- Yvonne Ridley opposes the war on 'resilient, generous'
Afghans.
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- Yvonne Ridley is the Express journalist who was famously
captured by the Taliban whilst reporting in Afghanistan. Released after
10 days, Yvonne later discovered that the village she had been staying
in before her capture, Kama, had been systematically bombed for three
nights
running by the US. Yvonne has been speaking out against the war in
Afghanistan
ever since and here talks to Helen Foot of Media Workers Against the
War.
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- Tell me about the village where you stayed in
Afghanistan.
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- The village is called Kama, and it,s about five miles
east of Jalalabad. It,s half the size of a football pitch. And you can
only get to it by an old dirt track, and then you have to walk about a
mile through a field and over a little footbridge to get into the village.
When I was there, there was nothing of any military significance. There
were certainly no Taliban there, otherwise I,d,ve been arrested. And also
an incredibly warm, resilient, generous people who were very willing to
share the little bit of food they,d got. Wonderful people who told me about
their hopes and fears for the future. They were worried about an American
strike.
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- I spent about half a day there and spoke to them and
there were some very sad tales; a young girl who was training to be a
doctor
and then the Taliban took away her right to education. There was also an
extremely strong woman who said there was no way they were going to
tolerate
any sort of foreign invasion, and she was obviously talking about the
Americans
and the Brits. The only thing with a military application in that village
were the pots and pans which the women said they,d use against American
soldiers, dare they come into their village.
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- After you were released by the Taliban and returned
home, how did you find out that Kama had been bombed?
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- About a week after I got home I took a phone call from
my guide in Pakistan, and he said: "Madam, they've bombed your
village.,
And I said: "What do you mean?". He replied: "Kama. Kama
has now gone." I said: "Yes, I know there've been some stray
bombs, there've been some accidents." He said: "But how can you
accidentally hit Kama three nights running?" And of course he was
perfectly right. How can you accidentally hit something that's half the
size of a football field three nights running?
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- I contacted the Pentagon and they recognized me as being
the woman who had been held by the Taliban. One of them suggested that
maybe I was 'turning native'...that I had 'Stockholm Syndrome'. I explained
I was upset because of the ordinary Afghans who had nothing whatsoever
to do with the Taliban.
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- I was saying to them: "You've obviously got a policy
of targeting innocent civilians." He replied: "Well, we did have
some stray bombs." I repeated the words of my guide: "Three days
running you managed to hit that minute little village. It doesn't even
warrant a mark on the map, its so small." He just refused to accept
that and just said: "It will have been a legitimate target. You
haven't
been there for three weeks, a lot could have happened in three weeks."
And I said: "You couldn't even push a bike to that village from this
footpath. It would have no military significance, it's not strategically
placed."
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- They were basically waging terror. Now I remember that
it was at that particular time that the Taliban suddenly decided to let
journalists in. And they took them round the Jalalabad area and showed
them the villages that had been hit. Because the Taliban were saying:
"The
Americans are targeting innocent women and children." I can't speak
for other villages, I can only speak for Kama. Kama had no right to be
blitzed.
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- Was that the turning point for you in terms of
opposing
the war?
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- Yes. I was never for the war anyway, because you can't
beat terrorists by dropping cruise missiles on countries. You strangle
terrorism financially, and go for a covert or underground war, which is
what we've been doing over the last thirty years, fighting terrorism. And
I have to say, that terrorism has been sponsored by the Americans.
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- What do you think in general about the media's
portrayal
of the situation in Afghanistan?
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- Well, for the first five weeks it was more or less a
war without witnesses, so the Taliban and America could get away with
murder,
without anybody reporting it. We were relying on Al-Jazeera, an extremely
professional outfit, staffed largely by ex-BBC people, not Arab fanatics
as has been suggested.
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- What do you think the challenges are for the anti-war
movement now, given the perception of the general public that Afghanistan
has now been liberated?
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- I think it's very very important to keep the momentum
going now. Trafalgar Square was a fantastic, brilliant, event, but it
wasn't
the culmination of the campaign. It should be seen as merely the start
of a lot more action. There's a lot of dissent, and once the harsh reality
of the war kicks in, people will realise we're talking about millions of
people being affected, millions are starving. And the Americans have made
it quite clear that they couldn't give a fig about the plight of the people
on the ground. I think the tide will turn - well the tide has turned
already
- but we've got to make sure that the momentum increases.
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- What's your assessment of this so-called
'liberation'?
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- I think the media - not all, but some elements of the
media - fell for the propaganda; the idea that Kabul had been liberated,
that women had been liberated, that they were burning their burkhas.
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- In fact, the reality was quite different. When the
cameras
went away and the journalists went away after the initial euphoria, the
burkhas went back on. A big deal was made about the cinema opening for
the very first time, and I was just so sad because I'm thinking, out of
this sea of faces there was not one single woman there.
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- The Northern Alliance are just as bloody and reviled
as the Taliban. They've done horrendous things to each other and I think
that the Northern Alliance, not that they would need any great
encouragement,
but they basically were given the green light when 450 people were
slaughtered
in that fort.
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- I'm sure - I hope - that the truth about that episode
will eventually emerge. But the Americans have more or less decided to
look the other way and that they're not really interested in taking
prisoners.
Well, what does that mean?
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- America reaps what it sows with its unethical foreign
policies. They've got to look at what's happening in Israel and Palestine.
And it's within their gift to actually do something in the Middle East,
but they're not doing it.
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