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Ep. 175: Selective Humanitarianism and the US Role in Afghanistan's Post-Occupation Famine

Added 2023-02-01 17:50:18 +0000 UTC

"History will cast a shadow over Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan," the Washington Post’s David Ignatius warned in April of 2021. "Biden's Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy," George Packer cautioned in The Atlantic magazine in August of that year. "The Cost of Betrayal in Afghanistan," wrote The Atlantic Council’s Ariel Cohen in Newsweek shortly thereafter.

When news broke in April of 2021 that the Biden administration planned to withdraw all documented US troops from Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation, media outlets almost uniformly rushed to issue condemnations. How could the US, and the West more broadly, simply "abandon the Afghan people," especially women, we’d so bravely liberated? How could the US just up and leave, when it had invested and sacrificed so very much to counter the Taliban over the course of two decades?

This outrage stood, and still stands, in stark contrast to the media’s default state of indifference to the suffering people of Afghanistan, and the US’ extensive role in engineering that suffering. For many decades now, American, British, and other Western media have only really seemed to be concerned with the plight of Afghan people, namely women, when it serves to bolster the case for war, occupation, and the continuation of US regional hegemony. Meanwhile, during Afghanistan’s now second winter of famine after having more than $7 billion dollars stolen from its economy by the United States and its allies, these very same pundits and outlets are uniformly silent on this unfolding human rights disaster, caused, again, in large part, by the United States itself.

On this episode, we examine the media's pattern of selective, chauvinistic outrage when addressing the welfare of Afghan people. We also study how media diminishes the enormous role the US has played in destabilizing the country of Afghanistan and endangering its people, how media portray US military solutions as the only means of support for Afghan people, and how media treat Afghans as little more than pawns in a game of US soft- and hard-power expansion and domestic media-focused moral preening.

Our guests are Hadiya Afzal and Julie Hollar.

Guests

Hadiya Afzal (@husbandofbread)is a Chicago-based program coordinator for Unfreeze Afghanistan, a women-led campaign supporting the Afghan people’s wish to live in peace and prosperity.

Julie Hollar (@hollarjulie) is a Senior Analyst and the Managing Editor at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR).

Show Notes

Pundits Whose Hearts Bled for the “People of Afghanistan” in August Now Silent About U.S. Sanctions Causing Mass Starvation of Afghans

Adam Johnson | December 21, 2022 | The Column

As Afghans Suffer, U.S. Stalls on Plan to Return Central Bank Funds

Sarah Lazare | December 19, 2022 | In These Times

Biden’s Afghan Shell Game Prompts Media Shrugs and Stenography

Julie Hollar | September 20, 2022 | FAIR

Afghanistan: NGOs call for assets to be unfrozen to end ‘near universal poverty’

Patrick Wintour | August 14, 2022 | The Guardian

Biden’s Multi-Billion Afghan Theft Gets Scant Mention on TV News

Julie Hollar | February 15, 2022 | FAIR

As Afghanistan starves, the pundit class turns away

Jon Alsop | January 21, 2022 | Columbia Journalism Review

Thanks to US Sanctions, Afghans Are Starving

Luke Savage | January 12, 2022 | Jacobin

How U.S. sanctions are driving Afghanistan to famine

Ryan Cooper | January 12, 2022 | The Week

The Silence — or Worse — of Human Rights Hawks on U.S. Sanctions Against Afghanistan

Murtaza Hussein | January 9, 2022 | The Intercept

A Million Afghan Children Could Starve This Winter. Are US Sanctions to Blame?

Brian Osgood | December 23, 2021 | The Nation

Media Forget Afghan Plight as US Sanctions Drive Mass Famine Risk

Julie Hollar | December 21, 2021 | FAIR

Afghanistan Withdrawal: Sundays With the Military Industrial Complex

Julie Hollar | October 20, 2021 | FAIR

Missing Voices in Broadcast Coverage of Afghan Withdrawal

Julie Hollar | September 24, 2021 | FAIR

The Other Afghan Women

Anand Gopal | September 6, 2021 | The New Yorker

On Afghanistan Withdrawal, NYT’s Peter Baker Turns to Raytheon Board Member for Independent ‘Analysis’

Adam Johnson | August 29, 2021 | The Column

Sanctions Didn't Help Cubans, Iranians or Venezuelans. They Won't Help Afghans.

Natasha Hakimi Zapata | | In These Times

Media Rediscover Afghan Women Only When US Leaves

Julie Hollar | August 23, 2021 | FAIR

The Invisible Dead and "The Last Word": Lawrence O'Donnell 'Rewrites' the Occupation of Afghanistan

Nima Shirazi | August 9, 2011 | Wide Asleep In America

Feminism as imperialism

Katherine Viner | September 20, 2002 | The Guardian

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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