-- The primary source of information for the average Afghan
is
the radio, often a transistor made 30 years ago. The 20 transmitting
towers
of the Taliban's Radio Shariat (meaning "Islamic law") are spewing out
hatred of America all the time.
Why is there no Radio Free Afghanistan broadcasting the truth about the
consequences of harboring the headquarters of terrorism?
Why are Afghans not told that their rulers' decision to hide Osama bin
Laden
is the direct cause of the withdrawal of U.N. relief and the starvation
that
they now face?
Why are the voices of revered, mainstream Muslim clerics not broadcast
denouncing the perversion of Islam by the terrorists, and reminding the
faithful that murder by suicide will lead not to heaven but to eternal
damnation?
Before a single bomb is dropped on a suspected training camp, the U.S.
should be doing what it knows best how to do: using psychological warfare
to
weaken the grip of the terrorists on the local population.
We are failing to make life more difficult for the terrorists in their
caves
because the Bush war planners have not thought of it yet. The chairman
of
the Broadcasting Board of Governors, overseer of our several official
overseas broadcasters, is an amiable Gore fund-raiser long awaiting
replacement. The Voice of America leadership is even more vacant.
Which U.S. government broadcaster should be charged with stirring anger
among Afghans at rulers eager to bring further devastation to their
country?
That mission of countering Radio Shariat's propaganda should go to
RFE/RL,
the "radio free" outfit experienced in acting as a surrogate free press
in
repressive nations like Iran, Iraq and China.
But evenhanded journalists at the V.O.A., backed by political holdovers
on
the Broadcasting Board, don't want those hard-sell types invading their
turf. The V.O.A. broadcasts to Afghanistan with fine impartiality in the
Dari, Pashto, Urdu and Arabic languages, and yesterday stepped up its
time
on the air; RFE/RL broadcasts only in Turkmen and Uzbek, understood in
Afghanistan's north, where our problem is not.
In the squabble over a measly $15 million in expansion money, here is
why
the V.O.A. is the wrong voice in this area in wartime:
On the day after the twin towers catastrophe, a V.O.A. reporter in
London
broadcast an account of two interviews. One was with a cleric who "warns
that no accusations against Islamists or Arab groups should be made
before
knowing the full truth." This was "balanced" by an interview with Yasir
al
Serri, identified only as "a leader of Egypt's largest Islamist group,
the
Gama'a Islamiyya, which has worked to overthrow the Egyptian
government."
Listeners were not informed that this terrorist group killed 58 foreign
tourists and 4 Egyptians four years ago. The reporter said that al Serri
"warns that retaliation by Washington will only lead to more violence.
He
lays the blame for the unprecedented assault on the U.S. financial and
military policy in the Middle East."
Stung by criticism of this broadcast, Andre de Nesnera, the V.O.A.'s
news
director, admitted that the extremist was improperly identified, but
argued
that for the agency to remain "a credible news organization," such
interviews with terrorists "will be part of our balanced, accurate,
objective and comprehensive reporting, providing our listeners with both
sides of the story."
After a call from Jesse Helms's office protesting "equal time for
Hitler,"
the bureaucrat warming the vacant V.O.A. director's seat issued a
belated
guideline that "we will not give a platform to terrorists or extremist
groups."
The nation is on a kind of war footing. Even in peacetime, news
credibility
does not flow from splitting the moral difference between good and evil.
In
the climate of today's undeclared war, private media in democracies are
free
to take either or neither side, but U.S. taxpayer-supported broadcasting
is
supposed to be on our side.
That's why we need an American signal in Afghanistan's five languages with
a
clear, truthful message: Bin Laden and his gang are the cause of present
and
future misery, and the suicides who murder innocents are eternally
punished
by Allah.
And for the Pentagon's choosers of "targets of value": consider, in the
first strike, the score of towers and mobile transmitters of Radio
Shariat.
