04 December 2001
Text: Keith on the Mazar-I-Sharif Prison Uprising
(Says captured Taliban soldiers were armed combatants) (940)
Ambassador Kenton Keith, spokesman for the Coalition Information
Service in Islamabad, released an article December 3 refuting
allegations by Pakistan's newspaper, Dawn, that Coalition forces
massacred Taliban prisoners in the Afghan city of Mazar-I-Sharif.
"The uprising itself was triggered by Taliban 'prisoners' taking up
arms and turning them on their captors. This changed their status from
prisoners to armed combatants," Keith wrote in the article published
by Coalition Information Service.
The incident occurred in the Northern Afghan city of Mazar-I-Sharif on
November 25.
Following is the text of the Keith article:
(begin text)
Article by Ambassador Kenton Keith, Official Spokesman for the
Coalition Information Service, Islamabad
The Coalition which was established following the atrocities of
September 11th has as its core aim the fight against terrorism - a
modern scourge that is a threat to every country in the world. It is
in the interests of the whole world that terrorism be comprehensively
defeated.
In a recent editorial entitled My Lai in Afghanistan, Dawn said that
in pursuit of this goal Coalition forces were guilty of war crimes and
compared the United States and the United Kingdom to the Nazis.
These accusations are as grave as they are false. They insult millions
of people, including those from what later became Pakistan who lost
their lives in the fight to rid the world of Nazism, ensuring liberty
and freedom for future generations. During the Second World War the
Nazis were responsible for the systematic extermination of 6 million
Jews, as well as gypsies, ethnic minorities and political opponents,
in death camps. To compare these crimes, unparalleled in human
history, with any act of Coalition forces is a distortion beyond
belief and beyond the meaning of words.
That is one issue. Let us now turn to what happened at Qala-i-Jangi in
Mazar-i-Sharif.
Two days before the uprising one captured Taliban fighter in
Mazar-i-Sharif blew himself up with his own grenade, killing some of
his captors and injuring bystanders including one British journalist
in the process - proof at least that these were not a group of unarmed
prisoners.
The uprising itself was triggered by Taliban "prisoners" taking up
arms and turning them on their captors. This changed their status from
prisoners to armed combatants. What then ensued was a pitched battle
between two heavily armed groups of men. One group of armed fighters -
the Taliban and Al Qaida - opened fire on another - the Northern
Alliance and a small contingent of Coalition forces. Both sides
incurred casualties in the fighting that followed. Many Northern
Alliance soldiers as well as many Taliban soldiers lost their lives.
Red Cross personnel on the scene were lucky to escape with their
lives.
This is not a massacre of unarmed prisoners by their captors.
The captured Taliban soldiers who began this battle were under no
obligation to take up arms in this way. They made a choice to do so.
Dawn quoted the journalist Robert Fisk to support the accusation of
war crimes against British troops. Mr. Fisk is a respected journalist
and in a free press he is entitled to his opinions. But his view of
what happened at Mazar-i-Sharif is very different from that of many
other equally respected journalists, some of whom, unlike Mr. Fisk,
were close to the scene. They reported that what happened was indeed a
battle. Mr. Fisk's opinion is just that - an opinion. It is not fact.
To turn to another incident on which you based your accusation of
Coalition war crimes, what happened at Takhta-Pul was very different
from initial reports.
The report that 160 Taliban prisoners had been lined up and shot was
written by a journalist who was not on the scene. There was no
independent corroboration of this story.
When asked about it, I said that the facts had to be established, but
that if they were true, we would condemn summary executions without
reservation. I stand by every word of that statement. We did look into
it and established that the accusation that 160 Taliban fighters were
lined up and shot is untrue. There were not 160 prisoners. The number
was far smaller. And they were not shot. They were properly treated.
In this war we are in a fluid military situation. The Taliban's
central control may have crumbled, but fierce fighting is continuing
in many areas. Isolated groups of armed Taliban fighters are engaged
in armed combat with either Northern Alliance or southern forces. Some
who are described as "prisoners" are armed and making their own way
across the country, sometimes engaging in further combat as they go.
In this atmosphere, rumors and accusations are bound to proliferate.
But there is a real responsibility on all of us - both the press and
the Coalition - to establish the facts before assuming every rumour
and every accusation is true. In a military situation where armed
combat is taking place it can take time to establish the facts. Let us
do that before indulging in any more accusations of war crimes or
ludicrous comparisons with the horrific genocide carried out by the
Nazis in World War II.
In the meantime the Coalition will continue with our objectives - to
destroy the Al Qaida network and the Taliban regime that gave it
support and shelter, to support the Afghan people in their efforts to
create a stable broad-based multi-ethnic government for Afghanistan
and to ensure both short term aid and long term reconstruction for a
country that has been ravaged by over two decades of war.
(end text)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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