Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid
I recently wrote an article entitled âFallujahâs Revolutionariesâ but it didnât appeal to many, perhaps because they werenât able to see the connection or maybe because they admired the political appeal of those far-off events. The article was a commentary on the killing of foreign civilians, among whom were Americans working in the construction sector, and a young man slaughtered in front of the cameras. The crimes committed in Fallujah were portrayed as heroic actions and these groupsâ defensive claims and political narrative have become pervasive in the Arab region, which does not differentiate between the right to resistance and the crime of killing civilians. That dangerous omission led to daily celebrations of these atrocities in the Arab media including in Saudi Arabia.
The reason I single out the media for criticism is simple: The current war is essentially one of ideas, with the media as willing tools. The terrorists have managed to capture the emotions of the media and exploit them in their grand political scheme. Their aim is on one hand to strike at foreigners â an important prop to our to society â and on the other to convince the public that these are legitimate acts. Kidnapping a hundred or killing a thousand people doesnât topple a regime, a fact they are well aware of. It is in the publicity for such acts that the leverage can be found, and that is why the media have been roped into their war.
We are on the threshold of a new era of media-savvy terrorism. The terroristsâ victims are civilians, and they are being stabbed with the same knives that have attacked Lebanese, Sudanese, Egyptians and Saudi women and children in the Kingdom, by the same extremists. The atrocities committed in Algeria 14 years ago are a good example because both mentality and tactics were similar. The criminals would attack âsoft targetsâ like women and children by disguising themselves as policemen, setting up security roadblocks or entering girlsâ schools or foreignersâ homes. The organizationâs propaganda machine tried to gloss the crimes with religious commands and publish justifications and false claims against the victims. In most of the countries where they surfaced, such as Egypt and Tunisia, these bloody groups eventually disappeared. In Algeria many members of these groups surrendered without achieving any of their aims.
Like colorblind bulls, the media enthusiastically generalize, not realizing that the internal fallout from talk abroad is going to be heavy and dangerous. The extremist line has been so widely publicized that it is now being parroted by any Tom, Dick and Harry without being fully understood, and they thence find their way into the audio and videotapes the murderers have taken to posting on their websites. |