War Crimes And Media Crimes
November 30th, 2001 - by: danny
When I lived in Britain, headline writers used to love to call American YANKS, probably as a throwback to the lingo in use during World War 2. This morning, a New York Daily News headline refers to US troops this way, a sign of creeping influence of Fleet Streetisms into American tabloid practices.
While some American media embrace Brit lit, others are askance at the style of journalism practiced across the pond. Yesterday I spent some time near “Ground Zero” in a studio at WNYC in Lower Manhattan to share my views for the National Public Radio show ON THE MEDIA to be heard Saturday morning and again Sunday afternoon. They are doing a segment built around a report chastising British media outlets for using inadequate sourcing. I was pressed into service to defend her Majesty’s media workers against calumnies which conjure up that old saw about just who is calling the kettle black.
REPORTING VERSUS JOURNALISM
My primary point is that there is a distinction between reporting and journalism in the sense that what often goes missing in the former is perspective and context. This does not mean necessarily that British journalism is on the whole necessarily better, but it certainly is more diverse and varied with far more experienced teams covering the world. I would argue that on the whole there are more journalists working for the quality papers in London than here, and more independent takes. This is especially true when it comes to covering Washington’s War where critical voices are more apparent. (When the UK went to war in the Falklands back when Maggie Thatcher ruled the roost, their objectivity was regularly tested just as “ours” is today.)
I put quotes around “Ours” because I hardly speak for my colleagues — it is hard enough to speak to them. All too often, there is a confusion of role as when journalists speak of the US military operation in Afghanistan in terms of ‘We.” I heard a senior writer from Newsweek do that on public radio on Wednesday morning as he slipped between using the collective “we” in talking about the soldiers, as if that term has the same meaning as the more impartial “they.”
THE CASTLE OF DEATH
Take a story that most of the US press has already “moved on” from, just as a year ago, most outlets “moved on” from investigating the election debacle in Florida once the Supreme Court had assured a Bush victory. I am speaking of the massacre in what the Independent newspaper calls the “Castle of Death.” I am obsessing on this story because it seems to be such a blatant case of massive human rights violations that were never reported as such in the US media. It hit me hard again yesterday after my visit to the Dentist to read press acounts in The Guardian about dead prisoners having their gold teeth yanked out by vultures posing as soldiers of the Northern Alliance.
Here’s Justin Huggler today from Mazar l Sharif on “What really happened in Qalai Janghi (The name of the fort, (ds)) on Sunday, and in the bloody days that followed? This is a front page story there, not buried in some “A Nation Challenged” section that is becoming as banal as Arts and Leisure. Note how colorfully this story is written, and how shocking it is:
“They were still carrying the bodies out yesterday. So many of them were strewn around the old fortress. We saw one go past whose foot had been half-torn off and was hanging from his leg by a shred of flesh. The expression on the face of the dead man was so clear that it was hard to believe he was dead until you saw the gaping red hole in the side of his forehead. The stench of rotting human flesh had become overpowering; at times, it was hard to breathe. But questions remained as they cleared away the bodies of slaughtered foreign Taliban fighters believed to be loyal to Osama bin Laden.
“How did US and British special forces come to be involved in the massacre of at least 150 prisoners of war – and maybe as many as 400 – who should have been protected under the Geneva Convention?”
THE BLUNDERS AND THE BLOODBATH
His account goes on to describe a series of blunders that cast doubt on what was about to happen, a blood bath that led to 600 people massacred by bombing and gun fire, a CIA agent dead, others wounded, and Northern Alliance leaders shot down as well. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper this morning carries an Agence France Press (AFP( report (no AP or Reuters for them). Note this is based on the reporting of a Nobel Prize winning western human rights group, not a denunciation by Al Qaeda:
“US, UK responsible for Qala-i-Jangi massacre: Amnesty
“LONDON, Nov 29: The killing of hundreds of Taliban prisoners at the Qala-i-Jangi fort in Afghanistan raises questions on the exact circumstances surrounding the massacre and on the role played by British and US forces in the killings.
“Whatever happened the US and Britain bear the brunt of the responsibility as they sent soldiers to coordinate with the Northern Alliance the quashing of the “rebellion”.
“According to the British war journalist Robert Fisk, the western soldiers bear a moral responsibility. It means that “British troops are now stained with war crimes”.
“And Amnesty International is talking of legal responsibility. It means, the Amnesty emphasizes, “the governments (British and American) cannot hide from saying simply ‘that’s war’”.
WHY DID THE PRISONERS REVOLT? TAKE TWO
Why did the prisoners revolt? Huggle offers a reasonable explanation: the feared they would be killed, which is exactly what happened: “…a Northern Alliance account suggests that the prisoners launched the battle when an Alliance general went to reassure the prisoners that they would be well treated.
“We tried to treat the prisoners humanely and they took advantage,” General Dostum said on Wednesday as he surveyed the carnage. “I gave orders for them to be allowed to wash and pray, but they attacked us.”
“Another explanation is that the prisoners feared that they were about to be executed.” This reporter, who is also a journalist in the best sense of the word concludes after rconstructing the events in a way that does not simply blame it all on one side. Again, he speaks of a tragedy of errors:”….it will be a long time before the world fully takes in what it all means. When the war in Afghanistan began, we were told the foreign Taliban intended to fight to the death, and many feared a massacre or a bloodbath in Kunduz. But, in the end, bin Laden’s warriors staged their last battle in the fortress at Qalai Janghi. If the accounts of the Northern Alliance soldiers are to be believed, 400 defeated men managed to force the United States into taking part in the massacre of prisoners of war.
“WE ARE BECOMING WAR CRIMINALS”
Another Independent newspaper journalist, Robert Fisk, best known for his seasoned reporting from the Middle East then adds a perspective, clearly labeled as a commentary or argument that is equally enraged at those that allowed this horror to happen. He also lambasts the TV media that showed pictures, accepted official rationalizations, and never explained their significance.
“We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies – who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 – move into the city and execute up to 300 Taliban fighters. The report is a footnote on the television satellite channels, a “nib” in journalistic parlance. Perfectly normal, it seems. The Afghans have a “tradition” of revenge. So, with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime is committed.
“Now we have the Mazar-i-Sharif prison “revolt”, in which Taliban inmates opened fire on their Alliance jailers. US Special Forces – and, it has emerged, British troops – helped the Alliance to overcome the uprising and, sure enough, CNN tells us some prisoners were “executed” trying to escape. It is an atrocity. British troops are now stained with war crimes. Within days, The Independent’s Justin Huggler has found more executed Taliban members in Kunduz.
“The Americans have even less excuse for this massacre. For the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, stated quite specifically during the siege of the city that US air raids on the Taliban defenders would stop “if the Northern Alliance requested it”. Leaving aside the revelation that the thugs and murderers of the Northern Alliance were now acting as air controllers to the USAF in its battle with the thugs and murderers of the Taliban, Mr Rumsfeld’s incriminating remark places Washington in the witness box of any war-crimes trial over Kunduz. The US were acting in full military co-operation with the Northern Alliance militia.
“Most television journalists, to their shame, have shown little or no interest in these disgraceful crimes. Cozying up to the Northern Alliance, chatting to the American troops, most have done little more than mention the war crimes against prisoners in the midst of their reports. What on earth has gone wrong with our moral compass since 11 September?”
THE TIMES OF INDIA: US ‘HERO’ MAY HAVE PLAYED A ROLE IN RIOT
Rashmee Z Ahmed of the Times of India News network reports today that The United Nations has joined human rightsgroups in demanding an urgent inquiry into the carnageat the Qala-i-Jhangi fort near the northern Afghancity of Mazar-i-Sharif, even as new information is.emerging” …
” Even as the CIA saluted its slain colleague, the firstAmerican fatality in Afghanistan, “American hero”Johnny “Mike” Spann, who died in the prison revolt,British journalists in Mazar-i-Sharif have begunreporting that Spann was less an innocent victim thanthe one who allegedly provoked the riot.
“With allegations of “war crimes” against the US and UKcoming in thick and fast for ignoring the GenevaConvention on the treatment of prisoners of war,United Nations High Commissioner for Human RightsCommisioner, Mary Robinson, has echoed Kate Allen,director of the London-based Amnesty International incalling for an urgent inquiry.
“On Wednesday night, the BBC’s authoritative domestictelevision program Newsnight interviewed OliverAugust, correspondent for The Times, London, inMazar-i-Sharif, who said that Spann and his CIAcolleague, Dave, were thought to have set off theviolence by aggressively interrogating foreign Talibanprisoners and asking, “Why did you come toAfghanistan?”. August said their questions wereanswered by one prisoner jumping forward andannouncing, “We’re here to kill you”.
The Guardian’s Mazar-i-Sharif correspondent said theCIA “operatives had apparently failed on entering thefort to observe the first rule of espionage: keep alow profile”.
“The Times’s August said Spann subsequently pulled hisgun and his CIA colleague shot three prisoners dead incold blood before losing control over the situation.
“Spann was then “kicked, beaten and bitten to death,”the journalists said, in an account of the ferocity ofthe violence that lasted four days, leaving more than500 people dead and the fort littered with “bodies,shrapnel and shell casings”.
Hey, have you read this story anywhere in the US media?
WHY ARE JOURNALISTS IN THE USA SO SILENT?
Why are journalists in the US so silent, or are they? Veteran journalist Joe Davidson, whose work I have always respected, reports on Tom Paine.com about a recent seminar he attended on these issues at the Poynter Institute in Florida where many colleagues agonized on how to balance journalistic responsibilities with pressures from the government to get the media to spin the war their way.
“St. Petersburg, Fla. — The television news anchor simply wants to know how long it will last. She’s not talking about the bombing of Afghanistan, the soldiers in the airport or the increased fear of terrorists. What the Florida journalist wants to know is how long she’ll have to wear a flag lapel pin. It was a question she posed to colleagues meeting at a journalism ethics seminar last week. More specifically, she wondered aloud, “If I take it off, will I be un-American?” …
“Lapel pins are not the big issue for Matt Parcell, special projects executive producer at WFTV-TV in Orlando. What bothers him is the creeping erosion of the rights and freedoms “we have taken for granted to do our jobs.” That erosion began in Florida well before September 11, he said, with the gradual closing of access to the state’s public records. Worse yet, he added, “I don’t know that journalists care.”….
Sometimes the damage done to journalism needs little government prompting. Last week, a number of newspapers ran big front-page displays of pictures, released by President Bush, of 22 suspected terrorists. A St. Petersburg Times headline called them “Faces Of Terror” in a huge display that dominated page one.
“Using the photos was a reasonable journalistic decision. But running them so prominently with such a headline could easily do more to provoke fear than provide information, several Poynter journalists concluded. That fear could provoke more unjustified retaliation against innocent Arab-looking and dark skin men.
“On the last day of the seminar, Bun Booyens, an editor from Cape Town, South Africa, and I ran along Tampa Bay, watching the sun slowly rise and a beautiful variety of birds fly along the strand. Booyens spoke of the difficulty Black journalists have with South African officials who seem to consider criticism unpatriotic. It sounded familiar.
IS HOLLYWOOD ENCOURAGING HATE CRIMES?
Some media critics are singling out Hollywood studios for reinforcing stereotypes that are triggering hate crimes, including two new murders reported today. Michael Paulson of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer suggests that the culture of fear in the US is also fed by false images:
“In his book, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” Jack G. Shaheen argues that in the current atmosphere, it would be unfair to depict Arab Muslims as terrorists in the movies — given that Arab Muslims stand accused of masterminding the worst act of terrorism in the history of the United States.
“Shaheen writes that years of depicting Arabs “solely as slimy, shifty, violent creeps” has created a tension between Americans and their Arab Muslim brethren. In testimony submitted to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Arab American Institute reported 326 hate crimes in 38 states in the first month after the terrorist attacks — including seven deaths, 90 physical assaults and 85 incidents of vandalism.
“‘We’re at war, and this is very serious now: We cannot, and should not, give comfort to the enemy,’ Shaheen says. “Every political leader in this country says we are not in a war against Islam, but is the motion-picture industry going to counter this by showing only images of Muslims as fanatics? There certainly should be movies made based on what happened, but if those are the only images we see from now on, if we continue to vilify all Muslims and all Arabs as terrorists instead of making clear this is a lunatic fringe, what are we accomplishing?”
DOMESTIC ANTHAX SUSPECT IDENTIFIED
Speaking of images, it is significant that the FBI is now seeking an American, not an Arab, for sending anthrax threats. Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday that a man who is on theF.B.I.’s 10 Most Wanted List is the primary suspect in themailing of anthrax threats to hundreds of abortion clinics. A $50,000 reward has been posted. Salon.com deserves credit for breaking a story that the FBI had less success with:
“Clayton Waagner claims responsibility for letters and Federal Express packages that were sent to more than 700 abortion clinics last month with the false threat that they contained anthrax. Fellow abortion foe Neal Horsley, who runs the Nuremberg Files Web site, claims Waagner “took him hostage and used him as his mouthpiece to claim responsibility for the anthrax letters and to announce his threat of new violence against abortion providers,” writes Frederick Clarkson for Salon.com.
MORE DEATH ON THE WAY
While death dominates the headlines, the deaths to come may still prove far worse. There are three of these. First, the terrorist infrastructure of the groups that form Al Qaeda have not been destroyed. The Financial Times today features a two page investigative report on the colossal intelligence failures behind September llth and the sophistication of a network which still has a capacity to do more damage.
Next there are the massacres to come in Afghanistan as various tribal militias march on Khanahar where they are likely to engage in fighting with the Northern Alliance which is 50 miles away in he province. And of course, the Air Force bombardments continue to pound away. More bloodbaths are likely.
All of this pales in the face of the massive starvation caused by draught and now compounded by the war that makes security impossible for aid caravans. The New York Times has a dramtic photo on the front page, but the story was pushed back onto p. 4. Alternet carries an interview with Reverend Ray Buchanan, an American aid worker who is just back from those killing fields.His comment is chilling:
“According to the U.N., and I can agree from having been there, this is the worst humanitarian crisis of our lifetime because of the sheer magnitude of the area covered and the number of people at risk. The drought has affected all of Central Asia from North Korea to China, Mongolia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and even into the Caucasus. In Afghanistan, because of the years of fighting and the number of refugees, eight million people are at risk of starving this winter. That’s one-third of the population.”
FEEDBACK FROM READERS
Happily, I am beginning to get other outlets to pick up some of my columnizing. Thank you Outllook India.com for leading with my column yesterday. There is also continuing feedback to this weblog which is aimed at my media colleagues as well as the web wise public at large. Barbara ee’s me from Britain:
“Hi Dan
“We are still reading you – even though like everyone else the “noise” of the media outpourings is deafening us. You didn’t mention them but the attached two reports (of a few) by the Times journalist Oliver August about the siege of Kala-i Janghi are informative. What is interesting is that in the Tuesday report he quotes an Afghan commander saying that’s wrong etc – this event was actually shown on BBC TV – with the camera close by and catching both the words (in English, by the way) and the facial expression of the same commander. The tv footage of the mayhem shows the US and British “specials” calling in the strike. You are right B52s putting down “prison riots” is extraordinary but what seemed clear form the footage is the sheer panic and pandemonium of violence – regardless of the “we wage smart clean wars ” platonic nonsense of the Pentagon and its British and other proxies. Clearly Amnesty are right – it all needs investigating… “uprisings”, “riots”, “incidents” – more weasel words to describe barbarity. Some questions for you -Why are the Russians now in Kabul? What about the military courts in the US (only for Osama?) and is it true that US resident Arab men have been asked to make ‘appointments’ at their local police stations in Chicago?”
Barbara, for people of Arab descent, the situation gets worse. Here’s yesterday’s report from Al Gore’s old hometown, Nashville Tennessee, home of the Grand Old Opry.
RACIAL PROFILING, USA
“Nashville gives green light to racial profiling
“In the name of national security, most Nashvillians give the thumbs up to singling out people of Middle Eastern descent for special law enforcement checks, according to a poll released by Vanderbilt University.
Anita Wadhwani of the Tennessean reports on a poll indicating that 62 percent of Nashville residents support security checks for people who are — or appear to be — Middle Eastern.
“In the poll, 74 percent of African-Americans supported the added scrutiny, compared with 64 percent of white and other residents.
MARK WORLD AIDS DAY
That’s my media war report today. If you live in New York City, come along tomorrow at 3PM to the Screening Room for a World Aids Day event for Medicine Without Frontiers (MSF) I will be speaking after a screening of the Globalvision film “Nkosi: Voice of Africa’s Aids Orphans.” It tells the story of the short life and death of Nkosi Johnson, a brave South African boy who died earlier this year. The screening is at 3 PM. Please share your comments and stories. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org
See the whole Post / →
Heroes And Sheroes
November 29th, 2001 - by: danny
For years, the most common usage for the word “Hero” was in connection with a sandwich. Now, it should be printed on our money because its usage has gone into overdrive and has become part of the currency of all conversation and a tool for commercialization.
Today’s hero, in the US media primarily, is the first American killed in action in Afghanistan: Johnny “Mike” Spann, A CIA agent. He was a casualty of that prison revolt in Mazar e Sharif which is finally becoming a focal point for more serious media interest now that its over. He was, no doubt gutsy to be there, but how he died, and what his role there was, remains murky in a war where covert agencies are on the front lines, and secrecy is the official policy of US government bodies that should be more forthcoming.
PASSION FOR HIS COUNTRY “AND HIS AGENCY”
The flag is at half mast at the CIA building in Virginia, which had itself been a target for one of Emir Osama’s commandos some years ago. According to Islam Online, “CIA Director George J. Tenet addressed agency employees Wednesday morning. He called Spann “an American hero, a man who showed passion for his country and his agency through his selfless courage.” Tenet added and said his fellow officers should “continue the mission that Mike Spann held” sacred. “And so we will continue our battle against evil with renewed strength and spirit,” Tenet”
This ritual of reverence and remembrance in what is now officially “a battle against evil” is winning the heart of Americans who have seen Mike’s anguished family and dad on TV. But, elsewhere in the world, in a story NOT in the tabloids are the responses of human rights groups who want explanations, not accolades. The BBC reports this morning:
AMNESTY INTTERNATIONAL DEMANDS….
“Amnesty International said there must be an investigation into what triggered the incident, ‘and into the proportionality of the response by United Front [Northern Alliance], US and UK forces’”.
“The enquiry “should make urgent recommendations to ensure that other instances of surrender and holding of prisoners do not lead to similar disorders and loss of life,” it said.
“A Northern Alliance spokesman, Abdul Wahid Yasa, told the BBC that the revolt had been started by radical fighters from Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
“Iraq condemned what it called the “massacre” by US forces and the Northern Alliance, while some Pakistani clerics called for a day of mourning against what they called a “barbaric act”.
AMNESTY AND RED CROSS BARRED, SAYS GVNN
The Globalvision News Network’s David Ben-Aryeah, filing from London, reports what most media commentators didn’t, that:”Both Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross had tried and failed to gain access to the compound or the prisoners.
“Northern Alliance General Dostum is not known for his compassion or tolerance of human rights, he controlled Mazar-e-Sharif with an iron hand for several years after the Russian retreat from Afghanistan. After Mazar-e-Sharif was recaptured 10 days ago, Dostum warned the Northern Alliance leadership against trying to return their control to the city as he considered it his personal fiefdom.
“Serious questions have already been posed as to his ruthlessness, following the confirmation by the Red Cross of the discovery of the massacre of several hundred foreign Taliban fighters — mainly from Pakistan — as the city fell to Dostum’s forces 10 days ago. Religious bodies in Pakistan and Iran have expressed their concern at the massacre and added their voices to the intensifying demands for a full investigation.”
UPDATE: THIS JUST IN…
As of l0:30 this morning, two hours after I posted this column, the Pakistan News Service reports that Amnesty is being invited to investigate:
“KABUL NOV 29 (PNS): The Northern Alliance said on Thursday it would let human rights group Amnesty International investigate the deaths of several hundred captured pro-Taliban foreign fighters who staged a revolt in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
“We have no problem in this regard. There will be no hindrance for them (AI) to do an investigation,” Alliance spokesman Mohammad Habeel said.
Different reports have been published in news papers around the world calling for a thorough probe of this staged revolt. Some experts have shown concerns about this whole revolt by calling it a designed strategy of US Special Forces, who have orders to kill every non afghan fighter or captured prisoners of war who have had come to Afghanistan to fight with Taliban.”
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARNAGE?
And what of the US responsibility? Writing this week in the New York Press, conservative commentator Chris Caldwell shares some of my suspicions of what happened,but not from a human rights perspective, and exlicitly, he insists, without the outrage I have been expessing about the muddled and amoral coverage: “And was it a prison riot? The official Northern Alliance story–that several hundred of the foreign Taliban were able to smuggle rifles, grenades and Kalashnikovs into the prison under their robes–suggests that the Alliance is either a pack of liars or the most easy-come-easy-go guerrilla army ever assembled. Particularly after their fervently expressed wish that the Arabs be slaughtered once and for all, letting them enter prison with hundreds of military weapons bespeaks a negligence that stretches credulity.
“What, finally, was the U.S. role in this? I ask this purely out of intellectual curiosity, and without the tiniest velleity of outrage. If the foreign Taliban are indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, and if Al Qaeda’s reason for being is to murder American civilians, then this resolution to the Kunduz siege will work better than any alternative pour décourager les autres. Over the long term, our role in the incident is more likely to be revealed (and exaggerated), but at the very least we can say that last week saw an historical first.
“(Unless there’s ever been another “prison riot” put down with the help of B-52 bombers.)”
THE NEXT AFGHAN SUMMIT: WOMEN UNITED
Meanwhile, in Bonn Germany , across the Rhine from the hotel in which hosted the Media Tenor conference on failures of media coverage, the Afghan talks continue with two of the parties already in agreement about the post-Taliban transition they each hope to lead. One complaint about the process that I heard on Public Radio yesterday were concerns from Afghan women that they are being left out of the planning for the future, just as they had been pushed out of their own socity by the Mullahocracy.
Now NGO groups are coming to the rescue, or, at least, hope to make a difference. This just in to the Dissector News Desk: “- In response to a request from women ofAfghanistan for support and solidarity, the European Women’s Lobby, EqualityNow, V-Day, the Center for Strategic Initiatives of Women, and The FeministMajority are hosting an Afghan Women’s Summit for Democracy.
“The Summit will be held at the European Commission in Brussels fromTuesday – Thursday, December 4-6, in collaboration with the Gender Advisorto the Secretary-General of the United Nations and UNIFEM. Fifty Afghanwomen leaders, broadly representative of women in Afghanistan, will takepart in the Summit, which will help bring the voices of Afghan women intothe current international political discourse, ensuring that their messageis heard.”
“Three of the Summit participants: Sima Wali, primary Afghan organizer of theSummit, along with Seddighe Balkhi and Amena Afzali, will come directly fromthe negotiations in Bonn where they are now serving as delegates. TheSummit will be chaired by Judge Navanethem Pillay, South African Presidentof the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.The AfghanWomen1s Summit is designed to implement United Nations SecurityCouncil Resolution 1325 on Women and Peace and Security. Adopted last year,the resolution reaffirmed the importance of the equal participation and fullinvolvement of women in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion ofpeace and security, and the need to increase their role in decision-makingwith regard to conflict prevention and resolution.”
While women from Europe and Afghanistan plan their future, and forge a collaboration, no less a media outlet than the National Enquirer, never known as an outpost for feminist advocacy, is saluting that country’s now unveiled better half as the true heros, or should that be, “SHEROS” of the day: Here’s part of their overheated EXCLUSIVE coverage, perfect for enhancing circulation on this chilly morning.
EXCLISIVE: ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
“Taliban women have played a key role during the war in Afghanistan – working behind the scenes to help crush the protectors of Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist associates.
“As U.S. air strikes decimated the Taliban and our Afghan allies pushed them from major cities, wives of Taliban soldiers became America’s secret ally, convincing their men to flee, switch sides or even give up altogether, The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively….
“Shockingly, some Afghan women even took up arms and killed Taliban soldiers themselves – they got hold of Kalashnikov rifles and engaged in gun battles with the soldiers, say eyewitnesses.
“The women all say it’s better to die than to give in to the Taliban,” said Dr. Atta Mohammed, who works at an Italian-run medical clinic in the city of Bagram and witnessed a gun battle between Afghan women and Taliban soldiers.
Before the U.S. bombing campaign began, ENQUIRER reporter Alan Butterfield traveled to dangerous areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he was granted interviews through a translator with the wives of Taliban soldiers.”
They told The ENQUIRER that Afghan women were already secretly conspiring against the Taliban. Incredibly, some late-stage pregnant women risked their lives by aborting their children rather than bringing females into their cruel world.
“These acts were a silent protest against the Taliban’s way of life,” one of the women, 20-year-old Amna, told The ENQUIRER after her husband left to fight with the Taliban. “As women, we are fighting back in our own way. A good man like my husband is a soldier following orders and he will do what he is told. But I know he doesn’t approve of what the bosses order for women in my country.
“If the Taliban remain in control, I will do what other women are doing if I become pregnant again – I will kill the baby if I know it is a girl.”
ISLAMIC TRUTH: THE TALIBAN Vs HOLLYWOOD
Despite its tone, Enquirer reporting is often accurate. But, just to appease the gods of journalism who once demanded “balance” in all stories –a requirement that many media outlets suspend at a time of war — here is a Taliban tinged view of recent events in Afghanistan from the Islamic Truth website. (Yes, there is one!)
“Northern Alliance open up cinemas, sell porn-magazines and allow women to expose themselves in public.
“Under the guns of the NA troops, cinemas have reopened and western experts disguised as NA troops have installed the latest cinema projector equipment to show bollywood films. Mass executions are happening throughout provinces north of Kabul as the NA/US/British troops purge key areas by paying locals to finger pro-Taliban supporters.
“‘When the cinemas where open”, said one local ,” no one wanted to enter the building but then the TV camera men came and under the watchful eye of NA troops youngsters where forced into the cinema at gunpoint. None of the elders approved of this as the films on show where haram and where against the teaching’s of Islam.” These sentiments where prevalent throughout Kabul as the NA/US/British troops tried desperately to get some momentum behind their propaganda programme.
“The Northern Alliance consists of a rag-tag group consisting of communists, fascists and atheists. The NA cannot be regarded as being Muslim in any way or form. They are Kafir and should be dispensed with as soon as humanly possible. The NA have been installed into Afghanistan by America and Britain since Afghanistan was the only country in the world which implemented Allah(Swt) laws and this was against the plan the Kafir have set for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent and Middle-east.
“With the NA will come fear, killings, massacres, innocent bloodshed, mass murder, pillage, rape, prostitution, gang rape and more drug trafficking than ever before. The NA will try to dope the masses by supplying free drugs to the young to pollute the next generation of Afghan people. War Lords will control territories with their own personal order. One Kabul local commented as saying, “…The NA are a bunch of cancerous, kuniving, killers that must be shot dead without hesitation.”
Help me out. What does the word :kafir” mean in this context. White South Africans used the term “kaffer” as the Afrikaans substitute for “nigger.” Don’t you think it is better to acknowledge the reality of this hate journalism (on all sides) than ignore it
JOURNALISTS ON THE FRONT LINE WAIT TO DIE
Journalists on the ground in Afghanistan are fighting their own war for survival. Writes the Village Voices Ted Rall” Afghans are different from you and me. We live in a world in which more people are alive than have ever lived and died. Theirs is the diametric opposite. Afghanistan is defined by things that used to be: people, ideas, Buddha statues, cities. Journalistic hyperbole has no place here; even the most abused adjectives fall short in a country where Soviet tank treads serve as speed bumps.”
Rall’s full piece brings you into the war in a way that television has largely proven itself incapable of: “Tanks and trucks and Japanese rental cars with Dubai plates zoom west across the desert, dodging donkeys, potholes, and piles of wheat drying on the asphalt — and every now and then a group of refugees from Kunduz. The drama is purely theoretical; in practice the sight of teenaged girls in brightly colored dresses, toting ridiculously tiny bags containing everything they own, becomes instantaneously mundane. Likewise the front itself, which has become such a local institution that it now has its own parking attendants for visiting journos.”
He closes with a warning from one of those sound-byte ready Northern Alliance commanders:” “If you stay after dark,” he warns, “some of my troops will rob you. And maybe worse.” There’s something tantalizing about this possibility. For one thing, I’d have something to write about. For another, it might jump-start the motions and bowels locked solid by days of fending off stooped old ladies in burkas pulling at my clothes in Central Asia’s ultimate form of aggressive panhandling. Maybe the sight of all of those guns — every other male carries at least one pointed at me — might spark my sympathy for the millions who lie under graves of stones and green flags hanging limply from mangy sticks.
“More likely, some dumb fuck would shoot me just for the hell of it. I don’t care to be number 11, not tonight.”
ABDANDONMENT ISSUES
If that is not bizarre enough for you, try this, a letter that Alexander Cockburn (via Steve Perry) reprints from the letters column of England’s New Statesman about the presumed sanity, or lack thereof, of Mr. Evil, Osama Bin Ladin:
“Re: Crazy Osama.
“I don’t think Osama Bin Laden is psychotic, he just has some abandonment issues and possibly a really poor body image. I think sometimes we are all guilty of terrorism, and by that I mean inner-terrorism. I myself was an inner terrorist, with crumbling towers of self-esteem and the plummeting fusilage of emotional frigidity.”
SORRY, I HAVE TO ABANDON YOU—THE DENTIST CALLS
I am beginning to get a tremor of abandonment issues vis a vis today’s outing on the weblog. I am off to the dentist. (UPDATE: No Cavities!) Here’s a pithy response from a reader to whom email is used the telegrams of days gone by: “Debating Alt. Realities – WELL SAID!!!!!!Keep up the good work! Sincerely, Michael Walker – Radford, Va.” Thanks Mike, and thanks America and the AP for this:
“Poll: News Media Values Improving”
“WASHINGTON (AP) – The public’s opinions of news media standards of values and morality – down sharply during the Monica Lewinsky scandal – have improved significantly since the terrorist attacks, a poll says….
I feel better already. See you tomorrow. Keep those emails coming to dissector@mediachannel.org
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Imagine All The People . . .
November 28th, 2001 - by: danny
When you look southwards outside of our office into Times Square, there is a subversive billboard right above a sign selling “DYNOTOPIA, ” a saga about an era which may have come and gone, depending on your point of view. A sentiment from the more recent past has the feel of being a dinosour right above it: It’s a line from John Lennon’s famous song, “IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING LIFE IN PEACE.” The billboard is all white and unsigned, and unmistakably a gift from Yoko Ono who has plastered peace sentiments in the “crossroads of the world before.” This year, even as we lurch into what is supposed to be a “Season of Peace,” that invitation to the collective imagination seems more of a flashback to another time.
JUSTICE, NORTHERN ALLIANCE STYLE
What is happening in Afghanistan, is, alas, not so unimaginable given the forces involved and the shockingly disengaged position of the United States military which is watching it all happen, and encouraging. I didn’t expect that this enemy would be it handled with kid gloves. And I am hardly sympathetic or supportive of the Taliban’s crimes and oppressive rule. But surely, the reporting on this phase of the “mop-up” of the war should consider what this chapter of the conflict must look like to the people around the world who were asked to support freedom over terror, and a war whose goal was to deliver “justice.” Yet those values and considerations are missing in much of the media coverage. While we debate the legality of media tribunals, hundreds of soldiers who gave themselves up are receiving capital punishment without any trials or tribunals.
These sentences seem to have the tacit approval of the people running the war. Those signals are everywhere including in quote from one of those unnamed “officials” that the Washington Post loves to cite. Today, on its front page, a Pentagon strategist explained yesterday’s bombing of a so-called Taliban/Al Qaeda headquarters. (The Taliban denied losing any of its leaders in that raid.) His words: “WE WHACKED THEM”
Whacking them may be what war is about, but that’s when the war is raging, not after its over. Much of the reporting seems to be cheering on human rights abuses with desensitized coverage and reporting which avoids legal and moral imperatives, those qualities which supposedly separate US from THEM.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE TIMES
Listen to this language in the New York Times today.
REMINDER: these words, describe people, human beings, who under every covenant of war have a right to be treated according international laws and customs as enunciated in Geneva conventions and Red Cross guidelines.
“Wreteched cargo”
“The Prisoners, crawling and writhing like turtles in a pet shop were the sorry by product of the Northern Alliance’s most recent victory.
“It was a defeated army, this, all rags, and filth, and lowered heads”
These words jumped out of Dexter Filkin’s dispatch from Khulm Afghanistan. It is a story about men about to die, about to be shot through head if recent practice is any guide. Executed. Liquidated. The New York Times headline sanitizes this with these words: “AFTER DEFEAT, JOURNEY TO UNCERTAIN FATE.” Uncertain?
WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE?
The Red Cross, an organization generously supported by millions of Americans has been issuing appeals that go largely unheard and unreported. The UN doesn’t want to get involved and says the Red Cross has the responsibility. And the Red Cross keeps talking but no one is listening. Around and around we go, while the world watches footage of hundreds of bodies strewn about the yard of that fort in Mazari-i- Sharif. ABC broadcast the images yeterday on World News Tonight. I have yet to read a detailed report on what happened there, how it started, and whether the bombing that wounded 5 Americans by mistake were called for.
Peter Pflaum sends along a BBC report and comment: “Another CIA screw up – poor and too little too late planning for management of prisoners – the presence of Americans set off the rebellion.”
Here is part of the Beeb’s graphic account: “What followed was a mixture of farce, tragedy and bloody combat.
“Some bodies had their hands tied behind their backs.
“Some of the Hazaras stopped to take the boots off the feet of the slain foreigners, forcing commanders to bring out sticks to beat their men back into battle.
“Sources last night said that the special forces had not joined in the attack against the Taliban’s position, but had called in the air strikes. It was not clear whether the body of a CIA agent killed on Sunday by the prisoners had been retrieved from the compound. The riot broke out when the prisoners spotted the CIA agent and another colleague, witnesses said. The second man, Dave, apparently shot dead three Taliban before escaping.”
Can you image what would have been the media response if the situation had been reversed, if Northern Alliance forces, or G-d forbid, US forces, were treated this way?
AN APPEAL FROM HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHOn Monday, Human Rights Watch issued an urgent appeal that went largely unheeded. Read this and tell me where else you have read it:
“ISLAMABAD, Nov. 27 2001 — Human Right Watch (HRW) on Monday called on the United States and the Northern Alliance to guarantee the humane treatment of surrendered or captured Taliban soldiers in the northern Afghan city of Konduz this weekend. HRW said fair screening procedures were needed to determine who should face prosecution later for serious violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The announcement follows reports of a revolt by Taliban prisoners in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif in which hundreds are reported to have been killed.
“We now have seen what can happen when you take such a large group of people prisoner,” an HRW researcher in Islamabad, Sam Zia-Zarifi, told IRIN. “We are concerned about both the prisoners and their keepers,” he said. He called for greater cooperation between the international community and the Northern Alliance.
“In a press statement, HRW said that the Taliban fighters in Konduz included two commanders – Mullah Dadaullah and Mullah Fazil – who were implicated in some of the worst human rights abuses in recent Afghan history.
“The need to set up a justice mechanism to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity is no longer a theoretical issue, it’s an urgent priority,” HRW’s Asia director, Sidney Jones, said. She noted that the most immediate need was to ensure that prisoners were treated humanely, but that it was also critical to establish procedures for separating people suspected of grave crimes from those who had simply volunteered or been recruited to fight for the Taliban. The fighters in Konduz reportedly included many young men who had volunteered after 11 September. ”
Bear in mind that many of those fighting for the Taliban and the Northern Alliance were children pressed into the war, untrained, and often the victims of the worst carnage.
ANOTHER JOURNALIST DEAD, MANY SAY: “WE ARE OUT OF HERE”
Many journalists are pulling out of the North of Afghanistan, after the death yesterday of Ulf Sroemberg, a Swedish photo-journalist and the eighth journalist killed. There has also been a kidnapping of Ken Hechtman, a Canadian freelancer who was reportedly being held in chains for ransom by bandits. The Swede was killed in a robbery and many journalists are being targeted in the same manner by criminal gangs.
What is it like to cover this conflict? Here is a report from Globalvision News Network partner, the Pakistan News Service about reporting from he town in which our Swedish colleague was murdered:
JOURNALISTS IN THE CROSSFIRE
” KABUL,Nov 27 (PNS): As Northern Alliance troops were driving Taliban soldiers out of northern Afghanistan, an official at the AllianceÃs Foreign Ministry in Khoja Bachoudin told us the key city of Taloqan about 40 miles to the south had been liberated.The Taliban had been chased out of town and out of the region.
“When we asked if we could go there, we were told: No problem. The official scribbled out the permission slip that would allow to us pass their checkpoints en route to Taloqan. That night, I discussed it with my producer and camera crew. We consulted with our fixers,the local translator-liaison-arrangers who are indispensable in Third World countries.We learned that the road to Taloqan was heavily mined, and parts of it might even be under Taliban control still – contrary to what we had been told. We took a vote and elected not to go.Two days later, the team from another U.S. network drove to Taloqan – at night, no less – and narrowly missed being caught in a roadside firefight.
By the time the media moved en masse to Taloqan a few days later, there was still fighting going on inside the city. The news that four journalists were killed on the road from Jalalabad to Kabul today tragically demonstrate the perils of reporting the war on terrorism from inside Afghanistan.
The biggest problem foreign journalists face in Afghanistan is relying on the guidance and protection of the Northern Alliance. And, simply put, its officials cannot always be depended on and what they say cannot be taken at face value – either out of arrogance, self-deception, macho posturing or simple errors of judgment. They tend to exaggerate their prowess and even the number of troops they have.
In any war zone, foreign reporters have to rely first on their instincts, then on the fixers. knowledge and, finally, on the goodwill of the host country or group.But in Afghanistan, each of these is flawed. Reporters’ instincts are typically based on conventional ideas of warfare.The brand practiced in Afghanistan is much more volatile, anarchic and brutal than what Westerners are accustomed to.
“The fixers who I met were often whimsical and uncommunicative, of dubious loyalty (most were sanctioned by and believed to be kicking part of their salaries back to the Foreign Ministry). Few were proficient with the English language, which also did not inspire confidence. To my knowledge, no one had previously worked with foreign journalists.
“Northern Alliance not to be trusted As for the Northern Alliance, found officials and military commanders to be unsettlingly prone to elliptical or ambiguous remarks,and,when it came to questions about Alliance troop strength and efficiency, misleading or even wrong.After the three journalists were killed in an ambush at Qala Qatar while riding on an Alliance armored vehicle at the invitation of a local official, I vowed never again to trust their assurances about safety and security.
“Reporters used to be considered non-combatants, essentially off-limits. Not anymore. And especially not in Afghanistan where the Taliban reportedly announced that journalists with the Northern Alliance would be treated the same as the enemy soldiers.
“The dilemma for us is that we all want to cover the story, or else we would not have accepted the assignment, but it is inherently risky. The fixer who was with the journalists killed at Qala Qatar told me the local commander strenuously warned them the trip was dangerous.They said,”Good. Then it might make a great story,’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
LET US HEAR FROM YOU
Enough death and horror for one day. I am a bit late today in posting this column because I am just back from a very informative American Press Institute conference. More on that later.
Please keep your items and letters coming. Email me: dissector@mediachannel.org
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About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
Mr. Schechter is NOT the Godfather of Soul.
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