ARCHIVE ‘One man’s terrorist’: Israel, Lebanon, Iran and beyond
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This week's front pages have been filled with headlines of Iran's Roth

Vengeance. It's "blitz at Israel" in launching missiles towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They report it as retaliation against Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's leader. What they don't say is that Hezbollah, a Lebanese anti-Israeli group and democratically elected political party backed by Iran, was first formed in the '80s in response to Israel's invasion of their country.

Well, this week's Iranian wrath came hours after Israel invaded Lebanon once again. So why does Western media not call this self-defense as they do Israel's aggression against Palestine? Perhaps because Hezbollah is classed as a terrorist organization in the UK, in the US, and many of the countries our listeners are tuning in from. And when we see groups as terrorists, we do not report on their side of the story.

Last October, weeks after Hamas' attack on Israel, MediaStorm produced an episode on terrorists. We look at the dangers of the terrorist label applied to Gaza's Hamas as it is Lebanon's Hezbollah, the truths this label conceals, and the ways we are all victims in the war of propaganda. Stick around to hear from Lebanese reporter Zahira Harb on Western coverage of Hezbollah specifically.

Over to the studio. The first point to clarify is that nothing we say in this episode is an endorsement of terrorism. This episode is an inquiry of terrorism and a case that doing so apolitically is not only a journalist's right, but a journalist's imperative. In war, the first casualty is truth.

One man's terrorist...

You know the saying. This is not a statement of justification. It's a statement of cause and effect. There is ample reason to call Hamas a terrorist group. There is also ample reason to call them a resistance. Before Hamas' attack triggered global outrage over civilian casualties, Gazans have been living in conditions many of us would consider unacceptable for ourselves, trapped in poverty in an open-air prison under heavy blockade by Israel, which restricts clean water and medical goods.

Those who resist peacefully are routinely executed and interned. In these conditions, violent rebellion is guaranteed. History is very consistent with that lesson, but instead of learning, we use the term terrorist to shut down inquiry. Terrorist is not just a legal definition. It is an excuse to disengage and dehumanize, to ignore valid grievances, to refuse to negotiate, to bypass legal, constitutional, and human rights,

to torture, detain and assassinate without trial. When we objectify someone as a terrorist, we turn a blind eye towards whatever motivates them as a human being. Righteous vengeance underpins terrorism in all its forms. So today on MediaStorm, we will speak to people who have been convicted as terrorists and ask them why they fought. Our goal is discourse in the name of humanism and most of all, peace.

We'll also interrogate the Western worldview and the presence of propaganda in mainstream news with former UN Security Chief Kishore Mahbubani. Then I'll see you back in the studio with Afghan author Gawali Passale and Lebanese reporter Zahira Haab to discuss everything around this media storm.

Another passenger plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. U.S. warships launched the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freeze. Baghdad skyline, well, it's not flames of billowing smoke. Weapons of mass destruction were never found. You killed a million people in Iraq. Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda.

Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's investigation. One man's terrorist. Resistance and radicalism in Gaza and beyond. The political struggle in Northern Ireland claims yet another victim. We begin in Northern Ireland with the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. The IRA.

The group rose to infamy during The Troubles, a 30-year conflict between Protestant Unionists who wanted to remain part of the UK and Catholic Nationalists who wanted to join the free state in the South. Just before lunchtime, a bomb exploded in a parked car just outside the officer's mess and seven people, including a Roman Catholic cadre, were killed. Like Hamas, the IRA has entered public imagination through the lens of democracy.

terrorism due to its car bombing campaigns in which hundreds of civilians were killed. "Last in peace will only come to Ireland when our people are free from foreign influence and free from foreign power and foreign domination." But like Hamas, the IRA defined its own mission as resistance to a colonial oppressor, a cause supported by many within the community at large.

And like Hamas, the IRA responded ruthlessly, targeting civilians and destroying public infrastructure, and kidnapping and torturing and murdering untried prisoners in what they described as guerrilla warfare, but the states they opposed described as terrorism. But also like Hamas, the states they opposed committed similar crimes, targeting civilians and weaponizing public infrastructure, and kidnapping and torturing and murdering untried prisoners.

but they were called soldiers and police officers instead, and they waged their war with the moral and military backing of a global superpower behind them. Now officially, the British army was sent to Northern Ireland as a peacekeeping force during the Troubles. On the last Sunday in January, Catholic civil rights marches came into violent conflict with British troops in the centre of Londonderry.

So when the British Army opened fire on Catholic civil rights marches in 1972, the British public was told: The troops claimed they'd shot back in self-defence at snipers who'd started the shooting. That the 14 adults and teenagers killed in the streets were gunmen for the IRA, terrorists. What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustified.

It took nearly 40 years for this lie to be overturned and for the British government to admit the truth. These were innocent civilians killed in cold blood. But the damage had been done.

Bloody Sunday, as it came to be known, sparked the deadliest year of the conflict and an upsurge in recruits to the IRA. My name is Tony Doherty and my father was murdered on Bloody Sunday. Among them, the son of one of the 14 people murdered that day. Prior to Bloody Sunday, I wouldn't describe our family as a Republican family.

After Bloody Sunday, I did start seeing the world in a slightly different way. We clearly saw the British Army as an invading force and they treated us with absolute disdain. But I remember actually by the age of 10, which was just over a year after Bloody Sunday,

asking my aunt what age did you need to be to join the IRA. She laughed back at me and said, you have to be 16, but it'll be long over by the time you're 16. So people had no real idea of a long war. At that stage, people thought this can't go on forever. Is it a fair observation then that most people, whatever their frustrations, would have opted for peace over war? There has always been a yearning for peace,

Nobody in their right mind would want to become involved in a long-term military campaign. But what I actually found when I went to prison was a number of people who pointed towards Bloody Sunday as the sole justification of why they were there and why they had joined. I was actually taken aback. I thought it was just me, but...

What effectively happened that day was that the peaceful campaign for civil rights was blasted off the streets by the British army. It's a bit like what's happening in Palestine and Israel today, when you don't have the avenues for dialogue or the aspiration towards dialogue.

just outcomes. Vacuums are created and vacuums are usually filled with hate and misunderstandings. People weren't really listening to one another and people become blinded by conflict, myself included. I locked in to violence, revenge and counter revenge.

And as we've seen, that can go on for generations. You describe this cycle of violence when people don't listen to each other and characterise each other, as you say, with hate and misunderstanding. This points to my main question today with the terrorist label. Is there a risk that this feeds into that cycle of not understanding, not listening? Absolutely. I think the use of the word terrorist or terrorism, it's a heavily weighted term.

emotional and propaganda term and it's normally used by states. What I witnessed growing up was state terrorism. I mean, I was convicted as a terrorist. When I went to prison, I did reflect in a sort of infantile way at times.

on the fact that the person who killed my father, who was Soldier F, hadn't spent a single day in prison for his murder and the murder of four-hour young innocent people within the space of 15 minutes. And yet here, the son of one of those murdered people was classed as a criminal. Here's the thing, if you had been there on Bloody Sunday, you were absolutely terrorised.

by what you saw, thousands of people were forced to scatter under heavy gunfire and those who couldn't get away were basically slaughtered like animals in the street. Was that terrorism? Of course it was. But it was also legitimised by the state propaganda and there's nobody better at it than the British in my view. You will carry your terrorist conviction for the rest of your life.

Does it bother you? I don't really care if the British government decided to describe the IRA as a terrorist organisation. I have no regrets about becoming a member. What I am concerned about is the legitimacy of the cause. I think if I was in Gaza today, I would be part of the resistance. I have absolutely no doubt about it because it's very, very difficult to see

How do you define a terrorist?

A person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. At least according to the Oxford Dictionary. Internationally, there's no consensus. Russia and the Arab Emirates call the Taliban a terrorist group. The UK and EU do not.

New Zealand and Canada deem the Proud Boys, who stormed the US Capitol in support of Donald Trump, a terrorist group. The USA does not. There's Mr. Mandela, Mr. Nelson Mandela, a free man taking his first steps into a new South Africa. You might see Nelson Mandela as a figurehead of peace, who led South Africa out of the apartheid.

And yet he was on US terrorist watch lists until 15 years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Why?

Partly because he'd led the military wing of the ANC, African National Congress, in a campaign including car bombs and sabotage that did kill dozens of civilians. But also because this resistance group, which ultimately toppled the apartheid and became the country's main political party, was funded by the communist Soviet Union. The real threat to our security is the danger of communist aggression.

The ANC may have been on the right side of racial justice, but they were on the wrong side of the Cold War. And for this, many former fighters continue to pay a price.

The apartheid government treated us as the terrorists and even today we are still suffering. Today, many of the survivors of the war against apartheid, who fought under Mandela himself, live in a township on the outskirts of Cape Town called Bala. They said I was welcome to come and hear their stories, as long as I brought some beer and a ram's head to barbecue. My combat name in exile was called

The first man I spoke to was a combat trainer for new recruits. Yet even he tells me violence is never a route chosen lightly. Did you ever have reservations about using violence as a method to fight? Yes, at times you take decisions that you wouldn't like to take because of the circumstances that pushes you to take that decision. You see, because of the apartheid government, it was...

So violent. I had to take that decision because of what was happening in the country and to me also. You see here, I have a scar. Yeah, just above your right eye. That's deep. Yeah, I was bitten while I was still young by the police. How old were you? 16. We cannot allow this thing to continue. Something needs to be done.

And who's going to do it if I cannot do it? And what was the goal of the violence? The aim was not to kill, but it was to push the government to the table where the negotiating can be done. It was unfortunate for those who died. Each war has its own casualties, you see, but it was in our wishes for them to be affected.

So this was a war and you didn't see yourselves as terrorists, you saw yourselves as an army? I don't see myself that we were terrorists because we were fighting for a just cause. There's no longer an apartheid government. Now we should live all together, black and white, equally. That's what I was fighting for.

And one of the guys here told me that you were his platoon commander and that was in Uganda. Will you just tell us what the training in Uganda involved? We were training them in political classes and also trained them in firearms, also how to use explosives and also how to use bombs. And how old were the trainees? Some were at the age of 13, 14.

16, 17 and upwards. How old were you when you started fighting? I joined the ANC when I was 17. And I saw that I'm still young. Freedom now, education later. We rarely think about the cost of violence to those who commit it.

And we also often forget, when we talk about violent rebellion, that many of those involved are recruited as children. There was no age restriction. When you are 18 years and above, then you can join the army. But on the reparation movement, there was no age restriction. The youngest one in the army was 12 years old.

Like myself, I joined the NAMU when I was 14 years. It was a very painful experience because we wanted as boys to be teachers or to be a lawyer or something like that. But we were forced of fighting this conflict because we saw our parents the way they were treated by the white regime. As we grew up in that trauma, that's when this movement of underground started.

I was imprisoned. I was sentenced to death sentence. We gave our lives to the struggle.

and there was no payment that we were paid. It was only our sacrifice with our lives. The scars of violent rebellion last a lifetime, and the reality is that many involved are exploited not just by the powers they oppose, but the ones they choose to serve. They were the seniors.

but they never experienced what we have experienced on the ground. If you look in our government of today, coming from prison, they got every benefit, but for us it's not happening. Mandela's and all those leaders were in prison when we fight, and we took them out, we put them in the parliament today. So we thought by now we are going also to be honored for what we did, but we have never been honored.

Brian Mattassi, Ayanda Mvallani and Master Samandi met me as representatives of a group called Liberation Struggle for War Veterans, or LSWV. Why are they still mobilizing? Because after all they've sacrificed, and even after being vindicated by history, they continue to pay the price of having been looked on by the world as criminals. They are still treated as terrorists even now.

The veteran is eating in the dustbin. The veteran finds the veteran under the bridge. My kids will die.

Next to the street. When we came back from exile, there were some promises. All people who are coming from exile, we are supposed to be compensated. To build a shelter, to take care of yourself, to take care of your kids too. That act never been implemented at all. There's not anything that we received. That's why we decided to form up the LSW. We were criminalized. We were not recognized as freedom fighters. You know, the revolution still goes on.

The West, by its own admission, has not always been on the right side of history. And this includes its declarations of terrorism.

Which is why an independent media must be critical of the moral parameters its politicians put in place. When I arrive in America and I turn on the television and I watch the news channels, I feel like I've been cut off from the rest of the world.

It's such an insular, self-absorbed discourse that takes place. Kishore Mahbubani warns that Western news is not always as independent as we think. Mahbubani is a leading academic and distinguished fellow at the National University of Singapore. But for much of his career he worked as a diplomat, serving as Singapore's ambassador to the UN and two-time president of the UN Security Council.

I asked him first to define what he means by the Western worldview. In the past, the Western worldview was somewhat diverse. If you were talking 20 years ago, the French President Jacques Chirac and the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder fiercely opposed the war in Iraq, you know.

But now my sense is that, to put it very bluntly, and forgive me for being so provocative, the European Union's foreign policy has been hijacked by the Anglo-Saxon world, which are US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand too. And how influential or representative is the Western worldview compared to others? If you add up the total population of the Western countries,

They make up at best 12% of the world's population. 88% of the world lives in a non-Western world.

Right now, as you and I speak, we are going through a major historical transition away from the era of Western domination of world history towards a more natural world order where China and India and other Asian countries will once again become stronger and more powerful actors. My full interview with Kishore exploring these geopolitical dynamics in more depth will be available in full for Patreon subscribers. You can access that via the link in the show notes.

So we in Western democracies credit ourselves with having a free press. But is it your perception that our news media is not as independent as we think it is? That it has been guilty of perpetuating a very subjective Western worldview? The puzzling thing about the United States is that on the one hand, it has the world's best universities and it has the world's best known academics.

It has the world's most powerful and influential newspapers. It has the freest media in the world. Now, you add up all these factors, Americans should be among the best informed people in the world. But sadly, they are among the most ignorant. They don't understand the nuances of this new world that is emerging.

I lived in New York for over 10 years and I read the New York Times every day. It's such a joy to read it every morning.

But it's also one of the most arrogant newspapers in the world. And presumably this isn't just a New York Times problem. Frankly, I refer to it as the Anglo-Saxon media problem. Because the Anglo-Saxon media, including British newspapers and Australian newspapers, are incredibly condescending when they write about the 88% of the world's population who live outside the West.

and make absolutely no effort to understand why do they view the world so differently from the West. Okay, so let's talk about what that worldview actually looks like. Having grown up in the UK myself, I'd say a big part of the West's self-perception is its pursuit of a moral mission to promote human rights and democracy around the world.

Does this view of the West hold up outside the West? When the West claims that it represents the highest values of human rights and democracy, certainly in their domestic societies, they are doing very well. The question is in their foreign policy,

Western countries, including the United States, sacrifice human rights and democracy when there's a clash between their interests and their values. So, for example, the United States was the first modern developed Western country to reintroduce torture in Guantanamo.

And what was shocking to the rest of the world was that no European government dared to publicly criticize the United States for reintroducing torture. The rest of the world saying, "Now, what's going on here? I thought you guys were in favor of human rights and democracy. Why do you have

double standards. You mentioned Guantanamo, which is very relevant for this episode because Guantanamo Bay is one of the ultimate symbols of the war on terror. Well, not just a symbol. It's a hugely controversial American detention facility for terror suspects, overwhelmingly for Islamic terror suspects. It's based in Cuba, which Cubans aren't very happy about. And it was opened by the US government after 9-11. It's

widely attested to engage in awful methods of torture against prisoners who've been interned which basically means they've been imprisoned without trial and people have disappeared inside for decades and people are still inside. Now this is all done and can only be done in the name of counter-terrorism which brings me on to my next question.

In attempting to bridge this divergence between Western and non-Western worldviews, how accepting should we be of the West's narrative of its war on terror? Do people from other worldviews agree with our definition of who and what constitutes a terrorist?

Every civilised society in the world abhors terrorism. That is not the issue, but when the United States announces a global war on terror, that was a huge oversimplification because each terrorist group has got its own separate agenda. You've got to understand each group and figure out ways and means of dealing with them individually to find political solutions to what was troubling them.

and not just focus on the military dimension in trying to eradicate terrorism. Now, let me give you a good example with the Iraqi invasion. It was sadly an illegal invasion, as Kofi Annan said. And many of my Arabic friends predicted that U.S. forces would be attacked by terrorists after they defeated the army of Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, all their predictions came true.

Something maybe I'm hearing in that answer is perhaps the term terrorist, especially used as a globally sweeping label, could conceal more than it reveals because it doesn't allow us to understand the human grievances behind the terror tactics, which we need to do if we want to defuse that violence. Is that a fair reading? Absolutely. You've got to understand different cultures and learn to work with them. Let me just give you a very simple example.

When the United States invaded Iraq, it didn't even know that the Sunnis were a minority and that the Shias were a majority. And so when the United States completely dismantled the army of Saddam Hussein, it created an explosive situation.

Now that reflects deep cultural ignorance. So what the United States and the West should be sensitive to is to ensure that they don't give cause for the radical Muslim agenda to be supported.

How can the media break out of a worldview that has shaped the understanding of most of the journalists inside it? In the next part of this episode, we'll dive into two more contexts from the Middle East to ask where and why those worldviews diverge from the West's, and how all this ties in to the war on terror. That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. ♪

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Welcome back to the studio and to MediaStorm, the podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. This week, we are looking at the fine political line between terrorism and resistance and how the mainstream media should tiptoe that line. And with us are very special guests. The first guest is our very own teacher of journalism. That's right, before becoming director of international journalism studies at City, University of London, where many, including Matilda and I, learned our craft. She's a professor at the University of London,

Thank you.

Thank you so much. How does it feel, yeah, being questioned by your former students? I just feel at home, actually. Oh, good. And our second guest is also an author. He is the man behind The Lightless Sky, an Afghan refugee boy's journey of escape to a new life.

Among a number of impressive positions, he has been president of the United Afghan Peace Movement and chairperson of the Afghan Youth Movement, advocating for refugee youth since his own political exodus from Afghanistan in 2006. He was shortlisted for the Nansen Refugee Award by the UN High Commission for Refugees and has spoken across news outlets online.

on displacement and immigration policy. Thank you for joining us, Gulwale Pasale. - Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. - Thank you. So in the first half of this episode, we heard from and about military groups that have been seen by their communities as resistance fighters, but labelled internationally as terrorists, while engaging in many of the same tactics as the official armies and governments that they oppose.

And we want to start with a theoretical talk about some of the language and imagery that dominates this topic in the international press. Zahira, this is why we invited you on. So among your publications is a book called Channels of Resistance in Lebanon, which looks at perceptions of Hezbollah and the role of international and national media in propaganda. Now, for any listeners who don't know, Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and military group. It was founded in Lebanon in the wake of

of the 1982 war when Israel invaded. The group opposes Israeli and Western attempts to exert influence in the region with a mantra of anti-colonialism and Islamic nationalism. It has been designated in part or in full a terrorist group by much of the international community, including the US, EU, UK, and Arab League. However, within Lebanon, it

won the single biggest share of the votes in the 2022 general election. Just to start off, maybe Zahira, would you tell us how can we understand this vast difference in perception of Hezbollah within Lebanon and without it? First of all, can I just say that Israel occupation of parts of Lebanon started in 78 and lasted till 2000.

So you have a long period of occupation presence in some parts of the country. So during that time, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist group by the United States only. The EU, UK did not see it at that time as a terrorist group.

This whole notion of Hezbollah being identified or classified as a terrorist group came into existence in the wake of the Syrian uprising. At the time when Hezbollah fighters took part in fighting alongside the Assad regime, the Baath regime in Syria. And later on also,

aiding the rebels in the Houthis in Yemen. Post-2011, really, when we started seeing that shift in the terrorism label, it contradicted the fact that Hezbollah is a political party in Lebanon. They have their military faction.

In Lebanon, they still have a lot of popularity. Hezbollah has actually established collaboration alliances across the spectrum, different religious sects, different political parties in the country stand with Hezbollah on the kind of front that you talked about, the anti-imperialist, the idea that we don't want foreign entity to come and dictate power.

what, you know, the people of Lebanon should be doing or how they should be running their country. So you cannot actually speak about Lebanese politics without including Hezbollah as a major political player in the country. So would it be fair to say that within Lebanon, Hezbollah is viewed primarily as a resistance group rather than an Islamist group?

It's both. For them, these two identities actually do not contradict each other. They are one for them. How did you balance this whilst you were reporting? When your own country was facing this occupation, how did you remain impartial?

I wasn't impartial. So let's take it from there. So I reported between 1991, you know, throughout to 2000, basically. And there was two major Israeli assaults on Lebanon in 93 and in 96. And it's the time when you feel like you can't be impartial. You are a journalist, you are a reporter covering what's happening, you are an eyewitness.

but you are also a citizen experiencing the same horror that is inflicted on your own people by a foreign military force. So in these kind of situations, there's never a question of am I impartial, am I not impartial? The question would have been at that time, are we telling the truth?

It's reporting the facts. Being factual was more important to us than this whole idea of impartiality and objectivity. So these traditional journalistic values of impartiality and of non-intervention, do you think these principles need to be rethought then when reporting on conflicts that are inherently unequal? The answer is yes.

So actually, this is something that I have been arguing for some time now. We are taught about objectivity. We are told about journalism norms and values. And it's the same values that are inherited from the Western doctrine of understanding what journalism is about, right? But then, you know, what does objectivity mean in the context of having this foreign military force involved?

inflicting harm on your own people? And that question stayed with me. You know, someone accused me at one point that I teach my students not to be objective. You're here, you can tell me. I don't teach them not to be objective. What I actually do is I try to critically push them to think and to question the

And then decide for themselves, you know, what do they understand of the meaning of objectivity in, you know, context that they are not used, context outside liberal democracies. Do you consider that someone reporting in Ukraine now not being an objective journalist?

Are Ukrainian journalists now asked to be objective journalists in a sense that do they have to be objective? You know, all these questions actually came back to me with the Ukrainian conflict. Yeah. You know, I'm watching and I'm thinking,

This is how it should be covered. Right, because there's not been any kind of pretense of non-partisan perspective. And outside Ukraine, I mean, within our media and most of the Western media, the position has very clearly been in opposition to Russia and in solidarity with Ukraine. We've had the language of the media being really suggestive. I mean, even with Ukrainian military forces that have historically been depicted in Western press as pro-Russian,

terrorist threats such as the Azov Battalion, which has been reported in Western media before as a kind of breeding ground for new Nazi ideology. Since the Russian invasion, the language has been exclusively, these are resistance groups, these are resistance fighters, and the Russian army has been described as an invading force, and the war has been described as an illegal invasion. So do you approve of this use of language in the Western press?

Yes. Yeah. Yes. And a kind of is it a mighty force invading? Yes. Do they have the right to invade? No. And I'm saying this and I'm thinking of Lebanon. We are an independent state. We were invaded. OK. And at that time in the 90s, when I was I did for for a year and a half, I did freelance reporting for BBC Arabic from from Beirut.

And for the sake of impartiality, I was asked not to refer to the military operation against Israeli soldiers, you know, occupying soldiers in South Lebanon as resistance. Wow. So I had to call them militias.

Wow. I'm just going back into my own reporting. And it was all for the sake of impartiality. So I was always given a lesson in we need to be impartial. We need to be objective. So we need to stay away from terminology that is controversial. My position in this.

is more towards like, let's look at it as a positive move. You really need to apply the same thing that you have applied to Ukraine to other conflicts. That's my, what I want to do is take this conversation, this argument forward and say, let's apply this to other conflicts.

This is where we lose Zahira, but thank you so much for teaching us once again. Do you have a takeaway message for our listeners before you go? I just want to say thank you so much for having me and your testimony, the fact that I don't teach my students not to be objective. Just to be critical, rightly so. Be critical and question all the time. Thank you.

We would love to know your reflections on the conversation we just had, Gulwale, given that the Western news media is very clear positioning on conflict in your own native country, Afghanistan. Now, the Taliban takeover was described as a tragedy. The

The Sunni militant political movement being defined as a terrorist group by countries like Canada, Russia and the UAE and widely seen in alliance with terrorist groups, although it defines itself legitimately as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Do you approve of the tone of Western reporting on events in Afghanistan? Or do you see hypocrisy? I feel like there's both. I feel like the Western media have, the way things have been described, the way things have happened, especially in the last two years, and there has been some media trying to soften its stand on the Taliban. And in the last 20 years, it was a different story. And I feel the Afghan people have suffered because of these. These are not just words. These are not just language. This has consequences.

So they were saying there's 20 terrorist groups in Afghanistan. They were spending billions and trillions in the country. We lost 190,000 people, 75,000 security forces for what? In the name of fighting terrorism. And then suddenly some of these guys who were supposedly terrorists, the country was handed over to them. We saw the British forces and American forces at Kabul airport whilst the Taliban was walking into Kabul. So it just contradicts the whole thing. What was the point of...

occupying and invading Afghanistan in the first place. Of course, we hear about Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 and so on. There are good reasons for the West to go into Afghanistan, but the way they have stayed there, the way they have described the situation and how the Afghans went through the situation, you know, suffering and now we have abandoned and betrayed them. The West realized the seriousness of the situation that the Taliban

where they told the NATO countries or the West that, you know, you have your watches and we have the time. So they realised there was no point continuing this unwinnable fight. So the West was trying to change its language. And change the narrative. It seems to me that often the difference between what we see as terrorist and what we see as legitimate isn't the military tactics of that group, it's the politics.

You know, the narrative on the Taliban can change very quickly and it's not got very much to do with the nature of that group. It's got more to do with the US's foreign policy agenda. And I have a really good example, I think, which came to my mind, and that's female Kurdish fighters

From the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011, Kurdish women fought ISIS alongside men, even establishing their own women's defense unit. And this earned them pride of place in Western media. We had stories of beautiful, strong, badass Kurdish women. You know, the Daily Mail called them inspirational and incredibly brave. CNN chose them as the most inspirational women of the year in 2014. And yet,

In a different context, when they're fighting Turkey, they were seen and described as, quote, murderers with highlights. Now the PKK or Kurdistan Workers' Party is labelled a terrorist organisation by Turkey and many Western governments for its resistance to Turkey and against what the PKK would describe as Turkish attempts to ethnically cleanse their communities. So this serves to show, I think, just how arbitrary and political Turkey

the language is. That's a very good summary. And indeed, this is the issue. We say what suits us. The people who are fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were freedom fighters, my father included. They were the Mujahideen. And then the same Mujahideen who were fighting the US was labeled as terrorists. So it's like, it depends who is fighting who in that context. And so there is no agreed definition.

We've been speaking of double standards and something we've heard from sources who grew up in Iraq or surrounding countries is that local communities who have witnessed U.S. shellings and civilian killings often consider U.S. activity in those regions to be terrorist. Is that something you have heard or come across? And what does that say to listeners who may have never encountered those testimonies?

Completely. I agree. I think the U.S., what the U.S. has done in Iraq and as well as Afghanistan, they have terrorized people. I've lost a loved one. My loved one was killed by the U.S. forces. So I saw and I still see the U.S. actions in Afghanistan, in Iraq and elsewhere as terrorist activities and terrorist involvement because you can't have it both ways. You can't say, you know, we're here to help and support you, but those who make a stand against are terrorists. So it doesn't make sense. If the U.S. were...

handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban and kind of legitimizing them and giving them mandate through negotiations and treating them as a government inviting. They should have done this 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Money of the Afghan civilians will still be safe. The Afghans were taken out of a cage and then put back in a cage 20 years later. So it's like if you don't experience freedom, you wouldn't know how it feels like and how it tastes like. So although I appreciate the fact we had opportunities, but it was underpinned by the occupation.

So you know when people say about the British Empire, look, we have built railways and we have built this and that. Yes, you might have done some good, although that was for your own good, that was for your own selves. But that does not justify, the end does not justify the mean. An empire is a bad thing. This idea that we are superior, we have to teach you how to be civilized. In the same way, the U.S. has done a lot of good in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that doesn't mean anything to me because the way it was done.

I think that's all we have time for. Thank you so much for joining us today. You've given us, oh my God, so much to think about. And although it's been a heavy topic, it's been a pleasure having you. Thank you for doing what you do, guys. And it's nice to see you both. Can you tell listeners where they can follow you and whether you have anything to

Yeah, people can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. It's Gulwale Pasarlai. And I would love for people to read my book to get a full context of, you know, Afghanistan refugees and why I came and how I came, what happened here. So The Lightless Care has a lot more information. I encourage people to be critical thinkers. As we heard, you know, we can't really be objective all the time. We can be subjective. Our own upbringing, our surrounding environment makes us who we are. But ultimately, we all capable of showing kindness in humanity.

Thank you for listening and for seeing us through to our season finale. If you value what we do, please consider sponsoring us on Patreon by following the link in the show notes. While we may be wrapping up for winter, there is a huge back catalogue of fascinating topics and testimonies on our feed. So have a scroll and see what else pricks your interest.

And though our next season is scheduled for the new year, we may pop back in the feed with some current affairs commentary and special investigations beforehand. So make sure you turn on notifications for the show. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcasts so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop.

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Hello, I'm Mark Still, and each week I look at the world and ask the question, what the fuck is going on? To help me answer my question, each week I'm joined by guests like Caroline Lucas, Jason Manford, and James O'Brien. Plus there are contributors such as our very own George Galloway. Let me put it to you, Justin Bieber. Nadine Boris. You shithousey little shithouse. And broadcasting legend...

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