Continuing the comparison of media coverage over Mullah Mustafa’s death in Ghor:
U.S. airstrikes in western Afghanistan missed their target of a militant commander and instead killed 12 other militants and 10 civilians, provincial officials said Thursday.
The U.S. military originally said the strike killed a warlord named Mullah Mustafa but now say he apparently survived. In a statement issued Thursday, the U.S. said ”credible reports surfaced that Mustafa survived the attack” in Ghor province.
The U.S. said it was investigating reports that civilians had been killed.
Oh. Well, that’s the AP, throwing some water on the entire incident. They add:
Mustafa is said to command about 100 fighters and ”reportedly had connections to” the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, which is known to train Shiite militants from Middle Eastern countries, according to the U.S. military.
A U.S. military spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, said that the military was not implying that Mustafa has links with Iran’s government, but that individual militants in Afghanistan may have links with individual militants in Iran.
[Ghor deputy Gov. Karimuddin] Rezazada said Mustafa has links with the Taliban and was behind a string of attacks.
Taliban extremists are Sunni and have in the past been opposed to Iran’s government.
Rezazada said that Mustafa is a Sunni Muslim, not a Shiite Muslim like most Iranians. Asked on Wednesday whether Mustafa has links with the Quds Brigade, Rezazada said: ”Maybe yes, maybe no. We’re not aware of that.”
It makes for interesting comparison with the Long War Journal’s coverage:
Iranian-backed Afghan Taliban commander survived airstrike
Mullah Mustafa, a Taliban commander in Ghor province, denied reports he was killed in the June 9 airstrike. Mustafa contacted Quqnoos, an Afghan newspaper, and said the US killed civilians after acting on bad intelligence.
“Some people went to the US forces and provided them with false information, and then they bombed our area,” Mustafa said. “I am not harmed.” Mustafa said his six-year-old son and ten year old brother were among those killed. The deputy governor of Ghor province claimed 10 civilians were killed in the strike…
The US military said Mustafa commands more than 100 fighters and receives support from Iran’s Qods Force, the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Mustafa claimed he “never [has] been in the opposition to the [Afghan] government” but did not deny attacking US forces.
Interesting indeed. I’m fascinated that in the LWJ’s world, U.S. military reports about High Value Target strikes are always definite (“The US military killed a senior Taliban commander,” from the LWJ story yesterday) while Afghan government officials complaining about civilian casualties are only “claiming” they happened. It’s telling, ain’t it?
It’s also interesting that other news sources stress that Afghan officials don’t know whether Mustafa is directly supported by Iran, and even U.S. officials say they only suspect involvement with individuals and aren’t describing an official relationship… while the Long War Journal simply prints it like a fact.
It’s almost as if there’s a narrative at work.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.
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I won’t presume to know anyone else’s research standards, but I read LWJ along with dozens of other sources (including some douchebag named Foust
and when taken all together they offer a much clearer perspective than one can offer on its own.
It’s bad to ONLY read LWJ, but in tandem with other agencies, what could it hurt?
My RSS newsfeed slash living bibliography is here https://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F04586273810504319061%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fstarred
I agree, it’s a mistake to rely on any one source. It’s just interesting, given how much some of the LWJ people have complained about “biased” media, to see how their own coverage shapes up in comparison. And I notice this because I, too, read LWJ because they DO get good stories.