by Jim Lobe
In critiquing Sebastian Rotella’s recent ProPublica report about alleged Iranian/Hezbollah activities in Latin America, I came across a surprising discovery. As readers of this blog know, Rotella had misattributed a quotation uttered by far-right Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in February last year to Director of National Intelligence [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
In critiquing Sebastian Rotella’s recent ProPublica report about alleged Iranian/Hezbollah activities in Latin America, I came across a surprising discovery. As readers of this blog know, Rotella had misattributed a quotation uttered by far-right Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in February last year to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. According to Rotella’s original story, Clapper had told a Senate hearing that Iran’s alliances with Venezuela and other “leftist, populist, anti-U.S. governments” in Latin America could pose
…an immediate threat by giving Iran — directly through the IRGC, the Quds Force [an external unit of the IRGC] or its proxies like Hezbollah — a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United States, our interests and allies.
After I tried to verify the quote with a press officer at the DNI’s office, he or a colleague apparently notified ProPublica about the misattribution, whereupon ProPublica promptly issued a correction, blaming the error on a July 9 testimony by Ilan Berman (the vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) who has seemingly made most of his career out of hyping the alleged threats posed by Iran to the U.S.) before the Oversight and Management Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee. In a subsequent note to me, ProPublica wrote that Mr. Berman had “graciously acknowledged responsibility for the error” after being contacted.
Well, he may have “graciously” acknowledged the error and indeed retroactively amended his written testimony to the Subcommittee, but, curiously, he apparently failed to follow up with a correction to the July 15 US News article he co-authored with AFPC researcher Netanel Levitt, entitled “Iran’s Operations in Latin America Are a Threat to the U.S.”, in which he also misattributed Ros-Lehtinen’s quote to DNI Clapper. The misattribution he made in testimony before the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2012 hasn’t been corrected either. Nor has he corrected an article he published in Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Quarterly.
Briefly skimming the USNews op-ed, I also noted that in the same paragraph as the Clapper misquote, Berman and Levitt cite recent testimony by the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, to drive their point home:
Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the House Homeland Security Committee last week that Iran represents a threat to the U.S. through our porous borders, and that there are Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard operatives active within the U.S. today.
So I went to the indicated link, which took me to the Homeland Security Committee’s website and agenda of a July 10 hearing on “Assessing Attacks on the Homeland: From Fort Hood to Boston”, which offered two video clips of Chairman McCaul from the hearing and copies of prepared testimony for the hearing, including Leiter’s. I then clicked on the link for the PDF version of Leiter’s prepared testimony and searched it for the magic words, “Iran”, “Hezbollah”, and “Revolutionary Guard” and could not find a single match in the text. I then read quickly over the text to ensure that the search function was not misbehaving. Same result. I then went back to the 10-minute video of McCaul asking witnesses questions but found that they were confined to a discussion of the Tsarnaev case.
Now, it may be that Leiter offered the quoted passage in response to questions posed by other members of Congress at that hearing. I haven’t seen a transcript. But whatever the link was supposed to show, it certainly didn’t include anything Leiter supposedly said about the threat posed by Iran, Hezbollah or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Hopefully, Berman and Levitt can explain the Leiter citation and correct the past misattribution in all of the fora in which it has appeared.
]]>Yasar Sharifi writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war crimes through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace.
For this testimony, Sharifi interviewed Wasel Khan, who relives the Hada massacre of 1984, one [...]]]>
Aslam Khan (uncle Aslam) witnessed the Hada Massacre in 1984, one of the most brutal massacres in recent Afghan history.
Yasar Sharifi writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war crimes through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace.
For this testimony, Sharifi interviewed Wasel Khan, who relives the Hada massacre of 1984, one of the most brutal attacks on civilians in Afghan history.
The village of Hada in Nangarhar province had waited all year for Jahanzeb’s wedding in December 1984. Winter weddings are a time of celebration in snow-bound parts of the country.
Jahanzeb, a soldier in the Afghan army, had come home for the wedding. Everyone in the village in Behsood district was invited. People were attired in their best clothes and jewelry. Women and children had painted their hands with henna. Rugs covered every square inch of Jahanzeb’s home.
But fate had other plans, says Wasel Khan, a villager who survived the Hada massacre.
It was the fifth year of the government of Babrak Karmal, who had risen to power in December 1979 after the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan and killed his predecessor, Hafizullah Amin.
Khan recounts how Russian troops suddenly marched into the village in the evening of Jahanzeb’s wedding day. There was panic, he recalled. Within minutes the revelry had been replaced by screams, he said.
What followed by the hands of the Russian army and air force were “crimes that cannot be described in words,” he said.
Hada village was targeted for being anti-government. But Khan insists not all the people were mujaheddin — most were only sympathisers, he says.
“Our village had 2,000 families before the Russian invasion. Most people fled but families from other areas had moved in. There were mujaheddin among them, he recounts. “A former villager informed the Russians that ours was a Russian-hating village. The wedding was seen as the perfect opportunity to cleanse the village.”
No mercy
Khan says the informer, who he calls Mullah Sultan Jan, told the Soviet authorities that Hada was responsible for attacks on Jalalabad, nine kilometres from the village. But he insists it was the work of mujaheddin factions from Pachir and Chaparhar.
Soviet soldiers searched every house in the village, and took away 100 old and young men who were made to stand in two groups in a field.
“They were infidels, they had no mercy. They suddenly fired at the group on the left, killing many,” remembers a man called Uncle Aslam, standing next to Wasel Khan. “The injured writhed on the ground untill they died. There was a stream of blood.”
The group of men on the right, he said, were jailed for a few days, tortured and released.
Uncle Shaperai was amongst the prisoners. “They (the Russians) made us push tanks in the mud, and beat us. The day after I was released I left the country,” he said.
Soviet soldiers did not catch the prospective bridegroom, Jahanzeb, who proceeded to climb on top of the hill above the village and kill the remaining Russian soldiers who had lost their way in the chaos of the bloodbath.
Many Russian mothers lost their sons that day to Jahanzeb’s bullets, Khan adds.
So much sorrow
In the end, a Soviet helicopter downed Jahanzeb. His body, which was cut in pieces, was carried to the village. His bride-to-be was eventually married to his brother, according to Afghan tradition.
“His mother had gone mad. There was so much sorrow,” says Khan weeping, a quarter century later.
The villagers were not able to bury their dead, he says, as the Russians had placed mines even in the graveyard.
A landmine blew up the vehicle of a villager called Amir Mohammad, who was coming from Jalalabad for the funeral, killing him and three others. Within hours a landmine had destroyed another jeep. “A tribal elder was among those who died. Only one woman survived,” he remembers.
Two days later, the village dead were buried in the nearby area of Karezo. “Now it is called graveyard of martyrs,” according to Khan.
Shamsul Rahman lost both of his parents in the Hada massacre, changing the path of his life drastically. If his dad had not been killed, he’s convinced he’d have gone to university in Afghanistan. Instead, “My uncle became our caretaker, and we had to migrate to Pakistan,” he says. “I did not attend school and I have been working as a labourer ever since.”