2000-2009 | Afghanistan | Journalists targeted

8 OCTOBER

MARGARET THATCHER TOASTS PAKISTAN’S DICTATOR ZIA

[ 8 October 1981 ]

On 8 October 1981 British prime minister Margaret Thatcher attended a banquet hosted by Pakistan’s military dictator, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. 

WAR CABINET DISCUSSES TARGETING AFGHAN MEDIA OUTLETS  DESPITE WAR CRIME WARNING

An American B-52 drops live ordnance on a training range.
US Federal Government via Wikimedia.

[ 8 October 2001 ]

The United States and Britain had commenced a massive aerial bombardment of Afghanistan a day earlier, when the War Cabinet convened on 8 October 2001. Alastair Campbell recorded in his diary, that they discussed ‘targeting some of the Afghan TV output,’ despite the fact that ‘both Harriet ( Harman, the Solicitor General ) and the Attorney General (Lord Peter Goldsmith ) had raised concerns.’1 There is little doubt that any such attack would have inevitably killed civilian journalists and media technicians and while the media outlets may have served a propaganda purpose, they had little or no strategic military value. Any such targeting would therefore have constituted a war crime.

FOOTNOTES

  1. Alastair Campbell and Bill Hagerty, The Alastair Campbell Diaries: Volume 4 The Burden of Power Countdown to Iraq, Arrow Books, London, 2013, p. 42.

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