(Part 3) How to report on ISIS-attacks?

Sixth Newsletter

Jun 14, 2022

Just returned from a visit to Kabul, Kandahar and Zabul. First and foremost, I went with Wall Street Journal colleague, Margherita Stancati (and photographer Joel van Houdt) who likes to write about my book ‘Looking for The Enemy’. We traveled to Zabul to finally see the hiding places of Mullah Omar. It was quite a trip—mostly very good. Being in Kandahar truly felt like coming home, namely my old home of the Kandahar Treasure which is also the go-to place for the art of Khamak (please check it out as the widows are experts in this special Kandahari way of designing clothes, table clothes, etc.).

I took notes during the trip and throughout the interviews, the teas, the dinners, etc. Nonetheless, I realized that it’s not so easy for me to come up with quick stories. The situation in Afghanistan and the ideas about Afghanistan in the West are all complex, and difficult to grasp in a quick article. Let me sit on this a bit.

In the meantime, I am sending you the last part of this extremely long (sorry!) research on how we covered the first ‘incidents’ in 2014 relating to ISIS in Afghanistan. The first part concluded that not the PR-people of ISIS but instead the BBC linked Afghanistan to the ISIS-narrative, though based on weak and scarce sources. We demonstrated how the BBC rectified this story by John Simpson, but that this didn't make any difference because by then the world was in panic and had already started framing follow-up attacks as ISIS (based on the same weak sourcing).

And that’s how ISIS arrived in Afghanistan, because the Western press said so. This begs the question: Should we not also consider deleting articles when rectifying them alone is not enough? (as seen in this case).

This last part of our research ends with something extreme: the US decision to use its most heavy bomb to wipe ISIS from the earth. The Mother of All Bombs was launched in 2017, with the U.S hoping to ‘wipe out ISIS’. Was it necessary to use this bomb?

We have now reached the final step, deconstructing the coverage. Many Afghans have died in the past 3 years. Many. Do we know what for? Do we know who the perpetrators are, who deserves to see a judge, maybe in The Hague? Throughout the War on Terror, Justice has been persistently lacking. This paper shows how groups and governments get away by misusing terrorism frames and killing people, deeply disrupting families’ lives along the way. Unfortunately, as this research shows, the coverage has been irresponsible most times and also overgeneralizing, resulting in killers walking around still unidentified. I don’t know of any investigation that has been properly carried out nor has identified the murderers who were behind such high-profile ‘ISIS-attacks’ (correct me if I am wrong).

Sometimes the media’s argument is that access is difficult and so is cross-checking, and that is fair. In those cases, nobody is helped by us jumping to conclusions and using the ideology of terrorism without the proper sourcing. Isn’t it therefore better not to tweet or say anything but simply admit “We don’t know”.

Former NPR-correspondent in Kabul, Sean Carberry: Thanks for adding your input to my last newsletter. In an interview recorded in January 2015, Carberry also reflects on the ISIS-coverage. He already warns the media to be careful. Very interesting. Take a look at this quote: “It’s hard to see what’s happening in the country and you can’t corroborate, and there is a lot of propaganda, and people use it for different reasons.” [link].

President Ghani misuses ISIS-narrative

A month after his speech in the Senate, the Afghan president Ghani did receive heavy criticism from the United Nations when he again held a speech about ISIS,1 this time on Kabul-television where he blamed an attack in Jalalabad on ISIS. This attack happened on the 18th of April, when a suicide bomber in Jalalabad walked into a line of Afghans waiting in front of The New Kabul bank, killing 35 and injuring a total of 125 people.2

The first ISIS- claim for this attack on the bank didn't come from the Amaq website which is often seen by media as the primary ISIS-source, but from a group called ‘ISIS Wilayat Khorasan’ who sent a statement to reporters in Afghanistan and named the suicide bomber Abu Mohammed Khorasani. This spurred media attention worldwide, but as the Washington Post added, they were not able to verify this claim.3

The first media reports also stated that a picture of the suicide bomber posing in front of an ISIS flag was posted on a Facebook account belonging to one of Saeed Khan’s associates. None of the media outlets reporting on the event published the photo. The photo was later reported to have been erased from the Facebook account.4

After President Ghani blamed ISIS for it, the UN was quick to say that this was exaggerated. “Quite frankly, there are many contrasting views as to how established and how widespread it is, and whether it is a real Daesh phenomenon or else just some elements of the armed insurgency looking for a flagpole to attach themselves to. So, all of this will require further investigation,” said Nicolas Haysom, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan.5

Others also said Ghani used the ISIS-narrative to divert focus from governance issues like corruption, hoping to persuade the Americans that their troops should not stop supporting his struggling government.

Soon it became even more unclear who was behind the attack. One of Saeed Khan’s associates would deny that the group was behind the Jalalabad attack.6 Then the NATO spokesperson in Afghanistan also disagreed with President Ghani and instead pondered a Taliban involvement.7 Then the Taliban reacted and denied involvement in the attack.8

Al Jazeera tried to cover ISIS as well

An al-Jazeera documentary about ISIS, published in November 2015, gained more than one million viewers, won an Emmy Award, and was often quoted by other media as direct proof that ISIS was present in Afghanistan.

Three weeks later, the American network PBS would publish a very similar documentary reusing Al Jazeera’s footage, giving the narrative an even broader audience.

The viewer was told that ISIS in Afghanistan was in direct contact with the ISIS leadership in the Arab world, something that had not been proven until then.

But the 47 minute video is not much more than a reflection of propaganda moments organized by unknown fighters. A closer look at the sourcing of Al Jazeera for this claim: Five Afghan and Pakistani fighters met up with the interviewer and squatted next to each other on an unknown mountain-top. It’s not clear what the journalist actually knows about these men, if he was able to ask, or if he was not. This results in a one-way communication where the fighters decide - not surprising - to pitch a dangerous and threatening narrative. They are successful: it is fully embraced by the journalist who adds ‘hollywood-effects’ with the way of filming, using dark background tunes and his own voice-over copies of the threatening narrative.

After, the journalist follows the men to the next propaganda-moment: They had organized Afghan children holding an ISIS flag in the background. Here we have another almost loose comment of the fighters saying: we are in contact with ISIS leadership in the Arab world and that foreign fighters ‘from all over the world’ had joined them. It’s not clear if the journalist tried to cross-check this with neighboring madrassas, for example. The journalist is not asking follow-up questions like: how many, where are they, can you introduce me to them?

It looks to me that for Al Jazeera, PBS, and the journalist, it’s enough that he has managed to get into this ‘dangerous’ area and meet with ‘ISIS exclusively’. Any critical reflection or transparency regarding the whereabouts of the journalist is not given. By then, it is widely known that there is a strong Pakistani presence claiming ISIS in this area (for local reasons), which could give some indebtedness to the film, but the journalist doesn't address this.

At the school, we see an ISIS-flag on the wall and a group of very young boys. One Afghan fighter let himself be filmed while asking the young children in an amateurish way what the names of certain weapons were, and what the goal of using these weapons was (Jihad). The journalist wants the viewer to believe that this is an ISIS-school, and that the ISIS-fighters are cruel by getting children involved in the fight. He leaves out some historical context that could de-escalate the scene a bit: in the jihad against communism, Afghan men who were US-allies saw in USAID-programms the same violent matters, especially in the areas where the journalist is now filming.

Statistics?

In the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, the first statistics came out with regards to the amount of ‘ISIS-members’, something that is easily quoted in the media.

While we are still not sure what ISIS in Afghanistan really is, which groups are part of it, and why, one researcher did try to understand. On the website of RUSI, researcher Antonio Giustozzi had written a two page article called ‘The Islamic State in ‘Khorasan’, a Nuanced View’. Giustozzi set the bar high claiming there are 7000- 8500 ‘ISIS-members on Afghan soil’ and they consist of ISIS ‘fighters’, but also ‘support elements’.

This is shockingly high compared to the missing proof for ISIS-presence. What are the sources for this claim? As is too often the case when writing about ‘terrorism’, there is an enormous amount of anonymous sources - more than the majority of this report consists of unnamed sources. Giustozzi claimed that several different sources agreed on this number, including ‘Daesh cadres themselves, Pakistani security sources, Afghan security sources and Iranian Pasdaran-sources’.9 How these sources are interviewed, when and where, and by who is not clear.

When asked over email about his sources, Giustozzi said that the numbers were ‘estimates that were given to him’, but that they were not his own. In that same year, 2016, NATO also came up with a statistic. They said their estimates were around 6,000 fewer fighters: 1,000- 3,000 fighters.10

Hundreds of people killed in 2016: by who?

In the year that followed, three utterly deadly attacks happened in the capital, Kabul. On the 23th of July 2016, a Hazara protest in Kabul was struck by a suicide bombing.11 Over 100 people were killed. This attack was claimed by the website that is called Amaq news agency (the website claims it’s their PR-site), and marked a shift in how ISIS claimed attacks in Afghanistan.12 In the past, the attacks in Iraq and Syria were claimed by this website. Now it was also the case in Afghanistan.

Three months later, on the 11th of October, another ISIS-claimed attack targeted the Hazara community. A Shi’a shrine was attacked on the eve of Achoura and at least 18 people were killed.13

Five months later, the next large-scale attack targeted a hospital in Kabul’s diplomatic quarters on the 8th of March 2017. At least 38 people were killed in the well-planned attack. Amaq once again claimed responsibility for the attack.14

Were these attacks the final proof ISIS had made inroads in Afghanistan?

As mentioned in the introduction, the Afghan conflict is complex and has many players who perform different roles at different times according to everybody’s primary interest. As we demonstrate in this paper, attacks instigated by personal interests are often falsely credited to terrorist groups by the quick media.

There were some aspects of the attacks that fit with what we have grown accustomed to see from ISIS in the Middle East. The string of attacks are some of the most brutal and deadliest since 2001, fitting the image of ISIS in the Arab world as a brutal and ruthless terrorist organization. Some of the attacks also targeted the Shi’a community, a sect that ISIS considers to be apostates and that they have heavily targeted in the Middle East. Moreover, the fact that Amaq claimed the attacks could suggest a strong link between ISIS, its Afghan affiliate and the deadly attacks.

However, when looking at the reported sources for these attacks it almost exclusively comes from one source: the ISIS-website Amaq. Regarding this one source, it’s essential to repeat - especially in brutal attacks like those in Kabul - that a journalist’s responsibility is to go beyond reporting from one or two sources. Only mentioning the claim from ISIS and maybe a ‘cross-check’ with the Afghan government (a party in the conflict) is not considered responsible journalism. It helps ISIS get attention, and it’s also possible that the real perpetrators get a free pass.

Regarding the targeting of the predominantly Shia Hazara community, which implied sectarian motivated attacks, it’s also important to look at the history and to incorporate this context. Kabul has witnessed similar gruesome attacks on the Hazara, although not many. The last such attack was on the 6th of December 2011 when a suicide bomber attacked a Shia shrine during Achoura. That time there was no ISIS-narrative, and instead a TTP fringe group called Lashkar-e-Jhanghvi claimed the attack. It is widely known that sectarian violence was, and still is, more common in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. The Guardian concluded that “Although there is a long history of bomb attacks on Shias in neighbouring Pakistan, there has never been such a large-scale attack in Afghanistan, raising fears that radical outside groups are being drawn into the already complex and fragmented Afghan insurgency”.15 According to the sources available, this dynamic was not discussed by mainstream media while the first ISIS-claims came from the Pakistani leader Hafez Saeed Khan. Furthermore, there is still a wide presence of militant Pakistani groups in Afghanistan and individuals waving the ISIS flag in Afghanistan remain mainly Pakistani. Adding this local dynamic is essential for the reader, but also for policy makers who need to address the problem based on accurate information.

In December 2016, the United Nations head of mission Nicolas Haysom continued to warn for a careful approach to statistics. Despite a string of attacks in Kabul the diplomat said in a press conference that he still didn’t know how strong ISIS was. He said he heard the number ‘1500’, but after that said ‘what does that mean? “Where is the 1,500?”, he continued. “ How is it concentrated? Is it all in Nangarhar? Nangarhar is one out of 34 provinces.” According to the UN head we need to be careful. “It’s almost as if people want the ISIL presence to be more than it actually is, which is why I say we have to be judicious in making our assessments.”16

Mother of All Bombs

Four months later, the UN-advise was not heard. On April 13th 2017, the US government moved in the opposite direction and decided that the threat of ISIS was extremely imminent, and needed the maximum military response possible.

That night, the US used for the first time the so-called Mother of All Bombs. This was the largest non-nuclear bomb (of 11 ton) that the US ever used. It was dropped on the district Achin, where in 2014 Hafez Saeed Khan and his Pakistani fighters fled to. Around 90 ‘ISIS-fighters’ were killed, according to the official statements, but this was not later confirmed [see link].

One month later, on May 17th, the state broadcaster RTA in Jalalabad was attacked. The claiming via Amaq continued, and so did the lack of cross-checking. The attack on the Iraq-embassy in Kabul followed in July, also attributed to ISIS.

In August 2017, there was another sectarian attack when a Shia mosque in Kabul was attacked and 28 people were killed. This was also an Amaq-claimed attack.

While finishing this report in December 2017, General Nicholson who led the American troops in Afghanistan said to the Afghan TOLO News that ISIS ‘remains number one target in Afghanistan’. “Hunting down and killing their leaders will not stop.”

Conclusion

Our analysis covered only the first false BBC-claim of ISIS in Afghanistan in 2014 up untill the Mother of All Bombs in April 13th 2017. Despite not covering every attack, this work shows us that the BBC changed the narrative in Afghanistan and falsely linked it to ISIS, all while ISIS was not present. By deconstructing articles, it is clear that reporters like veteran John Simpson or those at Al Jazeera jump easily on the terrorism-narrative, making ISIS powerful in newspapers or documenataries, meanwhile the situation in the field doesn’t reflect this and is in fact much more complex. Throughout those years, maybe there was a very clear ISIS-threat and maybe there was a danger that had to be addressed, but if so the media was not able to show that (with credible proof that could be cross-checked).

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