawyers, I mean, we are Lawyers. We care about double standard, we care about rule of law and as much as we continue to try to improve what we can do, we need to pin down the bigger problem and the bigger problem is that we need a functioning global security order.
Dr Patricia Lewis
Thank you, Mohamed. Lindsey, last words?
Lindsey Hilsum
And in the absence of having a functional global security organis – as you say, what can we do? And maybe Weapons Inspectors are Journalists are the same, that all we can do is find out as much as possible and so that they can never say they didn’t know, because they did know, because we told them.
Dr Patricia Lewis
And on that note, we will end. Thank you all so much for coming, thank you for being [audio cuts out – 70:37]. And I want to say a special thank you to you, Mohamed, for being with us, I really appreciate it. We’re sending our best wishes to Hans and his family. Thank you, Lindsey, for everything you all did and continue to do. Thank you.
Dr Mohamed ElBaradei
Thank you very much, Pat, for having us.
