Headlines from Afghanistan
You don’t see many, but believe me, there is plenty of news coming from here, the problem is that the news is good and therefore not mainstream material. Chrenkoff is making sure the blogosphere is kept up to speed on what’s happening with the Afghanis.
If there is one place where good news is harder to come by than Iraq, it’s Afghanistan. For that we should partly blame our poor understanding of Afghan realities, and consequently, unrealistic expectations. An isolated, poor, largely rural country with harsh landscapes and limited natural resources, Afghanistan has been for the past quarter of a century cursed with constant violence and oppression. Good news from Afghanistan will not in any foreseeable future mean mushrooming shopping malls and health care clinics in every village. For the people who have suffered so much for so long, relative peace and absence of theocracy are a good start.
But, as is the case with reporting from Iraq, we shouldn’t let the media off the hook so easily, either. For all the fashionable talk about Iraq distracting the Bush Administration from the war on terror, it’s largely been the media who have ignored Afghanistan except for the occasional story about another skirmish with the Taliban remnants or the explosion in opium cultivation.
While Democrat and Republican convetnions will soon grab all the headlines in America, another election will be taking place here in the Stan. The Afghan people, to include 2 million women whom have registered to vote despite warnings and threats from remnants of the Taliban not to, will participate in free and democratic elections in October, choosing their country’s president, and then early in the new year will return to the polls for electing their congressional representatives. This is huge news for Afghanistan given its history of oppressive ruling governments. You might catch it on the headline ticker at the bottom of your television screen as it flashes by while a pretty young talking head goes on about a candidate’s military service record or something. Sgt Hook out.
Posted by Hook @ 1630 zulu | | Permalink
This post is filed under: The Stan
