This morning I read a BBC World News account of the suicide bombing of a bank this week in Khandahar, Afghanistan (in the province defended by Canadian forces for some years), where 21 people were killed and many injured.What drew my attention especially was this comment by the author:
…….the overall security situation in Afghanistan has improved since the Taliban gained complete control with the full withdrawal of foreign troops in 2021,….
Which is followed by mention that previous recent bombings have been claimed by:
…….Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, the regional affiliate of the so-called Islamic State group, a major rival of the Taliban.
Aside from the obviously wrong statement that the Taliban had gained “complete control” in Afghanistan (no one has gained control of Afghanistan in the past 1000 years), what this reminded me of is the remarkable weakness of modern mainstream journalism.
ISIS has been active in Afghanistan for a long time. When the Taliban were still fighting USA supported government troops, they were already fighting ISIS in eastern Afghanistan too.
If you want journalism in depth, it seems you have to go to personal writing. I learned that in the 2016 book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, by Rosa Brooks, ex-“senior advisor” to the US State Department, and legal expert at the Pentagon, now law professor at Georgetown University. If I remember right, she is married to a colonel in the US special forces. She is someone who knows a lot.
Eight years ago she told us of the Taliban/ISIS conflict already underway. Why was no one else reporting that? I did recently find a new documentary on it, where one independent reporter travelled into ISIS territory to interview ISIS fighters. One of them told him how he had recently switched from fighting for the Taliban to fighting for ISIS (they were not using the term ISKP). When asked why he made the switch, the man said ISIS pays more – they pay double what the Taliban pay.
That immediately raises the question – who is paying for that? So far I see no sign of anyone looking into it, but maybe the facts are just hiding in a corner. Maybe we don’t want to know.
Anyway, as a parting comment here, you won’t find a better look at what is really going on in the world than in How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. Rosa Brooks tells us that the US State Dept is sadly depleted in employees and funding, as a result of which, in countries around the world, USA military officers are often doing work previously done by diplomats. She also calls attention to polls that have shown the armed forces to be the only American institution left that the American public still trusts.
Thinking about that, and how the November elections in the USA this year could result in chaos in that country, I can’t help reflecting how, throughout history, from the Romans until now, whenever a government has disintegrated the military have taken their place.
Alan Conrad 