AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now! in Exile's _War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In our next hour, we’re also going to look at the media. And we’re joined by Janine Jackson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, who can just give us a glimpse of what this — what you’re focusing on now.

JANINE JACKSON: Well, the sorts of things you’re talking about on this show, Amy, are, unfortunately, the sorts of things we’re not hearing in the mainstream media at large. The first casualty of war is the truth. We remember that. That was from California Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917 at the onset of World War I. The Washington Times updated that quote for their page-one headline on September 17th, which read, “Wartime Presidential Powers Supersede Liberties: Censorship, Martial Law Allowed.” So we’re going to talk about some of the restrictions that are going to be placed on the media. They’re announced. They’re saying they’re going to do it. They’re saying, “We’re going to lie to reporters.”

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to talk about that in our second hour. But right now we go to Peshawar. The United Nations has launched an unprecedented operation to prepare for a “massive crisis” in Afghanistan as people scramble to escape feared U.S.-led military attacks. U.N. high commissioner for refugees spokesperson Peter Kessler told reporters yesterday that an emergency contingency operation in neighboring Pakistan is the biggest in the agency’s history.

We turn now to Gordon Weiss of UNICEF in Islamabad.

Welcome to The War and Peace Report.

GORDON WEISS: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what is unfolding? What don’t Americans understand about what’s happening up to, what, to up to a million Afghans?

GORDON WEISS: Well, what is unfolding is what has been unfolding for the past three years. We’re at the culminating point, I suppose, of three years of severe drought. We have unknown numbers of people moving inside the country. I say unknown because we can’t really formulate a clear picture of what’s happening since our communications links with national staff inside Afghanistan have been cut, and journalists and aid workers outside Afghanistan can’t get inside to form a clear picture. But what we can guess is that people who have already been suffering from drought this summer, a very terrible drought that has depopulated villages, are on the move, with the additional — with the additional problem of fear, fear of military intervention.

AMY GOODMAN: There is very little understanding, certainly before what has developed over the last two weeks, of Afghanistan. Can you talk about why it is that the people face starvation?

GORDON WEISS: Well, there’s been no water in Central Asia for the last three years, so they can’t water crops. And, of course, that becomes chronic. It means that their [inaudible], their fruit trees are basically dying now, shriveling and dying. So there’s really long-term damage and long-term — long-term famine conditions being created. And, of course, you know, Afghanistan has been seen for years as being a bit of a basket case. So, UNICEF, for example, had to borrow $5 million using an internal U.N. instrument just to be able to prepare for this winter in Afghanistan. And we’re talking about numbers of recipients, aid recipients, in Afghanistan in the region of 5.5 million people.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Gordon Weiss. He’s speaking to us in Islamabad. We’re also going to try right now to go to Peshawar, where Yusuf Hassan is standing by. He is just coming out of a major news conference of hundreds of reporters, U.N. high commissioner for refugees for Afghanistan.

Welcome to Democracy Now! in Exile. Hello? Are you with us?

YUSUF HASSAN: I’m just going to finish a call, and I’ll be with you. I’m on a call. I’ll just finish —

AMY GOODMAN: Yusuf Hassan?

YUSUF HASSAN: [inaudible] Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: Yusuf Hassan, can you hear us?

YUSUF HASSAN: I’ll be back in a minute. Yes, I can hear you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what you just spoke about at your news conference?

YUSUF HASSAN: Well, we are just preparing on the ground for a major influx from Afghanistan. And we are working with the government of Pakistan, nongovernmental organization and other U.N. agencies to be able to be ready in case there’s a major influx into the neighboring countries. And at the moment, we do expect the conditions in Afghanistan to deteriorate because of the long-running conflict, as well as the drought and the thousands and thousands of people who have been on the move out of the cities into the rural areas because of fear of attacks in the past few days.

AMY GOODMAN: What needs to be done right now?

YUSUF HASSAN: Well, we’re expecting up to a million-point-five people to flee Afghanistan into the neighboring countries. So what we need is that — large amounts of food, tents, blankets, soaps and other material assistance that will be required by people who are coming exhausted and hungry, and who are going to come into the neighboring countries with nothing at all — nothing at all —

AMY GOODMAN: Yusuf Hassan — I just want to —

YUSUF HASSAN: — and who need all the assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: Yusuf Hassan, I just want to ask if — Gordon Weiss, if there’s a TV there in the background, if you could turn it down, because we’re having a hard time hearing.

GORDON WEISS: Yeah, look, I’m standing in a lobby, unfortunately, so —

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, OK.

GORDON WEISS: — there are people around.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could cover your hand — if you could put your hand over the speaker then, when you’re not talking, so we can —

GORDON WEISS: How’s that?

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you very much. Go ahead, Yusuf Hassan.

YUSUF HASSAN: Well, all kinds of assistance will be required, because this would be a massive displacement if it takes place. We already know that huge numbers of people are on the move, and then, therefore — and the countries that they’re coming into — Pakistan and Iran — simply do not have the capacity to cope with such a large number of people, and that this is why there is a very urgent need for the donor community, the international community, to be able to rise for the assistance of these victims of the Afghan situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Are people expressing fear of being bombed?

YUSUF HASSAN: Well, certainly, the reason why people are getting away from the cities and into the countryside and into the neighboring countries are obviously a fear that something is going to happen. They have been listening to the radio stations, and particularly to the BBC, that broadcasts to Afghanistan, and they know that something is going to happen. But nobody knows to what extent and where it may be happening. All they’re doing is taking their families and their children to safer places. And there’s no other place to look for most of them other than into the neighboring countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Right now UNICEF, as well as United Nations high commissioner for refugees, you’ve pulled your aid workers out of Afghanistan, is that right?

YUSUF HASSAN: Yes. All the U.N. agencies have had to withdraw their staff, international staff, from Afghanistan because of the security situation. They have been withdrawn to neighboring Pakistan, where they are in Islamabad.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask this question to both of you, Yusuf Hassan, who is with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees for Afghanistan, speaking from Peshawar, and Gordon Weiss with UNICEF in Islamabad. There is almost no coverage of this in the United States. What would you say to the U.S. government? Let’s start with Gordon Weiss in Islamabad.

GORDON WEISS: Well, it’s difficult to send a message to the United States. The United States has actually been a generous donor to Afghanistan. And a large amount of the aid, for example, that was instrumental in enabling us and WHO, the World Health Organization, to begin immunizing up to 5 million children this last weekend, a large proportion of that donation came from the United States. It’s not surprising that the grief and terror being felt by Afghanis is being ignored in the wake of the bombings in Washington and New York. But, you know, given time, people will understand that this is not just a military exercise, that the lives of 20 million Afghanis hang in the balance here. And we’re just going to have to wait for that to happen. We’re just going to have to wait for people to see the unfolding tragedy.

AMY GOODMAN: How are you getting food and other aid to people inside Afghanistan?

GORDON WEISS: Well, we have — we have supplies inside Afghanistan, which have been prepositioned, supplies that we prepositioned prior to the 7th of — prior to the 11th of September. And our national staff inside Afghanistan are still distributing those supplies. The thing is that, in common with the World Food Programme, those prepositioned supplies are rapidly dwindling. You know, we work on the basis that we move supplies into the country on a constant basis. Now the borders are closed. We can’t get anything into the country. We can barely get any information out of the country. So, what we’re doing, and what the agencies are planning for at the moment, is we’re planning for cross-border operations. We’re working on the presumption at the moment, as one of our contingency plans, that large numbers of people will move toward the borders. And if we can’t actually penetrate Afghanistan for whatever reason — let’s say there’s large-scale military activity going on there — at least we will be able to reach these people. So, to that end, UNICEF, at least, has got six flights leaving Denmark this week loaded with medical equipment, water supply equipment, rehydration salts for children with diarrheal diseases. And we’re positioning those in countries like Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iran and Pakistan and moving them up to border positions so that we will be able to reach people more easily from those positions.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Yusuf Hassan, from your position in Peshawar right now, we understand that the Taliban have confiscated U.N. supplies in Afghanistan. Is that true?

YUSUF HASSAN: Well, I am in the Pakistan side of the situation here. I am not in contact, or our organization is not in contact with any of the offices that we have in Afghanistan. Not much information is coming from there. All I can tell you is what is happening on this side, in which there’s a lot of anticipation and concern about the plight of many of the people who are trapped in between the major cities, where they have left, and the border areas, and who are massing up in some of the border areas but are unable to come in because the borders are closed. This is the biggest concern of people here. And that is what everyone here is focusing on and trying to see that we are ready when it happens and when they are about to come out, that we’re sure that we will lessen their suffering and we’ll be able to help them when we can. Those people who are in need of attention and assistance can receive that assistance once they arrive here in Pakistan or in neighboring Iran.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the Pakistani government saying why they’re not allowing people into Pakistan, while they’ve closed the borders and then sometimes open them?

YUSUF HASSAN: Well, all indications are that the Pakistani government is, in fact, anticipating an influx. They are working with us in preparing the ground. They have already said yes to the sites and the places where these people could be located once they come out. But one could say that they already host one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Pakistan hosts 2 million people, and this is an enormous burden on their economy and on their country and on their environment. And this is understandable, given the fact that there isn’t really much assistance coming in to support the Afghan refugees who are already here. That’s why we are assuring them that there will be more attention and more assistance coming in for those people who would be allowed. And I think they are convinced that it is necessary, at one time or another in the very near future, that they will be in a position to open their doors for people who need urgent assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: Gordon Weiss in Islamabad, what about the children?

GORDON WEISS: Well, the children — the women and children are the population at most risk at the moment in Afghanistan. We know that two weeks ago there were alarming levels of acute malnutrition, of acute respiratory diseases, of acute diarrheal diseases. If you add to that exposure undergone by children and women who are moving from area to area within Afghanistan looking for food, looking for shelter, and you take into account the fact that there has already been three years of drought in the country, you’re looking at terribly weak, frightened people. And the first among those are the children. Afghanistan already suffers with a child population with 50% malnutrition. I mean, 50% of all the kids in Afghanistan are malnutritioned in some form. One in every four children under the age of 5 dies before they reach 5. You know, there is a mother, a young mother, dying every 15 minutes after giving birth to children. I mean, the statistics are just horrendous. So, you add to that — you add to that the sort of borderline stresses of the types of things happening in Afghanistan now, the doubt and the lack of aid — because this is a country that has been living on aid for 20 years — you cut that lifeline all of a sudden, and it only takes a matter of weeks. As it is, we’re looking at a six-week window in which we will be able to ship supplies in to protect the Afghan population before winter sets in. Now, let’s just stop and imagine what’s going to be happening in those next six weeks, and you can understand how precarious the situation is for women and children particularly.

AMY GOODMAN: How much money is needed right now, not to mention the action that you feel has to be taken? I mean, if the U.S. said they weren’t going to bomb Afghanistan, would that alleviate the situation?

GORDON WEISS: Yes, of course, it would alleviate the situation. I mean, a lot of the responses taking place inside of Afghanistan are because the authorities there are acting as a country under siege. That’s why — that’s basically why our communications with national staff were cut several days ago. They didn’t want us sending any form of information outside the country. That’s not difficult to understand. In terms of money, you’re already talking about tens of million dollars, tens of millions of dollars. That’s money that we had budgeted just to protect the country this next winter. You know, U.N. agencies are busy putting together their appeals on the basis of whatever planning we can actually make at the moment, but it’s extremely difficult for us to plan. Just as media organizations can’t anticipate what’s going to happen, exactly the same thing applies to aid agencies. We’re working on contingencies. We’re working on trying to imagine the number of things that might happen in the next few months.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Gordon Weiss, I want to thank you very much for joining us, now in Islamabad, Pakistan, representing UNICEF; Yusuf Hassan, on the phone with us from Peshawar, Pakistan, with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. He is the area coordinator from Afghanistan.

And that does it for today’s program. If you’d like to write to us, send us email at mail@democracynow.org. That’s mail@democracynow.org. We have many people to thank for this unprecedented collaboration between television, radio and the internet, community broadcasters. Democracy Now! in Exile is produced by Kris Abrams, Brad Simpson and Miranda Kennedy; Anthony Sloan, our music maestro and engineer; Errol Maitland at the helm at WBIX.org. You can also hear us at webactive.com. Special thanks to Chase Pierson, Tony Riddle, Rick Jungers, Hoy No [phon.], Karen Ranucci, DeeDee Halleck, Tom Poole, Lenny Charles, and our hosts here at Downtown Community Television, Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno; also to Lizzy Ratner, Sam Delgado and Orlando Richards, our camerapeople. And thank you to Pacifica stations, especially KPFA and Pacifica affiliate KFCF in Fresno, all our affiliates around the country. We are Pacifica. Broadcasting from the historic firehouse of Engine 31 in Chinatown, in the evacuation zone, in exile from the embattled studios of WBAI, the studios of the banned and the fired, from the studios of our listeners, I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening. Stay with us for our second hour.

[end of Hour 1]

From Ground Zero Radio, this is Democracy Now! in Exile.

President Bush pressures Congress for authority to waive all existing restrictions on U.S. military assistance and weapons exports to U.S. allies for the next five years, including human rights-abusing nations. In a victory for the people of Park Slope, a thwarting of the Giuliani administration’s attempts to close their firehouse after 12 of their firefighters were killed in the World Trade Center attack. Will civil liberties and privacy be sacrificed by the Bush administration’s new anti-terrorism laws? And we’ll look at Bush’s hastily prepared package, which could greatly expand police powers.

All that and more, coming up.

We say peace! War! Peace! War! Peace! They say war! We say peace! War! Peace! War! Peace! They say war! We say peace! War! Peace! War! Peace! They say war! We say peace! War! Peace! War! Peace! They say war! We say peace! War! Peace! War! Peace! They say war! We say peace! War! Peace! War!

Welcome to Democracy Now! in Exile’s War and Peace Report, broadcasting just blocks from ground zero.

The United Nations has launched an unprecedented operation to prepare for a massive crisis in Afghanistan as people scramble to escape the feared U.S.-led military strikes. The U.N. high commissioner for refugees told AFP an emergency contingency operation in neighboring Pakistan is the biggest in the agency’s history. Crisis management specialists and equipment to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees were continuing to pour into Pakistan, on Afghanistan’s eastern border, amid reports that more than a million people could try to flee in the event of U.S. strikes.

And a group of Norwegian academics say that President George Bush should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize if he manages to avoid a war. The 12 university professors and other intellectuals nominated Bush in a Norwegian daily newspaper. They said their pacifist proposal was aimed to make the world think about ways of solving conflict without escalating violence.

President Bush launched a financial offensive against Osama bin Laden yesterday, freezing the assets of the Saudi exile’s organization and its sympathizers, while threatening foreign banks with the same treatment if they fail to cooperate with the U.S. initiative. The order froze the assets of 27 individuals and organizations suspected of links with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and other networks. It went further than a similar order issued by the Clinton administration, expanding the category of targeted groups to include all those, quote, “associated with designated terrorist groups.” The order also gave the Treasury Department the authority to freeze the U.S. assets and transactions of foreign banks which do not cooperate with the U.S.

President Bush yesterday backed off the administration’s pledge to quickly release evidence against Osama bin Laden. He said doing so could, quote, “make the war more difficult to win.” Secretary of State General Colin Powell, standing at Bush’s side, sent an entirely different signal a day earlier, when he said the administration in the near future will be able to release a document that, quote, “will describe quite clearly the evidence.” The ruling Taliban in Afghanistan has said it would hand over Osama bin Laden if the U.S. presented credible evidence of his guilt. Other countries have also urged the U.S. to use legal mechanisms in its quest for justice rather than military force.

The Air Line Pilots Association will ask Congress to allow pilots to carry guns in the cockpits of commercial airlines. John Mazur said the organization, which represents pilots at Delta Air Lines, will testify that some pilots want to be trained as armed federal officers. This would be strictly on a voluntary basis, Mazur said. Pilots would be trained and sworn in. Mazur said he sees arming pilots as a last resort for pilot safety and should be included among other options, such as modifying cockpit doors.

The Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to meet the foreign secretary of Britain, Jack Straw, following a 15-minute phone call between Sharon and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Sharon had earlier called off the meeting because of remarks Straw made in an article for an Iranian newspaper. The passage which caused offense said, “One of the factors that helps breed terror is the anger that many people in the region feel at events over the years in the Palestinian territories.” That was a quote of Britain’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw. Downing Street said the phone call took place this morning at the request of Sharon. Straw is today visiting Tehran as part of the U.S.-British effort to form an international coalition in the wake of the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The Israeli Foreign Ministry told British officials yesterday that it was Straw’s statement that could be interpreted as ascribing blame to Israel and is understanding for terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens.

Key legislators in Albany and New York City yesterday flatly rejected extending Mayor Giuliani’s term, even as members of the mayor’s inner circle split over whether he should try to remain in office past December 31st. The primary is today in New York for mayor of New York.

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: And I’m going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken. God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now. God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the War in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world. And I’m going to continue to say it.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Ray Charles, “Danger Zone,” following the Reverend Martin — Dr. Martin Luther King, here on Democracy Now! in Exile's War and Peace Report. We encourage you to call your community radio stations to air this daily, two-hour special, as we broadcast from the evacuation zone. We are at the historic firehouse Engine 31, just blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood. I'm Amy Goodman.