The news pages of the US MSM have gone completely AWOL on coverage of the rapidly unravelling strategic situation in Afghanistan. (A situation whose strategic importance I started to discuss here, on Friday.)
Today’s NYT magazine did carry an excellent piece by Elizabeth Rubin about the resurgence of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. It contained a lot of good material that she had gathered during a reporting trip back in summer, and definitely has a lot of helpful detail about the ambiguous (at best) policy toward the Taliban pursued by Pakistan’s infamous ISI intel service. So yes, it does provide some really useful background to the “news” events that have been occurring in Afghanistan over the past week…
But where is the coverage in the big US media of these momentous news events?
Almost nowhere, it seems… Most likely, because there are very few US service people left in Afghanistan any more. They have all been sucked up into the big “flood the zone” deployment in Iraq. And meanwhile, the Canadians, Brits, and other non-US members of NATO have been left holding the bag in Afghanistan.
Which probably also explains why the MSM in those countries has been covering the Afghan story much more than the US MSM.
Following up on the outspoken comments made by Chief of the British Defense Staff Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt ten days ago, his predecessor Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge reportedly told a meeting of European experts last Tuesday that the British forces risk defeat in Afghanistan.
Here is how Mark Townsend and Peter Beaumont described Inge’s remarks in a piece in today’s Observer:
- ‘I don’t believe we have a clear strategy in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I sense we’ve lost the ability to think strategically. Deep down inside me, I worry that the British army could risk operational failure if we’re not careful in Afghanistan. We need to recognise the test that I think they could face there,’ he told the debate held by Open Europe, an independent think tank campaigning for EU reform.
Inge added that Whitehall had surrendered its ability to think strategically and that despite the immense pressures on the army, defence received neither the research nor funding it required.
‘I sense that Whitehall has lost the knack of putting together inter-departmental thinking about strategy. It talks about how we’re going to do in Afghanistan, it doesn’t really talk about strategy.’
Well, if Whitehall has stopped thinking strategically about how to plan and balance the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, you can be almost certain that Washington DC hasn’t been doing any better at the task.
What I still don’t understand, though, is why people in the big US media are so asleep on this story?
“But where is the coverage in the big US media of these momentous news events?”
Umm, the cover story in the NYTimes magazine IS big media.
And I have read, over the past several months, several articles about the increasing poppy crop, the Taliban takeover of various areas, the safe harbor granted by Pakistan, etc. All in the “MSM.”
This entry reminds me of something that Little Green Footballs would write. Complain that the “MSM” doesn’t cover things properly, even when it does exactly what you want.
Um, are you even aware of the difference between the news pages and the Magazine? I’m not blaming the magazine folks… their production-imnposed lead times are far too long to allow them to do any coverage of breaking news. As for coverage “over the past several months”, that’s not what I’m writing about, either.
There’s been a sea change in the strategic/security situation in Afghanistan in the past 3-4 weeks, and very little hint of that has made it anywhere into the US big media.
Where is Carlotta Gall, for God’s sake? She should have been on the front pages of the NYT, from Afghanistan, three or four times per week for the past month…
“Um, are you even aware of the difference between the news pages and the Magazine?”
Yes.
There hasn’t been as much coverage in Afghanistan as, say, Iraq. But then again, one could say the same thing about your blog or your column.
Same media you talking about, before the invasion of Afghanistan there were a documentary from inside Afghanistan showing some pieces of Taliban hits the women on their uncovered legs, then moved to show us those very sick and dirty drug’s places, how those youth taking the drugs and all the story.
I wish the media and that producer for that decuman shows us now what’s changing in Afghanistan in regards to the drugs trading and eductions by the youth in Afghanistan specially which I believe they are jobless, hopeless no life just to fights the new invasion as they did before with Russia and other which the history of Afghanistan full of invaders like Iraq.
My guess as to why the Administration at least has turned its attention away from Afghanistan is that the solution involves a really difficult problem, Pakistan. You have to confront the ISI, the tribal jihadis, the fear of undercutting Musharaff, the fear of nuclear weapons going missing, etc. Rummy and Cheney would simply rather not deal with it.
One positive result of the Taleban’s summer push ( which wasn’t a resurgence as much as a continuation of the buildup that’s been going on for five years ) is that it’s been big for the media to finally stop ignoring. Articles like that NYT piece are becoming more common. More attention is being paid to the failure of reconstruction over most of the country, and the role of the ISI in propping up the Taliban. I really hope that this attention is increased, to keep the pressure on. As the ISAF and NATO commanders have been advising, we can finally pressure the ISI to relent their support, and pressure the Bush administration to be serious about reconstruction. These steps have to be taken.
My daily browsing (Slate’s roundup of major newspaper headlines, NYT, WaPo, LAT, and blogs) supports Helena’s point.
My local paper — the Santa Fe New Mexican — had a full page of articles from other papers and wire services a few Sundays ago, and it was the first real coverage there I can recall.
(The unusual coverage made me aware that the NM doesn’t include US deaths in Afghanistan in the daily Iraq deaths box buried on an inside page — which the WaPO does include, so I wrote requesting the NM do so…letter published but no change yet.)
The BBC World News has fairly frequent coverage.
Incidentally, I recall reading recently that even after the handover to NATO that the US still has about the same number of troops in Afghanistan.