Those following the Iraq war in Pakistan, unfortunately, have no choice but to follow the war in Iraq through reports emanating from western sources. Most of the newspapers and media sources here are covering the conflict not by sending their own correspondents — Geo has sent one person to the region but to Amman, quite far from the fighting.
Hence, the reports that they carry come from London-based Reuters or Agence France Presse (AFP). On occasion, these wire services carry reports from British and American papers, but these two might have an inherent bias. The other thing that probably needs to be remembered is that correspondents of most of these media sources are travelling within the attacking British/ American forces (hence the reference to them of being “embedded” reporters) and their reporting is subject to strict supervision by the coalition commanders.
A good example of this is the following: a CNN reporter “embedded” with an American convoy had an off-the-record conversation with a senior American commander in which the latter basically ‘thanked god’ for having air superiority over the Iraqis. The reporter mentioned this in his conversation when he spoke to the people back in his head office but his communication was intercepted and he was warned not to make such remarks in the future.
However, readers do have an alternative and that is to try to access alternative sources of information on the Internet. One such web site that gives you an eclectic offering of commentary on the war against Iraq can be found at www.commondreams.org. It is a particularly useful web site because of its extensive cross-links and the variety and strength of its articles. For example, this past week it carried an article by the Sunday Herald which reported that the British and American armies were using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq. It also pointed out that such weapons, according to a UN resolution, were classified as weapons of mass destruction. It said that DU contaminates land, and is known to cause cancer and other diseases. In fact, London and Washington were putting at risk even the lives of their own soldiers who handle such munitions, it said.
A former head of the Pentagon’s DU project, a former army colonel, was quoted as saying that the use of such shells was a “war crime”. The article even quoted a particular incident in which they had been used saying that this had happened on March 28, when an American A10 plane (referred normally to as a ‘tankbuster’) fired a DU shell, killing one British soldier and injuring three others.
Depressed uranium can cause genetic disorders and this happened after the last Gulf war when seven Iraqi men exposed to such shells gave birth to children who were anophthalmic (without eyes). Though the normal likelihood of this occurring is more like one case in 50 million births, one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years. There have also been cases of Iraqi babies born without the crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked to DU shelling, the article said.
Coverage of any war will be incomplete without casualty figures, but this is being kept a closely guarded secret by both sides in the current conflict. Clearly, the Americans and the British don’t want to give too much away in terms of their own casualties, and probably might be over-exaggerating the Iraqi figures. This has to do with the politics of running a war where maintaining morale of your own soldiers, and doing anything to lower that of the enemy, is a key prerequisite of any eventual success.
Then take the case of the now-forgotten “uprising” in Basra among the civilian population. It later transpired — and from sources other than AFP or Reuters — that the number of people who had “revolted” was 3,000 (in a city of 1.5 million) and that they were being led by the son of a Shia leader, allegedly at the instigation of British intelligence agents.
Web sites like www.aeronautics.ru, maintained by Russian journalists with assistance from Russian military intelligence (claimed as such on the site) said that these elements were financed by the Americans who were counting on a Shia uprising in Basra to lead to unrest in the mainly Shia cities of Najaf and Karbala. That did not happen because a general close to Saddam came down to Basra and quelled the “revolt”.
The fact that this site gets information from Russian MI is only to be expected, and is probably welcome, since the flow of hard information in the mainstream media is controlled by US Central Command or the Pentagon.
It gives a daily update on the war. For March 29 (posted a day later on the site), it had this about alleged Israeli help to the coalition forces: “Radio communications intercepted during the last five days suggest that the coalition is using Israeli airfield for conducting night air strikes against Iraq. Combat aircraft are taking off regularly from the (Israeli) Hatzerim and the Navatim air bases, but do not return to the same bases and fly toward the border with Jordan while maintaining complete radio silence.
“Possibly, these are just Israeli Air Force exercises, However, (Russian) radio intercept and radar units observe increased intensity of radio communications coming from the Jordanian air force and air defence communication centres during such overflights, as well as changes in the operating modes of the US Army Patriot tracking radars deployed in Jordan. This indicates that the Israeli air bases are being used as forward airfield or that some of the coalition air force units are based there. Normally, the IAF F-15I fighter-bombers and A-4N strike aircraft operate from the Hatzerim air base and the F-16 fighter-bombers operate from the Nevatim base.
“Experts believe that these air bases may be used by the F-117 stealth bombers ‘officially’ based at the Al Udaid air base in Qatar. Using these two locations minimizes the risk to the F-117s by allowing them to fly along the left bank of the Euphrates (in the direction of Turkey) and to avoid the dangerous manoeuvring over Iraq.”
Another web site that one could look into, and this must be fed by Israeli intelligence sources because of the nature of its information, is www.debka.com. Surprisingly, this too has said that the American and British forces have suffered many more casualties than they are telling the press.
Those following the Iraq war in Pakistan, unfortunately, have no choice but to follow the war in Iraq through reports emanating from western sources. Most of the newspapers and media sources here are covering the conflict not by sending their own correspondents — Geo has sent one person to the region but to Amman, quite far from the fighting.
