Shoddy mainstream media coverage of Afghanistan has created a safe haven for bad foreign policy ideas

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Even before the US’ withdrawal and Taliban takeover catalyzed a media frenzy over Afghanistan in recent weeks, 2021 was already on pace to be among the bloodiest of the US’ 20-year war in the country.

Through June, UNAMA, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, recorded 1,659 Afghan civilian deaths, higher than for most of the years the US has been at war in the country. Many of these deaths are the result of the Biden administration's decision to intensify the US bombing campaign, including in civilian areas. 

This has been the story of the last 20 years. The degree of violence experienced by Afghan civilians has never driven US media coverage, particularly when the US itself has been directly or indirectly responsible. The recent spike in mainstream coverage is an outlier. 

Researcher Andrew Tyndall found national news coverage of Afghanistan by the three major networks totaled just five minutes across the 14,000 minutes of evening news broadcasts in 2020, and only 362 from all of the 2015-2019 period. In total: coverage of Afghanistan amounted to an average of 24 minutes per network, per year, for a conflict on which the US has spent $2.3 trillion of the public’s funds.

Following the initial stages of the US invasion, television coverage roughly tracked with the number of US troops deployed to Afghanistan. Coverage picked up again during the US troop surge in 2009 and reached its third-highest point in terms of minutes allotted when there were around 90,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2010. When US troop levels in Afghanistan dropped, so did network coverage.

The violence didn’t go away when US troops started to leave Afghanistan, but major media networks did. In 2016, with US troop numbers below 10,000, the combined airtime for Afghanistan between the major broadcast networks was less than 30 minutes. For Afghan civilians, 2016 was one of the deadliest years of the conflict. More than 48,000 Afghan civilians are reported to have been killed throughout the war, although even that number is likely significantly underestimated.

The selective coverage of Afghanistan by mainstream outlets has created a petri dish for bad policy ideas. Among the most popular and widely repeated in recent weeks is the myth that the US’ previous approach of cultivating a stalemate was somehow ‘sustainable’ given the low number of US casualties incurred. As demonstrated above, this approach, now being advocated by many critics of the US withdrawal, requires completely denying the agency of ordinary Afghans.

This is a narrative ultimately syndicated by mainstream media outlets, but sourced from US foreign policy ‘Blob’, a largely militant and corrupt community of pseudo-experts including various ‘experts’ from establishment think tanks and retired generals. This community typically peddles failed ideas, or played a role in enacting those failed policies.

As usual, the Blob omits consideration of the people for whom its foreign policy ideas are domestic policy. If they were truly concerned for the welfare of Afghans, they would acknowledge that when a situation demands humanitarian action, the answer is humanitarian action, not militarism.

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