What Does Western Media Coverage of the Taliban Takeover Say about Western Understanding of Afghanistan

As Kabul falls and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is nearly complete, there is a rather bipolar coverage of the events on the ground among Western media outlets. On one hand, there are extensive analyses of what led to the fact that an Afghan military, 300,000 men strong, that was trained and equipped with modern, US-made guns, tanks, and fighter planes, at the cost of more than USD 80 billion over two decades, simply disintegrated in the face of a two-week assault by a group of guerrilla fighters carrying nothing more than rifles and grenades. 

On the other hand, there is extensive coverage about the plight of everyone who has suffered under the previous Taliban rule and assumed will be under e renewed Taliban regime. Stories abound of Western expatriates getting out of the country at the last minute, Afghan collaborators of the Western militaries or the now-defunct Western-backed government getting left behind and facing death threats, and Afghan women who have been kicked out of their jobs and schools. The message that social liberalism has died in Afghanistan implies that Taliban rule remains unpopular at least among some in the country.

Accompanying the on-the-ground coverage of the changing situation in Afghanistan is the coverage of a more high-level blame game among politicians and political commentators among both Western and non-Western countries involved in propping up the old government that has now all but destroyed by the Taliban. While the Biden administration in the US flatly denied that the chaos associated with the Taliban takeover could have been prevented in any other way, there are talks of Afghan government officials slipping out of the country with suitcases full of cash, and other countries jumping into a power vacuum.

Such multi-pronged media coverage of what is happening about Afghanistan certainly brings plenty of soul-searching. For all those who argue that Western effort in Afghanistan was a futile one, the image of everyone begging for international support and jumping on the last planes to leave the country suggests otherwise. Despite the incompetence of the Afghan government and military, for two brief decades, Western support has nurtured a small group of Westernized individuals who enjoy and remain willing to fight for liberal sociocultural values in their conservative homeland.

But the audience of Western media coverage should not deceive themselves that the Taliban has won the country through just brute force and did not have any popular support. The reality is that Westernized individuals remain tiny in a country of tribal affiliations and conservative values, and by supporting a government that was unable to neither able to guarantee the safety of the average Afghan, much less improve their livelihood, these Westernized individuals have earned the ire of the country's rural majority. Girls going to school and work are nice, but when most people fear for their very lives, it means little.

Of course, that is not to said that the Taliban is fundamentally popular with much of the country. It is a movement that takes conservative values to their logical extreme, and persecute everyone who deviates from the extremist values. Yet, as the only force left in Afghanistan that is capable of uniting the country and providing a semblance of nationwide security, the Taliban is now, in a way, chosen by the Afghan people to lead. In a country sick of continuing war and violence, anyone that is willing to deliver peace, even at enormous sociocultural cost, would be welcome.

Given this attitude among the majority of Afghan citizens, it is all the sadder that Western media coverage has not included more soul-searching on how an Afghan government propped up at great expense to Western states have failed so miserably to gain the support of the Afghan people. The "nation-building" exercise evidently did not extend to getting support from the various tribal leaders and ethnic groups that make up the socially complex country that is Afghanistan. The ignoring of the country's social context by both Western governments and media bodes ill for future engagements in this part of the world.

As the Taliban settles in for long-term government, Western media coverage of and attention toward Afghanistan will inevitably decline. But the lessons of Western failures and media bias about the country should not be forgotten by anyone else seeking to go into Afghanistan in the future. International actors oblivious to the concerns of the majority, while exaggerating the importance of a vocal minority, are bound to be shocked when things rapidly go against their desired directions. This is true both for the Taliban, as well as Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Russia, or any other country-level actors seeking to manage bilateral relationships with a new Afghanistan.