Journalism as Terrorism:
The Al Jazeera Effect
BAGHDAD, April 21, 2004
The past two weeks have witnessed an increase not only in anti-Coalition
activity, but also in anti-Coalition sentiment among Iraqis. The majority
of
Iraqis still appear to sup****t the Coalition, however this negative creep
in
public opinion has the potential to threaten that, and thereby may be far
more detrimental to the long-term effort in Iraq than the recent series of
failed insurgencies. While it is difficult to isolate a single cause, the
****ft in opinion does not appear to be motivated by either an increase in
the popular mandate of Muktada al-Sadr's cause, or by any alliance of
convenience between the Sunnis and ****as. Rather, it is a backlash -- a
visceral negative response to the perceived wrongs committed by the
Coalition. It is, in other words, the Al Jazeera effect.
Following the Marine offensive in Falluja, Iraqi journalists began
grilling
Coalition officials at nearly every briefing as to why Americans were
targeting women and children, and why the Americans were puni****ng so many
innocent Iraqis for the wrongs committed by the few who desecrated the
bodies in Falluja. Coalition spokesman Dan Senor and Brigadier General
Mark
Kimmitt explained that the Coalition is not executing a campaign of
collective punishment, is targeting only those who had demonstrated
themselves to be violently anti-Coalition, and is following strict rules
of
engagement and stringent policies concerning the use of force. But these
assurances fell on deaf ears. The journalists had seen the pur****ted proof
of the Coalition's barbarity: they had watched satellite networks like Al
Jazeera and Al Arabia.
Upon modest examination, however, the evidence of Coalition inhumanity
turns
out to be a combination of half-truths and no-truths. For example, these
networks re****ted that the Coalition dropped a JDAM on a mosque in
Falluja.
This much is true, however many news sources failed to re****t why the bomb
was dropped, or incorrectly stated that the action was unprovoked. In
reality, anti-Coalition forces had overtaken the mosque, and were using
the
high ground of the minarets to fire on Coalition forces. The bomb was
dropped to permit the Marines to breach one side of the mosque, and
thereby
to return order. By omitting any reference to the gunmen in the mosque,
media outlets were able to neatly transform an act of self-defense on the
part of the Marines into a pur****ted violation of the Geneva Convention.
The more general claims of Coalition forces targeting women and children
likewise have been sup****ted by a hodge-podge of unreliable and largely
unsubstantiated evidence. First, there have been re****ts of
extraordinarily
high body counts, always followed with the assertion that most of the dead
are women and children. But there has yet to be a single count confirmed
by
an independent agency, such as the Iraqi Ministry of Health. The Marines
have vehemently denied that the majority are women and children, saying
that
they have taken due care to avoid collateral injuries. This denial,
needless
to say, gets little attention in the local media.
The most damning evidence of Coalition forces targeting civilians comes in
the form of eyewitness accounts, and pictures of the dead and wounded from
the scene. However, even assuming the veracity of the witnesses, this
evidence tells us little more than that women and children were hurt or
killed, without clarifying who committed the acts, or why they were
committed. This is because many of the eyewitnesses only claim to have
seen
the injured or dead, but not the shooting or the shooter. For example, an
American re****ter relayed to me what she thought was convincing evidence
that the Coalition was targeting civilians. An eyewitness from Falluja
informed her that his relative was shot in the streets by a sniper. The
witness claimed that the shooter must have been a member of the Coalition,
because the Coalition controlled all the high ground. But this premise was
untrue: anti-Coalition forces had been using the minarets of mosques --
the
highest ground in the city -- to conduct attacks. While there are some
sophisticated snipers among the insurgents, many insurgents don't bother
with the sites of the weapon, preferring to spray rounds in the hope that,
insha Allah, the bullets will find their enemy. Given this poor technique,
and the fact that insurgents occupied the high ground, the witness had
provided no evidence as to who actually shot the relative. Yet this is
precisely the sort of testimony which has been bandied about as
authoritative proof of Coalition malfeasance.
Unfortunately, there are women and children among the wounded and dead.
Indeed, there is substantial evidence that the insurgents are taking
deliberate steps to increase the number of women and children killed by
Coalition forces. In a firefight over the weekend in the border town of
Husaybah, insurgents used women and children as human ****elds to block
mortar positions. Similar re****ts are beginning to come from Falluja,
where
the fighters chose to bring the fight into the city, and specifically into
areas where women and children were likely to be in the hopes that the
Americans would either not fire or would kill non-combatants. Through
these
acts, the insurgents have demonstrated that they are willing to sacrifice
women and children in order to generate bad press for the Coalition in
Iraq
and abroad, or alternatively to save their cowardly skins. The Coalition,
by
contrast, has put Marines in harms way in order to minimize injuries to
non-combatants.
While telling half of the story is bad enough, there is substantial
evidence
that outlets like Al Jazeera are in fact acting in concert with terrorists
to generate overtly false and misleading news re****ts. Colonel William
Rabena, who commands the 2d Battalion, 3d Field Artillery Regiment Gunners
in the Adhamiya region of Baghdad, related a scam coordinated between
anti-Coalition elements and Al Jazeera in his area of operation. A gunman
would go to the mosque, where Al Jazeera, as luck would have it, would be
setting up. The man would open fire in order to draw fire from the
Coalition. After he was inevitably taken down by the Coalition, a
bystander
would rush over to check his condition, and in the melee secret away the
firearm. Al Jazeera then would swoop in for the story: Coalition guns down
unarmed man in front of mosque! And as in Falluja, they would have the
pictures to prove it.
The Western press, while not acting in concert with the terrorists, has
performed little better. Too often, Western media outlets ran the
unconfirmed casualty statistics from Falluja, without providing caveats
about the accuracy of the re****ts and without providing a Coalition
response. And too often, Western media outlets ran "eyewitness" accounts
of
Coalition forces killing civilians without confirming the accuracy of the
statements, and without even suggesting that they sought Coalition comment
on the serious allegations.
While some of this re****ting is undoubtedly a function of haste, some
inevitably is a function of bias. By way of example, long before the
events
in Falluja, an Iraqi re****ter at a press briefing asked whether it was
Coalition policy to target women and children. After the briefing, a
re****ter for a major U.S. network congratulated the journalist for asking
such a fine question. It takes a uniquely skewed perspective to believe
not
only that soldiers are targeting innocents, but that a "good question" is
whether this is official policy. Given this jaundiced view, it is little
wonder that the news out of Iraq is perpetually bleak.
In the last two weeks, the Coalition has suffered stinging losses, not in
military battles, but in the battle for public opinion. Most notably,
those
who have demonstrated a willingness to kill women and children have
successfully blamed the Coalition for inhumane acts, while the Coalition
has
suffered increased casualties in its attempt to be more humane. The lesson
is clear: the most powerful weapon the insurgents possess is the aid of
sympathetic channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabia, which they have used
to
great effect in shaping opinion in Iraq and abroad. To secure long-term
popular sup****t and regional stability, the Coalition must do more than
win
militarily. Rather, they must find a way to overcome the Al Jazeera
effect.
Robert D. Alt is a Fellow in Legal and International Affairs at The John
M.
Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University. You can follow
his
daily progress in Iraq on the web at noleftturns.ashbrook.org.
(Weekly Standard) This column from the Weekly Standard was written by
Robert
D. Alt.
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