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Analysis
: Was Al Jazeera Deliberately Targeted?
By
IOL correspondent in Afghanistan Aamir Latif
ISLAMABAD,
Nov 21 (Islam Online) - Journalists worldwide have expressed their concern at
the bombardment of Kabul offices of the Qatari based Al-Jazeera satellite T.V.
and are convinced that it was targeted for being on the 'wrong side'.
The
U.S. had scored a direct hit on the offices of Al-Jazeera, leading to
speculation that the channel had been targeted deliberately because of its
contacts with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the
Sept. 11 deadly attacks in the U.S..
If
true, it opens up a worrying development for news organizations covering wars
and conflicts: now they could be targeted simply for reporting a side of the
story that one party wants suppressed, The Guardian reported in its last Monday
editions.
Nik
Gowing, a presenter on BBC World, was determined to get the issue raised at last
week's News World conference in Barcelona.
While
news executives spent most of the four-day event discussing how they had covered
the September 11 disaster and its aftermath, Gowing and a number of fellow
journalists wanted to alert their bosses to what they felt was a disturbing
shift in U.S. policy.
Gowing's
argument was that Al-Jazeera's only crime was that it was "bearing
witness" to events that the U.S. would rather it did not see. Indeed there
is no clear evidence that Al-Jazeera directly supported the Taliban - simply
that it enjoyed greater access than other stations.
Certainly,
Al-Jazeera reflects a certain cultural tradition: but only in the same way that
CNN approaches stories from a western perspective.
Growing
demanded that the Pentagon be called to account for the destruction of
Al-Jazeera's Kabul office. Journalists now appeared to be "legitimate
targets", he said.
"It
seems to me that a very clear message needs to go out that this must not be
allowed
to continue." It has to be stressed that the Pentagon denies the charge.
Indeed,
few senior news executives were prepared to go on the record and give credence
to the theory. But it is not the first time journalists have been deliberately
targeted: Serb television was bombed during the Kosovo conflict because it was
seen as an agent and advocate of state terrorism.
Al-Jazeera
is not an agent of a state, and few (except perhaps the U.S. military) would
claim that it is an agent of Bin Laden. But the fact that Al-Jazeera has
reported in such depth the other side of this conflict is troubling to the
authorities.
"Al-Jazeera
has been providing some material that has been very uncomfortable," Gowing
said at News World.
He
believes that the western military forces are prepared to target journalists if
they get in the way. He said that representatives of the British special
forces
had told him: "When a war is not declared, journalists are legitimate
targets where they are inconvenient."
Al-Jazeera
certainly believes it was a target. Speaking on the telephone to News World from
Qatar, its chief editor, Ibrahim Hilal, said he believed that its Kabul office
had been on the Pentagon's list of targets since the beginning of the conflict,
but that the U.S. did not want to bomb it while the broadcaster was the only one
based in the city.
By
last week, however, the BBC had reopened its Kabul office under Taliban
supervision, with the correspondents William Reeve and Rageh Omar, says the
newspaper.
The
situation is still confused. Al-Jazeera has a conspiracy theory that it cannot
prove, but of which it is genuinely convinced. Wars are organized chaos and,
however much it likes to suggest that it is capable of precision bombing, it is
clear that the U.S. has got little idea of what has and has not been hit in this
instance.
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