THOUSANDS OF AFGHANS LIKELY KILLED IN BOMBINGS
By MURRAY CAMPBELL
THE GLOBE AND MAIL (Page A1)
Thursday, January 3, 2002
globeandmail.com
The Afghan village of Qalaye Niazi vanished in a rain of bombs, with
only craters, remnants of mud walls and scraps of flesh and hair to
show that it once existed.
The people who used to live there say as many as 107 civilians died
when U.S. warplanes, including a B-52 bomber, swooped down early
Sunday.
The Pentagon says the village in eastern Afghanistan was a haven for
al-Qaeda and Taliban loyalists and that, in any event, the estimate of
casualties is "unfounded."
Such conflicting information has been a staple of the three-month-old
Afghan war and, critics say, has served to obscure the toll exacted
from civilians.
There is no agreement yet about how many ordinary Afghans have died
from the U.S.-led bombardment, but one American academic estimates that
the toll stands at 4,050 -- surpassing the number of people killed in
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Pentagon has played down the number of civilian dead, dismissing
many early reports as Taliban exaggerations.
The bombing campaign is controversial in Afghanistan, with some members
of the interim government suggesting it be stopped. Washington has
refuses, and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said this week the bombing must
continue, to "finish terrorists completely."
The bombing campaign remains largely uncontroversial in the United
States, where President George W. Bush's war on terrorism enjoys strong
support.
Marc Herold, a University of New Hampshire economics professor who has
monitored the campaign, said yesterday that U.S. officials again have
demonstrated their ability to manage the news and mainstream U.S. media
have shown their willingness to be managed.
"It's been a concerted effort to keep this kind of news off the front
pages," he said. "The record of the Bush administration is pretty
clear: This is a non-topic."
Prof. Herold has gathered media reports (many of them unverified) from
around the world for his estimate that 4,050 Afghan civilians have been
killed in the bombing. Other organizations, whose monitoring has been
less rigorous, offer lower figures.
Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based organization, offers an estimate of at
least 1,000 civilian deaths, while the Reuters news agency said that
perhaps 982 people have died in 14 incidents.
Prof. Herold's estimate, updated to include Qalaye Niazi and four other
recent incidents, follows his initial calculation three weeks ago that
3,767 Afghan civilians had died since the first bombs fell on Oct. 7.
He said he decided to study the effects of the bombing because he
suspects that modern weaponry is not as precise as advertised, and
because he found hardly any mention of civilian casualties in the U.S.
media.
He noted there have been news reports that Washington was spending
millions of dollars to buy exclusive rights to accurate satellite
images of the areas under bombardment. "Preventing the images of human
suffering caused by the U.S. bombing from reaching U.S. audiences
creates precisely what the Pentagon and Bush seek -- a war without
witnesses."
Sidney Jones, Human Rights Watch's Asia director, suggests there are
several reasons for the muted reaction to the Afghan civilian toll.
She said other Afghan topics -- the rebuilding of the country and the
hunt for Osama bin Laden -- crowd the news agenda. |
