Zero Dark Thirty
(twelve thirty am – a night operation)
was about ten years condensed into a hundred and fifty minutes. Politics are stripped down and similarly absent
is any personal life for the single-minded heroine who toils at the
bottom-feeding end of dirty CIA activities and who almost represents the essence of
life; everything else is preparation and waiting for that one big moment.
It opens
with over a minute of black screen accompanied by a soundtrack collage of
emergency phone calls from people trapped in the Twin Towers. Cut to two years
later, when a captured nephew of Osama bin Laden undergoes a prolonged series
of brutal CIA interrogations that involve beatings, waterboarding, being bound
with a dog collar and ropes and getting locked in a small wooden box. It's not
the cosiest way to invite the viewer to get involved. The hunt for bin Laden was
an enormously frustrating endeavour that cost vast sums of money, manpower and
strategic thinking and couldn't be brought to a successful close for nearly a decade,
despite the fact that he was holed up a stone’s throw from the Pakistani
equivalent of West Point. The tall man who had engineered the deaths of close
to four thousand people in that one iconic attack alone became a
phantom, protected by forbidding geography, loyal followers and an already
legendary aura. But, as BHO so succinctly put it – ‘we got him’. He was caught
because it was impossible for him to totally isolate himself. Even if he never
showed his face, made a phone call, sent an email, he was enslaved; he had to
rely on trusted couriers.
We all remember where we were on 9/11. I was in my office – a colleague called me
over to the computer screen as the second plane hit. I recall that it occurred
to me at the time how much better special effects were getting – like many, I
suppose – my first reaction was one of disbelief – this was surely a movie set.
The events of 9/11 led to a
fundamental change in how intelligence organisations perceived their role in
the common war against terrorism, especially true in the U.S. and Europe. Since
then, intelligence ties among the
various organisations have gradually improved, as has the transfer of
information among them. As a direct
result, terrorist suspects have been located and identified in their home countries,
and terrorist organisations in the early stages of formation have been exposed
and thwarted. Rapid transfer of suspected terrorists' details made possible
their detention and interrogation, while terrorist attacks which had already
been planned have been avoided and thwarted, saving thousands of lives in
Israel and elsewhere. And yet, even now,
over a decade later – how much do we really understand about the mentality which
has such a cavalier disrespect for human life? Books and pamphlets came out in
abundance, dissecting the myth of al-Qaeda and its many-headed children. I
lived in the Middle East, surrounded by mosques, where imams had their sermons
broadcast from powerful speakers so residents who preferred to stay in bed that
Friday still got the message. Even with my very limited knowledge of Arabic, it
was clear that there was passion in the preaching so it should come as no
surprise that extremist preachers find a congregation, disaffected and ripe for
jihadist enlistment. The recent operation in Algeria - described by the
one-eyed leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar as ‘blessed’ was carried out by forty
Islamist fighters, including several Westerners. It was filmed before the standoff
ended in a bloodbath last Saturday and the militant leader, who lost an eye
while fighting in Algeria, demanded that France withdraw its troops from Mali
as the price of any negotiation.
I think firstly that is this – the idea that ‘land’
and ‘Islam’ have some degree of equivalence - that is at the core of their thinking. Anywhere the Muslim sets his foot is claimed for Allah, the poll tax or jizya is to be levied on the infidel inhabitants and the blessings and mercy of Shari'a are to be applied. Secondly, the
Algerian Special Forces were inevitably blamed for over-zealous action by Western
media who persistently fail to understand that the militant or suicidal jihadist mindset perceives
negotiation as weak and they have the
right to trample on people too decadent or spineless to defend the principles they
believe in. The Western media carried horror stories of the extremists’ occupation
in Mali - random arrests for offences as trivial as playing local music, medieval punishments including public amputations,
lashing women considered underdressed and so on. It was only a matter of time
before the sheer scale and savagery of these excesses demanded a response from
someone – huzza to the French for shouldering their ex-colonial
responsibilities and flushing out the terrorists. But this did not come without
a price in the West, most particularly in London which has long been regarded
as a safer haven than most for exploitation of the notoriously liberal British
laws concerning freedom of expression. I’m not easily outraged, I have to say,
but the spectacle of about 60 British Muslims actually being allowed to come
out with the appalling rhetoric shown in this video without being arrested for
public disorder offences almost beggars belief. I found eight minutes' worth almost more than I could stand.
In 1140, after a prophetic vision, St Malachy of Armagh is said to have produced a list of popes from his
own lifetime until the end of the world. Some sources suggest that the final
entry in his list is a chap called ‘Peter the Roman’, hence Paddy Power’s
generous odds, I suppose. Did God signal His intention to have a wee flutter, I wonder?
