Earlier this year, 28 people, including a district governor and three Afghan police officers, were killed in southern
Afghanistan. Taliban fighters attacked a government office, and fighters, bodyguards, and civilians all died. I don’t know why, because I check CNN everyday and watch the local news outlets and try to stay fairly well informed, but I didn’t hear about this story until I specifically googled “
Afghanistan.” We hear about bombings and explosions in
Iraq everyday, but for some reason, everyone forgot about
Afghanistan. I keep wondering why that is. Does the government distract the press with news about
Iraq, or is the press distracted with
Iraq?
Obviously,
Afghanistan isn’t in complete stability. There might be a parliament, and Karzai might be running everything, but the fact that Taliban fighters are still launching attacks is evidence that the country still has a long way to go in terms of achieving peace. And what worries me is, we may be going backward. We took the power out of the hands of one group of warlords and put it into the hands of many different warlords, spread out across the country. The drug trade is still thriving, rights aren’t progressing much outside major cities, and terrorism can likely still find a home in
Afghanistan. And since the press isn’t giving the country the coverage it deserves, how do we keep the government in check?
