CIA Escalates Pakistan Campaign, Diverting Drones From Afghanistan

AnnJones, a journalist embedded in Afghanistan,  spoke with Juan Gonzalez &Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

DemocracyNow!: I’d like to ask you about one woman that became the front page of Time magazine in August, Bibi Aisha, the young Afghan woman who was pictured, her face mutilated, with the headline "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan." You’ve been particularly critical of that story and how the media have manipulated it.  

ANN JONES: I was very concerned about the exploitation of that personal family tragedy in order to make a case for keeping American troops in Afghanistan & continuing this war, in which so many Afghans have suffered. Bibi Aisha’s case was not uncommon. Her particular mutilation has been her nose & ears being cut off. There are four cases of it reported this year by the AfghanInde­pendentHum­anRightsCo­mmission. This, after Americans have been protecting Afghan women for eight or nine years in Afghanistan. This happens to be the way some Pashtun families treat women in order to keep them in servitude to the family. We're not going to change or stop that by the presence of troops. 

DemocracyNow!: Can you tell us her story, though, and how you feel it was misrepresented, in being on the cover, Time's case for why the US is there? 

ANN JONES: Bibi Aisha ran away from her parents-in-law's house. Her husband was absent elsewhere in doing some kind of work or looking for work. She was treated as a servant & physically abused all the time. She ran away. Her father-in-law caught up with her & did this mutilation. The Time story amplifies that, saying it was done under orders by Taliban commanders & so on. That's not the story I heard from Bibi Aisha when I talked with her before this Time story had ever come out, several weeks before.  Other journalists have spoken to her, as well, and have reported the mutilation, but not this supposed instruction of the Taliban to do this. The story changed in some way. How that happened, I don’t know. The news media that took that personal tragedy & used it for this political manipulation. 

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/30/ann_jones_­on_war_is_­not


The US protected Afghan women for the last 8-9 years, but when pro-war advocates inside the US government wanted to escalate the war & remain in Afghanistan, mutilations of Afghan women began anew.  The mention of these mutilations being ordered by the Taliban only occurs in Time magazine much later in a cover story selling the escalation of the war and "What will happen to the women if the US leaves Afghanistan". 

After the Taliban was inserted into the narrative of the story, Bibi Aisha was flown to the US for plastic reconstructive surgery - 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/bibi-aisha-disfigured-afg_n_675764.html>
 
 
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost