|
URL for this article is
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/redcross.htm
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive
about one article/day.
Click here to email the link to this
article to a friend.
tenc.net
[Emperor's
Clothes]
=======================================
Red
Cross Spokesmen Refute Pentagon Lies
Interview by Jared Israel [1 November
2001]
=======================================
Introductory Note: There has been much news
coverage of the U.S. bombing - twice! - of Red Cross humanitarian
warehouses in Kabul. Afghanistan.
Yet, while Pentagon spokesmen such as Gen. Richard Myers and Donald
Rumsfeld have been interviewed and widely quoted, we have seen only one
interview with a Red Cross spokesmen; that was on Canadian TV.
The general thrust of media coverage is that the Red Cross was hit
because it is right next to some military facilities, or even that its
warehouses had been taken over by the Taliban.
So on 31 October I called Red Cross headquarters in Geneva and spoke to
two officials.
Please feel free to repost or reprint the following interview in any
media, giving credit to www.tenc.net,
and without altering the text.
Here is the transcript.
-- JI
Jared Israel: The warehouses that have been bombed, are they in an
isolated area or are there many other warehouses right there?
Christoph Luedi: We had this warehouse which is our compound on its own
with these buildings inside and a wall around. So it is separate.
Jared Israel: You have a wall around?
Christoph Luedi: Yeah, it's five buildings; the compound has a wall
around; it's a compound on its own. At least two of the buildings had a
red cross on the top. There are three buildings in a row and then there
are two; they are very close together. As far as we know, one building is
still intact. One has been hit in the first bombardment. Two have been hit
in the second and the other caught fire.
Jared Israel: There is a news story from CNBC [29 October], they say:
"Also, there was an interesting case on Friday where the US--American
warplanes hit a Red Cross food warehouse twice. Now initially, it was
said that that was hit by mistake. However today, senior military
officials tell us that that Red Cross warehouse was hit on purpose
because it was seized by the Taliban, who was stealing all that food."
Is that a true statement or false?
Christoph Luedi: This we can confirm is not correct because we started
four days before the bombardment to distribute food out of these
warehouses to disabled-headed families, a distribution which started on
Tuesday and should have been ongoing until Sunday. This distribution was
notified to the Americans especially in light of, because we distributed
to different districts and this leads to a massing of people and we wanted
to keep them [the Americans] informed that the massing people was linked
to our distributions.
Jared Israel: And that involved the massing of people to receive the
food?
Christoph Luedi: But not around the warehouses. We load it on trucks
the day before. We load it, and then we bring it to the different
districts in Kabul where we distribute. So we gave a plan of distribution
to the Americans, we say, "On Tuesday the distribution is in this
district, District 1, these and these are the distribution spots, on
Wednesday these and these districts and so many beneficiaries, on
Thursday, on Saturday and on Sunday." And this is where they get this
information.
But we were using this food through our own channels. That means we had
the control over this warehouse. The only thing there was security around
the building, our own security and an extremely limited number from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs to give us protection because after the first
bombing we were afraid of looting so we had to negotiate. So we said OK,
we want to do a distribution but we need to keep this material. And the
Taliban said, OK, fair enough, that's your warehouse.
[At this point Mr. Luedi consulted with another gentleman nearby; this
was John Wurt, a Red Cross specialist in logistics.]
Christoph Luedi: He [i.e., Mr. Wurt] is logistician who visits
regularly and he has a clear picture. As I said it is a compound; you go
through a gate. The compound is quite big. We used it for jogging. And he
confirms that it is fairly alone [i.e., isolated].
Jared Israel: Could I talk to him for a sec? Is that OK?
John Wurt: Hello.
Jared Israel: Hi. So, there's a fair amount of space between the wall
around the compound and the other buildings in the general area?
John Wurt: As I remember there aren't buildings around in
the general area. There's kind of a residential area as you go down the
road to the compound and then there's nothing much around as I remember
and then you go through the gate into the compound and
basically it's open field all around.
Jared Israel: So this is really a Red Cross compound; this isn't a
complex of warehouses that the Red Cross has some food in?
John Wurt: No, no, no, we had the whole compound. There's a series of,
I think there was five chambers, some food some non-food, then we had some
other material stored in containerized material that wasn't stuff we were
using on a regular basis. But nobody else's stuff was in our compound. It
was solely for the use of the Red Cross.
Jared Israel: The Red Cross has a policy of non-discrimination, right?
You give out the food irrelevant of whose people are getting it, based on
need?
Christoph Luedi: Yeah, sure.
Jared Israel: Do you think they [the U.S. command] object to that?
Christoph Luedi: I will not speculate on the reasons why this happened
because I don't have the information and that's not my job. Our job is to
try and continue our work within Afghanistan.
Jared Israel: OK. But you do have this non-discrimination policy. That
is a true statement?
Christoph Luedi: OK, but humanitarian work should be that, not only of
the Red Cross but also of others.
Jared Israel: But that is not always true, right?
Christoph Luedi: Probably not but I will not judge others. But we work
together in a conflict with all parties to the conflict, and we are in
contact with the Americans; we are in contact with the Taliban, with
Northern Alliance, with Pakistan, to discuss what we are doing, why we are
doing it and remind them of their obligations within the international
humanitarian law. That's our job that we have to do with all parties.
Jared Israel: Thank you for speaking to me.
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
Further
Reading:
= = = = = = = = = == = =
(1) Congressman:
U.S. Set Up Anti-Taliban to be Slaughtered.
Excerpts from a most revealing
Congressional hearing with comments by Jared Israel. Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/misc/rohr.htm
(2) 'Did Pakistan
Pay WTC Terrorists?'
by Jared Israel. Can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/misc/isi.htm
(3) "'Bin Laden, Terrorist Monster.' Take Two!"
Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/taketwo.htm#c
(4) Washington's Pakistani Allies: Drug Dealers,
Killers
By Rahul Bedi in
New Delhi Can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/allies.htm
5) To provide more information about the terrorist assault
on Macedonia, sponsored by NATO under Washington's direction, we have
posted a list of relevant articles with brief descrptions. See, 'Washington
and its Partners are Waging a Proxy War in Macedonia' at http://emperors-clothes.com/mac/list-m.htm
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive
about one article/day.
Click here to email the link to this article to a
friend.
=======================================
Emperor's Clothes Needs Your
Help!
=======================================
On 18 September about 100,000
readers transferred more than 1.7 gigabytes of data from Emperor's
Clothes. That's the equivalent of around 1.5 million pages in printed
books.
As you may know, the Website was
"down" for about four hours that day. Because of the current crisis, we
are strained beyond capacity.
We recently hired a full time
computer person. He has partly finished remodeling the Website so it loads
more quickly and is easier to use. We hope you find these changes useful.
Now we need to complete the makeover and improve our technical facilities
to meet the huge increase in demand for bandwidth.
Emperor's Clothes does not charge
money for articles. We rely on donations.
Many of our readers have
contributed in the past. This has allowed us to function. Now we need
contributions from everyone who finds Emperor's Clothes useful so we can
pay our (overworked, underpaid) computer helper and make technical
improvements so that all our articles are available all the
time.
Please send whatever
contributions you can! $20, $50, $100, $500, $1000 or more. Every penny
will be used to get articles to more people.
Note: If you mail a donation or make one by
secure server, please let us know by email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] to make sure we
receive it. Thanks!
Thank you for reading Emperor's Clothes.
www.emperors-clothes.com or
tenc.net
[Emperor's Clothes]
![]()
Red Cross Compound in Kabul, described by Mr. Wurt
in interview
Return to
interview
"Local people watch as smoke rises from the International
Red Cross compound after it was hit during a U.S. air raid on the Afghan
capital of Kabul October 16, 2001. While the United States conducted its
heaviest bombing of the nine-day air war, there were signs of unease
around the world that civilians were being caught in the air raids."
(Picture and caption from REUTERS/Sayed Salahuddin) CLICK
HERE to return to Red Cross
Interview | 
