It’s easy to blame the messenger for bad news, and there’s certainly a long and ignoble history of politicians attacking reporters and media organisations for telling difficult truths. But I wonder if we have now moved to a new era when the media are as responsible for mistruths as politicians. I ask because although the media is meant to reflect reality, I wonder how accurate their reporting is of Afghanistan? I have some doubt, and it is based on experience.
When I was in Iraq, even a year after it was clear that the Coalition and the Iraq authorities had defeated the insurgency, journalists still arrived in theatre with the assumption that we were beaten (the role of the UK in SE Iraq is debateable, but that’s not the point here). Some reporters had real difficulty accepting victory. It was almost an inverse of traditional war journalism. Through most of the modern era, journalists assumed ‘their’ side was winning unless it was undisputedly obvious that it wasn’t. In the final two years of the Iraq War, the opposite took place – an assumption of failure even when it was clear that the insurgency was spent.
I’m still trying to work out the reasons for this: the lazy, soft-left assumption that the Iraq Government was a Western stooge, a bitter resentment of George Bush, a breakdown of relations between the MoD and the media, or just a legacy of the previous Iraq reporting. Whatever it was, some in the media acted as if they resented the fact that ‘their’ side had won. More broadly, I wonder if journalists now have an addiction to disaster. Watch TV news nowadays and almost every story is reduced to a ‘catastrophe’ or ‘tragedy,’ no matter how parochial the story or how few people are involved. If journalists can’t wallow self-indulgently in mawkish sentimentality the story is hardly worth bothering with. Straight reporting seems to be a dying art.
On Afghanistan, the UK provincial media will report good news stories such as education and infrastructure development, but our national media report only one story with any regularity; the deaths of British servicemen. Worse, they do not put the death in context. Who knows how many schools in Afghanistan have reopened? Or how many girls are now being educated? Or how many Taleban have been killed, or turned? Or how many Afghan soldiers and police are being trained? Or how many tribal meetings have been held? We don’t know, but what we see is the media revel in a mindset of thoughtless defeatism.
For some, every death is a call to ‘bring home our boys.’ And what then, after we have left? When the Taleban have re-ignited Afghanistan’s civil war and North West Pakistan becomes ungovernable? When the hundreds of thousands of refugees pour into Afghanistan’s neighbours? When Iran’s nuclear-armed Revolutionary Guard have been greatly strengthened by their support for the Taleban? And a Fundamentalist state in Kabul, with the mass slaughter and oppression that will accompany it, comes to pass, along with the training camps for those who want to blow us, and all moderate Muslim governments and people, into the next world? The same media fools who are ramping up the ‘why-oh-why are we in Afghanistan’ stance will, when the first images of beheadings and violence reach the outside world, be damning the US and UK for leaving Afghanistan to its fate and destabilising the wider world.
I worry that parts of the UK media are framing this war for defeat. For me, it was best summed up on the ITV evening news on Friday when, in a two-way between reporter and anchorman, both agreed that the UK needed to show some military success - and fast. Neither seemed to understand that this was a near impossible request because, first, much of the national media have shown themselves impervious to reporting good news stories, and second, set piece battles are not a feature of counter-insurgency. If our society and civilisation is going to fight wars to the drumbeat of a media that has more power than ever, but little responsibility and even less understanding, we are in deep trouble. The Taleban are aware of this and skilfully manipulate the media.
I don't want to whitewash. It’s clear there are problems in Afghanistan. NATO has not focused enough on winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people - the “win the people and you win the war” strategy. Political leadership here and the US has been unfocused, weak and reluctant. The Taleban have had tactical success. Yet some of this is changing. The MoD is more focused. We are getting the right strategy. The overwhelming majority of Afghans want us there, the insurgency is focused in a few pockets and progress is tangible in many parts of the country.
But can we get that on TV? No. TV has decided: Afghanistan is a bad news story. Sadly it hasn’t yet realised that leaving it will be worse.
Bob Seely served with British forces in Iraq from June 2008 to February 2009 and was awarded a Joint Commander’s Commendation in September. A former journalist, he is on the Conservative Parliamentary candidates' list.