How the U.S. Media Present Afghanistan part two

 Blames placed on Afghanistan for women.

 

Rarely, if ever, do we hear about how the women of Afghanistan have been impacted by over 20 years of American militarism and occupation.

Instead, we see blame placed primarily on the culture, of tribes, implying that this violence and hatred of women is simply a part of a rough terrain where men rule and women serve.

But how did severe U.S. economic sanctions, which have been used against Afghanistan since 1999, impact women, the health care system, and maternal health care? How did over 20 years of American military occupation, drones, war crimes, misuse of funds, and failed institutional building impact the economic, political, and physical well-being of women?

U.S. coverage shows us that violence against Afghan women only exists at the hands of their own men and never ours. Ours are there to help.

But shouldn't U.S. coverage hold the actions of its government accountable? Shouldn't U.S. coverage look at its government's complicity in worsening conditions for Afghan women? Journalists seemed pretty excited to start the war to save them, but not as much when the time came to hold their own governments accountable.

This was nowhere more apparent than in the coverage of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan in August 2021.

A long-planned but haphazard, violent withdrawal led to a sudden increase in concern and horror amongst American news punditry and reporters about the well-being of Afghan women.

“ With the Taliban in control, Afghanistan's women and girls now find themselves fearing

that 20 years of progress will vanish”. (MSNBC news)

“ Afghan women, do you worry that they were abandoned by the United States, essentially? (Face Nation)

“The most vulnerable are little Afghan girls. What are you hearing? Are Afghan girls able to get out?” (Live CNN)

Many American journalists seemed shocked that 20 years of well-documented corruption and destabilization didn't result in Afghanistan turning into a liberal Western democracy, and that it fell apart so quickly. We saw blame put on President Joe Biden for failing the people, and specifically the women, of Afghanistan by leaving them at the mercy of the Taliban.

“Did you get the sense that President Biden cared about the fate of Afghan women? (An Irani female activist reply) I don't think so. He said the U.S. could not be the police of the world to protect women in any other country”. (Axios on HBO)

“If there was a frustration by President Biden that staying wasn't going to help things, we've now seen that leaving can make things worse”. (Breaking news on MSNBC)

Many journalists began to see themselves as saviors, imperfect, but saviors nevertheless, taking up the responsibility of demanding that something be done to protect Afghan women. And then there was the glorification of American militarism. We were inundated with feel-good stories,  tweets, and photos about U.S. soldiers and Afghan children, where the occupier was again portrayed as a savior and ultimately, a good-hearted person because they were on our side. They represent us.

“This is what American troops were doing before terrorists struck today. feeding children, playing with kids, and lending an arm to the elderly. The American military is the greatest in the world, not only because of its superior force but because of its humanity”. (CBS evening news)

 

Mass starvation and cold winter clam countless lives in Afghanistan.

 

Now compare that to what felt like silence from the same American newsrooms, once it began to be reported that over 23 million Afghans were facing mass starvation, with only two percent of the population having the means to feed themselves sufficiently.

That the winter was about to claim countless lives.

But that level of devastation wasn't from a natural disaster. We knew a famine was approaching in Afghanistan as early as March 2021. The famine has been made a lot worse by Joe Biden's decision to freeze $7 billion in assets from Afghanistan's central bank.

That was justified as a way to coerce the Taliban, which retook the country as the U.S. withdrew, into meeting U.S. and European demands.

In one of the few instances where the connection was made between the frozen money and the devastation it caused, The intercept's Austin Ahlman detailed what the U.S. move has actually meant: that it's kept Afghans from withdrawing their own money, that teachers and government workers are unable to receive their salaries, that the impact the freeze has had on the import-export trade is devastating the economy.

Most coverage doesn't actually connect the dots between the U.S. decision to freeze funds and the humanitarian crisis. If it did, the picture would show a starvation campaign waged by the United States on the country it supposedly went to war to save.

Usually, the frozen funds are buried deep into articles that offer little context beyond painting the Taliban as primarily to blame for the hunger.

The framing makes it seem like freezing the money was the logical thing to do to stop the money from getting into the hands of the Taliban.

“The United States continues to face difficult fundamental questions about how it might be able to make reserve funds available to directly benefit the people of Afghanistan while ensuring that the funds do not benefit the Taliban”. (By JEN PSAKI white house press secretary on C-SPAN)

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