There has been nothing but disinformation, contradictory information and
rumour surrounding this current war in Afghanistan. There has also been
crass prejudice on the part of many, perhaps even most, journalists
working on the story for the bourgeois media.  or as Mr Chomsky
euphemistically calls it, the mainstream media.

For instance CNN, BBC, Guardian and London Independent journalists now
describe the non-Afghan Taliban in the Kunduz  as die hards fanatics
because they, it is claimed, refuse to surrender. What they fail to
point out is that, according to their very own reports, the non-Afgahn
contingent are left with little choice since, it is being said, that
they will not be allowed to surrender. Rumsfeld is reported as saying
that he wants these defenders dead rather than alive. Yet they are now
labelled die hard fanatics by bourgeois journalism.

At this stage most of the bourgeois journalists concerned have lost
credibility. Journalists have been providing false information whether
purposely, due to ignorance or disinformation. These guttter press hacks
have persistently refused a healthy journalistic scepticism. They have
been contradicting each other and individual journalists have been
contradicting themselves. The journalists on the front line, invariably
they are on the Northern Alliance side, they  have been largely
providing the most appalling propaganda as a substitute for serious
reporting. Their reporting contains the most appalling assumptions. They
paint the Taliban as demons while presenting the US and its ally the
Northern Alliance, as protectors.  Different journalists, from even
different broadcasting companies, use the same tv pictures even though
each indivuallyt claims to be on the front line. One Irish journalist
who paid a visit to Afghanistan said that  many Western journalists
based in Afghanistan were pretending they were on the front line and in
danger when they were neither on the front line nor in any real danger.

We are presented with these pictures of what appear to be Northern
Alliance soldiers. Most of the time they are just sitting around on
tanks or whatever apparently doing nothing --like unemployed guys in a
ghettoe. The odd time we see an apparent Northern Alliance soldier let a
round of artillery fire off wwith a grin on his face and a cigarette
hanging from his lips. One might be forgiven for thinking that this
exercise was phoney and merely executed for the TV team --probably for a
few dollars.

Indeed it is questionable as to how much fighting has taken place at
all. It would seem that the Northern Alliance just strolled into Kabul
and elsewhere. Defections and retreat by the Taliban forces (and of
course the massive bombing by Yankee imperialism) seems to have been the
victor rather than the Northern Alliance. Again the media have been
rather useless in investigating this matter. How these defections took
place and how they led to the Northern Alliance being able to saunter
into Kabul and elsewhere is something that bourgeois journalism does not
even raise as an issue. Indeed the absence of investigative journalism
has been conspicuous by its absence. What these journalists are doing
all day in and around Afghanistan is  questionable. Do they just sit
around, all snowed up, taking stories from the Northern Alliance --lazy
journalism. Concerning the north of Ireland during the height of the
troubles there, I was informed that most of the journalists with some
exceptions, such as Robert Fisk, lounged about that big hotel in
Belfast, The Europa, and took stories from BA officers who drank there
and from the few journalists that bothered to venture out onto the
streets.

The Northern Alliance people are sheer liars. From my observations they
tell different stories to different journalists. I bet too the
journalist have to pay them dollars for these stories. Then again you
don't always know how reliable some of these interpreters are too. They
may be misrepresenting what these guys are saying.

Then there is the extraordinary situation surrounding the Taliban. They
are always going on about dying and fighting to the death. After a while
you get sick hearing this. Especially when so many of the seem to engage
in musical armies concerning what side they are on next. Mullah Omar
says they will fight to the death while many of his soldiers have
defected and are surrendering up north. You just would not know what to
believe.

Only to some degree is it not the journalists fault. It is a secret war.
Information is so tightly controlled by all sides that it is rendered
more difficult to understand what is going on. In many ways this war is
an invisible war.

Assuming that there have been mass defections and that many of these
defectors are now fighting the Taliban  it would seem that the Northern
Alliance now contains within itself the Taliban.  Essentially there is
no essential difference between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
Rabbini, he invited OBL to Afghanistan, is largely as Islamic as
Taliban. For all the talk about the emancipation of women with Taliban
out of the way only men were able to attend the cinema in Kabul the
other day. Bourgeois journalism has been so impoverished as to have
failed to find out what, if any, policy differences exist between the
different indigenous forces. Certainly they all share the common feature
of being the foot soldiers of imperialist states.

It seems that rather than a war there has been a well organised coup
engineered by the CIA against the Taliban regime. It would seem that the
defections and surrenders, in many cases, were planned in advance. In
this way, as with Milosevic, power was transferred by a virtual palace
coup from within its own ranks to the Northern Alliance. The fact that
the Taliban leadership did not see this coming is a measure, it would
seem, of their cretinism. They just dont seem to have a clue as to what
is going on.

But as I have said there is no essential difference between the Northern
Alliance and the Taliban. Consequently politically, in a sense, there
has been no winner nor looser. Much of the anti-war left go on about the
fact that bombing does not achieve anything except misery. It is not the
job of communists to advise  capitalists as to how best to wage a war or
defeat an enemy. The point is bombs do make a difference. The
devastation caused to Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the WW2 accelerated
Japans surrender.

Please forgive this rough draft form.

Karl Carlile
Be free to visit the web site of the Communist Global Group at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/



Karl Carlile
Be free to visit the web site of the Communist Global Group at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/