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Russia Bans ABC
Robert Bruce Ware
ABC Television is being banned from operation in Russia, following its July 28th broadcast of an interview with Shamil Basayev. Basayev is the Chechen warlord who has been behind a long list of terrorist atrocities in Russia, including the Moscow theater attack in 2002, and the Beslan crisis in 2004, where 1200 hostages were held in a school and 180 children died. In the interview Basayev promised similar attacks unless Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya. The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry responded by declaring ABC undesirable, and declining further renewals of ABCıs accreditation.
During the Nightline broadcast, Ted Koppel reviewed objections of the Russian government on air, and defended ABC's decision to broadcast the interview by citing his journalistic obligation to consider multiple sides of a story, even when this requires him to interview controversial or unsavory characters. Koppel said, "I have interviewed thieves and conmen, child molesters, murderers and dictators with the blood of thousands on their hands."
Yet Koppel failed to note that there is an important difference between common criminals and terrorists. Common criminals do not commit their crimes for the purpose of attracting media attention; terrorists do. Terrorists depend upon media coverage, and without media coverage they are powerless. If Basayev had a large army behind him, or if he were popular, even in Chechnya, then he would not need to be a terrorist. He is a terrorist because he lacks popular support, and so the only way that he can attract attention, and acquire power, is to commit shocking atrocities that attract media coverage. No one can blame the media for covering a hostage crisis at a school, but that is different from turning the microphone over to the terrorist, and permitting him to spread disinformation.
During the Nightline broadcast, Koppel said, "I bear the responsibility of putting an interview like this in its proper context but not of keeping it from you altogether." That is exactly where Nightline failed. Basayev used the interview to threaten further acts of terrorism and to spread disinformation, without any challenge from Koppel.
For example, Basayev said that his ambitions were confined to Chechnya. Yet if Basayev's ambitions were confined to Chechnya then he would not have invaded the Russian Republic of Dagestan on two separate occasions. Russian troops went into Chechnya in 1999, only after Basayev led 2,000 fighters into Russia, where they murdered scores of people and displaced 32,000 Dagestanis from their homes. As another example of disinformation, Basayev claimed that he had wanted merely to "hijack" two Russian planes last summer, but that when he attempted to do so, the Russian military shot them out of the sky simultaneously. Yet there is no evidence either that there was a hijack attempt or that the Russian military had time to intervene. The two planes simply exploded without warning. They exploded because of the bombs that Basayev has previously acknowledged that his people smuggled aboard, and they did not explode simultaneously. As another example of disinformation, Basayev blamed Russian officials for the Beslan atrocity, as if Russian officials herded 1200 hostages into a school gymnasium, denied them food, water, and opportunities to use a toilet for three days, watched children drink their own urine, murdered several people in cold blood execution style, and hung bombs all around the room. ABC failed to note these, and several other, important inaccuracies that together constitute systematic disinformation.
Basayev presented himself as a nationalist, yet if Basayev were a nationalist he would have spent the years from 1997 through 1999, building atruly and effectively independent Chechnya, and if he had done that Chechnya might, in fact, be independent today. Instead Basayev undermined the government of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov; organized and otherwise tolerated horrific criminality; harbored international Islamist extremists; and then invaded Dagestan. There is nothing the least bit nationalistic in any of that. Yet ABC brought out none of these facts.
The justification of Beslan, and his own self-redemption, were clearly Basayevıs chief purposes in the interview, and the primary reasons that he granted the interview. When Koppel said that ABC had a duty to consider all sides, he implied that it is possible to justify the murder of 180 innocent children and the horrific abuse of over 800 more children. But if it is possible to justify the murder of 180 children, then Basayev has done something at Beslan that is potentially justifiable, and he is therefore off the hook. Islamist extremists everywhere benefit, because if the murder of180 children is potentially justifiable, then the destruction of the WTC, the beheading of innocents and everything else that they've done is potentially justifiable. Just like Basayev, Bin Laden makes claims that attempt to justify his position. Indisputably, there are elements of truth in some of Bin Ladenıs claims. However, we Americans are committed to the view that nothing can possibly justify what Bin Laden did on 9/11. We are therefore committed to the view that 9/11 is not potentially justifiable. We are right about that. But for the same reasons, there is nothing that can possibly justify what Basayev did in Beslan, Dubrovka, Dagestan, Budenovsk, and the scenes of his many other atrocities. That is why we do not need to hear from Basayev any more than we need to hear from Bin Laden, and that is why ABC was dead wrong.
Basayev is supported by less than 5 per cent of the Chechens, and he is hated by nearly all Chechens. Yet he continues to present himself as their international face, and much of the world thinks that his cause is their cause. This is a fallacy for which the Chechens have gravely suffered, and for which they will continue to suffer. In order to begin to understand what the Basayev interview meant to most Chechens consider how Americans would feel if much of the world was operating under the illusion that Timothy McVeigh was speaking for the American people.
ABC exploited the suffering of 1,000 children and their families in order to market a pain reliever. Whenever a spotlight shines on somebody like Basayev, the rest of the world grows darker. Someone should turn out the lights at ABC.
Robert Bruce Ware is an associate professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who writes extensively on Chechnya and the North Caucasus.
Updated 8/16/05
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