Lies, Truth, and Propaganda

"I loove history feelm. Gladiator, Braveheart (you know, with Mel Jeebson?), Troy. You like history feelm Jeems?"

"Yes, I like history films too. Have you seen "Munich"?

"No, what ees thees feelm?"

I proceed to explain the plot of Steven Spielberg's Hollywood epic to my 24 year old Syrian Arabic conversation partner: the kidnapping and subsequent massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian Black September group, the resultant Mossad death squad that hunted down and executed the perpetrators, the growing sense of unease and regret among the Israelis, the parallels with the modern "War On Terror".

"Why? Why they make up such oreeble storee? Why they say thees bad thing about Filistinian? Israel always keeling people, not Filistinian, they never keel people."

"This isn't a story, it really happened. More or less at least."

"No, thees never happen. It ees lie."

Somewhat fittingly, this surreal and somewhat sinister conversation took place on October 6th, a national holiday here in Syria, commemorating the famous "victory" in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. A rough equivalent in Europe would be Germany celebrating their famous victory in World War II in 1940, or Bayern Munich celebrating their famous victory in the 87th minute of the 1999 Champions League Final against Manchester United. But just as many of the Syrian populace seem unaware of the reprehensible actions of their Palestinian brethren in Munich in 1972, they are also, rather conveniently, apparently not informed of the successful Israeli counter-attack in the October War a year later.

Like many Arabs, my Syrian friend (who shall remain nameless for his own safety - discussing politics with foreigners can be a tricky occupation here) also holds forthright views on a number of truths, apparently self-evident to us in the West. The Israelis were behind September 11th - a cunning ruse to draw the Americans (and their humble servants in Britain) into a global war against Islam. This I've heard before of course, and while clearly absurd, it at least has the benefit of plausible motive, unlike the claim that the same Zionist government was also responsible for the assassinations of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed. My source doesn't elaborate on the logic of this assertion; I can only speculate it's part of a fiendish plot concoted between the late Robert Maxwell and his comatose friend Ariel Sharon to boost the sales of the Daily Express, a publication which seemingly exists solely to print outlandish theories on the demise of "The People's Princess".

Encountering the products of brainwashing is a frustrating experience. It's virtually impossible to explain to someone that something they've heard a thousand times is patently false, or that some major event they're totally unaware of actually happened, particularly when that event might pose some uncomfortable questions about their worldview. Yet meeting the brainwashed can also be enlightening and thought-provoking. Who is brainwashing who? Who has been lied to and who knows the truth? Is it possible that I am the one who has been misled?

As I read Robert Fisk's epic history of the Middle East, The Great War For Civilisation, told through the quite staggering scope of his own experience as foreign correspondent in the region for The Times and The Independent, I am reminded of the extent to which we in the West are lied to just as much as - perhaps even more than - the Syrians whose naivete I gently mock here.

How many Americans still believe Saddam was behind the atrocities of September 11th? How many Brits still believe Libya was behind the Lockerbie bombing? How many remember the US Navy shooting down Iran Air flight 655, with the loss of all 290 passengers and crew, in July 1988? (An action Margaret Thatcher described, incidentally, as "totally understandable". She seemed less understanding five months later when the Iranians and the Palestinian Abu Nidal - not the Libyans by the way - returned the favour by blowing Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky over Scotland, with 270 deaths.)

Whose government speaks the truth and whose government tells lies?

How many in the West are aware of the "First Holocaust", the Turkish genocide of 1915-1920 in which 1.5 million Armenian Christians were systematically annihilated. A genocide which, incidentally, was keenly observed by the Turks' German allies (among them a young Rudolf Hoess, later Kommandant of Auschwitz) who learned such innovative techniques as the use of cattle trains and gas chambers from their Ottoman compatriots. Yet despite the parallels, indeed the direct causal linkages between the two genocides, denying the Jewish Holocaust is a crime, while denying the Armenian Holocaust is official government policy in many countries, including Britain.

Who is brainwashing who?

My young Syrian friend and I also debate the indiscriminate use of the word "terrorist" - irhabi in Arabic - and its slippery definition. It's a well-known truism that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter": such now-revered figures of the Twentieth Century as Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, and David Ben-Gurion were all "terrorists" at one time or another. Nevertheless, most in the West would baulk at ascribing the label of "freedom-fighter" to everyone's favourite Pakistani cave-dwelling bearded Saudi, yet here in the Middle East it's a sobriquet by which Osama bin Laden is widely-known, even by many liberal Muslims. What is the difference, they ask, between the Allied slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and Al Qaeda attacks on Western cities?

The issue of "terrorist" versus "freedom fighter" was brought home to me with particular resonance this weekend, as I visited the picturesque Syrian town of Hama. In 1982 the peaceful sound of the gently spinning water wheels on the Orontes River was shattered when Syrian army and intelligence forces converged on the town to crush a putative uprising against then President Hafez al-Assad by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Estimates of fatalities vary between 10,000 and 40,000; the centre of the town was razed to the ground by artillery fire and hundreds of political prisoners disappeared. Today the peace is restored and a pretty park and elegant new apartment blocks stand where once fire rained from the skies.

Hama is no stranger to violence. Its environs boast two of Syria's greatest tourist attractions, the last stronghold of the Crusaders at Crac de Chevaliers and the castle of the legendary Assassins, a mysterious Ishmaili Islamic sect famed for their unparalleled efficiency at executing the leaders of any enemy. (From their name, derived from the Arabic word for the marijuana they smoked in copious quantities, hashish, we get the English word "assassin".) These sights provide a picturesque reminder that the clash between East and West, Christianity and Islam, predates Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush by some thousand years. (The Saudi construction magnate might play up his similarities with Salah ad-Din; I can barely bring myself to mention Richard the Lionheart and George the Buffoon in the same sentence.) Yet the events of 9-11 colour our relationship with the Middle East, our relationship with Islam, perhaps even our relationship with truth itself, to an enormous extent.

In 1982 the West condemned the atrocities in Hama as gross breaches of human rights against a legitimate political opposition movement. Today the Muslim Brotherhood and many of its offshoots - among them Hamas, Jammat al-Islamiya, and various Mujahideen groups in Afghanistan - are proscribed in many Western and Western-allied Arab countries as dangerous extremists. Freedom fighters to terrorists in 20 years.

I'll let my anonymous Syrian friend have the last word, however. Totally unaware (of course) of the Hama massacre he brushed it off with the observation that:

"in Amreeka and Britaan there have two parties which both same, and many people not like. Thees is not democrace. In Syria we have real democrace. I love my President, I love my government, so do all Syrians. Thees is democracy."

Tony Blair and George Bush might well agree.

News of A Kidnapping

"No Mas Muertes!" "No Al Sequestro!"

After a week here in Colombia´s capital, I was almost beginning to think that this was a normal country. It's a fair bet that the first words most people associate with Colombia are kidnapping or cocaine. Those were certainly the two first reactions I got when I told people I was coming here, generally preceded or followed by a polite nquiry as to my sanity. After a week here in Bogota, such reactions appeared laughable. Surely this urbane, cosmopolitan, modern city populated by hospitable, friendly, and fun-loving people couldn´t be the capital of a nation at war with itself? All that changed for me today.

According to most reports I´ve read this evening, between three and four million people piled onto the streets of Colombia´s four largest cities today, in an almost spontaneous protest for peace. In Bogota alone, over a million people joined together to demand an end to the forty year civil war, an end to kidnapping for political ends, and an end to the mindless killing by the leftist guerillas of the FARC, and ELN, the right wing paramilitaries of the AUC, and the state´s own security forces. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Bogatanos, many dressed in white, brandished placards, banners or simple white handkerchiefs, and blew whistles, banged drums, and sang songs.

In his much acclaimed reportage of the 1990 hostage crisis instigated by infamous narco-tycoon Pablo Escobar, Colombian Nobel Laureate for Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote "News of a kidnapping, no matter how painful, is not as irremediable as news of a murder". That may be so, but now, in 2007, the country´s most famous son is apparently out of step with the majority of Colombian opinion, which has tired of the ongoing brutality. Today they spoke up and said "no mas". "No more".

It was a quite amazing sight, even more incredible given its spontaneity. President Alvaro Uribe, whose controversial military and political assault on the guerillas has had such a positive impact on safety and security in Colombia in the last five years, called the rally yesterday in response to the announcement by FARC earlier this week that 11 Cali politicians captured in 2002 had recently died. The President claims the rebels murdered the men in cold blood; FARC maintain the hostages were killed in the crossfire when government forces attacked the remote jungle camp where they were held. Uribe himself led the protests in Bogota, though I didn´t see himself myself. In a slightly absurd touch, the protest initially seemed to subside around 40 minutes after it had begun at 12 noon, only to restart in earnest an hour and a half later. Trust the Colombians to break for lunch.

A few hours later and the sound and the fury has subsided. Once again, Bogota is quiet - no, not quiet, a city of 8.5 million people addicted to dancing, drinking and partying could never be quiet - but there is no sign of the momentous events of earlier. Once again this is the eminently normal capital of an eminently normal nation. In keeping with this trend I too returned to (relative!) normality, and after another intensive afternoon of Spanish class, this evening booked flights for two weekends away from Bogota. I happened to learn earlier today that in Colombia it is Tuesday, not Friday, the 13th that is considered unlucky - the Freddy Krueger films were translated here as "Martes 13th" not "Viernes 13th". This is just as well, for next Friday, the 13th, I fly to Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean coast. Lonely Planet describes it variously as "a fairy tale city of romance, legends, and sheer beauty", and "the most spectacular colonial city on the continent". The following Thursday, on the eve of Independence Day, I´ll fly to the party capital of Colombia, Cali, from where I´ll head back by bus through the spectacular Andean scenery of the coffee country.

Perhaps one day it will be the export of that cash crop, rather than cocaine, for which Colombia will be known; perhaps one day it will be Cartagena and Cali rather than kidnapping and chaos that are the first reactions when travellers speak of this country. Perhaps one day the anniversary of July 5th and the declaration of "no mas" will be celebrated with as much fervour as the Bolivarian Revolution. As I write now the radio plays D-Ream´s "Things Can Only Get Better". The last time I heard that song a suave young leader with a winning smile and a message of optimism was striding to the fore.

Alvaro Uribe better hope he does more for his country than Tony Blair did for his.