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A prince goes to war — and how

Photo: — AP

bizarre venture: Britain’s Prince Harry plays rugby with fellow soldiers during a break in their duties in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, in February 2008. His secret duty was abruptly ended after a magazine and web sites disclosed details of his whereabouts.

Now that the hysteria over Prince Harry’s famous 10-week Afghanistan outing has, finally, died down people have started to ask some hard questions about this bizarre venture got up by the Ministry of Defence with a little help from an obliging media.

Many suspect that the whole thing was an elaborately stage-managed PR job for the Royal family, especially for the young Prince who was becoming a bit of an embarrassment because of his colourful lifestyle and badly needed an image make-over. His sudden and extraordinary transformation from a “lost cause” to a “royal pin-up,” as The Times noted , is cited as a proof that it was all a huge PR operation..

There are others who believe that the Prince was used as a “pawn in a propaganda war,” “Dirty Harry: Dog of war or prince of public relations?” The Guardian asked describing the Harry story as a “right royal coup” for the Palace and the army’s newest poster boy.

Leave aside the conspiracy theories, but the question remains: what was it all about? There are some 7,000 young British soldiers in Afghanistan, many engaged in more dangerous — even life-threatening — tasks than the heavily televised walkabouts of Harry. So, what was so special about what he did that everyone from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the army brass down was obliged to single him out for his “bravery,” “courage” and “outstanding service?”

In the plane that brought Harry back from Afghanistan after his cover was blown by the American website Drudge Report there were two seriously injured soldiers. But there was not a word said about the pair, one of whom had lost an arm and a leg, and we wouldn’t have known anything about them at all had, in a moment of humility, Harry himself not drawn attention to them while speaking to a fawning television interviewer who apparently hailed him as a “hero.”

“I’m no more a hero than anyone else….There were two injured guys who came back on the plane with us who were essentially comatose throughout the whole way…Those are the heroes,” the 23-year-old prince said.

Indeed, if anyone came out of this whole episode looking anything like normal it was Harry. At least — unlike the army and the media — he didn’t pretend as though he alone was carrying the entire burden of the Afghanistan war on his shoulders. In fact, the more the media sought to portray him as a super-hero (“A hero at home, an enemy to the jihadists,” screamed one headline) the more he insisted that he was simply another ordinary soldier “just mucking in as one of the lads.”

An over-the-top media coverage saw Harry’s non-adventures (Harry firing at an unseen target, Harry riding a motorcycle, Harry eating his “ration,” Harry patrolling, Harry kicking a ball around, Harry talking to an unseen journalist, Harry getting off the plane) take precedence over far more important stories such as the deaths of 70 people in Gaza as a result of Israeli attacks. The venerable BBC, too, reduced itself to an extension of MoD and Clarence House with its shamelessly fawning reporting that would have made journalists even in tinpot monarchies cringe.

The media has also attracted flak for colluding with MoD in imposing a news blackout over Harry’s deployment on security grounds.

The last time the British media was party to such a “conspiracy of silence” was way back in 1936 when it agreed to a blackout over Edward VIII’s relationship with the American socialite Mrs. Simpson that finally led him to abdicate the British throne.

The sharpest criticism came from Jon Snow, one of Britain’s most respected and outspoken broadcasters, who “thanked God” for the Drudge Report breaking the news. “I never thought I’d find myself saying thank God for Drudge,” he said arguing that the British media’s conduct went to the “heart of trust between the media and their audience.”

“One wonders whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust the media again,” he said.

Media executives have admitted that it was a difficult decision to make. They denied that they were forced into a deal and said any media outlet could have pulled out of it anytime.

“We did a lot of agonising over whether to enter into it. We made our decision on the basis of safety [of Harry and other soldiers], not on the basis of whether we were supporting the war effort or not. Most of the audience understand the dilemma we were in and thought the decision we took was justified,” said Fran Unsworth, head of the BBC’s news gathering.

Meanwhile, families of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are angry at the way Harry’s Afghan tour has been hyped to the exclusion of others. The father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan has called it “propaganda” and an attempt to “glorify” the failing British mission in Afghanistan.

“I think they have just used Harry as propaganda to promote and glorify a war which, in the end, is going to be found to be a terrible mistake,” said Anthony Philippson whose 29-year-old son James was killed in Afghanistan in 2006. Echoing a widespread criticism, he wondered what was so extraordinary about a trained soldier going to the battlefront.

“He went to Sandhurst, so it was inevitable he had to go out there because otherwise he would have resigned from the army. What’s gone wrong in my view is the tremendous publicity behind what’s happened,” he said.

It is not difficult to understand why a news blackout might be justified under certain circumstances — national security, people’s safety, communal harmony, law and order — but next time the BBC faces an embargo in another country hopefully it would think twice before breaking it in the name of independent journalism.

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