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British Counter-Intelligence expert Richard Barrett: Western nations have acted 'a bit too late' in Syria
By Henry Hullah
The inaction of the West has prompted Muslims from across the globe to make the treacherous journey to Syria to join the even more dangerous civil war that has been waged for almost two years.
12,000 fighters have flooded Syria, more even than went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, have created a violent reaction in western nations known as 'blowback'.
British Counter-Intelligence expert and veteran Intelligence officer Richard Barrett told Amanpour that "In many ways, the Western nations, as Mr. Brahimi suggested, are in a bit of a bind here. What is the correct policy to conduct towards Syria? And I think the retiring ambassador, Robert Ford, also suggested this. It's now a bit too late. But with hindsight, you would have done things differently. But that's always the way. And very, very hard now for Western nations to correct a policy which would satisfy all their citizens that they were doing the right thing."
Amanpour asked if there was any way the U.K., France or even the United States could prevent foreign fighters in Syria returning and encouraging domestic terrorism.
"I mean, there's a big difference I think about being motivated to go as a foreign fighter and coming back as a domestic terrorist. But nonetheless, it doesn't take many. And if it's only 1 percent of 3,000 people already and counting, then that's going to be quite a problem".
Former Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi: I resigned in protest
By Henry Hullah,
Once Special Envoy to Syria for the Arab League and the U.N., Lakhdar Brahimi left his post on May 14th of this year.
He went out with a bang, telling Amanpour he resigned in protesting f the world’s refusal to act in Syria.
“I resigned because I was getting nowhere and it was the only way for me to protest the total inattention of the international community and the region to the situation in Syria”
It was a move that echoed the resignation of Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford in February.
“I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy”, said Ford just last week.
NATO Commander: Bergdahl hasn’t been debriefed yet
By Mick Krever, CNN
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, whose release from five years in Taliban captivity has been mired in controversy, is not “actually being debriefed yet,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, General Philip Breedlove, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Friday.
“What we're concentrating on right now is his health. He has been in a very tough place for a long time. Landstuhl Medical Center [in Germany] is the perfect place for this. It is the best place in the world to do it. That's what we're focussed on right now."
Breedlove and Amanpour spoke in Normandy, France, where world leaders marked 70 years since the Allied D-Day invasion during World War II.
Bergdahl’s release has become a political football in the United States since it was announced last week.
Critics believe he was a deserter (an Army investigation found that he walked off his Afghan base voluntarily) and say he was not worth the five Taliban members who were released from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for his freedom.
“The Army has given all of our forces a great culture, and that culture is no soldier left behind,” General Breedlove said. “So no soldier, no sailor, airman, nor marine we leave behind.”
D-Day, when war came home in pictures
Christiane Amanpour reports from Normandy on Hollywood's effort to capture D-Day as it happened.
Click above to watch.
Amanpour tours Churchill's bunker
In the lead up to World War II, a top secret bunker was built directly under the UK’s seat of power, Whitehall.
It included everything Britain’s leaders could need during wartime – military planning rooms, bedrooms, and even a secret room (disguised as a bathroom) where Winston Churchill would often speak with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Click above to see Christiane Amanpour tour the Churchill War Rooms with historian Taylor Downing.
Dramatist fighting for freedom in Belarus
“We have a joke,” Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre, tells Christiane Amanpour.
“The head of electoral committee [comes] to [President Alexander] Lukashenko and [says] that, ‘We have bad news and good news.”
“And he said, ‘Start from good news.’”
“‘You are the president again.’”
“‘So what bad news?’”
“‘Nobody voted for you.’”
Belarus is considered the last dictatorship in Europe. Lukashenko has ruled with an iron fist there for 20-years, stamping out any dissent.
Kaliada unsurprisingly is an outspoken critic of Lukashenko, through theatre, and that has forced her into exile.
“When KGB arrived they said we will not allow you to organize a second Maidan – freedom square in Ukraine.”
Click above to watch Amanpour’s full conversation with Kaliada.
Former NSA Director: ‘An attack is going to come’
By Mick Krever, CNN
The former director of the U.S.’s National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander, warned Thursday that the NSA, mired in controversy over alleged overreach, will inevitably come under another kind of negative scrutiny when the next terrorist attack comes.
“I do think an attack is going to come and hit us or Europe,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview. “And then people are going to swing this right around.”
“What is it that NSA actually does? Let’s get those facts on the table.”
“Put it on the table, look at it, and say is that a reasonable way to do it? And if not, what would you suggest? What would others suggest? Nobody’s been able to come up with a better fix.”
Thursday marks one year since the first revelations from leaker Edward Snowden were revealed. General Alexander led the spying organization until earlier this year, and has since founded a cybersecurity company, Ironnet.
Former Pakistani foreign minister: 'Pakistan is still beaten and bruised'
By Henry Hullah, CNN
The first female foreign minister of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar's country and the region surrounding it has become entrenched in international condemnation as a stream of crimes committed against women are coming to light.
In particular, so-called "honor killings" are taking place on a large scale in Pakistan, with 869 committed in 2013 alone.
"I would say that the whole question of honor as being the protection of the men's honor as against the woman's life and the woman's honor," Khar says, "So the question of honor is actually the honor of the man."
"Therefore a lot of legislation is required."
Tiananmen leader expected beating, but never bullets
By Mick Krever, CNN
The students who led China’s Tiananmen Square protests 25 years ago genuinely believed that success was a possibility – and though they foresaw a crackdown, they never expected the government to use live ammunition.
“We did expect some kind of crackdown. The logic of a mass movement is that you apply pressure and hope for your opponent to make the right choice,” Wu'er Kaixi, who was one of the main student protest leaders, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “We never really expected real ammunition.”
Wednesday marks 25 years since the Chinese military’s bloody crackdown on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in which hundreds – perhaps thousands – of protesters were killed. The government has never acknowledged how many were killed.
June 4, 1989 was a “very dramatic night after seven dramatic weeks,” Wu’er said.
“We made very emotional demands. We went through hunger strikes. And one of the Chinese poets wrote that … the students moved the God but they failed to move the emperor.”
“Of course that time the square is in extreme emotional state,” Wu’er said. “But all the students there were almost ready, almost ready to sacrifice our lives.”
Syria jihadist training ‘worst since Afghanistan in 1980s’
By Mick Krever, CNN
The volume for foreign fighters seeking to battle jihad in Syria is “more significant than every other instance of foreign fighter mobilization since the Afghanistan war in the 1980s,” the International Center for the Study of Radicalization claims.
“What’s happening right now in Syria is truly profound,” Peter Neumann, director of the center, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“The old al Qaeda, I believe, is no longer that relevant. In five years’ time we may well be talking about a different kind of organization, and one that like Afghanistan in the 1980s has been created in Syria.”
Western powers are scrambling to deal with the very real national security blowback that is emerging from the Syrian civil war, now in its fourth year.
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