The Guardian (London) October 23, 2001
Taliban parade helicopter trophy
Propaganda Afghans display wheels as proof but Pentagon denies claims
By Julian Borger in Washington, Rory McCarthy in Islamabad, and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Taliban displayed two sets of landing gear, which they claimed are from a downed US helicopter, on the Qatar-based television station al-Jazeera Photograph: al-Jazeera/AP The propaganda struggle between the US and its enemies in Afghanistan escalated yesterday as both sides vied to turn the "fog of war" to their advantage. At stake are the world's perceptions of who is winning and at what cost.
Yesterday's battle focused on two sets of rubber-tyred wheels, a war trophy shown off to the television cameras by Taliban commanders, who claimed they were the landing gear of a US helicopter they had shot down.
The footage of the dirty, dented wheels was a riposte to videos released by the Pentagon on Saturday, portraying what defence officials claimed had been two smooth ground raids by US special forces. At the same time yesterday, the Taliban told journalists that US bombers had hit a hospital in Herat, killing 100 civilians. The Pentagon said it was looking into the claim.
Past Taliban claims of civilian casualties have consisted of a bewildering mix of truth and exaggeration. Yesterday, the Afghan militia accused the US of using chemical and biological weapons against civilians, but the accusations were rejected by the Pentagon and ridiculed by most observers of the 15-day-old conflict.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday described the Taliban claim of a downed helicopter as "false", and the real circumstances behind the video of wreckage remained a mystery.
The landing gear appeared to come from a Chinook transport helicopter. It was stencilled with the model number, CH-47 and the manufacturer's name, Boeing. The video of the wreckage was broadcast on the Qatar-based Arabic satellite channel, al-Jazeera, which once more found itself at the centre of the propaganda battle.
Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad, said the helicopter had been shot down in Helmand province, close to Kandahar, home to the Taliban's headquarters in southern Afghanistan. The province is close to an air base in Pakistan now being used by US forces.
Mr Zaeef said all the crew on board died, but offered no evidence: "All the people on the helicopter were killed. Two more helicopters tried to come back and find this helicopter but they were not able to."
Other Taliban officials have said up to 25 people died in the incident.
No footage was shown of the fuselage, or of any bodies. The Taliban said that most of the helicopter had come down in a minefield and could not be reached, but it was not clear why the landing gear should have been found at a distance from the rest of the aircraft.
John Pike, a military analyst at the private intelligence company, GlobalSecurity.org, said no other forces in the region are known to use Chinooks. He said it was possible that the wreckage had been left over from a CIA mission in the 1980s when the US supported mojahedin fighters against the Soviet Union, but no such loss had ever been documented.
Mr Pike pointed out that in its media "ground rules" formulated at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Pentagon had said it would tell the press whenever US soldiers were killed in action.
"It is possible that this helicopter crashed on some mission they're not telling us about, and everyone was rescued," he said. "The Pentagon's denials, in the absence of casualties, can't necessarily be taken at face value."
The Pentagon did reveal that two US special forces soldiers died when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Pakistan early on Saturday. Defence officials said that the helicopter had been on standby for rescue missions on the Afghan border and had crashed while returning to base. The Pentagon denied that the helicopter had been sent into Afghanistan on a rescue mission.
The Pentagon's handling of the press has created friction between Mr Rumsfeld and the US media. The defence secretary is furious about leaks on Friday night about the special forces raid and said yesterday that whoever was responsible had committed a federal offence. "Maybe they want to seem important, maybe they want to seem knowledgeable, but they showed total disregard for the lives of US servicemen," he added.
He said that due to the nature of the war, he would on occasion remain deliberately vague about military operations. "Our goal is not to demystify things for the other side," Mr Rumsfeld said. A close-up of debris shows the stamp of the manufacturer Boeing and a model number
Copyright 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited
