American television networks have chosen to rely almost exclusively upon the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House for their information on what's going on in Afghanistan.

Since the U.S. bombing campaign began against Afghanistan's Taliban government on Oct. 7, reports of a growing number of civilian deaths and injuries resulting from America's bombs, cluster bombs and missiles have made news across the world. But because many U.S. media outlets have decided not to focus attention on this issue, people in a number of Middle Eastern and Western European nations know more about the consequences of our military action than most Americans.

According to independent observers, U.S. airstrikes have destroyed numerous non-military targets, including a United Nation's compound, a hotel, mosques, schools and dozens of homes and shops. Inexplicably, U.S. bombs hit food warehouses operated by the Red Cross, not once, but twice in 10 days. The Pentagon also destroyed the home of Taliban Mullah Muhammad Omar, killing his elderly stepfather and 10-year-old son.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Geov Parrish, a columnist with WorkingforChange.com, who examines the growing civilian death toll in Afghanistan and the effect it may have on international support for the U.S. war against terrorism.

Geov Parrish: There is an enormous amount of difficulty in determining exactly the extent of civilian casualties or damage to the infrastructure that civilians need to survive inside Afghanistan. There are reasons why it is both in the interest of the Pentagon, the White House and the Taliban (to minimize the count of civilian deaths.) For that matter, it's also in the interest of the Pakistani government, which is where a number of these refugees and aid workers are staggering across the border -- assuming they can survive the gauntlet of abusive border guards with guns and truncheons and what not trying to keep people from getting into Pakistan.

There are a lot of reasons why these people want to underemphasize the number of civilian casualties that have taken place. The one thing we do know is that it's probably understated, no matter what we know or what we don't. That being said, the biggest difficulty   for a lot of American networks and newspapers (is confirmation) through additional independent sources. They may have one or two people describing what happened in a particular village, but because the Taliban aren't allowing Western reporters in there, access to the country is very difficult. Because the Pentagon is keeping a very tight lid on what they know -- even to the point of buying up all the commercially available satellite maps that are accurate enough to show bodies and destruction from the air raids -- we just don't have a lot of confirmed sources.

But the (accounts) we do have are telling us that there are at minimum a couple or a few thousand people who have already died -- civilians who have died even in the first two weeks of U.S. airstrikes. The village of Karam in northern Afghanistan where U.S. airplanes came and made repeated strikes in the middle of evening prayers and where at least 100 to 200 people died probably has been the most publicized incident. The Taliban did take Western reporters to that site a couple of days later and showed them the destruction. The Muslim practice of burying their dead very quickly when they die makes it difficult again, to confirm the bodies. But aside from that 100 to 200, there have been a number of other incidents of 10-20, or 100 people at a time dying (as a result of) some of these raids -- raids in which the Pentagon claims that there was a military target nearby or that (the location hit) was a military target.

There are a lot of these cases, like with Karam, that information has been outdated or simply erroneous. So a lot of this stuff is getting widespread publicity in the Islamic world and even from English language media in the U.K., Europe and other parts of the world, but not so much the United States. Between The Lines: Tell us a little bit about the obstacles that are standing in the way of U.S. reporters -- particularly television journalists -- from getting this information to the American people. Geov Parrish: Well, the simplest obstacle is that American networks, for whatever reason, have chosen to rely very heavily almost exclusively, in fact, upon the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House -- official government sources -- for their information in terms of what's going on in Afghanistan.

All of the networks at this point do have people on the ground in the Middle East, in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or someplace like that. But again, it's very, very difficult to get the story of somebody, who say, is a refugee who's coming out of Afghanistan, who is an eyewitness, who probably has a much better idea of what has actually happened on the ground than the Pentagon even has. In some of these cases, it's not even necessarily that the Pentagon is lying, they just don't know where their bombs dropped, where they hit (on) the ground. And these people's stories are not being treated as credible. So what happens is that the networks who all have reporters in the Pentagon and the White House press pool ... are relying upon the information that's released by the Pentagon and are not questioning that information, are not seeking other sources that might bring that information into question. Quite aside from the immediate humanitarian crisis, there are two other very serious problems with this (situation). Number one is that especially in the rural and mountainous areas you have a tremendous humanitarian crisis that is about to set in.

Oxfam estimates that 7.5 million people are at risk for starvation this winter. You cannot get to many of the areas in Afghanistan once winter sets in, which it is literally starting to do in the next week or two. The other problem is the public relations problem. If your goal over the long term is to prevent terrorism, that means preventing people from being sympathetic with terrorists, which means convincing particularly the Islamic world that the United States is not targeting civilians. And when you have a lot of civilian casualties, as apparently is taking place, and certainly the creation of a huge number of refugees and an enormous humanitarian crisis with a possibility of a lot of people starving to death, a lot of people are going to blame the United States for that.

Between The Lines: Is the Bush administration prepared to stop the bombing and change their strategy in the war against Afghanistan if they think they are losing the battle for public opinion which could feed into a wider war in places around the globe? Geov Parrish: It is very, very easy in any number of ways for this conflagration to escalate out of control. Nuclear weapons in Pakistan is one. The steadily degenerating situation in Israel and Palestine is another. That's something that the Islamic world is going to react to and is going to associate with the United States as well. It's a very complex situation. A lot of what's been done so far I think has been pretty counterproductive. And if it becomes apparent that it's not working, I would hope that (the U.S. government has) the wisdom to reverse course. I think a lot of the rest of the world is already coming to the conclusion that it's pretty urgent for the United States to rethink what it's doing. And I would hope that the public is watching events and trying to come to independent conclusions as well.