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AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL
Iraq and the war
of words
By K Gajendra
Singh
The US administration led by President
George W Bush, with loyal support from British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, has waged a personalized war on
Saddam Hussein for months. Armadas of battleships and
massive war-making machines are now moving towards Iraq,
and military exercises are covered daily in the
international press.
As many people agree,
though, the war does have a lot to do with oil. As an
oil expert recently observed, "The Americans have
nothing against the people of Iraq, but our way of life
is dependent on 20 million barrels a day, and half of it
has to be imported. We are like a patient on oil
dialysis. It's a matter of life and death. The smart
people [in Washington] all know this, but it is not
generally advertised on the kind of shows that most
people watch: MTV and soap operas."
So what is
advertised and highlighted is another kind of war - a
propaganda war that is now becoming red hot. Of course,
such propaganda wars have gone on in the past. Take for
example John Mackenzie's Propaganda and Empire - The
Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960.
He points out that propaganda can be veiled or conscious
and deliberate "transmission of ideas and values from
one person, or groups of persons, to another, with the
specific intention of influencing the recipients'
attitudes in such a way that the interests of its
authors will be enhanced".
The communication
techniques used in former days in Britain were developed
in music halls, clubs, meetings and lectures, and
developed later by cinema, radio, films and the print
media, such as pamphlets, newspapers, magazines and
books. Nowadays, of course, there is the Internet too.
British imperialism at the time had various
manifestations - patriotic imperialism, popular
imperialism, moral imperialism and liberal imperialism,
against the projectionist and autocratic imperialism of
its European rivals. Liberal imperialism was epitomized
as "free trade and benevolence". Today, it is packaged
as free trade and globalization.
During the Cold
War era, James Bond films conveyed a democratic and
virtuous virility (bedding curvaceous enemy females -
not Russian battleships) and portrayed the smart British
spy against dumb Soviet agents. And from the Hollywood
stable came Rambo films.
This writer started his
diplomatic career as an assistant press attache in the
early 1960s in Cairo, and has seen the transformation of
print media offices from cozy, lived-in pigsties with
coffee cups, overflowing ashtrays and scissors and glue
strewn around to the present-day operation-theater
cleanliness.
During his 35-year diplomatic
career, the writer maintained fruitful relationships
with many excellent Western media personalities, such as
Flora Lewis (who passed away recently), Jonathan
Randall, Charles Hargrave (The Times), Nick Ludington
(AP) and many others. But he also saw how the media was
manipulated and used for propaganda purposes against
non-aligned India. He encountered daily half-truths and
lies disseminated, specially by the Western media. US
policy remains the same, "If you are not with us, you
are against us."
The media go to
war
This writer had a ringside view in Amman, the
capital of Jordan during the 1990-91Gulf crisis. Jordan
was the only point of access to Baghdad by air, road or
telephone as Iraq and Kuwait were effectively cut off
from the world. Other countries had closed their
borders, so apart from the refugee flood, Amman had also
become the staging point for international politicians
and others visiting Iraq. It was necessary to keep a
watch on political developments to help assess their
impact on the influx of Indian refugees.
The
Iraqi viewpoint was drowned by the anti-Saddam Hussein
rhetoric disseminated by the media. For this writer, the
Western viewpoint was available from Western radio and
media and Israeli TV, across the Jordan Valley 40
kilometers away. CNN had limited availability in Amman.
The Iraqi version was available from Jordan TV and
radio. But most television radio broadcasts in the
region, except Iran sometimes, were against Iraq because
of its clear-cut aggression on Kuwait. Some had sold out
for US aid or money from the Saudis and Kuwaitis. Jordan
TV was popular in Syria, but it was sometimes jammed by
the Syrian government.
Soon, Amman was crawling
with international media. This writer and his staff were
frequently interviewed by BBC and others on the
evacuation by air of thousands of Indian refugees who
had come all the way from Kuwait. Many in India relied
on these broadcasts for some news of their relatives and
friends lost in Kuwait and transit. This writer was
allowed limited access by Iraqis to his counterpart in
Baghdad to exchange news about the movement of refugees.
With little to do, the BBC crew even came to film a
small function on August 15, India's independence day.
But in spite of decades of dealing with the
media and its divas, this writer was in for some shocks.
US media persons were spreading stories, such as
they had been asked to be on standby. "We could be asked
to accompany the coalition forces any time. Everything
is ready for an attack." This was repeated by many media
teams. This was a surprise as it was clear that until
the end of November, 1990, the US-led allied forces were
not yet in a position to attack Iraq.
The BBC
was making uncharitable snide remarks about the height
of King Hussein, because to protect his country from a
possible civil war and as he was genuinely interested in
a peaceful solution, he had not joined the coalition
against Iraq. Again, the "if you are not with us, you
are against us" syndrome. When Iraq closed the foreign
embassies in the city of Kuwait and cut their electric
power, the BBC broadcast how the British diplomats had
opened champagne bottles for a candlelit dinner, living
in the past glories of Khartoum, Calcutta and Shanghai.
A reliable journalist told this writer that at
times journalists would toss food or water bottles to
thirsty and hungry refugees who had trudged all the way
from Kuwait, 1,500 kilometers away and who were camped
in no man's land between Iraq and Jordan. Naturally, the
refugees scrambled for the food, which the media
gentlemen then filmed and photographed for their readers
back home. This exploitation of misery was disgusting.
And this when rich Western powers, after initial
commitment of funds to Jordan for refugee care, as
usual, forgot about their promises. Amman subsequently
allowed in as many refugees as were being taken out of
Jordan. Nearly a million refugees passed through Jordan,
which had a population of three-and-a-half million.
One of the most blatant manipulations of the
press during the Gulf War involved the story of a
15-year-Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah (her last name was
kept confidential). In testimony before the US Congress
on October 10, 1990, she said, "I volunteered at the
al-Addan hospital. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi
soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into
the room where ... babies were in incubators. They took
the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators,
and left the babies on the cold floor to die." This
terrible news about 312 babies made headlines worldwide
and helped turn public opinion and Congress against
Iraq. This writer, too, was very shocked.
Later
it was learnt that Nayirah was the daughter of Saud
Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's ambassador to the US. She had
reportedly left Kuwait before the Iraqi invasion.
This writer helped organize the evacuation of
nearly 150,000 Indian refugees, and came across few
complaints from them against Iraqi officials en route.
It is estimated that between 100,000 to 150,000
Iraqi soldiers died in the war, many of whom were killed
when retreating or wanting to surrender. Reports
circulated of taped conversations of US pilots shooting
at retreating soldiers, exalting at "target full areas"
as if doing target practice.
And of course there
remains the mystery of the full details of the last
meeting between the then US ambassador to Iraq, April
Glaspie, and Saddam in Baghdad on July 25, 1990, when
she purportedly told Saddam that his dispute with Kuwait
was a bilateral Arab matter and that that the Kuwait
issue was not associated with the US. Glaspie then
disappeared from public view, and was barred from giving
interviews or writing a book. (She was last heard of as
consul general to South Africa - a certain demotion).
Journalists allowed themselves to be shepherded
like cattle for briefings by military spokesmen who
showed them battles like some weird computer games, and
the official line was carefully reproduced. A study
published in the New York Times of May 4-5, 1991,
concluded that the US military had successfully used the
media to "manage the information flow in a way that
supported their political goals", to set a precedent for
media control in peace and wars in the future.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador
(retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August
1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as
ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is
currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies.
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