Mark Steyn is a decent man who values human life,
but I suggest he is wrong to describe me as gullible
STEPHEN GLOVER
There is unhappiness in the snowy wastes of New Hampshire. My item last week about the civilian war-dead in Afghanistan has upset my cherished colleague Mark Steyn. Readers may remember my pointing out that the official death toll for the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September now stands at fewer than 3,000, under half the highest estimate used by many politicians. I also remarked that Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire had worked up some figures which suggest that as many as 4,000 Afghan civilians may have been killed by American bombs.
The mention of Mr Herold's name caused a good deal of eye-rolling and headshaking in the snowy wastes. In an article in the Daily Telegraph, our friend Mark did not address the way in which American and British politicians have exaggerated the number of people murdered in the World Trade Center, but went for Mr Herold's jugular. He ridiculed him for being a professor of economics and women's studies, and judged that his figures are 'complete bunk, full of dubious sources and conflated numbers', producing a few examples in an attempt to prove his point. Why, even Human Rights Watch had put 'civilian fatalities [in Afghanistan] at about 1,000'. The prof was way off the radar. and I was 'gullible' for attaching any credence to him.
Actually Mark is wrong about Human Rights Watch. According to a spokesman in London, the organisation has so far deliberately avoided any estimates for the number of civilians killed by American bombing in Afghanistan. 'We're very cross with Mark Steyn,' she says, 'We've never released figures for civilian fatalities in Afghanistan, nor have we speculated. It's all utterly made-up.' Was it possible, I asked — mindful of Mark's Americo-centric view of the world and his likely suspicion that the London office is a provincial offshoot of Human Rights Watch — that the New York arm would have offered its own statistics? No, it was not possible.
What is true of Human Rights Watch appears to be true of every similar organisation. Amnesty International has not produced its own estimates. Human Rights Watch will eventually do so, as it did after the bombing of Kosovo, but there is a lot of sifting and weighing of figures to be done. Besides, the American bombing still goes on, and Afghan civilians are still being killed. So far as I can see, the only person in the world who has produced a comprehensive toll of civilian dead is Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire.
I suppose it is quite funny that Mr Herold is a professor of women's studies, but that does not make him wrong. My own prejudices were stirred on reading in his voluminous and highly detailed report the throwaway phrase 'the war waged by Britain upon Northern Ireland'. Mr Herold is plainly a lefty, as well as a critic of America's bombing of Afghanistan. But while it may be wise to note where he is coming from, the proof of the pudding is surely in the eating. His report strikes me as being surprisingly lucid for an American academic, and measured and balanced in its tone. It is certainly not the work of a madman or fanatic. And it is, I stress again, all we have, It is the only game in town, No doubt Mr Herald's methodology is open to criticism — he may rely too heavily on Indian and Pakistani newspaper reports, and rather implausibly invests the Times of India with the authority and dependability of the New York Times — but I do not see how Mark can dismiss his report as 'complete bunk'.
How can he be so certain that so many fewer people have died in Afghanistan than the professor estimates? He offers no counter proof other than to cite, incorrectly, Human Rights Watch, and to take rather inconclusive issue with a few examples among the hundreds which Mr Herold mentions. Mark cannot deny that there have been dozens of reported incidents of Afghan civilian deaths, and that in many cases those making the reports have worked for reputable media organisations. How can he know that 4,000 people have not died? Well, obviously he can't — any more than I can know that they have. My only explanation is that he is a sensitive, decent man who values human life and recognises that the deaths of thousands of innocent Afghans, if they occurred, might damage the pro-war cause — especially given the declining number of World Trade Center dead and America's failure so far to capture Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants. If Mark were a real extremist, a complete out-and-out rightwing purist, he would argue something to the effect that while the deaths of thousands of civilians would be regrettable, it is a price that may have to be paid in the worldwide fight against terror. This is not what he says. Nor is it what the American government says, now or during the bombing of Kosovo. During that campaign it continually underestimated the number of people inadvertently killed by 'collateral damage'. Since the Kosovo war reputable organisations have estimated that between 500 and 1,500 civilians died as a result of the bombing, many more than Nato was prepared to admit at the time. So it is with the Americans and Afghanistan. On several occasions US government spokesmen have obfuscated or stonewalled when presented with figures of apparent civilian casualties. For example, after the United Nations reported that 52 civilians had been killed on 29 December at Niazi Kala in eastern Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, took refuge in his habitual evasive gobbledegook. 'The reality is that there were multiple intelligence sources that qualified that target, and there were multiple secondary explosions out of that target.' He added, 'I can't imagine a conflict in history where there has been less collateral damage, less unintended consequences.'
There is a numbers game going on, and Mark is part of it. As I have pointed out before, American and British politicians have consistently suggested that more people died in the World Trade Center than they should have known was the case. Now, on the other side of the gruesome equation, the American government and its more uncritical supporters in the media are straining every muscle to minimise the number of civilian casualties. There is a brutal calculus here. We'll never know for sure exactly how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan. But if, in a month or two or three, neutral parties should suggest that as many Afghan civilians have been killed by US bombs (let alone those who died from mass starvation made worse by the war) as Americans were murdered on 11 September, there will be some explaining to do. The explaining will be all the more challenging if Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are still free to plan further murderous attacks. One proper defence the American government can make is to point out that Osama bin Laden caused deaths deliberately while it has done so inadvertently. There is obviously a huge distinction. Nevertheless, as one set of figures comes down and the other goes up, it is impossible to duck these questions. Was this a just war? Was it even a sensible one?
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