The Power of Nightmares - Part III
The Power of Nightmares assesses whether the threat from a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. In the concluding part of the series, the programme explains how the illusion was created and who benefits from it.
This is a must watch documentary - Broadcast 11/03/04 BBC 2 - Written and produced by Adam Curtis
Transcript by Mike Conley
NOTE by Mike Conley: Portions of the audio are difficult to understand; where possible, I provide my best guess at the actual words spoken, and precede them with a {?} indicator.
VO: In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It�s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.
VO: This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Last week’s episode ended in the late ‘90s with both groups marginalized and out of power. But with the attacks of September 11th, the fates of both dramatically changed. The Islamists, after their moment of triumph, were virtually destroyed within months, while the neoconservatives took power in Washington. But then, the neoconservatives began to reconstruct the Islamists. They created a phantom enemy. And as this nightmare fantasy began to spread, politicians realized the newfound power it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age. Those with the darkest nightmares became the most powerful.
[ OPENING TITLES : THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES / THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR / THE SHADOWS IN THE CAVE ]
[ TITLE: AFGHANISTAN 1998 ]
VO: At the end of the 1990s, Osama bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan. He was accompanied by Ayman Zawahiri, the most influential ideologist of the Islamist movement. For 20 years, Zawahiri had struggled to create revolutions in the Arab world, but all attempt had ended in bloody failure.
[ EXCERPT , CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO ]
INTERVIEWER (in Arabic, English subtitles): We haven’t had any information about your whereabouts for some time. Where were you?
AYMAN ZAWAHIRI: {?} I was just home and clubs.
INTERVIEWER: Not in Afghanistan? Somewhere else?
ZAWAHIRI: Everywhere, everywhere.
INTERVIEWER : Everywhere?
ZAWAHIRI: I am a Muslim. Being a Muslim, you are wanted everywhere. Because if you—just if you say no to the superpowers, this immediately in itself is a crime you are wanted for.
INTERVIEWER: {?} Yes, but isn’t what you do not to do with arms?
ZAWAHIRI: {?} It�s aggressive but ask Allah, and he is greater than superpower.
VO: Zawahiri was a follower of the Egyptian revolutionary, Sayyed Qutb, who had been executed in 1966. Qutb’s vision had been of a new type of modern state. It would contain all of the benefits of Western science and technology, but it would use Islam as a moral framework to protect people from the culture of Western liberalism. Qutb believed that this culture infected the minds of Muslims, turning them into selfish creatures who threatened to destroy the shared values that held society together. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Zawahiri had tried to persuade the masses to rise up and topple the rulers who had allowed this corruption to infect their countries.
[ EXCERPT , VIDEOTAPE OF SADAT ASSASSINATION ]
[ CUT TO AYMAN ZAWAHIRI IN EGYPTIAN COURTROOM CELL ]
ZAWAHIRI [haranguing courtroom]: We want to speak to the whole world. Who are we?
VO: But the revolutionaries became trapped in a horrific escalation of violence, because the masses refused to follow them. Islamism failed as a mass movement, and Zawahiri now came to the conclusion that a new strategy was needed.
GILLES KEPEL , HISTORIAN OF ISLAMIST MOVEMENT: They had no revolution at all. I mean, they had failed in their takeover, they had failed to topple the powers that be, and, you know, they became more and more interested in this idea that only a small vanguard could be successful. I mean, they had lost confidence in the spontaneous capacity of the masses to be mobilised. Then they decided to change strategy completely, and instead of striking at what they called the “near enemy”—i.e., the local régimes—they decided that they could strike at the “far away enemy”—i.e., at the West, at America—and that would impress the masses, and the masses would be mobilised.
[ TITLE : NAIROBI , AUGUST 1998 ]
VO: Zawahiri and bin Laden began implementing this new strategy in August, 1998. Two huge suicide bombs were detonated outside American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. The bombings had a dramatic effect on the West. For the first time, the name “bin Laden” entered the public consciousness as a terrorist mastermind.
[ CUT TO AFGHANISTAN ]
VO: The suicide bombers had been recruited by bin Laden from the Islamist training camps in Afghanistan. But his and Zawahiri’s operation was very much on the fringes of the Islamist movement. The overwhelming majority of the fighters in these camps had nothing at all to do with bin Laden or international terrorism. They were training to fight régimes in their own countries, such as Uzbekistan, Kashmir, and Chechnia. Their aim was to establish Islamist societies in the Western world, and they had no interest in attacking America. Bin Laden helped fund some of the camps, and in return was allowed to look for volunteers for his operations. But a number of senior Islamists were against his new strategy, including members of Zawahiri’s own group, Islamic Jihad.
[ EXCERPT , CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO : BIN LADEN, SURROUNDED BY ARMED , MASKED SOLDIERS ]
VO: Even bin Laden’s displays of strength to the Western media were faked. The fighters in this video had been hired for the day and told to bring their own weapons. For beyond this small group, bin Laden had no formal organisation—until the Americans invented one for him.
[ CUT TO MANHATTAN CITYSCAPE ]
[ TITLE : MANHATTAN , JANUARY 2001 ]
VO: In January, 2001, a trial began in a Manhattan courtroom of four men accused of the embassy bombings in east Africa. But the Americans had also decided to prosecute bin Laden in his absence. But to do this under American law, the prosecutors needed evidence of a criminal organisation because, as with the Mafia, that would allow them to prosecute the head of the organisation even if he could not be linked directly to the crime. And the evidence for that organisation was provided for them by an ex-associate of bin Laden’s called Jamal al-Fadl.
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