[iwar] What the world's press is saying

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Date: 2001-10-27 23:50:54


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Subject: [iwar] What the world's press is saying
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Friday, Oct. 26, 2001 TIme magazine
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


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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