Posted on 11th November 2001

Hypocrisy, Hatred And Terror
By Robert Fisk

'If the US attacks were an assault on "civilisation", why shouldn't Muslims
regard the Afganistan attack as a war on Islam?' 08 November 2001

"Air campaign"? "Coalition forces"? "War on terror"? How much longer must
we go on enduring these lies? There is no "campaign" ­ merely an air
bombardment of the poorest and most broken country in the world by the
world's richest and most sophisticated nation. No MiGs have taken to the
skies to do battle with the American B-52s or F-18s. The only ammunition
soaring into the air over Kabul comes from Russian anti-aircraft guns
manufactured around 1943.

Coalition? Hands up who's seen the Luftwaffe in the skies over Kandahar, or
the Italian air force or the French air force over Herat. Or even the
Pakistani air force. The Americans are bombing Afghanistan with a few
British missiles thrown in. "Coalition" indeed.

Then there's the "war on terror". When are we moving on to bomb the Jaffna
peninsula? Or Chechnya ­ which we have already left in Vladimir Putin's
bloody hands? I even seem to recall a massive terrorist car bomb that
exploded in Beirut in 1985 ­ targeting Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the
spiritual inspiration to the Hezbollah, who now appears to be back on
Washington's hit list ­ and which missed Nasrallah but slaughtered 85
innocent Lebanese civilians. Years later, Carl Bernstein revealed in his
book, Veil, that the CIA was behind the bomb after the Saudis agreed to
fund the operation. So will the US President George Bush be hunting down
the CIA murderers involved? The hell he will.

So why on earth are all my chums on CNN and Sky and the BBC rabbiting on
about the "air campaign", "coalition forces" and the "war on terror"? Do
they think their viewers believe this twaddle? Certainly Muslims don't. In
fact, you don't have to spend long in Pakistan to realise that the
Pakistani press gives an infinitely more truthful and balanced account of
the "war" ­ publishing work by local intellectuals, historians and
opposition writers along with Taliban comments and pro-government
statements as well as syndicated Western analyses ­ than The New York
Times; and all this, remember, in a military dictatorship.

You only have to spend a few weeks in the Middle East and the subcontinent
to realise why Tony Blair's interviews on al-Jazeera and Larry King Live
don't amount to a hill of beans. The Beirut daily As-Safir ran a
widely-praised editorial asking why an Arab who wanted to express the anger
and humiliation of millions of other Arabs was forced to do so from a cave
in a non-Arab country. The implication, of course, was that this ­ rather
than the crimes against humanity on 11 September ­ was the reason for
America's determination to liquidate Osama bin Laden. Far more persuasive
has been a series of articles in the Pakistani press on the outrageous
treatment of Muslims arrested in the United States in the aftermath of the
September atrocities.

One such article should suffice. Headlined "Hate crime victim's diary", in
The News of Lahore, it outlined the suffering of Hasnain Javed, who was
arrested in Alabama on 19 September with an expired visa. In prison in
Mississippi, he was beaten up by a prisoner who also broke his tooth. Then,
long after he had sounded the warden's alarm bell, more men beat him
against a wall with the words: "Hey bin Laden, this is the first round.
There are going to be 10 rounds like this." There are dozens of other such
stories in the Pakistani press and most of them appear to be true.

Again, Muslims have been outraged by the hypocrisy of the West's supposed
"respect" for Islam. We are not, so we have informed the world, going to
suspend military operations in Afghanistan during the holy fasting month of
Ramadan. After all, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict continued during
Ramadan. So have Arab-Israeli conflicts. True enough. But why, then, did we
make such a show of suspending bombing on the first Friday of the
bombardment last month out of our "respect" for Islam? Because we were more
respectful then than now? Or because ­ the Taliban remaining unbroken ­
we've decided to forget about all that "respect"? "I can see why you want
to separate bin Laden from our religion," a Peshawar journalist said to me
a few days ago. "Of course you want to tell us that this isn't a religious
war, but Mr Robert, please, please stop telling us
how much you respect Islam."

There is another disturbing argument I hear in Pakistan. If, as Mr Bush
claims, the attacks on New York and Washington were an assault on
"civilisation", why shouldn't Muslims regard an attack on Afghanistan as a
war on Islam? The Pakistanis swiftly spotted the hypocrisy of the
Australians. While itching to get into the fight against Mr bin Laden, the
Australians have sent armed troops to force destitute Afghan refugees out
of their territorial waters. The Aussies want to bomb Afghanistan ­ but
they don't want to save the Afghans. Pakistan, it should be added, hosts
2.5 million Afghan refugees. Needless to say, this discrepancy doesn't get
much of an airing on our satellite channels. Indeed, I have never heard so
much fury directed at journalists as I have in Pakistan these past few
weeks. Nor am I surprised. What, after all, are we supposed to make of the
so-called "liberal" American television journalist Geraldo Rivera who is
just moving to Fox TV, a Murdoch channel? "I'm feeling more patriotic than
at any time in my life, itching for justice, or maybe just revenge," he
announced this week. "And this catharsis I've gone through has caused me to
reassess what I do for a living." This is truly chilling stuff. Here is an
American journalist actually revealing that he's possibly "itching for
revenge".

Infinitely more shameful ­ and unethical ­ were the disgraceful words of
Walter Isaacson, the chairman of CNN, to his staff. Showing the misery of
Afghanistan ran the risk of promoting enemy propaganda, he said. "It seems
perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ...
we must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the
Taliban have harboured the terrorists responsible for killing close up to
5,000 innocent people." Mr Isaacson was an unimaginative boss of Time
magazine but these latest words will do more to damage the supposed
impartiality of CNN than anything on the air in recent years. Perverse? Why
perverse? Why are Afghan casualties so far down Mr Isaacson's compassion?
Or is Mr Isaacson just following the lead set down for him a few days
earlier by the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who portentously
announced to the Washington press corps that in times like these "people
have to watch what they say and watch what they do".

Needless to say, CNN has caved in to the US government's demand not to
broadcast Mr bin Laden's words in toto lest they contain "coded messages".
But the coded messages go out on television every hour. They are "air
campaign", "coalition forces" and "war on terror".