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Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
November 13, 2001
UPDATE ON USA'S ATTACK ON THE MEDIA IN KABUL
- Comment from Peter Bell;
- Kabul Staff of Al Jazeera Believed Safe;
- US Missile Also Damaged Offices of BBC, AP
Comment from Peter Bell:
[Wow. Condi Rice really, really doesn't like A-J, and I guess the
only real surprise is that it took them until now to do it. Since
the Talib have withdrawn from the city, it's harder to explain this
one as being necessary or even useful to our aims if the pretext
is that it's an accidental hit and part of our overall campaign in
Afghanistan.
I guess the boys at the Pentagon must be truly surprised by the
speed of the NA dudes. They were probably hoping to be able to
send in a rocket while hostilities in the city were ongoing. This
is helpful to them for several reasons: shuts up A-J *and* prevents
the very common journalistic professional courtesy of letting one
another use comms links when the network doesn't need them. If
A-J had stayed up, the Western press would almost certainly have
been allowed to use their satellite facilities to upload footage
of Kabul and its outskirts. Footage the Pentagon does *not* want
us to see now (the NA lynching people) and footage they do *not*
want us to see later (body bags coming through town as the
counterstrikes come in from the hills once the US troopers go in
in force to "preserve order"
while they round up tame third parties - Turkey and Malaysia, I
think, are reported here - to staff the peacekeeping force with
Muslims...)
The Pentagon planners need to go reread the history of the FSSR
advance - the FSSR took Kabul in 24 or 48 hours after their initial
advance; they spent the next ten years pinned in place there.
The Afghans and the Chinese have similar fighting tactics around
what would seem to us to be things to cover: let 'em be, nail the
supply lines, pin the perimeter.
Even Reuters is now reporting lots of mass slaughters by our New
Best Friends... -Peter Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
*
Mainstream press coverage from Ali Abunimah e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.abunimah.org
The Independent - 13 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=104736
Arab satellite channel's Kabul office destroyed by missile
By Adnan Malik, AP writer
The Kabul office of the Arab satellite channel AlJazeera, which
the United States has criticized for its coverage of the Afghan
campaign, was destroyed early on Tuesday by a US missile, the
channel's managing director said.
No one was in the office when it was hit before dawn. The 10
staffers, including reporter Tasir Alouni, operating out of the
office were believed safe, but their whereabouts were not known,
said managing director Mohammed Jassim alAli.
"All our equipment has been destroyed, but we believe that all our
crew are safe," alAli told The Associated Press in a telephone
interview from Qatar, the channel's headquarters. He estimated the
loss at dlrs 800,000.
"We don't know where our crew members are. We are trying to see
how we can communicate with them," alAli said,
It may be difficult for Arab members of the crew, including Alouni,
to move about in Kabul, where they might by mistaken for Arabs who
had come to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban religious militia.
The Taliban, who saw their hold on Afghanistan erode under a U.S.
bombing campaign that began Oct. 7, fled Kabul overnight and bands
of heavily armed northern alliance soldiers roamed Kabul Tuesday
seeking Arab, Pakistani, Chechen and other Taliban allies. At least
five Pakistanis and two Arabs were killed.
The target of Tuesday's attack was unclear. The United States has
been bombing Afghanistan, targeting Taliban military and government
installations, because the militia harbored Osama bin Laden. Bin
Laden is the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and
Washington.
The Taliban Ministry for the Suppression of Vice and the Promotion
of Virtue was across the street from the AlJazeera office. Taliban
antiaircraft positions were located on a hill nearby and the
neighborhood, Wazir Akbar Khan, was home to many Taliban officials.
When asked if he thought AlJazeera's office was deliberately
targeted, alAli said, "They know where we are located and they know
what (equipment) we have in our office and we also did not get any
warning."
The same missile that destroyed the AlJazeera office also damaged
the offices of The Associated Press and the BBC.
In Kabul Tuesday, one side of the house in which Al Jazeera's office
was located was caved in, with twisted steel reinforcement rods
jutting out. Alouni was believed to have left the city during the
night. It wasn't clear whether he left on his own or with the
Taliban.
The bearded Alouni, usually appearing dressed in a khaki vest, had
become familiar to Arab viewers around the world, providing live
reports from Talibancontrolled areas barred to most Western reporters.
He had often described U.S. missiles hitting civilian areas and
killing women and children.
*
Agence France Presse - November 13, 2001
US missile put Al-Jazeera TV out of action in Kabul: report
DOHA--Al-Jazeera television, which found fame and controversy with
exclusive reports from behind Taliban lines, said Tuesday that its
Kabul office had been put out of action by a US missile.
"US aircraft bombed the Al-Jazeera offices in Kabul during the
night," the Qatar-based satellite channel announced. Al-Jazeera
staff in the capital, which fell to Northern Alliance opposition
forces at dawn, had not been wounded, but they could no longer be
contacted, according to a news bulletin.
The channel gave no details about the extent of the damage, but
did say the home of one employee had also been hit.
In an earlier report, Al-Jazeera said the bureau had been hit by
shells and put out of action when the Afghan opposition forces
entered the capital.
"Shells fell on the Al-Jazeera bureau in Kabul, but there were no
casualties," said the station's correspondent in Kandahar, quoting
his colleagues in Kabul.
He added that foreign journalists in Kabul had been confined to a
hotel in the capital.
Al-Jazeera Kabul correspondent Taysir Alluni has become a celebrity
in the Arab world with his exclusive reports from Taliban-held
territory since the launch of the US-led war on Afghanistan on
October 7.
But the channel has also been heavily criticised in the West as a
mouthpiece for the Taliban and particularly Osama bin Laden, the
chief suspect for the September 11 terror attacks in the United
States.
Bin Laden has appeared on video tapes aired by the Doha television
station urging Muslims to rise up against the West in a holy war.
*
November 13, 2001
US WARPLANES BOMB AL-JAZEERA BUREAU IN KABUL, ALL CONTACT LOST
Summary of Al-Jazeera coverage by Ali Abunimah
US warplanes bombed the offices of the Al-Jazeera satellite channel
in the Afghan capital Kabul early on Tuesday morning as the city
fell to Northern Alliance forces Al-Jazeera reported today. The
channel has lost contact with its correspondent in the city Taysir
Allouni and has been unable to determine the extent of the injuries
or damage to its staff and offices.
There is no information as to whether the attack was deliberate or
not, however on April 23, 1999 US-led NATO forces deliberately
bombed the offices of Radio-Television Serbia killing 16 journalists
and technical staff, a case that the European Court of Human Rights
has just agreed to review. In recent months US officials have
alternately criticized Al-Jazeera and demanded to be interviewed
on it, and the network has been subjected to a campaign of
villification in the US media, including at least in one case a
demand that it be bombed. New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets
wrote on October 14 that "Dealing with Al Jazeera is a job for the
military. Shutting it down should be an immediate priority."
In recent days, Al-Jazeera has stood almost alone in reporting
extensive civilian casualties from US bombing in several parts of
Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Al-Jazeera reported that there are reports of summary
executions and round-ups as Northern Alliance forces flood into
Kabul. The television, using pictures taken by reporters entering
the city with Northern Alliance forces, showed many bodies lying
in the streets as a result of what some reports say were summary
executions.
Taliban forces are said to have withdrawn from the city under cover
of night, street fighting may not explain why so many bodies were
lying in the street.
On Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson
expressed concern about reprisals and violence against civilians
both by Taliban and Northern Alliance forces as Afghan cities fall
to the Northern Alliance (see story below). -- Ali Abunimah
*
Agence France Presse - November 13, 2001
UN rights chief tells US, Britain to prevent Afghan bloodbath
by PRATAP CHAKRAVARTY
NEW DELHI--UN Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson
Tuesday urged Britain and the United States to ensure the ouster
of the Taliban from Kabul by opposition forces does not end in a
bloodbath.
Robinson also demanded that other nations involved in the military
campaign share the responsibility for shielding civilians from
marauding warlords and retaliatory massacres in Kabul and elsewhere
in Afghanistan.
"A number of cities are changing hands from the Taliban to the
Northern Alliance opposition forces in the recent days," Robinson
said, voicing her fears of a looming anarchy in the country she
said had been "torn by 20 years of conflict and a drought." "It is
extremely important that the message should go out and I look
particularly to the United States and Britain and the countries
that are involved in the military strategy to make it very clear
that there will be no toleration of massacres, of rapes and abuse
of civilians.
"If it happens, there will be justice against the perpertators. In
other words there will be no longer impunity. My office is in the
process of mapping out just how bad the situation has been in
Afghanistan," she said.
She spoke of a bloody massacre carried out by the Taliban militia
in January and a reported copycat bloodbath by the opposition forces
of the Northern Alliance later in the year.
"Both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance have abused and massacred
and created total human rights violations against civilians in
Afghanistan.
"There have been some leaders of the Northern Alliance who have
very bad human rights records," Robinson said.
Although Robinson said the United States had the right to retaliate
for the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington by
ordering the strikes in Afghanistan, the UN commissioner said she
was "deeply concerned by the civilian casualties" in the bombings.
"There should be no more killing or damage to civilian life,"
Robinson said, and added her department will soon begin to monitor
such sufferings.
"They are a priority concern to the human rights commissioner,"
she added.
Robinson also said the United Nations has just received reports
that humanitarian aid had been looted in Kabul following the march
of opposition forces into the capital of the war-torn country.
"There have already been some reports of looting of humanitarian
aid and there is a fear that the situation could turn worse. That
would be tragic for the entire civilian population," Robinson said.
She said the United Nations was also concerned about the local aid
workers on the ground. Foreign aid workers were pulled out of
Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.
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