the power of nightmares

leo&sayyid, originally uploaded by John Barleycorn.

I've seen the light and it came in the form of a BBC documentary called The Power of Nightmares. Finally a voice of reason in this crazy world and a really good analysis of the Politics of Fear. The Power of Nightmares presents the history of two of today's most influential political groups, the American neo-conservatives and the Islamists. The old guys on the picture above are two of the main characters, Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss.
The most controversial conclusion in The Power of Nightmares is that today's official and dominating image of Al-Qaida as the International Terror Superpower simply does not exist in reality. There is no huge international terror network with tens of thousands of well-trained terrorists and sleeper cells all over the world controlled by one supreme and evil mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaida "training camps" did not "train thousands of militant Muslims from around the world". There are of course Islamist training camps here and there in the Muslim world, but they are not controlled by Al-Qaida. There is no underground Al-Qaida mountain fortress in the Tora Bora mountains, just a couple of small caves. The Al-Qaida is not a Islamist superpower, it's just a loose group of people that believes that their fight against the US will unite nationalist Islamist militants (like Hamas, Hezbollah, Chechnyan and Kashmir separatists etc) around the world. This idea was originally promoted by the Islamist Ayman al-Zawahiri as a response to two resent events in the Muslim world. First, the total failure of political Islamism, they were outmaneuvered and imprisoned in almost every Muslim country were they tried to participate in the elections. Secondly, the failure of Islamist terrorism in Egypt, Algeria and other Muslim countries, it didn't manage to scare the majority of the citizens into fundamentalist Islam.
Ayman al-Zawahiri hoped that spectacular attacks against American targets would impress people in the Muslim world and make them support and join his militant version of Islamism.
You'll find a short summary of this excellent documentary here:
Part I, "Baby It's Cold Outside"
Part II, "The Phantom Victory"
Part III, "The Shadows In the Cave"

If we compare the influence of Islamism on today's Muslim world with the influence of radical socialism and communism on Europe during the 70:s we'll find that the R.A.F. was very well known and feared back in the 70:s but the Leftist terrorism in Europe back then didn't have that many active members and supporters. Eventhough different socialist and communist ideologies had a big impact and influence on the western society back then and loads of sympathizers there still were no huge support for western Leftist terrorist organizations. The Baader-Meinhof Gang, The Socialist Patients Collective, The Red Army Fraction, Movement 2 June, Revolutionary Cells and West Berlin Tupamaros didn't even have a hundred active members together. Probably the Al-Qaida has the same amount of active support. But nationalist and separatist terrorist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah most likely have a much bigger popular and active support. Just compare those Leftist terrorist groups with nationalist or separatist terrorist groups like the IRA, UDA, ETA and others and see who have had the biggest support and longest life. In the long run nationalist and separatist terrorism (sometimes camouflaged as Islamist, fascist or communist) will be a much bigger and dangerous problem than the Al-Qaida.