- An independent television station broadcasting from Afghanistan
was a problem in winning "the propaganda war" so before "America,s
allies" overran Kabul - an American bomb silenced it.
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- The Kabul office of the independent Arabic news channel
Al-Jazeera, which the U.S. government had criticized for its coverage of
the Afghan campaign, was destroyed by a U.S. missile just hours before
the U.S. backed Northern Alliance entered the Afghan capital on Nov. 13.
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- An American missile obliterated al-Jazeera,s office and
effectively shut down what had been the only independent source of information
from the Afghan capital as it fell to fighters from the anti-Taliban coalition,
who reportedly celebrated their conquest with looting and summary executions.
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- Al-Jazeera has a reputation for outspoken, independent
reporting and its reporting had been an obstacle to winning the propaganda
war against the Taliban since the start of the US-led military action in
Afghanistan. American officials criticized al-Jazeera,s coverage of the
bombing campaign as being "inflammatory propaganda."
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- The Qatar-based Arabic language network, being the only
media outlet with access to Taliban-held territory, broadcast video pictures
of Afghan demonstrators attacking and setting fire to the US embassy in
Kabul on 26 September.
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- Al-Jazeera was criticized by the U.S. government for
being a mouthpiece for al-Qaeda after it broadcast two videotapes of Osama
bin Laden, Washington,s prime suspect in the September attacks, in which
bin Laden denounced the American government and urged Muslims to rise up
in a holy war - as U.S. bombers pounded Taliban targets in Afghanistan.
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- These broadcasts aroused the ire of the Bush administration
and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said al-Jazeera was giving too much
time to "vitriolic, irresponsible kinds of statements." The U.S.
government said the channel was being used by the al-Qaeda network to pass
on coded messages to supporters around the world.
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- But al-Jazeera refused to be silenced. "We are in
the business of news. Our policy is to air all shades of opinion. The attention
of the world is riveted on Afghanistan. If we don't show it, who will?"
asked Ibrahim Hilal, al-Jazeera's chief editor. "We put every word,
every move of President Bush on the air. Arabs accuse us of being pro-American,
even pro-Israeli. The Americans say we're pro-Taliban. We must be doing
something right."
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- Although Al-Jazeera had achieved global stature with
its exclusive access to Osama Bin Laden, and was known and respected as
the only credible source of information and video footage from Taliban
controlled areas of Afghanistan, the U.S. bombing of its office was not
widely reported in the United States.
-
- The American-Israeli columnist Zev Chafets, writing in
the New York Daily News had recently called Al Jazeera "an Arab propaganda
outfit and "one of the most potent weapons in the Islamic Axis arsenal"
and proposed that the U.S. military "shut it down."
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- Chafets said, "the free press is a symbol of what
America's enemies hate about this country" and then went on to say
that the U.S. should bomb the only independent television network in Afghanistan
- and the Middle East.
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- "Dealing with Al Jazeera is a job for the military.
Shutting it down should be an immediate priority because, left alone, it
has the power to poison the air more efficiently and lethally than anthrax
ever could," Chafets said.
-
- An American bomb hit the network's office in Kabul at
3 a.m. on Nov. 13, destroying the building. Al-Jazeera's managing director,
Mohammed Jasem al-Ali estimated the loss at $800,000.
-
- Al-Ali did not speculate as to whether the offices were
deliberately targeted, but he said the location of the bureau was widely
known by everyone, including the U.S. military. "This office has been
known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office,
they know we are broadcasting from there," he said.
-
- "The office sits in a residential area. We cannot
say for sure that it was deliberately targeted, but the Americans know
exactly where the office is. I can see no other reason why a bomb would
land in that section of Kabul," al-Ali said.
-
- Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. David Lapan (USMC) told AFP
that the building had been intentionally targeted because it was a "command
and control facility" for Osama bin Laden,s Al-Qaeda group. Lapan
said that the military "had no information that it was the al-Jazeera
office."
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- Al-Ali had previously denied that al-Jazeera was anti-American,
saying Western media begrudged the station its successful coverage of world
events and its coterie of professional (mostly BBC-trained) correspondents,
anchors and editors.
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- "Al Jazeera wants to ensure balanced coverage by
getting out the other side of the story, just like CNN did during the Gulf
War," said Mahmoud Tarabay, a professor of journalism and media studies
at the American University in Lebanon.
-
- Missiles also damaged the offices of The Associated Press
and the British Broadcasting Corp. in Kabul. Half an hour earlier, a huge
American bomb badly damaged a house used by the BBC just a block away,
striking while William Reeve, a reporter, was broadcasting. Reeve dived
to the floor in mid-sentence and the BBC team left the building shortly
afterwards, crossing the city to the safety of a hotel.
-
- After being destroyed by American bombs, Al-Jazeera was
prevented from sending televised images of the atrocities being committed
by the alliance fighters as they occupied the cities and towns of northern
Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera, which has contractual relations with the American
broadcaster CNN, was forced to broadcast CNN,s footage of events in Kabul
to its 35 million Arabic speaking viewers around the world.
-
- Prior to Al Jazeera,s emergence, Arab TV audiences had
to rely on CNN and other sources from the Western media, which are generally
regarded as pro-Israel in the Arab world.
-
- Kabul fell into chaos late in the day on Monday, Nov.
12, as the ruling Taliban forces abandoned the capital hours ahead of the
advancing tanks of the Northern Alliance. The U.S.-backed opposition arrived
in the city early Tuesday.
-
- The Northern Alliance is primarily comprised of three
minority (non-Pashtun) ethnic groups - Tajiks, Uzbeks and the Hazaras.
The Uzbek and Hazara people are of Mongol descent. Alliance fighters looted
three banks and several houses in Kabul after taking over the city, Taliban
sources in Islamabad said on Nov. 13.
-
- The Taliban sources also said that three villages had
been completely destroyed around Mazar-e-Sharif after U.S. planes bombarded
them on the basis of wrong information provided by the Northern Alliance
about the presence of Taliban there.
-
- The people in the villages were ethnic Pashtuns and not
Taliban members, the sources said, adding that the raids had killed a large
number of people.
-
- As the Northern Alliance advanced through previously
held Taliban territory on the way to Kabul looting was widespread as the
ethnic Uzbek and Tajik rebels celebrated by executing Pashtun Afghans,
Arabs, and Pakistanis. The Pashtun comprise the majority of the population
of Afghanistan and bore the exclusive name of Afghan before that name came
to denote any native of the present country of Afghanistan.
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- Al-Jazeera's reporter in Kabul, Tayseer Allouni, had
been told by the Northern Alliance that if they captured him he would be
killed. The bearded Allouni, who usually wore a khaki vest, had become
familiar to Arab viewers around the world, providing live reports from
Taliban - controlled areas barred to most Western reporters. He had often
described U.S. missiles hitting civilian areas and killing women and children.
-
- After the bombing, Allouni was missing for more than
a day. In a phone interview broadcast Nov. 14, he said that he and the
rest of the Kabul staff had fled the city shortly before his office was
bombed and witnessed "scenes that, I'm sorry, I couldn't describe
to anybody."
-
- Allouni and his team left their offices minutes before
it was bombed by U.S. aircraft. Allouni was assaulted as he fled the Afghan
capital amid the Taliban retreat, the station reported on Nov. 14.
-
- Allouni would not say who beat and mugged him and the
rest of the Kabul office staff of al-Jazeera. They were saved by Afghan
tribesmen who also retrieved their equipment, he said.
-
- Allouni told al-Jazeera that he and the team were now
safe, but he was "in deep psychological shock." Allouni, who
is Syrian born and carries a Spanish passport, is leaving Afghanistan to
receive medical treatment for a slipped disc.
-
- When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked by
reporters on Nov. 13 about media reports of atrocities coming from areas
overrun by the Northern Alliance, he responded, "Who's making these
reports?"
-
- Stephanie Bunker, U.N. spokeswoman in Islamabad, told
a press conference, "we've had sources that have corroborated that
over 100 Taliban troops who were young recruits who were hiding in a school
[in Mazar-e-Sharif] were killed by Northern Alliance forces on Saturday."
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- Because the Taliban retreat had occurred the day before,
and according to Bunker's account, the young recruits were killed more
than 24 hours later, it appeared they had been executed and did not die
in battle. The Northern Alliance,s representative in neighboring Uzbekistan
denied the reports.
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- Hundreds of people had been killed and tons of aid supplies
were looted in Mazar-e-Sharif, according to the International Red Cross,
who said its workers were helping bury the dead. "It is in the hundreds,"
said spokeswoman Antonella Notari. It was unclear how many of the victims
were civilians and how many were Taliban fighters.
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- "According to reports, in Mazar there is a lot of
pillaging as well as civilian kidnappings, armed men out of control and
fighting in the streets," said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman
for the World Food Program.
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