Thread by @AzmatZahra

I went on @ReliableSources with @brianstelter today to talk about U.S. media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, which has been its lowest in recent years, despite record pace.

There are many negative consequences, but one I want to emphasize the most is this...

(a thread)

https://twitter.com/ReliableSources/status/1432002165254524929

Because most Americans are only now waking up to the war, they're informing themselves about the debate over withdrawal based ​mostly on sudden coverage from Kabul over the last few weeks—not the the years of context that's essential to having an informed debate about this war.

Most of the war in Afghanistan over the last 20 years has been fought in rural areas — not Kabul.

These areas are harder to access, admittedly, and some reporters have really gone to great lengths to report from them.

These are places where ordinary Afghan citizens have experiences the brunt of the war, from U.S. bombings, Taliban attacks, night raids by Afghan forces, ISIS-K attacks, kidnappings & more...

U.S. bombing in Afghanistan ramped up to record levels in recent years—not just against the Taliban, but ISIS-K, the group responsible for Thursday's airport attack.

In fact, in 2017 the U.S. dropped a 21,600-pound bomb in a small village in Nangarhar, intended to target ISIS-K.

Better known as the “Mother Of All Bombs...

Bombings & air support are primarily how the U.S. has been engaging in direct combat in Afghanistan in recent years.

In 2019, the bombing campaign was so intense it reached record levels in America's long war: usatoday.com/story/news/pol…

But American media tends to prioritize covering the war most when Americans are on the ground, and especially when they are dying.

The shift to air war meant (with some exceptions) news orgs focused little on the bombing and the impact it was (or wasn't) having on the ground...

Here are some of the impacts of that bombing, according to my ground reporting and that of many other journalists who have prioritized trying to understand how the war has been playing out in rural areas:

The intense scale & pace of bombing resulted in large numbers of civilians dying.

Those deaths created space for the Taliban, including many of its recent recruits, but it also left many civilians in battlefield areas desperate for the war to end.

Many Americans would struggle to relate to these civilians. They don’t speak English. Most have never had a smartphone. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a video of them going viral online.

But their voices are essential context to understand this war:

https://twitter.com/AzmatZahra/status/1429831426371883009

Investigations into America's aerial war in Afghanistan are essential to understanding the approach the Biden administration seems to be weighing right now, based on the bombings yesterday against ISIS-K and today in Kabul:

a future of continued aerial warfare in Afghanistan.