Why the Newsweek article?
In response to widely circulated reports of atrocities committed in Afghanistan—including the cargo container deaths and the slaughter of prisoners at the Qala-i-Janghi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif—US authorities have been forced to provide at least a semi-official explanation of the events. The Newsweek report, most likely sanctioned at some level of the Bush administration, serves this purpose. It confirms much of what has already been reported about the cargo container deaths, provides some additional details, and then goes out of its way to sanitize the role of American forces. This is the classical modus operandi of a whitewash. The timing of the report, moreover, suggests that it is bound up with growing tensions between the Bush administration and the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance. These strains increased in the aftermath of the assassination of Afghan Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir on July 6. The assassination of Qadir, the second leading Pashtun in the Afghan government a
