Reporting the Pakistani Taliban 'confession'
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Sunday, October 28, 2007 | 11:35 AM ET
By Carolyn Dunn
Reporting the Pakistani Taliban 'confession'
For the media at Kandahar Airfield, it was a bizarre weekend to say the least.
One event in particular reminded us that we are definitely not in Canada. Our phones started buzzing, practically simultaneously, early Saturday afternoon. Text messages, phone calls, e-mails were coming in from our "fixers."
They are the local journalists we hire to keep an eye on things outside the wire, videotape "breaking news" we can't get to quickly and help us conduct and translate interviews in Pashto and Dari.
They had important news, they told us.
Afghan Security Intelligence Officials were having a news conference in the late afternoon.
Brief mentions of the arrests of several "Pakistani Taliban" were followed by promises of updates when possible.
Purported jihadists ask Afghan government for forgiveness
October 27, 2007 | CBC News
The local media gathered to find they were being offered an opportunity to interview three Pakistani men, who had an amazing tale to tell.
In leg shackles, they were paraded into a room by security agents, later telling a tale of being recruited to "do jihad" in Afghanistan, because foreigners were oppressing Muslims.
After training for three days to fire Russian guns and set explosives, they were on their way to Uruzgan Province to do their Muslim duty, but along the way they had doubts about their mission, they claimed.
They could see only Muslims and no foreigners or infidels (words that are often interchangeable in these parts). They were, according to Afghan authorities, arrested before they reached their destination to carry out jihad on the foreigners.
The three had now seen the error of their ways and said they'd been duped by their recruiter in Pakistan. They asked forgiveness of the Afghan government and promised, if released, to tell others not to believe the lies they'd believed.
The men were calm and seemed in good health and had no cuts or bruises, with one even smiling frequently during his interview.
They insisted they had not been coerced to say anything. I asked my fixer how this story would play out in the local Afghan media. He told me virtually all the media are pro-government in Kandahar, so the story would very likely be told as an heroic tale of capture and conversion, and would be unquestioned.
A media dilemma
This is where the dilemma begins for the Canadian media.
I thought it might be interesting for the news junkies out there to peer into our processes a bit and see how we decide to treat such stories. There was a flurry of calls to the assignment desk, to editors, to show producers, as everyone weighed in on the legitimacy of the story.
There was never any consideration to put the story out there "unquestioned." Obviously, there was no way of our checking the veracity of their claims.
However, there was also no dismissing this story as unimportant. It's well known that fresh supplies of insurgent fighters (and such things as cash and weapons) are brought in through Pakistan. Trying to keep relations neighbourly with Pakistan, it's not something Afghan officials like to talk about, but NATO commanders will tell you it's one of the biggest challenges they face.
This weekend, it seemed, we may have had some living, breathing examples of such recruits telling their story.
Some things needed to be carefully considered before we aired their account, and we had a list of questions, most of which remain unanswered today.
Were these really insurgents who had been arrested? Could they have been props used to tell a convenient story?
If they are insurgents, were they speaking their own words or were they coerced into giving their story and then do a mea culpa on air about how mistaken they were?
Was this merely propaganda by Afghan Security Intelligence agents?
Why were Afghan authorities parading prisoners for interviews but refusing to do any of their own?
What will happen to these three young men?
Will we ever know?
Regretfully, we will probably never know the answers to most of these questions.
As a journalist, I will ask the questions of Afghan authorities when I can, but we are not in Canada and I have no right or expectation of an answer. There is no access, for example, to information law in Afghanistan that we can use to track their case.
If the men are tried, we may find out about it. If the men are released, we may be given that information too. But the truth is that we will probably never know how it came to be that three young men were paraded before TV cameras in Kandahar to make such a startling confession.
Whose purpose did it serve for them to confess to all of Afghanistan and to the world? If they really are would-be jihadists, I'm not sure it was in their interest to confess to the world, even if they did have a change of conscience about the whole business.
Journalists like their stories to be neatly wrapped up with a bow: a beginning, middle and an ending nicely woven together in a package of words.
There are too many loose ends in this story for my liking. But, we tell you the story the best we can. We tell you what we know for sure and we raise questions even if we don't have all the answers.
We add a healthy dose of skepticism to the parts that seem a little too convenient. But, most of all, we have faith in you, our readers, viewers and listeners, to bring your own critical thinking to the table.
