A friendly Afghan man named Fazel was my Lyft driver on a recent trip from Washington Dulles Airport into the city, and as we talked during the long ride, I learned that Fazel was driving 11 to 12 hours a day to support not only his wife and two young children but also family members back in Kabul. Now that the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan, the country is in rough economic shape, with many Afghans unable to support their families and facing widespread famine. A few days later, I happened to read a New Yorker article that lays out in excruciating detail why diplomatic talks to prevent a Taliban overthrow of Afghanistan’s democratically elected government failed. The piece, the first of a two-part series, is dispiriting for several reasons, not least of which was the fact that the American public was largely unaware of what was going on. I believe this news blackout was the fault of our government leaders and the media who seemed to be asleep at the switch. More on that below.
First, let’s talk about what went wrong. As the New Yorker writers note, the first major misstep in what is now a humanitarian crisis was the Trump administration’s decision to make an end-run around Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and negotiate directly with the Taliban. Without consulting Ghani, Trump agreed to a May 21, 2021 withdrawal of U.S troops in exchange for a temporary ceasefire of hostilities. The second major misstep was President Biden’s decision in April to unilaterally withdraw U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. After that announcement, the Taliban began attacking and conquering rural areas of the country and closing in on its major cities. While negotiations to save Ghani’s government and institute some sort of power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban continued, it was clear the U.S. and the Afghan government was operating from a position of weakness. Top Pentagon officials tried to convince Biden to delay the withdrawal so they would have some leverage in negotiating a lasting ceasefire with the Taliban, but Biden overruled them. He wanted out. The result was a disastrous, badly coordinated pullout, which left many Afghans who worked with Americans over the years at the mercy of the Taliban and spawned the deaths of 95 others who were killed when an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up at Kabul airport in late August. As the world knows, 13 American service members were among those who died in that bombing.
I remember reading and listening to media accounts of those last desperate days with horror. Those of us who follow international news knew that the Taliban was rapidly gaining ground but we had no idea that the Afghan government and its military forces would fall apart so quickly, with such devastating consequences for their citizenry. Obviously, some of our top military leaders had an inkling of what might happen, which is why Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tried to convince Biden not to withdraw U.S. troops so precipitously. But the American public wasn’t fully informed of their concerns. This strikes me as a major failure of U.S. media. In April, after Biden announced the withdrawal, at least two news outlets, CNN and the New York Times, did publish stories by about how Milley and Austin tried to convince Biden to delay the withdrawal and maintain a modest troop presence in Afghanistan but were ultimately unsuccessful. But that was about it. It wasn’t until right before and after the chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops in late August that other national news outlets reported on Biden’s refusal to listen to his top military advisors.
Why was the media not paying attention? Part of the problem is that after 20 years, most Americans were weary of the ongoing hostilities in Afghanistan, which by the way is the longest running war in U.S. history. The national press knew that many readers were no longer interested in this particular quagmire. So there wasn’t a lot of pressure for reporters to do a deep dive into what was going on in Afghanistan behind the scenes. And there is also the fact that international coverage has been sharply curtailed by financially strapped news organizations. Covering war overseas is a hugely expensive proposition; during the Iraqi war in the early 2000s, for example, it cost the New York Times a $1 million a year to staff a bureau in Baghdad, according to one former Times editor.
In the past decade, coverage of Afghanistan has been spotty and erratic, which is why many Americans were stunned to see the Ghani government and its military allies collapse so quickly in the face of the Taliban’s onslaught. When I asked Fazel, my Lyft driver, what caused such a precipitous collapse, he hesitated and then said, “It’s complicated.” Fazel obviously didn’t want to wade into the political morass with a stranger. While the New Yorker article lays it out for those who want the gritty details of what happened, here’s a quick summary: President Ghani and Taliban had no intention of sharing power with each other and the Afghan military never really learned to fight independently without the air power and strategic backing of U.S. forces.
At this point, Afghanistan is pretty much in the rear-view mirror of most Americans, even though there are still thousands of Afghans who worked with U.S. soldiers and advisors still trying to get out of the country and thousands more facing a famine. I don’t feel sorry for the Taliban whose repressive tactics are costing them international aid and pushing their economy to the brink of collapse. I do feel sorry for ordinary Afghans, like the family of the Lyft driver who drove me from Dulles the other day. They supported U.S. troops when we were in Afghanistan and don’t deserve the hell they are facing now.
