MICHAEL CARLEY,
Sir, - Kevin Myers (An Irishman's Diary, January 22nd) discussed a report by Prof Marc Herold on estimated casualties in the bombing of Afghanistan. Let us consider one of his claims, that "this fine women's studies prof has used reports in one Pakistani newspaper, five British and one US media outlets to justify a claim that US bombers killed between 100 and 160 people in the Afghan village of Karam on October 11th. (Which is it, Prof: 100 or 160?) And since no primary source is quoted, and the casualty figure has such a huge range, clearly no one knows the correct figure; therefore, might it not be fewer?"
The obvious point to make here is that using eyewitness reports in seven media outlets on three continents is rather better than taking the word of Donald Rumsfeld, but we can go further and look at the sources.
The report is available to those with Internet access at: http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian.deaths.htm and readers can check for themselves what Marc Herold has to say. He does not, it is true, give primary sources for the attack on Karam, but he does give references to newspaper and other reports. A little effort will turn up the Observer report (October 14th) with a list of eyewitnesses and the Independent report with a list of eyewitnesses (October 13th).
The BBC reports that a correspondent "met children who had lost all other members of their family, and the villagers themselves spoke of 200 dead" (October 16th). Unless the BBC is in on the conspiracy, the figures given by Prof Herold look reasonable. The reason for the difference between the figures is that there are differences in the reports. Prof Herold does not claim to know the exact figure and, indeed, has chosen not to believe the Taliban claim of 200 dead. Instead, he has reported the figures given in reputable newspapers and based on eyewitness accounts.
Mr Myers then claims that "the professor treats reported allegations from the Taliban ambassador in Pakistan as fact: and worse even still, allegations from this worthless scoundrel that the first night's bombing by the US had killed 20 people across Afghanistan were then exaggerated in the Herold report into 20 deaths in Kabul alone."
In fact, he does nothing of the kind. In a table of Prof Herold's appendix 4, he lists a number of attacks, two of which are alleged to have killed twenty people in Kabul alone. His Western sources are CNN, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Irish Times and the Guardian. The Irish Times story used appears to be a Reuters report in the "Breaking News" section. In that story, Taliban radio is reported as saying there were no casualties in Kabul while the Pakistan-based "Afghan Islamic Press said 20 people had died near Kabul airport and 10 were killed near the radio station headquarters". Prof Herold's table indicates that a total of 20 people were killed in Kabul. From this evidence, Mr Myers deduces that Prof Herold has chosen to believe the Taliban and inflate the figures.
Finally, Mr Myers would have it that "there have, of course, been mistakes, all of them tragic." Most Irish Times readers can probably guess how Mr Myers would respond to an IRA apology for civilian deaths phrased in those terms. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL CARLEY,
Claverton Buildings,
Bath,
England.