Chat Ed : Hello and welcome to tonight's live THE HOUSE OF WAR chat with the director PAUL YULE.
Paul Yule : I shouldn't really hope that you enjoyed the programme, enjoy is the wrong word.
I hope you got the context in which this battle happened, oh and hello.
fred1507 : as an ex special forces person in borneo in the 60s...the only thing that surprses me is the lack of proffessionalism,,,,by the cia ...how after so much training can they be so stupid and amateur
Paul Yule : Their problem was that they wanted to find bin Laden, but were completely naive about the messianic nature of his message. Which meant that, as we discovered in New York, his followers were all too willing to die for the cause.
EC : Is it your opinion that the CIA's actions and cruelty led directly to the uprising?
Paul Yule : It must have been instrumental to some extent. The people who began the uprising came from the basement with grenades and wouldn't necessarily have known that the CIA was there. But by the time that happened the prisoners probably felt that they weren't going anywhere anyway and embraced the idea of being martyrs. Since it is likely that some of the Taliban prisoners knew exactly where the armoury was, they then went directly there to get weapons as the firing began.
laurie : hi, a while back on channel 4 news they showed the SAS at the seige attacking the fortress.This wasnt in the documentary and i was wondering if u had been censored by the MOD or something?
Paul Yule : No . The D-notice committee have been in touch about the programme but did not in any way censor it.
Cai : The CIA guy who lived...forgotten his name...where is he now? Surely he has some questions to answer? Great prog by the way.
Paul Yule : The CIA don't reveal where their operatives are. His name was Dave Tyson.
Doc : The program, and a lot of other media sources, have indicated that Walker was a troubled young man who stumbled into the fighting misguided. In your opion is this true or was he sincere and well informed of what he was doing?
Paul Yule : He seems to have made choices - as we all have to. His seem to have led him to Qala-I-Jangi and the battle at the fortress.
claire : I felt there was a discontinuity at the beginning of the programme that left me confused as to the motivation of the prisoners. Either they were surrendering or they were planning an uprising. Which was it? If they were planning an uprising, I feel their tactics were very peculiar. I would have liked to have heard more of the questioning. I feel that is the key. Do you have archives of the questioning?
Paul Yule : The fact that 86 prisoners came out alive from the basement at the end of the battle perhaps suggests that not all the Taliban were in agreement with the uprising. My guess is that it was started by a few of them and that the majority got caught up in it. Once the firing began, and the deal was broken, it was very difficult to re-open negotiations. There is more footage of the questioning.
neil atkinson : what was the reaction to the errant US bomb that landed on the Northern Alliance CP?
Paul Yule : Intense frustration, to put it mildly. The Americans landed a bomb on their own command post. The result was an end to bomb strikes as a means of concluding things.
kc : a lot off the dead taliban were still tied up can u explain this
Paul Yule : They were tied up because, as you see clearly in the film, their hands were bound behind them with their turbans. The reason their hands were tied is because the previous day, when they were allowed to walk freely, they had exploded hand grenades which they had hidden in their clothing. So when the shooting began immediately after the uprising started, people were killed with their hands behind their backs. They were shot from the ramparts which surrounded the compound and that is how they lay there for 3 more days until the battle ended.
OBL : The documenrtry shows Dostum to be a paecemaker if so What about those thousands missing and killed in containers from Kunduz?
Paul Yule : Are you sure that your question states a fact and not a fiction? After the fall of Kunduz, the prisoners were either set free or taken to Shebeghan. I think the real question that we have to ask is would we prefer that prisoners were taken or that they just surrounded the town and shelled it from a distance? The fact of the matter is that this war was fought without many battles because surrenders were negotiated. The truth is that Dostum has been successful chiefly through negotiation rather than battle. In the case of these Taliban prisoners who died at the fortress, his intention was that he would have them handed over to the UN. Apparently the Americans were not in agreement with this.
ALI : Do you know how many casualties the US have sustained during the war? i know it isn't directly related to the talk but i find it hard to believe that such little numbers have been killed compared to the thousands of taliban
Paul Yule : Well, there were nearly 3000 killed in New York for a start.
Tuggy : Do you think that J. Walker should be treated differently just because he is an American citizen?
Paul Yule : No. All the prisoners should be given the same rights that he has.
joel : it is quoted in theprogramme that the taliban overwheled an american cia worker, before he was eventually killed. However it was not explained how this was possible, seeing as they were all tied up. Can you give a plausable reason as to how this happened?
Paul Yule : A Taliban emerged from the basement and exploded a grenade. He then picked up the AK-47 from one of the guards and began shooting. The other guards withdrew. The Taliban began to undo each others turbans which bound their arms so they were then free. They surrounded Spann after he ran out of bullets, bullets which we found incidentally in the fortress, and Spann was beaten to death.
Liberal Thug : how do you feel about America's refusal to grant Taliban prisioners at Camp X-Ray their rights guranteed under the Geneva Convention?
Paul Yule : It seems to me that they are prisoners of war and are therefore eligible for protection under the Geneva Convention. But the US authorities obviously don't agree with that.
pamelastott : Are you saying that the prisoners were housed in a fortress which actually held an arms dump? To believe this is to accept that the general public will believe anything the TV cares to state.
Paul Yule : But it's true. The arms dump was put there by the Taliban themselves. Dostum's army had only recaptured Mazar and the fortress 10 days previously. When Dostum had previously been in control of Mazar up until 1998, that armoury was used as offices in fact. The Taliban were using arms which they themselves had put there. It probably confirms the cock-up theory of history as opposed to conspiracy.
Ed : How has seeing all those dead bodies made you reassess your view of life?
Paul Yule : It makes you think, doesn't it. For me this film is emblematic of war. The fact that it took place within a confined space, almost like a reality gameshow, complete with Walker speaking about the events afterwards, added to the extraordinary nature of the story. I want to pay tribute to the journalists who went in and showed us, in part, what war is really like.
Roy2cool : Bye good luck in everything :)
mossman : thanks paul
Andrew : bye
David Crawley : Cheerio
Victoria : Thanks Paul
Mat : thnx
JJ : nice doc
Victoria : Thanks Paul
Sulkster : thnks, bye
Andrew : well done
claire : Thank you for your insight.
Chat Ed : That's it! Thanks for coming PAUL and thanks for all your questions, folks! For more on this subject check the Science Lounge for Jon Snow's recommended books on Afghanistan, bin Laden and Terrorism - details on the House of War site.
Paul Yule leaves the room
