CTV : Graphic TV ad against terrorism a mystery

Graphic TV ad against terrorism a mystery

CTV.ca News Staff | October 13, 2006

A high-budget television advertisement designed to dissuade potential suicide bombers is airing across the Middle East, but its mysterious makers are troubling some critics.

"If it's an Arab initiative it's a positive step, but why aren't they coming forward?" asked Sohail Raza of the Canadian Muslim Congress.

Raza said he's convinced the United States government is behind the $1-million ad, which he argued could breed mistrust among its intended target of would-be terrorists.

His own narrowly escaped death at the hands of a suicide bomber. He winced when he watched the ad, which includes Matrix-style slow motion footage of flying glass and debris.

"It's out of a Hollywood movie or a videogame," he told CTV News.

The ad started airing this summer on several Middle Eastern broadcasters, including Al-Arabiya, Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. and a few Iraqi channels.

A Los Angeles production company called 900 Frames created the ad, but would only say it was "privately funded by business people and activists who want to remain anonymous."

The ad begins with a young boy playing soccer in a crowded market. As he stops to adjust his running shoe, he notices a man approaching with a fixed stare.

The man then opens his jacket to reveal a belt laden with explosives, which he then detonates. One of the final horrific images shows the boy's shoe landing on a nearby car, as a woman screams in the background.

The ad then fades to black, with Arabic words spelling "Terrorism has no religion" and a link to a website: www.noterror.info.

The website carries the ad and asks viewers to share the link with others. At the top, Quranic verses teaching against violence are superimposed over the faces of children.

The use of such verses has concerned some Middle East analysts, who said such a tactic may not be persuasive against fanatics.

"We should not be playing on the other guy's home field, which is to debate with them the right and wrong Quranic verses for the battle against terrorism," said Robert Satloff of the Near East Policy Institute.

The ad was filmed in Los Angeles with 200 cast members. Before its release, the company named the group behind the ad's funding as the Future Iraq Assembly.

That same group has backed several ads specific to Iraq, and describes itself on its website www.futureiraq.org as "an independent, non-governmental organization, comprised of a number of scholars, businesspersons, and activists, who share a common and firm believe in freedom and progress for all the Iraqi people. It is simply the 'watchful eye' over Iraqi interests."

A publicist for 900 Frames would not comment to The Associated Press about the Future Iraq Assembly.

Meanwhile, officials for the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense said they had no evidence either department had backed the ad, although they would not deny the government was possibly involved.

In the past, the U.S. government has helped various public relations campaigns in the Middle East, according to AP, including the U.S.-financed Radio Sawa and the Al-Hurra TV station. It has also paid Iraqi newspapers for positive stories about coalition forces.

The U.S. Department of Defence has a massive budget dedicated to fighting fanaticism. Last year, the Pentagon's Joint Psychological Operations Support Element gave three companies several million dollars to create anti-extremist "multimedia products."

Two of those contractors have since been dropped -- Science Applications International Corp., based in California, and the Washington, D.C.-based Lincoln Group.

The remaining company -- Virginia-based SYColeman -- said it was neither connected to the ad nor the www.noterror.info campaign website.

Whether or not the U.S. government is behind the ad, critics said its intended audience may never actually watch it.

"We are preaching to the converted, the people who follow the ideology of destruction, who don't watch television," said Raza. "It's against their faith."

Another critic of the ad, Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-Palestinian who writes the blog Raed in the Middle, said the ad is ineffective because is makes no mention of the suicide bomber's motivation.

"Dealing with suicide bombers is way more complicated and is usually linked to fundamentalist religious beliefs that have political implications," Jarrar told AP.

"Portraying it as a looney tune who goes into a market to kill civilians -- I don't know if this will work."

But what could ultimately make the ad ineffective is the very thing that makes it stand out -- it's sleek Hollywood style.

"It just raises so many red flags," Lawrence Pintak, the director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo, told AP. "The assumption is it has to be made by the Americans or the Saudis."

With a report by CTV's Lisa LaFlamme and files from The Associated Press