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Sects, lies and
videotapes
By Charles Recknagel
PRAGUE - The
international media have received so many audio and
videotapes purporting to be from armed militant groups
battling the US in Iraq and elsewhere that observers
have long ago ceased counting.
The latest
videotape, received by the Qatar-based Arabic satellite
television station al-Jazeera, is a perfect example.
Broadcast over the weekend, it presented a statement by
five hooded men in battle dress and holding assault
rifles and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers.
The men, identifying themselves as part of the
hitherto unknown Iraqi National Islamic Resistance
Movement, pledged to escalate their efforts to evict US
forces from Iraq. "The Iraqi resistance, as is well
known, has started to make substantial progress on the
domestic front, putting the enemy on the defensive
rather than offensive, and its varied and frequent
attacks have prevented the occupiers from planting
themselves on Iraqi soil, thank God," they said.
The masked men also took an unexpected slap at
the media by accusing journalists of covering up the
news of almost-daily guerrilla attacks on US forces in
Iraq in order to help US President George W Bush win
re-election in November next year.
"The enemy is
suffering so many casualties on a daily basis that this
news is being severely blacked out by the media to
protect Bush's chances in the forthcoming election and
to protect the policies of the White House from the
American public," they said.
The tape is the
most recent of a string of videos recorded by unknown
groups purporting to be leading the guerrilla campaign
against US soldiers in Iraq. Earlier this month on
August 9 another five masked men appeared on a tape
identifying themselves as members of the White Flags,
Muslim Youth and Army of Muhammad organizations.
They said that they wanted "to tell other
organizations that guerrilla warfare is the only way to
free the country", and they warned "the countries of the
world, for the last time, not to send troops into Iraq".
At times, the videotapes emerging from Iraq are
having to compete for press attention with recordings
from better-established groups like al-Qaeda. That was
the case this weekend when, just as al-Jazeera broadcast
the message of the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance
Movement, another regional satellite TV, Abu Dhabi-based
al-Arabiyah, aired an audiotape by a man praising Osama
bin Laden.
That tape, broadcast on August 17,
announced that bin Laden is alive and well - as is
Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban who once hosted
al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The speaker then linked
al-Qaeda to Iraq by calling on all Muslims to join in
evicting the US from Baghdad.
The television
station attributed the tape to Abd al-Rahman al-Najdi,
an al-Qaeda official believed to be still at large in
Afghanistan. But it offered no proof of the source and
international news agencies reporting the broadcast
added their own caveat that - as Reuters put it - they
"could not verify the authenticity of the tape or the
identity of the speaker".
As the number of
anonymous tapes threatening the US in Iraq grows
steadily, the fact that their origins are often
uncertain is fueling a debate over whether the media
should air such messages. Washington frequently says
that the tapes have no news value and are pure
propaganda.
Analysts say that the debate pits
journalists' desire to present all perspectives in their
coverage of the "war on terrorism" against Washington's
concern that propaganda might serve as a recruiting tool
for militant groups.
Jonathan Stevenson, a
counterterrorism expert at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies in London, told RFE/RL the armed
groups hope to use the media to create an image of a
growing struggle on the verge of victory. They hope that
will persuade more people to join their movements. "A
lot of these groups probably do exist and are
sympathetic with al-Qaeda," he said. "On the other hand,
some are probably just hoaxes and people playing games.
[But] the more people see others getting involved and
casting their lot decisively with a terrorist group, the
more inclined those onlookers will be to jump over the
fence."
But Stevenson said the recruitment value
of the messages themselves depends entirely on the
success the groups actually have in carrying out anti-US
strikes. He says that al-Qaeda's ability to draw new
members comes from its stunning destruction of New
York's World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001,
and only marginally from messages purportedly recorded
by its leaders. He said that this means that if Western
governments really want to cut off terrorist
recruitment, they would probably have to ban the media
from reporting terrorist attacks altogether.
So
far, most news organizations have put their interest in
covering all aspects of the "war on terrorism" ahead of
fears that they are allowing their resources to be used
by terrorist groups. Stevenson said that the Western
media have at times banned terrorists from the airwaves
at a government's request, but that the results have
been counterproductive. He cited efforts by Margaret
Thatcher's former administration in Great Britain to ban
representatives of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from
British media.
He said that Thatcher's broadcast
ban on the IRA, its representatives, or Sinn Fein,
"actually empowered the group - by drawing attention to
the broadcast ban itself and, by extension, to the
group. [It] actually made a government that was
attempting to project itself as a democratic bastion of
liberal principles [appear] suppressive."
Amid
the latest flurry of messages from little-known militant
Iraqi groups and purportedly from al-Qaeda, top US
officials are reserving their response until
intelligence agencies can determine just where the tapes
are coming from.
Speaking about the tape linking
al-Qaeda to Iraq, US civil administrator for Iraq L Paul
Bremer told reporters, "I don't have any reaction to
these tapes until I see a chance for our intelligence
agencies to analyze the tapes and tell us what they make
of their authenticity."
But he said that he
would not be surprised if al-Qaeda made this type of
tape to boost the morale of its members and to try to
expand the scope of its influence to Iraq. Bremer told
CNN that terrorists are indeed operating in Iraq, and
some are al-Qaeda elements.
Copyright (c)
2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave
NW, Washington DC 20036
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