PETER HITCHENS: Amid the bombs of Aleppo, all you can hear are the lies
This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column
I AM the opposite of a war junkie. I loathe the sound of fireworks because they remind me of a bloody night in Lithuania in January 1991, where I lay down in dirty snow to save my skin from Soviet bullets. I was also frozen with fright in lawless, gang-ruled Mogadishu in December 1992, waiting for US marines to arrive.
In Bucharest at Christmas 1989, I crawled under the bed as tracer fire whizzed past my hotel-room window, and – because my long-delayed call home came through just then – I dictated my account of events to my wife. No heroics for me, thanks.
I was in all these dreadful places by accident. I never meant to be there. I take great care not to get caught in such things again.
But I learned a bit from it, mostly that the old cliche ‘the first casualty of war is truth’ is absolutely right, and should be displayed in letters of fire over every TV and newspaper report of conflict, for ever.
Almost nothing can be checked. You become totally reliant on the people you are with, and you identify with them.
If you can find a working phone, you will feel justified in shouting whatever you have got into the mouthpiece – as simple and unqualified as possible. And your office will feel justified in putting it on the front page (if you are lucky).
And that is when you are actually there, which is a sort of excuse for bending the rules.
In the past few days we have been bombarded with colourful reports of events in eastern Aleppo, written or transmitted by people in Beirut (180 miles away and in another country), or even London (2,105 miles away and in another world). There have, we are told, been massacres of women and children, people have been burned alive.
The sources for these reports are so-called ‘activists’. Who are they? As far as I know, there was not one single staff reporter for any Western news organisation in eastern Aleppo last week. Not one.
THIS is for the very good reason that they would have been kidnapped and probably murdered. The zone was ruled without mercy by heavily armed Osama Bin Laden sympathisers, who were bombarding the west of the city with powerful artillery (they frequently killed innocent civilians and struck hospitals, since you ask). That is why you never see pictures of armed males in eastern Aleppo, just beautifully composed photographs of handsome young unarmed men lifting wounded children from the rubble, with the light just right.
The women are all but invisible, segregated and shrouded in black, just as in the IS areas, as we saw when they let them out.
For reasons that I find it increasingly hard to understand or excuse, much of the British media refer to these Al Qaeda types coyly as ‘rebels’ (David Cameron used to call them ‘moderates’). But if they were in any other place in the world, including Birmingham or Belmarsh, they would call them extremists, jihadis, terrorists and fanatics. One of them, Abu Sakkar, famously cut out and sank his teeth into the heart of a fallen enemy, while his comrades cheered. This is a checked and verified fact, by the way.
Sakkar later confirmed it to the BBC, when Western journalists still had contact with these people, and there is film of it if you care to watch. There is also film of a Syrian ‘rebel’ group, Nour al-din al Zenki, beheading a 12-year-old boy called Abdullah Issa. They smirk a lot. It is on the behalf of these ‘moderates’ that MPs staged a wholly one-sided debate last week, and on their behalf that so many people have been emoting equally one-sidedly over alleged massacres and supposed war crimes by Syrian and Russian troops – for which I have yet to see a single piece of independent, checkable evidence.
When I used to travel a lot in the communist world, I especially hated the fact that almost every official announcement was a conscious lie, taunting the poor subjugated people with their powerlessness to challenge it.
I would spend ages twiddling dials and shifting aerials to pick up the BBC World Service on my short-wave set – ‘the truth, read by gentlemen’ – because it refreshed the soul just to hear it. These days the state-sponsored lies have spread to my own country, and to the BBC, and I tell the truth as loudly as I can, simply because I cannot hear anyone else speaking it. If these lies go unchallenged, they will be the basis of some grave wrong yet to come.
The one, sorry secret of being 'just like us'
I watched Muslims Like Us on BBC2 with grim fascination. Indeed, they were mostly like us, vaguely but pleasantly charitable, sweary, victims of all kinds of fashions in thought, clothes, language and sex.
And then they were not like us. One had an arranged marriage to a woman he’d never met, as far as I could see. All suddenly slipped into Arabic from time to time. One had attracted the attention of the authorities because of the passion of his views.
I could see his point when he upbraided his temporary housemates for not being very Islamic. They weren’t. He was. And I think most of us probably quietly hope that most British Muslims aren’t very devout.
But what really bothered me was the joke British person, in a bow tie, who was brought in to introduce them to Britishness, whatever that now is. There they were in York, looking at York Minster, one of the most moving and powerful buildings on the planet. I almost stop breathing whenever I visit it (I had the same experience amid the Islamic glories of Isfahan and Samarkand, by the way). But if Mr Bow Tie once mentioned Christianity, or suggested they go inside the great church, I missed it. And the Muslim party seemed wholly unmoved, as if they were being shown a furniture factory.
The sad fact is Muslims are only going to be like us if they sink, along with us, into the same state of ignorance and indifference about the past, and cease to take serious things seriously. Some of them may. But an important number of them (to their credit) never will.
Railways are the skeleton of civilisation. I have always loved them, and can never see why we have made such a mess of them by preferring to pour money into a rival system of nationalised roads which will never work.
So can I just say how pleased I was last week when my home town, Oxford, got a beautiful new rail link to London? It can be done.
Last week I chided the authorities for ignoring the danger of power cuts imposed by mad Green dogma. I was wrong. They have a plan after all – you can pay extra to avoid having to sit in the cold and dark.
Andrew Wright, a senior partner at the regulator Ofgem, says: ‘We are currently all paying broadly the same price but we could be moving away from that, and there will be some new features in the market which may see some choose to pay for a higher level of reliability.
One household may be sitting with their lights on, charging their Tesla electric car, while someone else will be sitting in the dark.’
I am not making this up.
Things we really don’t need include an all-graduate police force, as is now being madly proposed.
Graduates spend the first ten years in any job discovering that they don’t, in fact, know everything, while the non-graduates roll their eyes in despair.
What police officers need is not a certificate, but the common sense that comes from years of friendly contact with the people they serve. A decent pair of walking shoes, or a bicycle, will provide that.
And they must learn to go out on their own again, instead of walking in unapproachable, unobservant pairs, chatting about overtime, while crime and disorder rage within feet of them.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
Peter Sullivan | 19 December 2016 at 05:30 PM is misreading the context.
Posted by: adeledicnander | 20 December 2016 at 12:12 PM
Steven Haworth writes “Assad knows of course that ISIS is an aberration which will burn itself out in due course”.
Of course. OF COURSE! How dense I have been.
Ignore them and they will go away.
Posted by: John Main | 20 December 2016 at 12:11 PM
Mr Hitchens,
I cannot thank you enough for this article. I had given up hope of hearing the truth about Syria from anyone in the UK. I watch Channel 4 News every evening and I am utterly sickened. Aleppo MP Fares Shehabi was recently interviewed and Jon Snow refused to believe anything he said. Just like Tariq Aziz was not believed about Iraq's non-existent WMD.
Jane Karlssonn PhD, biologist
Posted by: Jane Karlsson | 20 December 2016 at 12:04 PM
To Steven Haworth, who writes "the greatest menace in Syria (besides Assad himself) comes from ISIS, whose crimes exceed those of the other rebel groups..."
I am interested in your preference for the East Aleppine rebels, whose desire to kill westerners is of a less dangerous order than the desire of ISIS to do the same. Would your wish to support decent Syrians involve intervening on behalf of these rebels?
Posted by: Peter Starr | 20 December 2016 at 11:52 AM
*** "That demotic and individualistic age will come to an end when autonomous vehicles become compulsory" ***
That is unlikely to happen, except in the largest metopolis for the sake of simplified traffic flow, and even if it did you cannot make centrally controlled motorcycles and bicycles.
Posted by: L Porter | 19 December 2016 at 07:38 PM
I agree it's not likely in the short term but cars have a limited useful life span. In contrast to forty years ago, these days one sees very few cars over fifteen years old on the roads. Once autonomous vehicles are the only replacement option because a) they don't make any other kind and b) older, ie driver-controlled vehicles are taxed out of existence by a rate that doubles every year of the vehicles' life, It could be as soon as twenty years.
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 20 December 2016 at 11:13 AM
All you can hear *is* the lies. Sorry, but that sort of thing irritates an old pedant like me.
Posted by: TH Watson | 20 December 2016 at 09:21 AM
Re: Sara "What do you mean by Us & Them, Peter?"
Well, it's only the difference between right and wrong innit? I mean good manners don't cost nothing, do they? Eh?
Posted by: Francis Waters | 20 December 2016 at 03:50 AM
"Last week I chided the authorities for ignoring the danger of power cuts imposed by mad Green dogma. I was wrong. They have a plan after all – you can pay extra to avoid having to sit in the cold and dark.
"Andrew Wright, a senior partner at the regulator Ofgem, says: ‘We are currently all paying broadly the same price but we could be moving away from that, and there will be some new features in the market which may see some choose to pay for a higher level of reliability.
"One household may be sitting with their lights on, charging their Tesla electric car, while someone else will be sitting in the dark.’"
Jings - it reminds me of Mr H's report from North Korea (which was quite the eye opener and worth picking up his very enjoyable Mordor book for) and how they would switch off the electricity when the outsiders were away from their hotel to save fuel.
Surely this goes against the ideas of fairness and charity that one would hope a Christian country follows?
Perhaps inward investment in British nuclear technology is in order? It would be both useful and exportable. Far better than paying the Chinese, with their rather lax standards in both safety and construction in comparison to Western nations.
Posted by: Michael | 20 December 2016 at 02:48 AM
Well, there is the modest suggestion that flattening a city full of civilians is itself one giant war crime when there is no humane standard of proportionality by which it could possibly be justified. An assault which kills thousands of civilians and leaves a city in ruins requires a serious pretext. The ostensible target, “the rebels”, comprises a very wide spectrum of groups, from Salafist-jihadists to the Free Syrian Army (itself an umbrella group). Even if their physical elimination is justifiable on the grounds of retaking sovereign territory, there is no way that the threat they pose to others or the severity of previous crimes can warrant the carnage that all have suffered in the process. An episode of cannibalism is savage, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to blow up an apartment building.
The greatest menace in Syria (besides Assad himself) comes from ISIS, whose crimes exceed those of the other rebel groups by orders of magnitude. Yet Assad has done virtually nothing to combat them; Raqqa is unscathed compared to Aleppo. Assad knows of course that ISIS is an aberration which will burn itself out in due course. The wider rebel cause poses the much greater threat because its general aim - to see the end of the one-party state - is supported by millions. Most of the people in Syria are not jihadists or flesh eaters. Many are educated, prosperous and decent. That might be shocking to some, but if one is prepared to assume it then why not the next step: that reasonable people might object to a system that enforces ritual obedience to a leader whilst simultaneously crushing all dissent? Something like a civil society was emerging in certain parts of Aleppo, with around sixty independent publications where previously there had been none. But because of the blanket bombing that has disappeared now.
The biggest flaw in Mr Hitchens’ attempt to graft the template of Iraq onto Syria is that even if the suited fascists are returned to power, the country will not return to its pre-2011 state of relative peace - with only mild discontent, and only intermittent violence and torture. It is well past the point where that could be hoped for. In the minds of Syrians the crimes perpetrated against them over the last five years by the regime are unforgivable. And even if the slaughter, gassing and torture is only imaginary (as people here seem to think), they believe in it nonetheless. The unrest will not cease just because certain groups in Aleppo are forced into a humiliating surrender. They and others are simply going to fight elsewhere. If you truly want to see a “stable” Syria under Assad, you’re going to need to accept a lot more civilian deaths. That, and a police state even more extensive than the one which exists at present and which (according to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group) has killed 18,000 in its prisons and torture centres in the last five years alone.
Posted by: Steven Haworth | 19 December 2016 at 10:10 PM
Blood on your hands Jon Snow et al.
Read an article by the esteemed ME journalist Elijah Magnier this morning, even before today's events this section stood out.
"The role of the media is also one which makes it a major contributor to the growth of terrorism and its recruitment. Posting falsely attributed sensational images of war, manipulating children’s messages, calling jihadists “moderate rebels” when they auto-proclaim themselves as Mujahedeen-fi-sabil-Allah, all this has the effect of misleading readers by offering false data, reflecting a kind of undeclared “political wishful thinking”.
There is no need for readers to go and meet jihadists from al-Qaeda to understand their message or contact ISIS websites or publications, and risk prison back home for accessing jihadists material or propaganda. Western media is offering enough material already to channel ISIS and al-Qaida propaganda material aimed towards recruitment. How easy it is to defeat a state (Iraq or Syria)! How incompetent Syrian / Iraqi armies are! All these narratives brand terrorist like invincible militants and therefore can be later used by home-grown jihadists to fight the west at home, making the counterterrorism argument a more difficult case to argue and implement."
Posted by: LondonBob | 19 December 2016 at 08:05 PM
And lets hope that nobody over-reacts to the potential "archduke ferdinand" moment in Ankara tonight...
Posted by: L Porter | 19 December 2016 at 07:39 PM
Brian;
*** "That demotic and individualistic age will come to an end when autonomous vehicles become compulsory" ***
That is unlikely to happen, except in the largest metopolis for the sake of simplified traffic flow, and even if it did you cannot make centrally controlled motorcycles and bicycles.
Personally, I would not mourn the loss of the motorcar; the road system is far more destructive of our countryside than even the fastest rail travel, and with a reduced use of cars we may even see a resurgence of smaller village shops (when people cannot get to supermarkets but still wish for a more personal service than a delivery van).
Posted by: L Porter | 19 December 2016 at 07:38 PM
Dear Mr. Hitchens, you might want to know, that the bullets you mention at the beginning of the article were not "Soviet", but shot by those who needed a provocation and whose aim was to destroy the USSR. The same tactics were used on the Maidan in Kiev three years ago.
Posted by: Natalia | 19 December 2016 at 06:12 PM
Have just listened to the BBC radio 4 documentary on the White Helmets, who were painted in glowing colours. Then watched some youtube videos on the same topic, which shows that some at least are fully active in the islamist hate terrorist campaigns - unless the photos and videos have been doctored of course. The truth probably lies somewhere between the BBC and the RT viewpoints. Truth is the first casualty in war and the BBC seem more intent on pursuing an agenda than fully acurate and truthful reporting.
Posted by: Robert Walker | 19 December 2016 at 05:58 PM
@sara, @adeledicnander
Using such words in such contexts is perfectly reasonable and not offensive or 'othering', something people like you seem obsessed about, effectively accusing others of being bigots. Do not tell us how to speak and how to write. Go away. Do something useful with your time and with your life.
Posted by: Peter Sullivan | 19 December 2016 at 05:30 PM
"Dear Mr. Hitchens
In the piece about Muslims Like Us you used the phrases us and them 5 times , and made it very clear that by them , you mean Muslims. Could you please explain who do you mean by us?
Otherwise, could you please correct me:
British atheist = us
British Reformist Jew = us
British Orthodox Jew=us
British Church of England Christian = us
British Catholic Christian=us
British other Christian=us
British Hindu = us
British Sikh = us
British Buddhist = us
British Pagan= us
British Muslim = NOT us
From a – I guess undesirable – Not-us fan"
- Posted by: Sara | 19 December 2016 at 03:32 PM
It is those who self-selectivly identify as a made-up 'in-group' who relegate all others to the necessarily inferior 'out-group'.
Haras Rafiq, the managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, analysed the creation of group identity: "The first thing is to create 'the otherisation' - 'I am in one group and everybody else is different'. Secondly 'collectivisation' - 'everybody else is the same'. Then it talks about the oppression narrative - 'everybody else is oppressing us'. It talks about 'the collective guilt' - 'that everybody else is complicit in oppressing them'. Then comes the supremacist - 'we are better than them'. Then comes 'self defence'. And finally the idea of violence."
Posted by: adeledicnander | 19 December 2016 at 04:30 PM
@ Sara
If one is commenting on a programme called "Muslims Like Us", then the differentiation between Muslims and non-Muslims has already been made and Peter Hitchens is perfectly entitled to comment on that differentiation. If people don't want that differentiation made, then they should complain to the makers of the programme, not those who discuss it.
Posted by: Mike B | 19 December 2016 at 04:22 PM
Dear Mr. Hitchens
In the piece about Muslims Like Us you used the phrases us and them 5 times , and made it very clear that by them , you mean Muslims. Could you please explain who do you mean by us?
Otherwise, could you please correct me:
British atheist = us
British Reformist Jew = us
British Orthodox Jew=us
British Church of England Christian = us
British Catholic Christian=us
British other Christian=us
British Hindu = us
British Sikh = us
British Buddhist = us
British Pagan= us
British Muslim = NOT us
From a – I guess undesirable – Not-us fan
Posted by: Sara | 19 December 2016 at 03:32 PM
Oh Horace,Eva Bartlett does NOT work for RT,She merely sends them her reports which they can then publish or not.
Posted by: michael savell | 19 December 2016 at 02:55 PM
Horace--If Eva Bartlett is a paid disseminator of kremlin propoganda she is the best actress I have ever seen.I do not remember anyone who appeared more forthright in my lifetime of 80 years. She is actually THERE,Horace,where are you and your bunch of trolls?
Posted by: michael savell | 19 December 2016 at 02:47 PM
Dear PH and readers,
I would like to propose a radical alternative to HS2; underground rail lines cost c. £20 million/mile. Building an absolutely straight line from Birmingham to Manchester (70 miles) would therefore cost £1.4 billion.
I look forward to your thoughts on these suggestions.
Posted by: Train Anorak | 18 December 2016 at 08:09 PM
Interesting idea, but why not go the whole hog and have the trains running through a tunnel out of which all the air has been sucked? Not to power the trains by vacuum. No, that idea was Brunel's one real turkey, but simply to reduce drag. At anything over 70mph air resistance becomes the most expensive thing to overcome, which is why the French TGV's require power cars with enormous appetites, each train running sucks a 6,800 kW continuous load out of the electricity supply. The aerodynamics of high speed travel are bad enough in the open air but this problem would be so much greater when the train is compressing the air in a confined space such as a tunnel. (The last time I went by train to Paris I couldn't help noticing that the Eurostar goes through the tunnel itself at a relatively stately pace, presumably for this reason). If you don't exclude the air, you will need a tunnel whose proportions more resemble a cathedral than a 15ft diameter pipe, but this would push the cost up many, many times higher than your underground figures suggest.
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 19 December 2016 at 02:07 PM
This post by Horace is apparently acceptable......." Anyone who works for the troll TV channel RT has less than zero credibility. Those who watch RT are either 'useful idiots' or actual idiots. Or malevolent. Or both."
While my polite and factual replies to him are blocked!!
You win, Peter, I give up!
Posted by: Michael Wood | 19 December 2016 at 12:59 PM
Christopher W. | 18 December 2016 at 10:25 PM :
*** One example is a video produced by Channel 4 News titled Up Close With The Rebels, which was hastily removed without comment. You can still view this video as it was re-uploaded by individuals who made copies of the original. ***
Successive governments in the UK have passed and reinforced allegedly "anti-terrorism" laws -- pretty obvious these are not what they are claimed to be, else the C4 News team (and others) would already have been arrested.
Not to mention a multi party pack of cheerleaders for jihadi-terrorism in the House of Commons .... who will need to re-locate while their present venue is being renovated -- well, there's spare accommodation in Guantanamo.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 19 December 2016 at 12:40 PM
Horace | 19 December 2016 at 09:28 AM :
*** Anyone who works for the troll TV channel RT has less than zero credibility. Those who watch RT are either 'useful idiots' or actual idiots. Or malevolent. Or both. ***
How would you describe those who persistently reiterate propaganda on behalf of the US State Department and its Neocon masters -- which where the war against Syria is concerned, includes a barrage of lies and 'false-news' supportive of murderously sectarian jihadi terrorists sponsored by the Saudi theocracy?
Or those who support the neo-nazi usurper regime in Kiev, which is preparing to "privatise" all public assets -- in other words, totally asset-strip Ukraine (while inflicting further 'austerity') on behalf of gangsters and corrupt foreign corporate interests?
What sort of moral and mental degenerate could possibly endorse or even participate in such perversions?
Posted by: C. Morrison | 19 December 2016 at 12:09 PM
@ Horace Many people might consider you to be an idiot and a rude ill mannered one at that
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 19 December 2016 at 12:03 PM