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Subject:
Mazar-i-Sharif and My Lai
Malrait
1/20/2002 6:39:13 AM
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Sorry, I was busy spanking atkins in the Kosovo board (feel free to join, I need good opponents there!). So,here is a very good article from D.Schechter, with knock down arguments. Try to counter them if you can:
? Danny Schechter is executive editor of MediaChannel.org and author of News Dissector, which reports on how a citizens' war crimes commission was reported derisively during the Vietnam War. (Akashic Books and electronbooks.com).
Where were the U.S. mainstream media outlets when crimes of similar moral gravitas were being committed right in front of them today? I am talking about that so-called prison revolt in the old fort called Qalai Janghi in Mazar-i-Sharif, which was only fully extinguished by the end of last week. To be sure, these men were not civilians, but armed combatants. But once in custody, they must be treated according to the Geneva convention. A fuller probe is warranted.
Thanks to the British press, the story has received more than the usual episodic treatment, with a story here or there but no cumulative impact. While Time and CNN covered it, the UK media offered in-depth analysis not only of the horror but its meaning in terms of possible war crimes. The BBC, Times of London, Independent and Guardian were all over the grisly story in graphic detail, while most American outlets played it only as more bang bang.
Justin Huggler wrote in London's Independent last Friday about its grisly aftermath. "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."
The Media And The Massacre
Let's turn to those questions in a minute since this column is more about media than massacres. And it is also about how some journalists performed like modern-day Ridenhours and Hershes, while most did not. For one thing, few journalists explained the run-up to the prison outrage, as in how the Taliban prisoners got there in the first place. On November 25, The New York Times carried a front page photo showing members of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban shaking hands in Konduz and appearing to peacefully resolve a showdown that U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had predicted would be a bloody fight to the finish, an eventuality he seemed to relish in the soundbites I saw. At that time, the Northern Alliance, advised and outfitted by the U.S. and Britain, had the town surrounded and was moving in for the kill ? until, that is, talks broke out and a peace of sorts was brokered.
As I discovered from the Sunday New York Times, the two sides had worked out a deal. The Taliban forces believed they would be treated fairly if they gave up. A photo underscored the point. The caption: "Northern Alliance troops near Amirabad watched as a convoy of surrendering Taliban soldiers from Konduz passed through the front lines." These men were on their way to the Northern Alliance fort at Mazar-i Sharif as part of what the Times called, "a script for surrender." The Times correspondent also reported that General Rashid Dostum had promised to turn them over to the UN and international courts.
This was reported without clarification. What "international courts" were not specified. I shook my head. The Times knew there were no international courts in place. They also knew the UN had no provisions to accept prisoners. Why didn't the newspaper of record mention this? Was this some scam? Had the Taliban's feared foreign troops been suckered? The Times then added, rather obliquely, "It was unclear if his (Dostum's) view would hold." The next sentence seems to reflect the "catch 'em and kill 'em" orientation of the Alliance and the Pentagon, which was cheering them on: "Other Northern Alliance Leaders say they want to try the men in Afghan criminal courts and possibly put them to death." Again, the Times failed to point out that there were no such courts functioning either.
That was Saturday. The foreign troops surrendered presumably with the expectation that they would be turned over to the UN. Maybe they didn't know better. Maybe they believed Dostum, who has fought on every side over the long years of combat in that country, with the Russians against the Mujadids and then with the Mujadids against the Russians, with the Taliban and now against it. He is known as a killer par excellence. His forces slaughtered 50,000 people between l992 and '96 in Kabul, leading to many Afghans welcoming the Taliban as saviors. Now he was wheeling and dealing with the Taliban, cajoling them to stop fighting. Those fanatical fighters believed they had a deal. The next day, when they discovered they didn't, the world would find out that it had a problem. A deadly one.
A Revolting Revolt
What happened next? Here is the reconstruction by the Independent's Huggler, published five days later:
"Bound to one another, the prisoners were taken in pickup trucks to Qalai Janghi, the 19th-century mud-walled fortress that Dostum had used as his headquarters after the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif to his Northern Alliance forces three weeks previously.
"It was on Saturday that what started as the relatively peaceful surrender of the northern Afghan Taliban stronghold of Konduz suddenly started to go out of control inside the fort. Before the eyes of Western reporters, two foreign Taliban prisoners, in the process of being registered by the Red Cross, detonated hand grenades, killing themselves and two senior aides to General Dostum and slightly injuring the ITN news reporter Andrea Catherwood.
"It was not the first time that we had heard of bin Laden's 'foreigners' committing suicide rather than be taken alive. The Northern Alliance claimed that a group of around 60 of them jumped into a river and drowned themselves. Another group were found kneeling in positions of prayer, each with a single bullet wound from behind. A Northern Alliance commander alleged that one of them had killed all of the others in a suicide pact before turning the gun on himself.
"But there were always fears that the stories might have been invented to cover up Northern Alliance massacres of the foreign fighters. Nor was it the first time that surrendering Taliban had not been properly disarmed. Over the past few weeks, journalists in Afghanistan have watched repeatedly as Taliban who had surrendered were allowed to head into Northern Alliance-held towns, waving their Kalashnikovs and rocket-launchers triumphantly in the air. This time, however, defiance grew into mayhem, culminating in the scenes of trucks piled high with human bodies that we saw heading out of Qalai Janghi yesterday."
The Plot Thickens
OK. So far we have two Taliban prisoners, allowed to take arms into a prison ? how crazy is that? ? and then attack their jailers. Time magazine reported that they were outraged when they saw Western reporters. Perhaps they thought the UN would be there. But that was just one, contained incident.
Huggler continues: "The next day, Sunday, the prisoners ? many of them with their arms tied behind their backs ? were being herded into a room for interrogation before two CIA agents [Mike Spann and one identified only as Dave]. Did they fear retribution for the previous day's murder of the two Northern Alliance commanders? Or was it, as another account suggests, the mere sight of two Americans ? from the foreign fighters' point of view, sworn enemies of bin Laden ? that provoked the bloodbath that followed?
"The incompetence of the |
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