Just a brief note to remind people to, if they don't already, check out Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN. I've just finished watching this weeks edition that dealt primarily with the attacks on Mumbai last year - it provided the best analysis of, and insite into Islamic violence that I've seen.
Fareed uses audio footage from HBO's Terror in Mumbai, a documentary on the murders in India a year ago, to analyse the character and motivation of the gunmen. Based on a few seconds of the footage alone I would recommend the documentary which airs next week; it provides us a rare view of the level of control that these "soldiers" are under, the best example being the following:
As one of the gunmen enters a room in the opulant Taj Mahal Hotel he pauses, and as if a child entering disneyland describes in wander to his controller his "amazing" surroundings - "it's got two kitchens a bath and a little shop". There is a pause, his controller tells him down the phone to start a fire (the iconic image of the attack), as the best way to maximise the spread of fear through the media whose helicopters circle the building.
We also see video footage of the lone surviving gunman who's Father was paid to release his son to the fundamentalists, who through a combination of fear and incentive coerced him into carrying out the brutal murders. What struck me was the need to distinguish between the motivation of the suicide soldiers themselves and those who command them, and how that vital distinction is never conveyed through mainstream media. It was immediatley apparent that these boys were young, extremely simple minded, poor and ultimatley vulnerable to exploitative fundamentalists with entirely separate motives to theirs. The boys moral universe easily manipulated to a point where murder without remorse is a means to achieve righteousness, like a guest stated its pretty easy to programme them to kill.
The show provides a level of nuance that should be common, but is unfortunatley all to rare. This edition in particular was poignant and inciteful, if it was more widely seem it would spark the sort of debate this country vitally needs.
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