[iwar] [fc:World.Wide.Web.Review:.What.They're.Saying.About.the.War]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-26 16:58:41
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Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 16:58:41 -0700 (PDT)
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      World Wide Web Review: What They're Saying About the War
  Europeans blanch, Arabs wince, Russia wants a race and China wants
                               Taiwan
                            BY TONY KARON
                    Time magazine, October 26, 01

                           RON WATTS/CORBIS


Friday, Oct. 26, 2001
The U.S. media may be all Anthrax all the time, but many European
papers are giving more front page space to the war in Afghanistan. The
Europeans have been all over comments by U.S. officials about the
tenacity of the Taliban and dim prospects for snaring Bin Laden.
Dublin's Irish Independent suggests the media missed the real story in
last weekend's special forces raid at Kandahar, which the paper
suggests encountered far heavier resistance than had been expected.
"There was blanket and mainly adulatory media coverage on both sides
of the Atlantic with the prognosis that the ground war had begun," the
Independent writes. "But, instead, what happened last weekend made US
and British planners at central command in Tampa, Florida, reappraise
the military campaign, and continue with air strikes rather than carry
out any more missions on the ground."
Britain: Diana's Ghost?
But if there is a dominant motif in European coverage, it appears to
be the looming humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. London's Times
gave prominence to a call by The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial
Fund for the U.S. and Britain to stop using cluster bombs in
Afghanistan, because of the "serious long-term threat to civilians."
The bombs, being used against Taliban defensive lines, scatter 200
smaller "bomblets" designed to maximize their kill-ratio. But the
bombs sometimes go astray, and also leave dangerous unexploded
bomblets that kill civilians days or years later. Diana spent the last
years of her life campaigning to ban land mines for the same reason.
Russia: Race ya to Kabul!
President Bush may think he's as thick as thieves with his pal
Vladimir Putin, but hopefully someone at the White House is reading
the English edition of Pravda. The erstwhile communist mouthpiece
reports that Russia's generals want to send troops back into
Afghanistan, in the hope of backing up their Tajik allies against
U.S.-backed Uzbeks in the battle for supremacy among rival factions of
the Northern Alliance. Russia wants to restore the Tajik-led
government overthrown by the Taliban in 1996. "Pakistan is against
such development of the events, as well the U.S.A., due to the efforts
of which the split within the anti-Taliban coalition started," Pravda
reports. "The United States promised its support to General Rashid
Dostum (originates from Uzbekistan). The situation was very intense —
on the edge of the armed conflict between the Tajik and Uzbek wings of
the alliance." Moscow may want its own troops to reinforce the Tajiks
— something it believes the U.S. won't match for the Uzbeks.
"Therefore, we have a race," warns Pravda. "Who is going to be the
first to support 'its own' wing of the anti-Taliban alliance." The
last time the Russian military sensed such a "race" it embarrassed
NATO by being first into Kosovo's capital.
Turkey: You want us to do what?
The U.S. has no plans to send peacekeeping troops to Kabul, of course,
having apparently tapped Turkey for the job. And that appears to have
created intense interest there in the political infighting among the
Taliban's would-be successors. Ankara's Turkish Daily News carries a
lively account of the sit-down in Pakistan among mostly Pashtun
mujahedeen leaders hoping to forge a "southern alliance" against the
Taliban (and the Northern Alliance, whom many Pashtuns distrust). The
delegates urged the U.S. to halt its bombing campaign on the grounds
that this was supposedly consolidating Pashtun support for the
Taliban. They'd prefer to bring down the Taliban by coaxing its
supporters away. And they want a Muslim force to keep the peace
(Turkey being the prime candidate). And from the paper's discussion of
the struggle for power between rival anti-Taliban factions, the
peacekeepers may be kept busy.
Jordan: America is losing the propaganda war
Jordan's intelligence community has provided invaluable help against
Al Qaeda in the past, but an editorial in The Star suggests the U.S.
is losing the propaganda war there because of concerns over the
humanitarian effects of the bombing. "While the general feeling in
this part of the world is that they condemn terrorism, and many have
repeated such a statement to the point it has become defensive, the
regional states are wary to point out they are also against war, that
a better solution must be found to end terrorism. Regardless of Bin
Laden or the Taliban, it's an unequal one-way war that is only causing
the misery and the flight of innocent civilians... And in this respect
neither the United States nor Britain are handling the 'propaganda
war' very well. It is being perceived as a war against the
defenseless, and the poor. Perhaps because that is what it is."
China: The more things change…
News coverage in China's communist party organ The People's Daily
carries a note of neutrality. CNN stories compete for attention in the
lineup with dispatches from the Afghan Islamic Press, while the main
story concerns China's own humanitarian relief efforts on behalf of
Afghan refugees in Pakistan. But a commentaryon how recent events have
changed U.S.-China relations is decidedly sanguine about backing
Washington. The piece enthuses that last weekend's APEC summit in
Shanghai showed that "the U.S.-China relationship has acquired a more
extensive and stable foundation and will step into a new stage notably
different from what it was in the past… China is earnestly sharing woe
with the United States." Let's not even mention that unpleasantness
over the spy plane — the paper waxes lyrical on China cooperation with
U.S. efforts against Al Qaeda. But after pledging unswerving
solidarity in the struggles against both terrorism and economic
recession, the comrades in Beijing thoughtfully warn that "the most
sensitive problem between the United States and China, or the biggest
obstacle, is the 'Taiwan' issue, without a correct solution of this
issue, it will be impossible to fundamentally improve the U.S.-China
relations," etc. In other words, not everything changed on September
11.

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