The
Osama bin Laden Videotape as Propaganda
by
Richard W. Bulliet
The decision taken by many news organizations to limit exposure
of Osama bin Laden's image and words might be justified as
a way of stripping him of a platform for broadcasting his
views, proclaiming his resistance to American assaults, and
boasting of his deeds. Against this one needs to balance the
desirability of the American people knowing the minds of those
who so murderously attack them. Since the material excerpted
here was prepared many months ago, its context is that of
bin Laden trying to spread his opinions and recruit followers.
It does not relate to his current operations or views. It
is a skillful work of propaganda that manipulates words and
images and thereby seeks to touch the emotions of susceptible
viewers. Pursuing our current struggle to a successful outcome
requires that we understand the hostility that has enveloped
us and that we recognize the techniques of manipulation used
by those who would mobilize that hostility to deadly effect.
In viewing the videotape circulated in the Arab world by Osama bin Laden's sympathizers in the months preceding the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, American viewers must recognize that the images, voices, labels, and music were chosen to resonate with preexisting ideas and images that are foreign to most Americans. Where an American viewer might be surprised or shocked by a video clip showing Israeli soldiers brutalizing a Palestinian woman or child and protest that the scene fails to present the violence in any context other than oppression, viewers in the Arab world are more likely to see it as an affirmation of what they have always known or assumed about Israel. Where an American viewer might consider tearful appeals to masculine honor emotionally overdone, a young man socialized within the strongly patriarchal ethos of the Arab world might find them profoundly moving.
Looking at the tape overall, with the problem of different cultural perspectives in mind, one can discern two different rhetorical structures, that is, structures intended to lead the viewer to commit himself to bin Laden's cause. The first structure is explicit and conventional. The tape divides into three "scenes." Reel I is entitled "The Situation of the Muslim Umma." The word umma has served for fourteen centuries to denote the entirety of the world Muslim community. All Muslims belong to the umma. At the outset, therefore, the audience being addressed is Muslim and worldwide, and the situation depicted is one of worldwide assault on Muslims by Crusaders and Jews.
Reel II is entitled "The Causes." The copy of the tape available for study shows the beginning and end of this scene, but the middle, including any subheadings beyond the first ("Love of This World and Loathing of Death"), is missing. Judging from the other two scenes, there were probably at least two other subheadings, and it seems likely from the last few minutes before the start of Reel III that the final subheading concentrated on the centrality of the United States to the worldwide violence perpetrated against the Muslim community.
Reel III is entitled "The Solution." It divides into the following subsections: 1) "Hijra," a word drawn from the early history of Islam, when Muhammad and a few hundred followers fled oppression at the hands of the Meccans and in 622 made a migration (hijra) to the city of Medina, and used here by bin Laden for the obligation pious Muslims should feel to come to Afghanistan and join the battle to defend Islam; 2) "Preparation," referring to receiving military training and religious instruction at camps in Afghanistan; 3) "Jihad," a word literally meaning "making an effort" and susceptible of many non-violent interpretations in Islam, but here used to mean holy war in defense of the Muslim community.
The structure of the argument these three scenes constitute is familiar to every high school debater: describe the problem, explain the causes of the problem, propose a solution to the problem that addresses the causes you have described. The logical simplicity of the argument forecloses any need to understand Islamic theology, specific political grievances in different lands, or the structure and organization of the group summoning you to war.
Accordingly, none of these elements play a role in the tape. While religious appeals suffuse all three scenes and reference is made to the example of Muhammad and his early followers, the many and complex theological, social, and religious issues that surround discussions of jihad in Islamic intellectual history remain unmentioned. Reel I, which contains subsections labeled "Land of the Two Holy Places" (i.e., Saudi Arabia), Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Lebanon (specifically the village of Qana), Indonesia, and Kashmir, avoids discussion of specific political grievances and demands. And the al-Qaeda organization is never mentioned, nor is there any specification of the hierarchical or command relationship between Osama bin Laden (never identified by name) and the other shaykhs who appear.
The less obvious rhetorical structure derives from the imagery and the sound track. The tape's prologue shows bin Laden in religious garb reciting a poem of his own composition about the attack on the USS Cole, followed by pictures of the Cole with an explosion superimposed over the hole in the ship's side. Then follows Scene One, which begins with an evocation of the Muslim holy places in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem juxtaposed with clips of American armed forces in Arabia and subservient Saudi leaders. The link to the section on Palestine brings the viewer back to the Muslim holy places by portraying the struggle there as a defense of the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The visit to the mosque by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, portrayed as a defilement, completes the link, and the clip showing his visit reappears in the jihad portion of Reel III to remind viewers of the religious underpinnings of Palestinian violence.
The sections on Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, the Israeli bombardment of the village of Qana in Lebanon, Indonesia, and Kashmir show unremitting violence or the tragic consequences of violence. Particularly moving scenes, like women being manhandled or a Palestinian boy being shot to death while trying to shelter behind his father, receive special editing treatment: slow motion, close-ups, repetitions, zooms, etc. The sound track combines Koran recitation, religious appeals, songs, poetry, tearful pleading voices, and the sounds of war. The scene ends with a renewed evocation of the holy places.
Though the images and message of Reel I contain little that an Arab viewer would find new, the skillful editing, both of sound and image, has substantial cumulative power. Young Arab males seem particularly struck by the appeals to their sense of shame at sitting by while women and children are assaulted, holy places are defiled, and braver men who stand up for Islam suffer injury and death. The images of Arab rulers, particularly those of Saudi Arabia, honoring American leaders and doing nothing to help suffering Muslims compounds the sense of shame. Images of Iraqi infants dead or malnourished because of Crusader hatred, i.e., U.S. sanctions after the Gulf War of 1991, are followed by a scene of an Iraqi soldier abasing himself before Saddam Hussein, who is described as an unbeliever. Quick shots of the rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia follow immediately conveying the message that Saddam is no better than his erstwhile foes.
The violent images and evocative soundtrack of Reel I manipulate preexisting assumptions to stir feelings of revulsion and outrage in the viewers. The producer of the tape presumed that the audience would know about violent situations in Muslim lands, particularly the West Bank and Gaza, and require no explanations. More explaining is done for places like Kashmir and Indonesia that are remote from the Arab world. A sense of religiosity, and particularly of the sacredness of the Muslim holy places, is likewise assumed, as is a feeling that Arab rulers are effete and dominated by America, and that Muslim men should feel ashamed if they do not defend the honor of women. These assumptions permitted the producer to minimize verbal exposition and let the images and sounds build their own argument.
In the midst of the violence and outrage, one image and one alone comes through as calm and reflective, saddened but resolute. That is the image of Osama bin Laden, depicted in Reel I wearing the plain white head cover of a religious shaykh. Symbolically, he is the calm center, the refuge, the leader who has the courage and the composure to lay before his audience the awful truth about the situation of the Muslim umma. His austerity, dressed in white, standing in a mosque alcove, relating somber "truths" in an Arabic redolent of the vocabulary and classical pronunciation of the Koran, contrasts favorably with pictures of Saudi leaders honoring foreign crusaders or Saddam Hussein allowing a soldier to bow before him.
In Reel II (to the extent that it is available) the image of bin Laden becomes the primary focus, though at the end there are clips from speeches by other shaykhs, whose voices are invariably more strident than bin Laden's. Sometimes a religious teacher, sometimes a military man in turban and camouflage jacket, he quietly and logically explains how the Muslim community came to such a dire situation. While some of the causes deal with those who assault the umma, the first involves Muslims themselves: their preference for the worldly pleasures of this world at the expense of their eternal reward in the next, their fear of death even though death comes to everyone and death in a holy cause brings heavenly rewards.
Reel III begins calmly and rises slowly to a crescendo
of violence that mirrors the violence at the start of the
tape. At its close bin Laden is again reciting the poem
about the USS Cole, which is again seen exploding. "Hijra,"
the first subsection, features bin Laden drawing an analogy
between devout Muslims migrating to Afghanistan to fight
in a jihad, hijra and jihad are linked in the verses he
recites from the Koran and the experience of the early Muslim
community. Muhammad, he says, had only a few hundred followers
in Mecca; but after the hijra in 622, Muslim forces grew
strong enough to overthrow the Persian and Byzantine empires,
doubtless intended as metaphors for the United States and
Israel.
Pursuing the lesson from early Islamic history, he says that Muslims must agree on a single leader for their jihad and identifies that leader as Mulla Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban. The title he gives him is Amir al-Muminin, "Commander of the Faithful," the primary title of the medieval Muslim caliphs who succeeded Muhammad as leaders of the Muslim community and oversaw the conquests that created an enormous empire.
Depictions of the fall of Kabul, the execution of Soviet-installed President Najib, and the destruction of the statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, the latter treated as a long, lyrical montage complete with pertinent songs, reinforce Mulla Muhammad Omar's stature.
"Preparation," the second subsection combines clips of bin Laden speaking about training for jihad with scenes of that training. This long section emphasizes individual skills and physical challenges. Aside from one clip of an Egyptian fighter teaching someone to fire a shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile, there is no suggestion that training will involve advanced technology or heavy weapons. Rather, the training seems like an adventure, almost a summer camp experience, a time of bonding for a common cause. The closing portion showing young boys having a fun time going through the same training reinforces the summer camp-like quality. Though images of handgun practice against targets projected on a screen about ten feet from the shooter grip American viewers because in one instance the target is former President Clinton, the overall scene suggests a movie lobby video game more than serious military training.
Fun and games come to an end in the third subsection, "Jihad." Where the tape had begun with the situation of Muslims being assaulted and abused, now the viewer sees them fighting back. Mr. bin Laden is still the model of calmness and rationality and is joined by others in extolling violence toward a sacred end and praising fallen martyrs. He describes Americans as weak and cowardly, weaker than the Russians, and summons Muslims to attack and kill them. Visually this final portion starts in Chechnya with comparatively routine images of warfare; accelerates with a montage of attacks on American targets in Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen; and reaches full crescendo with the Palestinian intifada. Where Reel I had shown Israelis assaulting and abusing Palestinians, here the tables are turned. Israeli soldiers run away from stone throwing Palestinian boys while a bouncy song says: "Our war is in the streets, with stones and knives."
This violent climax, followed only by bin Laden's poem, the exploding USS Cole, and Quranic verses culminating in the well-known phrase "Victory is from God, and conquest is near," strongly conveys a message that David can defeat Goliath, literally by throwing stones. The low-tech training depicted in the previous subsection becomes meaningful when simple weapons are shown routing heavily armed soldiers. The sad situation of the Muslim world under siege by Crusaders and Jews finds its resolution in fighting a new kind of war in which bravery, dedication, and belief in Islam compensate for simplicity of armament.
There is no way to calculate the effectiveness of this videotape. Some young Arab men who watch it find it gripping; some feel it contains nothing new. Effective propaganda often contains nothing new, however. It works by triggering latent feelings, by manipulating familiar words and images. Looked at strictly from a structural standpoint, the bin Laden videotape shows a highly professional mind at work. The psychological understanding of how propaganda can move people to action is of a very high order, as are the technical skills deployed in the video and sound editing. Though some propagandists for the American side in the current conflict portray Osama bin Laden as the enemy of America's modern technological civilization, this tape proves that he is capable of using both the techniques and the professional production skills of the modern television industry to convey his message. Though never named in the tape or accorded a rank or title confirming his implicit leadership, Osama bin Laden's face, voice, and thinking dominate it throughout. Whoever the actual producer, the animating intelligence is that of bin Laden, a man who shows himself here as a master of propaganda and an intelligent, ruthless, and, yes, modern adversary.
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