How the U.S. Media Present Afghanistan part one

The Burqa. For women honor or shame and using the body of  Afghanistan's woman as a front.

"Imagine a huge dark piece of cloth hung over your entire body like you were a shameful statue." That is an excerpt from the poem "Under the Burqa" by the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler. It was recited by Oprah Winfrey on February 10, 2001, in front of 18,000 people who had paid $1,000 per ticket to attend a "Vagina Monologues" gala event. They then witnessed Winfrey remove a blue shuttlecock burqa from an Afghan activist.

That was eight months before the invasion of Afghanistan. There isn't a better summary of over 20 years of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan than that an exorbitantly expensive spectacle of salvation and dehumanization using the body of the Afghan woman as a front.

It also sums up what U.S. coverage of Afghanistan has looked like for over two decades. In the news, it’s addressed like this.

“For the women of Afghanistan, the veil, the burqa, has become the symbol

of the Taliban's power.” And in another place “How long does the military think it will take them to finish the job that they came

there to do in terms of Afghanistan and Al Qaeda and the Taliban?”. Another piece of news is “Hundreds of women, many in burqas, gathered at a wedding hall to implore officials to find a kidnapped American aid worker”.

In its coverage of Afghanistan, the U.S. media has tightly held hands with U.S. foreign policy, Helping justify an invasion born in large part out of the fog of vengeance following the 9/11 attacks.

And so when we closely examine American media coverage of Afghanistan from the invasion to the occupation, and even the withdrawal in late 2021, we see how U.S. militarism and, in many cases, U.S. journalists themselves are presented as a source of salvation.

The story of Afghanistan the false saviors.

Afghanistan deserves a better story. And for us here to tell that story from the vantage point of the American empire, we need to be able to reexamine how we've built the narratives around American militarism, its victims, and the so-called war on terror.

We need to define the real legacy the United States leaves in Afghanistan,

one which is about the horrors of violence and not one about a reluctant savior, a bumbling empire.

The narrative U.S. coverage of Afghanistan loves to repeat, as it often does in coverage of Muslim societies, is about the physical bodies of the women and the violence done against them by their own men, while actively ignoring the role American militarism plays.

“The Taliban, of course, is responding in the way that it always has, that Osama bin Laden and his associates are guests in their country. Well, it's time for the guests to leave”. (Colin Powell, former secretary of state)

“ It is obviously late in the evening in Kabul, and once again they are finding nighttime very unpleasant.” (CNN night news strike on Afghanistan)

“As we drive out the Taliban and the terrorists, we're determined to lift up the people of Afghanistan. The women and children of Afghanistan have suffered enough”. (George W Bush on c-span)

Afghan women were and still are depicted as simply victims of their men's savagery. They only exist in our headlines when they're being beaten by their own men, denied an education by their own men, or when they are killed by their own men.

And journalists, of course, have made themselves the voice of Afghan women against their own men.

“ The hidden victims of war and a brutal, male-dominated society. A rare look inside the lives of Afghan women and their struggle to survive.” (Live CNN news)

“The need for female officers is definitely there. But you can imagine the incredible obstacles and taboos that Afghan women have to get through to do this kind of work.” (MSNBC Rachel Maddow show)

“Violence towards women is not just committed by the Taliban, and it's quite frequent. And in a  report released just this year by Human Rights Watch, it stated that nearly nine out of 10 Afghan women suffer physical, sexual, or psychological violence or forced marriage at least once in their lifetimes.” (By Erin Burnett CNN)

 Click here to read part 2