The entry of Northern Alliance troops into Kabul monopolizes the attention of the international dailies that dedicate their front page and editorials to analyzing the progress of the war. “The fall of Kabul, the mystery of the Airbus”, is the headline carried for example by Le Monde of 14/11, that makes the point: “Two months after the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September attributed to the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization, the regime of mullah Omar, who had united his fate with that of Osama Bin Laden, is about to be toppled”. “New York, again…”: this is the front-page title chosen by La Croix of 13/11, in its coverage of another tragedy, which struck the American metropolis, where an Airbus cashed into the residential suburb of Queen’s, causing over 250 victims. “Fear over the city”, is the title of the editorial signed by Bruno Frappat, who reflects on the “climate of insecurity” that is making itself ever more strongly felt in New York, in spite of “the formidable efforts” of the population “to exorcize its fears and, united, to manage its grief”. There are, according to the author of the article, “a series of resemblances and coincidences” between the plane crash and the attacks on the Twin Towers “. Frappat lists them: “Yesterday’s tragedy took place two months after 11 September, and on the same city of New York; they similarly took place early in the morning, on a clear sunny day, and once again an American Airlines plane was involved… “. “When fear erupts into history this is Frappat’s conclusion it is not easy to root out. It is rooted in people’s hearts and minds. Yesterday, New York was placed, literally, in a state of attack”. The front page of the Herald Tribune, by contrast, places the tragedy of the victims in the forefront and stresses that “there is no proof of a terrorist act in the American air disaster”. “Wars are not only terrible, but also unfruitful“: that is the title of the editorial of the Rome correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Heinz-Joachim Fischer, on 13/11, in which he analyzes the attitude of John Paul II to the war, taking his cue from the discourses given by the Pope on the occasion of World Peace Day since 1999. He concludes: “the Pope in the course of his pontificate has become pacifist, not in the biblical sense of turning ‘the other cheek’ to every aggressor, but as a result of his experience of world history and politics”. In this latest conflict the Pope has remained silent because everything had already been said on the occasion of the Gulf War and the conflict in Kossovo, and the editorialist wonders: should the Pope “perhaps have repeated all this, day after day, during these weeks?”. The request for aid for the suffering people of Afghanistan made in his Angelus address of 11 November is, in Fischer’s view, sufficient: “The Pope’s message could not fail to be heard by all those who wished to hear it… John Paul II asked for nothing more.” “Behind his silence lies hidden, so it is said in the Vatican, a sorrowful feeling of helplessness”. The acritical attitude of the American press is the theme of the article “Every day on the alert?” written by Jan Fleischhauer and published in the weekly Spiegel of 12/11/2001, which comments as follows: “neutrality in the choice of words is interpreted as a way of distancing oneself, scepticism as weakness of character: the terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan have changed the American media“. On 8 November the Spanish government, accepting the proposal of Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, approved the “new integral plan of support to the family”, which will be the mainstay of social policy for the three-year period 2001-2004. The Spanish daily La Vanguardia (9/11) sums up “the package of 50 fiscal and labour measures, drawn up by the government to respond to the profound transformation undergone by Spanish families in recent years and in particular to help people to reconcile work and family”. El Pais (8/11) emphasizes that “the new plan favours all families, irrespective of the type of bond that unites the couple, and hence also de facto and single-parent families, which represent a growing phenomenon in Spain. The plan has been welcomed by the Federation of Large Families, which declared that for the first time the government has shown its firm political will to help families with children”.
