BBC propaganda. posted by Richard Seymour

Ordinarily, I skate over gibberish and bias in the news with a snarl of irritation while trying to find the useful material. But the report of the execrable Jalal Talabani's desire to form Shi'ite and Kurdish 'militias' to deal with the insurgency is jaw-dropping. Talabani has an abominable human rights record from the period in which he ran half of the northern 'safe zone' in Iraq during the 1990s. His politics are disgracefully sectarian, and the attempt to set Sunni against Shi'ite and Kurd could be seen in the context of that. Yet, the BBC chooses to frame Talabani's recommendations in terms of a commitment to human rights, noting that:

If Saddam Hussein is to go to the gallows, as many of his erstwhile foes insist he must, his death sentence will have to be endorsed by the new Iraqi presidency.

But Mr Talabani, a lawyer and human rights advocate who has always opposed capital punishment, made it clear that his principles would not allow him to sign such a document, despite all the suffering the Baathist regime had inflicted on his Kurdish community.

"Personally, no, I won't sign," he said.

It is often difficult to gauge the proclivities of the various leaders and would-be leaders emerging in the 'new Iraq', since they have no record. Mr Talabani is different, however. He has form. He has a record. During his governance of one half of Iraqi Kurdistan, he had cause to be involved in a civil war with the other half of power in the Kurdish Regional Government, controlled by Massoud Barzani's KDP. It was a dispute originating from control of land, borders and money, but it swiftly took on dimensions of extraordinary cruelty. Talabani deployed his peshmerga in alliance with the Iranian security forces, who in return for their support insisted that he clamp down on Iranian Kurds seeking refuge in his territory. The Iranians, you see, had their own 'Kurdish problem'. To that end, Talabani procured an agreement from those Iranian Kurds that they would cease hostile activities against Iran. What they were not to know when they signed was that Talabani, in pursuit of his war for land and power against Barzani's equally brutal KDP, would allow the Iranian security services to capture, torture and brutally kill his erstwhile comrades.

Talabani is described as a great foe of Hussein. Yet, when his fellow Kurds were butchered by Saddam's army and mukhabarat, Talabani decided to go and make a deal with Saddam. A picture of him kissing the cheek of his apparent enemy can be found in Dilip Hiro's Desert Shield, Desert Storm. Barzani is no better. When Talabani brought in the Iranians to assist his side in the civil war, Barzani invited Saddam's forces to come and kill his fellow Kurds if they happened to be supporters of the PUK. In exchange, Saddam was also allowed to crush non-Kurdish dissidents based in the north. If any judgement fits Talabani, it is that he is an unprincipled opportunist who has, along with Barzani, given terrible leadership to his people. But a supporter of human rights? Irony must have gone to the moon for a day.

The BBC's preference for government-friendly information was also revealed in a recent exchange with MediaLens over claims of the use of banned weapons by US forces in Fallujah. In a Newswatch article over the issue, Helen Boaden of the BBC claimed:

"Compellingly, Paul Wood has had meetings with the relevant specialists at Human Rights Watch, who have been very tough on the US military as regards abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Paul asked them specifically about banned weapons in Falluja. They said they had heard the claims, had made some investigations, and had found no evidence that such weapons had been used."

Now, read on to see what Human Rights Watch said about that claim.