IP: A New Battle Station: A washingtonpost.com article

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: register () washingtonpost com
> Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 08:39:21 -0500 (EST)
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: A washingtonpost.com article from
>
>
> Dave,
>
> May wish to send this to IP.
>
> Useful contrast between care taken by minimally PR trained, experienced 
> 'spokesman' for Northern Alliance (and its resultant effectiveness in 
> propogancda war)  with US Govt's plans to marshall Madison Avenue and 
> Hollywood to get its message out.
>
> To view the entire article, go to 
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51204-2001Nov6.html
>
> A New Battle Station
>
> By Howard Kurtz
>
>
>
>
> >From a sixth-floor balcony in a beige high-rise off North Glebe Road in 
> Arlington, Haron Amin is shouting into his cell phone in Farsi.
>
> No sooner does he finish talking to a U.N. diplomat than a Greek reporter 
> is on the phone, followed by a CNN booker confirming his Larry King 
> appearance. Amin was on "Hardball" the night before and, after hitting the 
> sack for 4 1/2 hours, chatted up Bryant Gumbel on CBS's "Early Show." Next 
> stop is Fox News.
>
> A 32-year-old Afghan who had never dealt much with television, Amin 
> suddenly finds himself in the white-hot media glare as spokesman for the 
> Northern Alliance, the rebel forces battling the Taliban. And despite his 
> calm demeanor and precise, mildly accented English, he is facing a very 
> different battlefield than the one he fought on back home.
>
> "The most important thing I learned is, you end up with three minutes on 
> TV," he says, sipping his morning coffee. "In those three minutes you have 
> to get a message out. How do you bring diplomatic language in the context 
> of sound bites? If you do a dull presentation, you're not going to get the 
> job done."
>
> Like a commander studying the opposing troops, he began conducting a 
> "character study" of television personalities. "Chris Matthews versus 
> someone like Brown, Aaron," the CNN anchor. "Geraldo versus someone like 
> Bob Schieffer. . . . Is he going to give you enough time? Is he going to 
> interrupt you?"
>
> There was more to learn. "When you've got adversaries on the show, to 
> confront them but to always keep the moral high ground."
>
> And the print press was adifferent challenge. "First you give an 
> off-the-record interview, then you say on the record these are the things 
> you can quote me on."
>
> All this has been a crash communications course for a man who fled 
> Afghanistan with his family, spent his teenage years in California, did 
> two stints as a soldier in his homeland and wound up as a United Nations 
> functionary. That changed on Sept. 11.
>
> Intense, charismatic and a tad self-righteous, Amin has become both 
> spinner and symbol, as he has come to recognize.
>
> "How can people see through me a modern Afghanistan?" he wonders. "Me 
> representing this devastated country, this very poor country, and creating 
> a feeling of sympathy." He misses no opportunity to denounce the Taliban 
> and Osama bin Laden.
>
> There is something surreal about Amin influencing the coverage of the 
> world's biggest story from this art-filled Virginia apartment -- an effort 
> that Amin's publicist, Tom Lauria, calls Operation Ragtag.
>
> The two-bedroom apartment belongs to Otilie English, a longtime Northern 
> Alliance lobbyist who is Amin's adviser, friend and self-appointed mother hen.
>
> "You can't hire somebody to do what he does," English says. "When he 
> speaks, he speaks from the heart."
>
> But even fleeting celebrity has its downside during a war on terrorism. 
> Amin is constantly on the move, staying with friends and relatives in the 
> area. A hotel, he says, would be too dangerous.
>
> "Osama is still hunting people down," he says. "You have a lot of Muslims 
> in America who are twisted and want me dead. They're going to be hunting 
> for me sooner or later." But, he says, "my parents and brothers and 
> sisters are more worried than I am."
>
>  The Edward R. Murrow Room is packed.
>
> Hands clasped in front of him, a sober expression beneath his dark, 
> searching eyes, the neatly dressed Amin is facing a bank of 16 television 
> cameras at the National Press Club. American, British, French and Japanese 
> journalists are among those gathered to record his words of wisdom.
>
> He is soft-spoken, polite, scholarly, even when talking about killing people.
>
> "The status of military aid still is not satisfactory. . . . We've asked 
> that the coalition forces ought to aggressively and intensely, and with 
> more frequency, pound Taliban positions," Amin says.
>
> Should the United States commit more ground troops to Afghanistan?
>
> "We strongly believe we have enough fighters on the ground who are 
> competent, who are battle-hardened, who can do the fighting by themselves."
>
> How bad is the hunger problem?
>
> "There's going to be the necessity of the Berlin-style airlift in numerous 
> parts of Afghanistan."
>
> Amin is not just winging it. To prepare for the session, he used his 
> satellite phone to call the Northern Alliance's foreign minister, defense 
> minister and interior minister. (Sometimes it takes an hour or more to get 
> through, usually late at night, since Afghanistan time is 8 1/2 hours 
> ahead.) He settled on the phrase "Berlin-style airlift" -- repeating it 
> twice -- as the hoped-for headline. The sound bite was picked up by 
> "Today" and "NBC Nightly News."
>
> Amin finessed questions about human rights abuses by the Northern 
> Alliance, saying the country was in chaos when the alliance ran 
> Afghanistan in the early 1990s. "Certain issues I wanted to dance around, 
> I was able to dance around," he admits later.
>
> Soon after the news conference, Amin got a call from his brother Farid, 
> the Afghan ambassador to Austria, complimenting his performance. 
> Unbeknownst to Amin, CNN International was carrying the session live.
>
> But making news also means taking some chances. After the Taliban captured 
> and executed opposition leader Abdul Haq late last month, Amin predicted 
> on Fox News -- based solely on a hunch -- that Pakistan's intelligence 
> service had a hand in Haq's betrayal. He felt vindicated when NBC's Andrea 
> Mitchell reported just that.
>
> The media log for Haron (pronounced Haroon) Amin is that of a man in 
> constant demand: Charlie Rose, Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, Bill 
> O'Reilly, Judy Woodruff, Brian Williams. "Face the Nation," "This Week," 
> 18 CNN appearances (including "Crossfire" last night), 12 on Fox, eight on 
> BBC, five on MSNBC, dozens of newspaper interviews. He's also chatted with 
> State Department official Richard Haas and testified before Congress.
>
> The irony is that Amin has long struggled to get the world to pay 
> attention to the cruelty of the Taliban and the danger of bin Laden. Now 
> he's a vital cog in the global media machine. "This kind of attention we 
> wanted for years," he says.
>
> While growing up in Afghanistan, Amin joined anti-Soviet demonstrations 
> after the 1979 invasion of his country and helped distribute leaflets 
> against the invaders. His father, a wealthy businessman, was jailed for a 
> time by the new regime. The family, including Amin's six brothers and two 
> sisters, soon moved to Pakistan, then Germany, then California. Haron, who 
> was 14, began learning English.
>
> Otilie English recalls him as a teenager: "He was young, innocent, kind of 
> gangly and very gung-ho. He had a puppy-like quality but at the same time 
> this dead-steel seriousness."
>
> After graduating high school in 1988, Amin decided he had "an Islamic 
> duty" to return to Afghanistan and fight the Soviets. "He was an ambitious 
> guy from the beginning," says his brother Nadin Amin, now a California 
> businessman. "All along he wanted to do something for the country."
>
> When Haron told the family of his plans, Nadin replied: "Very good."
>
> "What if I get killed?"
>
> "You will be martyred."
>
> "I wish my parents could say something like this," Amin said. His parents, 
> who had hoped he would go to law or medical school, were understandably 
> nervous.
>
> Life was rough when he joined his idol, Northern Alliance commander Ahmed 
> Shah Massoud. There were 18-hour treks through the mountains in freezing 
> temperatures, with little to eat. Amin felt sick, sometimes vomited, but 
> he persevered. He was struck by shrapnel while crossing a river, causing a 
> major foot laceration.
>
> For his 20th birthday, Amin bribed someone to get a can of a Swedish 
> orange drink called Sisi. It occurred to him more than once that he could 
> be living the good life as a California college student.
>
> "It was a time for me to discover true values," Amin says. "You get 
> wrapped up in a material world: How large is your house? How luxurious is 
> your car? What clothes are you wearing? I learned that sacrifice is the 
> most important thing."
>
> When the Soviets finally pulled out, Amin came to Washington as chief 
> liaison for Massoud, who was now part of the government. But in 1995, 
> after earning a political science degree at the University of California's 
> Riverside campus, he rejoined Massoud to battle the Taliban in a raging 
> civil war. Within months, Amin was dispatched to join the Afghan 
> delegation at the United Nations. On the day he left, Taliban forces 
> seized Kabul.
>
> Abdul Rahim Ghafoorza, who became prime minister of the 
> government-in-exile, named Amin director general, a sort of communications 
> chief, in 1997. From his new base in Mazar-e-Sharif, Amin and his new boss 
> traveled constantly together, from Russia to India to France to New York 
> and back again. That summer, bogged down with paperwork, Amin missed one 
> flight. The plane crashed, killing Ghafoorza and four Cabinet members. 
> Amin was devastated.
>
> The Northern Alliance sent him to New York, where he became part of a 
> make-believe government. He and his colleagues in the U.N. delegation were 
> officially recognized by the United States and all but three countries 
> around the world, even though the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan. He 
> put out press releases, wrote speeches for visiting dignitaries and served 
> on various committees. Many people told him it was a lost cause, but Amin 
> refused to believe it.
>
> Amin would ride the express bus from his home in Queens, using the time to 
> do his homework for his night classes at St. John's University, where he 
> is one research paper short of a master's in political science. And, 
> despite his modest salary, he enjoyed such American pleasures as 
> frequenting Starbucks for a grande latte. He felt twinges of jealousy 
> toward an Afghan friend with a beautiful hilltop home in Malibu. But in 
> some ways he felt richer.
>
> This placid interlude did not last. On Sept. 9, Massoud, Amin's longtime 
> mentor, was killed by suicide bombers. Two days later, the twin towers 
> fell. Amin was immediately ordered to Washington. He packed three suits 
> and a few shirts, but with air travel shut down and train service 
> difficult, he had to wait for English to make the drive to New York.
>
> Those who work with him are amazed at his stamina. "There's a lot of 
> pressure on him, definitely," says Nadin Amin. "He works 16 to 17 hours a 
> day. But he thinks this will ultimately bring peace to Afghanistan."
>
>  Confrontational television is part of American showbiz. Producers love 
> orchestrated conflict. The more you're on, the more likely you are to 
> come under rhetorical fire.
>
> When Amin appeared on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show last month, he got into a 
> dust-up with Nasim Ashraf of the Pakistani-American Political Action 
> Committee. Ashraf argued that "to restore order to Afghanistan, the power 
> would have to be taken out of the hands of the military commanders, such 
> as those of the Northern Alliance."
>
> "Well," Amin shot back, "the leader of Pakistan himself is the leader of 
> the military junta, and for him it's very unseemly as a statesperson to 
> insinuate any inflammatory remarks about Afghanistan. This is our issue. 
> Tell Pakistan to keep away from it."
>
> Amin was pleased, feeling he made his point without sounding "vicious" or 
> "brutal." The question, he says, is "how do you take these questions that 
> are very bitter and transform them into gaining sympathy from the host, 
> and the audience."
>
> His least successful outing was what he calls "the Lester stunt." During 
> an interview with MSNBC's Lester Holt, a producer told him in his ear that 
> they would shortly be breaking away for a Rudy Giuliani news conference.
>
> "I started shooting at the speed of light," Amin recalls, leaving Holt no 
> opportunity to interrupt. "I put four different issues into one interview. 
> It was too much because you lose the audience."
>
> Haron Amin, it is clear, likes to talk. Even after a full day of 
> interviews and diplomacy, he stays up late, hashing things over with local 
> Afghans.
>
> After last week's House International Relations Committee hearing, Amin 
> was lingering to gab with lawmakers when English grabbed him for an 
> appointment at CNBC. "He will sit and talk for hours with someone," she 
> says. "Sometimes I have to say, 'Sorry, this person is more important than 
> that person,' and he gets upset with me."
>
> In true American fashion, Amin has achieved a modicum of fame. To his 
> surprise, some customers recently stopped him at the Barnes & Noble in 
> Georgetown. Said one: "You're the Northern Alliance guy, right?"


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